Hitting the mosh pit in my wheelchair

EMMA- Do you have a startle reflex? Because it’s a cerebral palsy specific thing, kind of, isn’t it?

MARTIN- It’s exclusively just for us, which we love it; it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. It can happen anywhere. Oh! You see what I mean?

EMMA- I have a friend who always talks about her startle reflex and the trouble it gets her into. 

MARTIN- Oh, it drives me nuts. 

EMMA- It’s like hitting people or knocking your coffee. 

MARTIN- Yeah. It only happens to me every once in a while. But the coffee one it happens quite a lot with, or I’ll just be sitting and I’ll just sort of jolt. I don’t expect it.

EMMA- So, that’s what the startle reflex is: if something frightens you or whatever you jump more than someone else would? 

MARTIN- Yeah. Even when you’re at a cinema or something like that, my girlfriend tells me it’s like you kind of give them a 4D experience when you go to the cinema with somebody with cerebral palsy. It’s really frustrating sometimes actually because I can be sat on a train and somebody will make a loud noise and I’ll basically go through the roof. 

EMMA- You go, it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m okay.

MARTIN- It’s all right, it’s my cerebral palsy. That really puts them at ease. It’s my cerebral palsy, don’t worry, you can’t catch it. I feel cleaner for talking about, I feel better. 

EMMA- Do you? 

MARTIN- Yeah.

EMMA- Fab. This is all part of the service. 

MARTIN- A bit of therapy actually. I’m going to go and have a cry and a lie down now. 

MUSIC- Theme music.

EMMA- This is Access All, the BBC’s disability and mental health podcast. I’m Emma Tracey.

MARTIN- And I’m Martin Dougan. 

EMMA- Martin is standing in, sitting in – oh I can’t believe I just did that work joke, you’re a wheelchair user. 

MARTIN- I’m just in. 

EMMA- Sitting in for Nikki Fox who’s off on her holidays. 

MARTIN- I hope she’s having a good time. 

EMMA- It’s been a rough few weeks for disabled people taking commercial flights in and out of the UK. BBC broadcaster Frank Gardner told Access All a few weeks ago how he was left on a plane for over an hour because someone didn’t bring his wheelchair to the door. There’s also been the tragic story recently of a man with reduced mobility who died at Gatwick Airport after leaving an aircraft. But there’s another major bugbear too, when wheelchairs are damaged in transit. Martin, you’re a wheelchair user, you flew from Glasgow to London to be with us here today, has your wheelchair ever been damaged?

MARTIN- Yes, loads of times. The one that I remember most is I went on holiday to Turkey and they put my wheelchair in the hold, and then they brought it back and my side guards were actually pinned inside my wheels because they’d stacked everybody’s luggage in the hold on top of the chair and it must have been that much pressure on top of the chair that the metal parts started to bend. 

EMMA- BBC Access All has been keeping across these air travel stories and have been told that the government is considering new measures to improve air travel for disabled people. They’ve told us that they’re hoping to make an announcement in the next few weeks. We don’t know the full extent of the plans yet, but we do know one area being carefully considered is the removal of the low cap on insurance claims for damaged wheelchairs. Martin, what do you know about this? 

MARTIN- Well, at the moment if your wheelchair gets damaged during a flight you can apply for insurance, but the highest amount you're likely to get, unless you have a chosen paid premium when purchasing your travel insurance, it’s £1,000. You’re only getting £1,000. 

EMMA- £1,000!

MARTIN- I mean, I know my wheelchair cost about £3,000, so if anything gets damaged £1,000 just doesn’t cut the mustard. 

EMMA- Why is it only £1,000 they have at the moment? 

MARTIN- This is where it gets a wee bit technical. So, it’s down to something called – are you ready for it?

EMMA- Uh-huh.

MARTIN- The 1999 Montreal Convention which limits the amount of compensation available, because currently it classes mobility aids as baggage. They’re also stored in the hold because of their size, which is where they do get damaged, like I mentioned before; this is where the damage happens.

EMMA- So, what’s the government planning? 

MARTIN- Over the last few months it’s been asking the industry about how it could improve the customer experience, including removing this insurance cap. Other countries signed up to the Montreal Convention have managed to do this, including Canada itself. And the government says it would be possible for UK domestic flights to remove this cap. Now, we have to wait a few weeks to know for certain that it’s been waved through. But I wonder just how much it may or may not help the situation. 

EMMA- And why now? Has the government been listening to all these stories on Access All? 

MARTIN- Well, I’m sure they’ve been listening, definitely. But they’ve been working on this idea a little longer. Basically Brexit, when the UK left the EU, has given the industry a wee chance to rewrite their own rules to an extent. 

EMMA- I know someone else who has faced great frustration when flying with his wheelchair. It’s Mik Scarlet, all-round entertainer and disabled customer service expert. Hi Mik, how are you?

MICK- I’m really well thanks. Yes, flying, what fun, or not. 

EMMA- Yeah, you’ve not got a great track record for flying, have you? 

MIK- No. I first flew in 1986, long, long ago, to the island of Ibiza when I was 22. I’d been a wheelchair user for five years. And I arrived and my wheelchair was brought to me in bits.

EMMA- Oh my goodness. 

MIK- And I spent three days trapped in my hotel room, while my best mate roamed San Antonio trying to find someone who could weld it together. We did, we found a lovely Scottish guy who fixed motorbikes, and he welded it. Basically the first rigid framed wheelchair was invented in Ibiza by accident. And it meant that I had a holiday. 

But when I was coming home I remember watching through the window of the plane as the baggage holders jumped on my chair trying to fold it up. So, when I got back the wheels were no longer round and I had to wait ages to get a new one. I mean, that was ’86 so this isn’t a new story. And I would say on average maybe about once every three, maybe four flights my chair comes back to me with bent wheels, broken back rests. The frames get broken a lot. Because what people don’t appreciate is your chair is put in a plane that goes up to 30,000ft where it gets freezing cold, there’s no air pressure, so all the metalwork cracks, the tyres deflate; any weaknesses become more weak. And then you come off the plane, usually somewhere warm, so then it heats up and cracks. So, basically your chair needs to be somewhere where it’s looked after like a person. 

EMMA- Ideally it would be that you would sit in your wheelchair, even on the flight, or your wheelchair would have somewhere to go in the main cabin?

MIK- Yes. I mean, I no longer fly. 

EMMA- At all?

MIK- Unless I absolutely, absolutely have to. Because the last time I flew for work the cabin crew, who hadn’t been trained how to use the aisle chair, dropped me and broke my leg while I was at 30,000ft. That involved, I was meant to be going to Vienna,  instead we diverted to Schiphol in Amsterdam. I was rushed off the plane. And six months later my leg was finally taken out of plaster, because I’d got a complete snap on my tib and fib. So, basically I laid on the floor on the aeroplane when I’d been dropped and said to my wife, ‘I’ve broken my leg’. And she went, ‘Are you sure?’ and I lifted my leg up and my foot just hung off like a [voices overlap]. 

EMMA- Oh my gosh. 

MARTIN- Was that 2018?

MIK- Yes.

MARTIN- What grabs my attention is you were taking about when you went away in 1986, and then you get an injury in 2018 as well. Why haven’t things progressed? 

MIK- Because we are still viewed as being an annoyance. We are not a part of the flying public. We’re travelling public. We are in most types of public transport we’re kind of like, this is how we do it, and now we’ve got to modify it so that disabled people can do it too; rather than designing it so that it works for everybody. And I think one of the big problems is the use of the term PRM: person with reduced mobility. 

EMMA- Yeah.

MIK- That covers everybody. So, it covers wheelchair users, it also covers visually impaired people, it covers pregnant women, it covers anyone with any kind of cognitive impairment. It covers everyone. Anyone that can’t just run to the plane is a PRM. And the problem is that’s too much, it’s too big. So, in many cases you can’t know who you’re going to be assisting off. 

MARTIN- What about actually disabled people themselves? Have we as disabled people got a responsibility that when we go to travel, when we go to an airport, when it comes to us getting that communication right and that understanding between them?

MIK- I think the problem is how could you communicate it. I mean, I know people that stick great big stickers on their chairs saying fragile, and it still comes back in bits. The point is it shouldn’t be up to us. We are the paying public; we don’t get discounts on airline tickets because we’re disabled. It’s not like say going on the train or something with your special train card. We pay full whack, and really it should be understood that a wheelchair is a piece of medical equipment, it’s a piece of mobility equipment, it's essential to our experience. As well we have the problem that if we do something in this country to make things better then lots of the airlines will go, oh but internationally the rules are this. And if you go somewhere where the country does less than what the international rules are then the airlines and the airports go, ah but nationally the rules are this. So, there is no conformity, and we don’t know what to expect. 

MARTIN- Well, I’ve experienced that myself. 

MIK- Well, I don’t think of any of us do, do we? None of us know what we’re going to get when we turn up at an airport. One time it could be brilliant, next time awful. 

EMMA- Mik, there’s like a new narrative coming through of thoughts that people are going to the airport and asking for help who don’t need it and taking that help from disabled people. We’ve heard this from airport airline staff, but also from politicians. What do you make of that? 

MIK- I personally think it’s a complete myth. And I think what’s actually happening is more and more people, I mean the idea of what disability and being disabled is has expanded, and I think more and more people are thinking well actually no, I do need a bit of help, I am not steady on my feet, I do need that support. Airports are big and they’re very confusing, people fought their way around and kind of hoped they’d get to where they needed to be. Now they’re thinking, well there’s this assistance, I’ve heard of it, I’ll get it. To me it should be seen as a good thing that actually more people are asking for assistance. But what we need is more people offering assistance so that it becomes an integral part of how airlines and airports work, that there is this level of staffing that means that you can turn up and you can just be a little bit old, you could have had a recent injury.

EMMA- Is that okay to ask for the help in that situation? 

MIK- Yes. One of the things is is that airports, railway stations, all those kinds of places have issues around safety. So, if you ask for help and assistance what you’re doing is trying to make yourself safer in an environment that isn’t always safe. And we’ve seen that tragically. So, I think the thing is that the idea of oh, well there’s all these people faking it, well that’s a myth. We’ve always had that faker thing. I know I’ve had people saying, do you really need that wheelchair. And it’s like, well I wouldn’t have spent five and a half grand if I was trying to pull the wool over your eyes. 

EMMA- And they’re legally obliged to help you as well, the airports. 

MIK- Because it’s so broad and it’s so poorly described that the poor people providing assistance kind of are like, I don’t know who I’m meant to be helping. And so it feels like if they can’t see it it must be a faker. And it’s one of the reasons why we’ve got all of these lanyards and cards and things. And I train staff to understand that someone might appear to be completely physically fit but need you there for peace of mind, to make sure they feel secure and safe and get them from A to B, out of your purview safely, and that’s your job. It’s very easy to think well, wheelchair users and guide dog users and people with the very obvious impairments are the ones that need help; but normally once we’re off the plane we’re kind of all right thanks. It’s those people that need the support all the way through the airport system. 

EMMA- We’ve also been told that there are a lot more disabled people travelling, a disproportionately high number. It’s gone way up in the last three months, for whatever reason. 

MIK- Sorry, I love that.   

EMMA- But that’s probably putting a lot of pressure on the service. 

MIK- I love that: stop flying, just stop having a life, go home again. You’ve been locked away, put up with it, you’re making it stressful for us. 

EMMA- I don’t think they’re blaming disabled people. I think they’re just saying that to their minds there are more people booking assistance, disabled people booking assistance at the moment. Mik, thank you so much for joining us. 

MIK- Thanks a lot. 

EMMA- Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. And I’m so sorry that you’ve had such awful, awful experiences when flying. 

MIK- I just say take the train. 

EMMA- Thanks Mik. What I didn’t manage to get into Mik’s chat was that when I was being assisted during the week I was told that Romeo was for someone who stays in the chair and doesn’t get out and walk. So, they think of it is as Romeo, someone who can’t roam. 

MARTIN- Do you know what, you’ve just ruined that for me because whenever they called me Romeo I just thought it was because they thought I was good looking. But not anymore. Thanks for that. 

EMMA- Sierra is someone who can leave the chair to maybe go up the steps or whatever. And blind people are just called blind. And I have been called a blind more than once. 

MARTIN- A blind?

EMMA- And I’ve mentioned that before. Yeah. 

MARTIN- You’re a blind. All this labelling, hey I love it. It’s the label, isn’t it? We love a good label put on us when we’re out in public travelling. 

EMMA- Yeah, to be shouted at the whole plane, we’ve got three blinds at the back.

MARTIN- We’ve got a blind and we’ve got wheels as well. 

MUSIC- Hello Glastonbury, we’re Access All! [Applause] And what a show we have for you. 

EMMA- Glastonbury is happening this weekend, Martin. You’re a bit of a festival goer. I have never been to a festival. 

MARTIN- Why?

EMMA- Well, probably just because I think it would just be too hard, and I’d have to hang off someone the whole time. I mean, I did go to full-day concerts, like at Slane Castle and stuff when I was a teenager, like just hung out with my friends and they all had my back and stuff. I just feel like now it would just be too much for me and for the person I was with. And that’s probably just all in my head. Maybe I’m just too lazy and maybe I just don’t like camping. That’s probably more like it. 

MARTIN- Ah, we’re getting to the nub of it now: you don’t like the tents and the sleeping rough, do you? 

EMMA- No, I don’t. I don’t. And I don’t like the idea of someone coming and weeing on my tent in the night. 

MARTIN- Yeah, that’s all part of it. 

EMMA- Stuff like that. But do you like that then? 

MARTIN- I absolutely love it, you know. There’s something about the great outdoors. And actually obviously with my disability it’s a physical thing mainly, and I just see it as a little bit of a challenge to get there. I love music. I’ve got a really strong passion for music. And obviously I’m Glaswegian so I love a good drink of whatever. I love it. 

EMMA- I thought you were going to say I’m Glaswegian so I love the Proclaimers. Well, they’re more Edinburgh, aren’t they? 

MARTIN- They’re Edinburgh, but I actually do love them as well. But I just love a gathering, do you know what I mean? 

EMMA- Yeah. 

MARTIN- A gathering of people in live music has got that little bit of like je ne sais quoi about it, that little bit that just gets you going. I absolutely love it. 

EMMA- And do you use the accessible campsite, whatever that means?

MARTIN- No, I don’t use the accessible campsite. Not that there’s a problem with it actually, because I think I would now. 

EMMA- In your older years.

MARTIN- Oh yeah, the bones are getting achy. But I just think that for me the less hassle the better. When I was a younger Martin I’d just throw myself into things, do you know what I mean. Which actually was really good; I’d throw myself into all sorts of weird situations at festivals, probably where I shouldn’t be. 

EMMA- Where? What?

MARTIN- Like for example right at the front of the crowd when there’s a Prodigy concert going on. That’s just not a place where someone who’s in a wheelchair who’s height challenged and can’t get out of somewhere quickly should be, because just like stuck in the middle of this mosh pit, so I was. 

EMMA- So, you were in a mosh pit and you were in your wheelchair?

MARTIN- Mm. 

EMMA- And were there people on you?

MARTIN- Yeah, like literally on top of me. 

EMMA- On your head? On your face?

MARTIN- On my head, on top of me. Because in mosh pits, I don’t know if you’ve ever been…?

EMMA- I have been in a mosh pit.  

MARTIN- Have you? 

EMMA- Yeah, in my younger days. Probably like Coldplay or something though rather than Prodigy. 

MARTIN- Prodigy were like the headline act in the final night, so everybody’s a little bit drunker than the first day. [Music] That’s it, Firestarter was actually where I was at the front. I just remember like a big hand coming and grabbing me and just pulling me back. It was like one of my mates must have had an instinct to be like I can’t see Martin, I don’t know where he is and I’m going to go and get him. And he probably saved my life, or saved something from getting broken or damaged. 

EMMA- Yeah. Did you fall out of your chair or anything? 

MARTIN- I didn’t fall out of my chair during the mosh pit actually. I kept myself in it, I don’t know how I managed to do it. But going to festivals you’ve got to be prepared to be adaptable with yourself really. For example getting around at the campsite, at a lot of the festivals they’re quite a distance away from where the stages are, so you’ve got to travel a couple of miles to get to the stage from your campsite. And one day it was really wet and really muddy and really rainy and basically I couldn’t get my wheelchair out of the campsite. So, my mates decided that the best way to carry the beer, the booze along to the campsite was to take it in a sledge. 

EMMA- A sledge? 

MARTIN- It was a blue sledge, just for anybody that wants to know that. And they decided that they weren’t taking the wheelchair but they were going to put me in the sledge and tie the rope round their waist and they would just walk around the festival with me on the sledge. And actually it was one of the best festival experiences that I’ve ever had. People just moved out of the way. It was like Moses parting the Red Sea. So, I think it was like they would see this person in a sledge, they didn’t know I was disabled for a start because the wheelchair wasn’t there, but somehow they were more accommodating because people must have just looked at it and thought, this guy’s got the right idea, I am shattered, but look at what they’ve done, that is mates. And I just remember listening to Kings of Leon live and all I could see was people’s calves. 

EMMA- The calves. Yeah, because you were just on the floor?

MARTIN- Just on the floor. It was amazing. What a great experience. 

EMMA- And what did you do, did you stay on the sledge the whole time? 

MARTIN- I stayed on the sledge the whole night. I think I even slept there to be honest. I just stayed there the whole time. And actually it was good because my mates had understood that this was, not an inconvenience, but it wasn’t ideal, do you know what I mean, so they just kept bringing me drinks and food, fed me, just keeping me up and going. I had a brilliant time. 

EMMA- We did ask you Access All’ers to get in touch about your festival experiences. And disabled music journalist, Faith Martin, told us about hers. 

MARTIN- She says, ‘Victorious Festival is always amazing; this year will be my eighth, and they’re super helpful when it comes to being a wheelchair user. And they also have BSL for those that require it. and a mobile loo. So, it’s the most stress free ever’. Now without a mobile loo, an accessible portable loo with a hoist she said that she’d have to drink very little and become dehydrated. I’ve been there before, I can relate to Faith in that. There’s a lot of, even without festivals, even in daily life if I need to get to a toilet, I either need to go to the toilet never or yesterday, so I’m one of those types of people.

EMMA- So, you manage your drinks accordingly?

MARTIN- Yes. 

EMMA- Truck Festival and Mighty Hoopla, which is a pop festival in London, have also had shout-outs, and really, really positive experiences, so that’s really, really good. And the Victorious Festival is in Portsmouth. Tell us your festival stories or anything else. We absolutely love to hear from you. Tweet us @accessall. And you can also send us a WhatsApp message. Martin, what’s the number? 

MARTIN- So, it’s 0330 123 9480. We love a wee WhatsApp. 

EMMA- Love them. Love the voice notes particularly. And if you can just write Access before you send your message that really helps us, that would be fantastic. 

[Music] Martin, did you watch the BAFTAs a few weeks ago?

MARTIN- I didn’t see the whole thing, but I did see the clip of our next guest that went viral. 

EMMA- Ooh. Here’s a clip from that sketch where Lee Mack is helping Chris McCausland with the auto cue. 

LEE- That’s the line you say now. 

CHRIS- Yes. [Clears throat] The importance of women in comedy… What was it? 

LEE- Cannot be overstated. 

CHRIS- Cannot be overstated. 

LEE- So, let’s take a look… Sorry, that’s still your bit, Chris, sorry. 

CHRIS- You’re serious? 

LEE- Yes.

CHRIS- ‘Let’s take a look’ is my line? [Applause]

EMMA- Oh, Chris McCausland hello.

CHRIS- Hello. Can you hear me?

EMMA- Yeah. Chris hi, it’s Emma. How are you? You’re sounding very like someone who does Zoom interviews and has a mic and a setup and stuff. 

CHRIS- I’m Radio 4’d up baby.

EMMA- Yeah, baby, I can hear it in your views. You could read the news. Oh no, actually maybe you couldn’t read the news. 

CHRIS- Shipping forecast is number two on the… I always think the shipping forecast sounds like that thing they do in the dentist when they go over your teeth. When they just go, number four, two, number eight is comprehended, five.

EMMA- Got compromised. 

CHRIS- Coming westerly. Yeah, I shall make a note of that. That’s funny. There’s stand-up in that. 

EMMA- I was going to say, is that part of your show or did you just make that up? 

CHRIS- No, just making a note now: teeth, shipping forecast. I’ll read that back in two months and go, what the [beep] was that. 

MARTIN- See, that BAFTA sketch that you did with Lee Mack it was fantastic, it really was. But whose idea was it? 

CHRIS- It was an idea that I had that we both wrote together. So, we both equally kind of fleshed it out. I went round to his on a Wednesday afternoon for far too many cups of coffee, and we had a few ideas. And when we started talking over this one and bouncing it back and forth we started making each other laugh and we thought, this is the one. Because we wanted to do something a bit different. And I suppose a bit risky in a way because we came up with it on Wednesday, we were like this is hilarious; and then on the Saturday we were like, do you still think this is funny; and then by the time we got to the Sunday we were like, I hope other people think this is…

MARTIN- You must have had some great comments off people when it happened. 

CHRIS- Yeah. Do you know what as well, we’d never tried it in front of people; it was just our own silly little heads that thought it was childish and funny. And we were kind of doing it on live TV in front of everybody that could ever give us a job in the TV industry. So, it was a bit of a gamble. But almost that nervous energy and that freshness we just fell into the timing. If we’d have done that 100 times I don’t think we’d have got the timing better than what we did that first go. 

EMMA- So, you’re on tour now. What’s it called? 

CHRIS- It’s called Speaky Blinder. Yeah, I hate it, hate it, hate it. 

EMMA- Why did you call it that then? 

CHRIS- Because I got overruled on my own show title. 

EMMA- What did you want to call it? 

CHRIS- Well, I didn’t really have an idea at the time, but a friend of mine, Justin Moorhouse, who’s a northern comedian from Manchester. I hate puns, plays on movie titles and things like that. And also, even though I talk about being blind in the show, I don’t like hammering it over the head in the title. It just pushes a people in a direction they’re maybe thinking it’s more than what it is, if you know what I mean. 

EMMA- Yeah. 

MARTIN- How important is that actually, Chris, when it comes to your comedy? Because obviously the blind element is always there within your jokes. But do you try your best to kind of keep it to a minimum, try and move away from it as much as you can?

CHRIS- So, weirdly this show is the most I’ve spoken about it. So, in a way the title, I reluctantly admit it, does match the show more so than what I was anticipating the show would be. When I started I never mentioned it; I’d do a joke at the beginning and I literally wouldn’t mention it again. Now I look back 20 years, 19 years, whatever, I think it was a combination of sheer defiance, I always wanted to challenge people’s preconceptions, and I think I still do to an extent. I always thought if I was sat in an audience – I’m a judgemental git – if I was sat in an audience and I came out on stage, I was a big comedy fan, I would have thought oh god, this is going to be 20 minutes of blind jokes. And so I went the opposite: I wanted them to forget that I was blind, and then at the end go, oh god yeah, he was blind, wasn’t he. And then the older I’ve got and I think the more life experience I’ve got and the more original unique things I’ve got to offer on the subject from my own experience it’s kind of filtered in a little bit more now. But also I think the thing that goes hand in hand with that is I lost my sight gradually and so in my 20s I was still in that real defiant denial. Do you know what I mean? 

EMMA- Hmm.

CHRIS- And I think the older I’ve got I’m just more comfortable as myself and in myself now. So, it’s all of these things feed into each other. But yeah, I do talk about it more now on stage. But I think it’s a little bit more interesting and personal. 

EMMA- It’s really interesting, and I’m glad you’ve said all that because I had loads of questions that basically you’ve just answered. 

CHRIS- Well, it’s been a nice interview. I’ll catch you later. 

EMMA- I’m blind from birth, right, I’ve always been blind. And when I saw you, 17 years ago I’ve probably been in this disability journalism game, and when I saw you earlier on I was like, why is he not talking about being blind. And it only occurred to me as I got older that you were in a certain part in your journey, sight loss journey, but that you were at a point that I wasn’t at, and you were thinking about things differently than I was. And funnily enough we’re not all the same, isn’t that amazing? 

CHRIS- We’re not. And on a very basic level I think people who were born blind and people who lose their sight gradually, and people who lose their sight in an instant, we’re like three different animals, if you know what I mean, psychologically. 

EMMA- Yeah, but there’s still a lot of relatability there too. 

CHRIS- There is. There’s like a Venn diagram of psychological kind of levels of acceptance and denial and ability. 

EMMA- Where are you on it then? 

CHRIS- I think I’ve got more in that shared space now than I used to. I think I still have this kind of trauma, it’s not a trauma, but it’s a hatred of a white stick. 

EMMA- Interesting. 

CHRIS- And I think because when I was in my 20s and I was losing my sight and I kind of needed to use it I hated using it, because you think that everybody’s looking at you being rubbish with it and blundering your way along and blah, blah, blah. You become very self-conscious over it. You want to be normal. You want to be a cool 20 odd year old, and you don’t feel like that. And so I never really got good at it. And because I never really got good at it I never built that confidence with it. And I still don’t have that confidence now. 

EMMA- Do you ever use it? 

CHRIS- I used to. I take it out with me, but I say I don’t really use it these days. If I’m going somewhere it tends to be with other people or I get Ubers. 

MARTIN- I heard if you weren’t doing stand-up who might have been doing something else very different. I heard a rumour that you once applied for MI5. Is that true? 

CHRIS- It is yeah. My degree’s in software engineering. I graduated in 2000 and the world was just so different then in terms of access, I just found it very difficult to get a job in the area I was trained in. I hated doing programming, even though I love programming, because I hated being worse than the person or slower than the person next to me. I know there are people out there who are blind and programming and all credit to them, but it just drove me insane. 

MARTIN- Can I just confirm with you right now, you don’t work for MI5?

CHRIS- I just applied for it because I didn’t realise it was a thing you could apply for, and I came across it. And I got down to the last 30 out of 3,000, so I was in the top 1% of potential spies. 

EMMA- Wow. 

MARTIN- That is so cool. 

CHRIS- Yeah, it’s astonishing. 

MARTIN- I think you do work for MI5, Chris. 

EMMA- I think it’s quite funny when I Spy is like the least accessible game that you could ever play. 

CHRIS- Well, do you know what, there was a moment, because I had so many interviews and like one-day assessments and all these kinds of thing, and there was an interview I had and the guy goes, ‘And part of the job will be running agents’. Because I always thought an agent was like a James Bond. It’s not. An agent is somebody who doesn’t work for the security services who has something that you want. Like you run an agent who’s somebody who’s got information to trade or something like that. And he said, ‘Part of the job will be meeting these people in staked out locations to trade or obtain information’. 

MARTIN- This is brilliant. I love this. 

CHRIS- ‘Now, you being blind it’s a bit of a security risk.’ And I said, ‘Well, what’s more undercover than a blind bloke meeting his mate in the pub for a pint?’ And he went, he literally went, ‘Oh yeah, good point’ and then he wrote something down. And I’ve always loved to think to this day that he just wrote down: more blind people. 

But obviously I didn’t get that job, and I didn’t get that job for discriminatory reasons that I completely, wholeheartedly agree with. But the person helping me at the time was furious about the complete blatant discrimination. I don’t think every job has to be for everybody in the world either. 

EMMA- So, what was the discriminatory reason? 

CHRIS- Because I did a full-day assessment and I had to go through all of this information in boxes. I had to identify the threat, prioritise the threats, identify the biggest threat, have a meeting with the surveillance team. It was my inability to identify a threat in an extremely limited period of time, sift through vast amounts of information and identify a threat in a limited period of time. 

EMMA- Okay. So, they should have given you reasonable adjustments; you should have had extra hours to find the threat? 

CHRIS- Yes, precisely, precisely. But you can’t have Waterloo blowing up and then them going, well this guy needed extra time, can you? Do you know what I mean? There are certain things where you go, yeah, thank god someone’s had the guts to stand up and go, this bloke…

MARTIN- You know what though, I find it interesting that they took the time to figure out that you were in the top 1% before they decided to discriminate against you, sort of thing. So, they let you get so far. 

CHRIS- Absolutely. 

MARTIN- And then it’s like, well actually you’re not good enough. 

CHRIS- Gave me a story, didn’t it, you know? So, I applied for mad stuff, didn’t get any of that, needed a job because it’s part of your identity. For me personally I found that people would always ask, what’s your name, where are you from, and what do you do. And I just felt not complete unless I had an answer for all three, for the third one. And I got a job in a call centre, and while I was working in the call centre that’s when I did stand-up just as a bucket list, do five minutes. So, not as a job, not as a dream, not as a one day I’ll be doing this for a living; it was literally just do five minutes. But it was kind of a little bit addictive. I did it again and then again, and then it kind of became, it’s quite soul destroying working in a call centre, but it became almost the thing I looked forward to of an evening as a hobby. 

MARTIN- Give us an idea about what we should expect for this Speaky Blinders tour? 

CHRIS- Well, I’m 40 dates into it at the minute. We’re just at the end of the first leg. So, we start again in September; got about another 90 dates to go, so a lot of dates. It’s good though, I enjoy it because the show works. I’m happy with the show. The audiences are being great. The feedback has been wonderful. I’m a big believer in achieving in the mainstream and people seeing people with disabilities achieving at the top of their game in a mainstream environment. And so to be doing this tour in big venues and people paying their money to come along and watch, because they’ve seen me on all these shows, it’s really lovely to see that kind of driving force that I’ve got is kind of rubbing off on people’s views and opinions.

EMMA- Well, you’re smashing it on those shows. They’re so visual. I don’t even watch them really because they’re so visual. 

CHRIS- Yeah. 

EMMA- And you’re just sort of chatting with your comedian mates, and they’re supporting you through it. That’s what it feels like when you’re looking in at it that you’ve just kind of quietly and sensibly made little adjustments and they’ve made little adjustments. 

CHRIS- Yeah, it’s about meeting each other halfway. 

EMMA- I’m sure there are lots of meetings that happen behind the scenes, but it doesn’t feel like that on the telly. 

CHRIS- This is a lot less than you’d imagine, you know. Have I Got News For You for example, it’s amazing when I do Have I Got News For You some people on Twitter will always be like, oh it’s appalling from the BBC still using photographs and visual jokes. But that’s what the show is. And I want to do that show. Do you know what I mean? 

EMMA- Yeah. 

CHRIS- When it’s not visual, I do the News Quiz on Radio 4, and they’re both great shows, but I don’t want Have I Got News For You to be morphed into the News Quiz just because I’m on it. So, we do a thing, they meet me halfway, they change one of the rounds to an audio round or something similar like that. Because it genuinely is off the cuff in terms of all you can do is read the news. They don’t tell you, oh in round two we’ve got this question and that question and then there’s going to be a photograph of this; it literally just comes up as you… So, I just say to whoever’s hosting or the other guys, if there’s something you want to tell me describe it, and if they want to leave it in the edit they will, and if they don’t they won’t. Do you know what I mean? And the Christmas special for QI for this coming Christmas – I did it in February believe it or not – and there was a point in that where there were a couple of things where Aisling Bea was doing a stunt on a wheelie chair and nothing was happening, it really wasn’t doing it, and I said, ‘I kind of get the feeling I’m getting the same out of this as everybody else’ and I smashed it in the room. 

MARTIN- I could honestly sit and listen to you, Chris, chat all day. 

EMMA- I know. 

MARTIN- So, thanks very much Chris, it was great. 

CHRIS- Cheers guys. Catch you soon. 

EMMA- That’s almost it for this week’s Access All. We really want to spread the word about this podcast so please, please subscribe, tell your friends, share it on your social media, get it out there. Please spread the word. We really want people to hear it. 

MARTIN- If you want to hear the latest programme and you have an Alexa device just say her name then, play Access All from the BBC, and you’ll get the latest edition. 

EMMA- We’re here every Friday, and Martin’s here next week as well standing in for Nikki Fox. See you then. Bye. 

MARTIN- Can’t believe they’ve had me back. Bye.