Not Going Out? Stay in and Watch Television.

[catherinem]

Whilst our American cousins are in the middle of TS Awareness month, us Brits have something else to look forward to. Yep, you’ve guessed, quite the opposite of awareness and education, we get THAT sitcom with THAT episode AGAIN! Yet again a rather dated, so-called comedic view of disability and in particular the perpetuation of that aged TS myth (with a few canned laughs thrown in for good measure) As a ticcer I’m constantly telling people that I meet that TS doesn’t necessarily equate to swearing and that as a person with coprolalia I am somewhat a minority amongst ticcers. When ridiculously ill-informed stereotypes like in this so called sitcom are shown it does nothing positive, all it does is make a mockery of complex neurological condition. Going back to THAT sitcom, I’ll tell you what the plot basically is; well this is what it says on the BBC’s website anyway –

“Lee is insufferably smug when he wins a thousand pounds in a writing competition with an essay entitled Disability in the Workplace.

Lucy is moved to tears when she reads the essay - she had no idea that Lee was so sensitive. Tim, however, is more sceptical, and with good reason; when a journalist turns up to interview the winner, she is expecting to meet a disabled author.”

But what is left out in this little synopsis is that our protagonist pretends to be disabled and also tells the journalist that his friends are also disabled and that one of these friends has TS, but the TS is like no other, the TS seems to be absent of any motor tics or other vocal tics and coprolalia just seems to be present – just what you’d expect from this crass, mainstream sitcom.

This may seem unconnected but I was my rather empty local pub a couple of days ago with my neighbour and partner, the landlord looks at me in a funny way, I try my best not to shout “FAT” at him but a string of expletives do come out along with whistles, claps and claw shape hands. “She’s got Tourette’s” my neighbour says. The landlord looks at me in disbelief, “Whatever” my little brain is wiring away thinking of a witty reply “Are you really a fat b£%^&”d, or is that a fat suit?” I think to myself. We go outside to leave him alone with his large flat-screen TV.

This isn’t the first time that someone has thought that my TS was put on, quite sometime ago in a Camden pub (the same one that I was in on Thursday) this actor, well he said he was an actor, told us that he thought that me and two ticcer friends were putting it on. Why? Why the hell would three intelligent women spend the evening pretending to have TS? But it would be the kind of idiotic stunt that somebody lacking in scruples might pull, often during my teaching days I’d pull a pupil up for using bad language in my lesson and would be answered with “Oh but Miss, I got Tourette’s” I’m sure he’s also love to experience my motor tics too.

I think the BBC should think carefully when commissioning TV programmes, perpetuating these myths about TS is damaging, both socially, educationally for young people with TS and damaging employment wise for adults. So if you happen to be at home this Wednesday evening ( May 25th ) at 10.45, flicking through the channels and accidentally happen to land on BBC1 you may find yourself getting somewhat annoyed by this awful sitcom and put fingers to keyboard and email the BBC telling them what you think of such quality comedy.