Ouch Talk Show #95 March 2013
bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast

Presented by Rob Crossan and Liz Carr

liz	We’re back on your mp3 player, computer, games console, TV or however you listen to us. Yes it’s Ouch for March 2013. Coming up on today’s programme, Rob?  	
rob	The Comedians With Disabilities Act join us in just a moment. It’s been a little bit of a painful month in disability circles so we’ll be discussing recent events with them. 	
liz	And continuing the pain, we’ll be talking with the disabled artist who intends to lie in her bed on show in a public art gallery to bring awareness to changes in benefits and the invisible thousands who have what she calls ‘a bed life’ that’s in about 20 minutes. 	
rob	And with Mother's Day almost upon us is there anything more painful than the comments disabled parents receive about their ability to look after their children. Laura Miller from the Disabled Parents Network will join us later. 	
liz	So stay tuned. 
[Jingle: From London it's Ouch disability talk from the BBC with Liz Carr and Rob Crossan.]	
rob	And boy is it nice to see your pretty face, Liz. 	
liz	What are you after, very suspicious when you're nice to me. 	
rob	Well yes I know. Well the thing is I want to throw the system of Ouch into a kind of curved ball situation here because I know listeners will regularly know that we always have the music bit at the end…	
liz	Promise me we've got something good this month. 	
rob	Oh the artist we have this month it's just so good that I can't wait and I won't wait. 	
liz	Okay. 	
rob	So are you okay with us just listening to a little bit now?	
liz	Just a clip. 	
rob	Just a taster. 	
liz	Okay. 	
Rob	An amuse-bouche. Okay let's go. 
[Playing music]
You see I told you that was worth waiting for didn't I?	
liz	I can barely get to the end of the show now.	
rob	That was Dan the Rapperman, by the way and we'll be hearing, I would hope substantially more from Dan the Rapperman later on in the programme. 	
liz	I think that's the way you do rap. 	
rob	That is the way you do rap. 	
liz	And you know how cool I am. 	
rob	And taking it from someone who knows her street stuff. 	
liz	I know my rap. 	
rob	Yes. 	
liz	I know my rap. Also hopefully now a bit of comedy I think but we've got some great comedians coming and joining us now from Memphis, Tennessee. Yes we have Nina G, Eric Mee and Steve Danner collectively known as the Comedians with Disabilities Act. Hello guys. 	
ERIC AND STEVE	Hello. 	
NINA	Hey.	
rob	Hello. And what time is it over there you sound rather, well exhausted, have we woken you up? 	
nina	It's like, what time is it now, it's like 12:30 but we're also just exhausted from travelling because we're actually from the San Francisco Bay area. 	
rob	And what brings you to Memphis then, why on earth would you choose to go to the home of Elvis? 	
steve	We got brought out here by the Rhodes College in Memphis to come out and perform for their Disability Awareness Week. 	
rob	Ah doing a show, of course you are on the road. 	
liz	But the Disability Awareness Week that sounds like fun what will you be doing?	
eric	We'll be doing about 15/20 minutes a person plus a question and answer afterwards. We all do a little bit about our own disabilities and our lives and stuff. It's awareness through our comedy. 	
liz	Okay. 	
rob	So tell us a little bit about how you all got together, how on earth did you all find each other? 	
steve	This is Steve, I'll go ahead and answer that. 	
rob	Hello Steve. 	
steve	Hi. I was in the Sacramento area in California and I ran into another comedian, Michael O'Connell, who is also a part of our group.  	
rob	This is the fourth member who isn't with you guys today?	
steve	Correct. He has muscular dystrophy he is confined to a wheelchair most of the time.	
nina	No, no, no he uses a wheelchair because we're on Ouch we've got to say the right words. 	
rob	Straight in there!	
nina	Confined uh-ha Steve. 	
steve	Okay I'm sorry, I thought that's how he put it but I guess that could be incorrect.	
liz	To be honest an alarm did go off in the studio when we heard the word 'confined' imprisoned as well. Now, Nina, can I just say though we had heard that you're the fiery one of the group, I don't know if you'll like being called that. But when somebody says something patronising or gets it wrong or un-PC you challenge them on it, like you did there, yeah? 	
rob	To which we just heard exhibit A. 	
nina	Yeah. And that was done with love. 	
rob	And a little bit of poison. So how often does this hurricane Nina go off in the face of political incorrectness?	
nina	Er…	
rob	Daily, hourly? 	
steve	It depends on how often Eric is around.	
nina	No it's probably if I don't look on Facebook I'd say once a day; if I look on Facebook I'd probably say ten times a day, so it all depends. 	
rob	Well in that case thank goodness you're here to rip apart the news stories which we really want to get your opinions on.	
liz	We don't know if you've heard about what's been going on over here but late February a Cornwall councillor, a politician, Colin Brewer he apologised and later resigned for some pretty unpleasant words uttered to a disability charity store holder. He said that disabled children should be put down suggesting it would cost the council less money if they were. So obviously it's been reported, gathered universal disgust from disabled people on Twitter all over social media and it's I guess a real ouch moment. And so started we're thinking what are the other thoughtless, unpleasant things that people say to us as disabled people and that's it, you know things that make you go "Ouch!" So you must have plenty of them. 	
rob	One that really sticks out like a festering sore. 	
steve	Can I take a picture? 	
nina	No literally that's what Steve was asked recently.	
rob	Can I take a picture? 	
steve	Yeah. 	
rob	Extraordinary. 	
steve	I was in a convenience store here in America.	
eric	7-Eleven.	
steve	7-Eleven, a very popular convenience store here. And a guy started asking me questions and at first I thought he was just being inquisitive asking me about my size. And then as I was about to leave he asked if he could snap a picture of me. And that was yeah I just kind of basically told him that's pretty rude. 	
liz	You're a little person that's right yeah? 	
steve	Yes.	
liz	At least they asked. I was out for dinner with a friend of mine recently when people were just sort of in secret taking pictures on their mobile phones of the guy I was with. I mean you must get that all the time? 	
rob	So is asking for permission…	
steve	Yeah I've gotten that a hell of a lot. 	
rob	Is asking permission somehow better, is this what you're trying to say, Liz? 	
liz	Neither is great. I guess you could charge them then. 	
nina	I think that is the takeaway - ask us first. 	
rob	And then we can say no. 	
liz	And then we'll have a go at you. 	
rob	Nina, tell me yours, the rudest thing anyone has ever said to you? 	
nina	First of all I stutter but I also have, what we call here in the States, a learning disability. I know you guys say more dyslexia there. But I think around my stuttering which is what I get more of because people have to deal with it more is I've gotten men, especially after some of my shows, saying, "You know I think I could help you with that stuttering."	
rob	And have you enquired further? What sort of therapies, ideas, suggestions do they have? 	
liz	Have you taken them up on their offers? 	
nina	No! Well especially the guys who have asked me haven't been ones that I would want that from. 	
rob	Do their suggestions involve dragging you back to a cheap motel, is the line you're going down here?	
nina	Yeah. And I'm not quite sure how to say this in a clean way but yeah they have implied that somehow sexually they have the power to cure my speech. 	
liz	Please I hope you use that in your set. Eric, how about you what's been the ouch thing that someone's said to you? 	
eric	The thing that kind of sticks out in my mind is just the questions I get like women asking me, "So how do you have sex?" Or my…	
rob	You're blind, right? 	
eric	Yeah I'm blind. It's like yeah you've never had the lights off so huh-ha. And then I'll have women talking to me and I'll tell them yeah I'm married and they always go, "Really! That is so CUTE!" I'm like why is it cute?	
rob	As if it was obviously a sympathy marriage all along. 	
eric	Yeah it's why is it cute because here in the States you get a tax deduction for marrying a blind guy. It's a charity thing. 	
rob	And you obviously must have known. 	
nina	You know that actually be true. 	
rob	In certain States. They're bringing it in Mississippi apparently. 	
liz	Now we put out on Twitter we said can you remember any more famous ouch moments of things that people have said to disabled people, so thanks to Laurie, Christina, Amanda and Gail they reminded us of some of these. Now last year in the UK Geoffrey Clark he was a UKIP candidate standing for Kent County Council, he called for an NHS review, so a health service review, to look at compulsory abortion of foetuses with Down's syndrome or spina bifida. 	
nina	Compulsory…	
liz	Compulsory. 	
nina	…meaning that you had to there is no choice it was forced?	
liz	Yeah, yeah that's the one. And he said you know because if they're born then they could cause a burden on the state and on the family.	
nina	Well my first impression of that is that Hitler called and he wants the T4 project back. So that is my read on that, is that what is this Nazi Germany? And a lot of times just so the whole world knows a lot of like bad stuff happens to us first and then it spreads. So it's always good to look at how society is looking at its disabled populations because next it'll be someone else. 	
rob	And you won't be surprised to hear that the party, political party, UKIP did suspend Geoffrey Clarke. Let's rattle through a couple more, there's two I'm going to give you now. The England football manager, soccer to you guys, Glenn Hoddle, he caused offence in 1999 when he told The Times newspaper that disabled people were paying for sins from a past life. He apologised but it was too late he was forced to resign. Well I suppose it's a sign of how far we have progressed in the last 20 years. At the sporting Commonwealth Games in Victoria in Canada in 1994 the head Australian official, a chap called Arthur Tunstall, he called the presence of athletes with a disability and I quote now "An embarrassment to both sides." He then went on to say, "People are going out of their way to assist them and able people are getting a little bit embarrassed to have them around" which I think is possibly…	
eric	Why because they keep beating them? 	
rob	Beating them with words. 	
eric 	If disabled people beat you in a sport I guess yeah it's a little embarrassing for you, uh? It takes away a little bit of your manhood when the blind guy outshoots you in darts. 	
rob	And I have to say before we go and move onto the next topic, Liz, please tell me your ones, I know you're going to have a brilliant one of like the worst thing a disabled person's ever said to you. 	
liz	Oh no, I can't believe you've done that. No I don't know that I do have one. As I said to you in the production meeting people say nasty things to me every day, Rob, and it's just we survive don't we, we survive. But I think…	
rob	I don't believe you though, I don't think people do say nasty things to you every day.	
liz	I think the worst thing I had recently was when I was a clinic where they perform assisted suicide; I know this is what I do for kicks! But it was a cocktail party in a death clinic, so that was even funnier. 	
nina	Oh but that just sounds like it could go so badly. So like you had a lot of courage like even stepping in there. 	
rob	And imagine the names of some of the cocktails you could have; mine's a My Die. 	
steve	My Die that's very funny. 	
liz	But there was a woman there and she was talking to me and she thought she knew what was wrong with me. She said, "Ooh have all your facial bones not formed before?" And I'm like, "No, no that's not what's wrong with me." And she said, "Are you suffering intolerably?" And I was taken aback because that's the definition of if you want to die you have to be suffering intolerably. And I thought oh my God she thinks I want to die. 	
rob	She thinks that's why you're here. 	
liz	Of course she does. I mean looking at me you would think that probably. But there I am at a cocktail party, and I guess in a death clinic if you're going to hang out there, but yeah…	
rob	You brought it on yourself quite frankly didn't you? 	
liz	I was begging for it really. 	
steve	Did you get in the wrong line? 	
nina	I thought I was in line for drinks. You know?	
liz	There was me I thought it was an abortion clinic. 	
eric	Different cocktail, sorry. 	
rob	You know what you need to do is just make sure you've got your return airline ticket very close to your person which you can brandish, "Look, I intend to leave this place, I intend to go home." 	
steve	But not in the way you'd like me to leave. 	
liz	Not in a box. 	
rob	So let's move on to our next story and this is going to be mildly jarring after the raucous hilarity that we've all just been enjoying. But on Valentine's Day the world woke up to the rather shocking news that the double amputee sprinter, Oscar Pistorius, had been arrested. So he now stands accused of shooting dead his girlfriend, Reeve Steenkamp, and is presently on bail. So a trial is pending and I do admit I kind of fear putting this out as a topic to discuss with three comedians on the line. So maybe we should move aside slightly and talk about the Twitter responses. Now there was one joke that was tweeted again and again and again in various forms about this and I just wonder if you guys can guess or maybe you know what the one joke that went viral.	
eric	Equality. 	
rob	Is that a joke? 	
eric	Finally, now…	
rob	I'm surprised to hear that. 	
eric	…disabled people can do it too. 	
rob	Well the joke that kept on doing the rounds was if Oscar Pistorius goes to court he won't have a leg to stand on, boom boom! 	
nina	Oh right yeah I saw some titles with that. 	
steve	Yeah horrible. 	
nina	Yeah that's too obvious. 	
steve	That’s just a cheap joke. 	
rob	Well this is interesting your reaction so you… Obviously it's very clear that…because there's been a lot of response to that in the UK that people find these jokes rather tired and cheapening and hackneyed and dull and offensive and you seem to concur with this entirely, you don't think that's funny and you're sick of those kind of gags is that true to say?  	
steve	Yeah I mean we just run into so many comedians that just think being rude and offensive just means funny. But it's like they forget the fact that they have to be funny you know. 	
nina	And also original that's the other thing. 	
steve	And original yeah. I don't know how many times I've heard comedians tell me they'd give their left leg to be a part of our group. And it's like that that gag is so old. 	
rob	Yeah, yeah, okay. So are there any other disability gags that you're completely sick of? Let's ask Nina, are there any that you really are tired of, stutter gags in particular? 	
nina	Yeah I mean like a lot of times on stuttering it's whether it's in comedy or anything else where it's like, "Ooh these stutterers here to, you know, teach everyone a lesson or to kill themselves or to kill someone else" because those are pretty much all the roles that stutterers have had. So for me it's more like come up with something new and something real. 	
steve	I hear plenty of little people jokes going round the comedy circuit. 	
nina	Midget it just said constantly. 	
steve	Constantly. A lot of people don't understand that midget is a derogatory word. And I even comment on that, I say a joke in my set, I tell people midget is derogatory, it's only acceptable now if you drop the ‘et’ replace it with an ‘a’ but we can only say it to each other. Like “what up my midga”, you know a play on words. 	
rob	Midga that's amazing. 	
steve	Midga please. I get a lot of, you know, I hear a lot of just very cheap, not really thought out jokes, just people just straight belittling little people, no pun intended. 	
rob	It's quite a good pun I must say. 	
steve	I know uh? 	
liz	Eric?	
steve	Eric yeah go ahead.	
eric	I think it's with any disability you're going to run into that because I know that Michael would say that he's sick and tired of everybody going, "Oh roll on up here." "Yeah this is stand-up comedy" and so like with me it's always, "Oh I bet you didn't see that coming" or "Oh you didn't see that did you?" It's like, “Well of course not I'm blind what do you think the stick's for?” 	
rob	And is taking the potency out of the gag isn't it by a completely straight and blunt reply.	
eric	Yeah it's so irritating because in the driver's tests here in most States it says, ‘If a person has a white cane you give them the right of way because they are blind’ and I guess people skip over that or get it wrong all the time because nobody knows what my cane's for. They're like, "What's that for?" 	
rob	Finally, how can we find you online if we're not able to see you in Memphis tonight which obviously isn't going to happen, how do we find you online? 	
eric	Oh you're not going to be there? Aren't you across the table right now? 	
nina	Yeah we haven't told him that you're not in this studio. 	
eric	What the heck?	
liz	Would you like to feel my face?	
eric	Who's hand did I shake? 	
rob	That wasn't a hand. 	
steve	You can find us…	
eric	That wasn’t a hand! 	
steve	You can find us on Facebook, we have a Facebook page. 	
nina	And we recently started a Twitter and then also individually you can find us all too. 	
rob	So thank you for adding to my Lexicon by giving me the word 'midga' tonight. I'm not sure how many opportunities I'm going to have to use it but God I'm going to try. So thank you so much and we will put all the details of where listeners can contact you on the blog as well. Good luck for the gig in Memphis tonight and thank you so much for joining us.  	
nina	Thank you. 	
steve	Thank you. 	
eric	Thank you. 
[Jingle: Ouch talking disability.
Rob: 	Do you think that your depression would have taken a 	different form if you weren’t someone in the public 	eye? 
Ruby:	You’ve got to stop saying stuff like this you really do.
Rob:	Why?
Ruby:	Because people don’t hang themselves because they 	had a TV show on BBC4, this is really feeding the 	stigma. This is like laughing at somebody with cancer 	and saying, “Come on do some Scottish dancing.” 
	bbc.co.uk/ouch.]
And they just will not leave that alone me and Ruby Wax arguing. We're over it now. 	
liz	It was a beautiful moment. 	
rob	We're living together happily and we have three cats and it's all fine. Now listen, Liz Crow is on the line from Bristol. Hello, Liz. 	
Liz C	Hi there. 	
rob	Now you're a well-known artist in the disability art community so it says here. And we're going to talk about your latest work which is now on show at Salisbury Arts Centre. Now you're bringing attention to the current changes in state benefits amongst other things by lying in bed. So is this a sort of John and Yoko for PIP or more sort of Tracey Emin related activity; I'm sure you're going to reply neither but just give us a little bit of context to it all. 	
liz C	It's a kind of mix of all of them except that I'm there on my own. But at the moment I've got an installation at Salisbury Arts Centre called 'Bedding Out'. And then at the beginning of April I take up residence for 48 hours in a bed on a stage in the Arts Centre. 	
rob	And what will you be doing while we…I presume anyone can wander in at any time and just look on and see what you're doing, and what will you be doing? 	
liz C	Sleeping, chilling, zoning out. I'm going to be behind a red rope so basically I'm a kind of exhibit for the time that I'm there. 	
rob	So you're almost going to be an inanimate object? 	
liz c	Yes I am.	
rob	Is this the portrayal of disabled people that you want to give?	
liz c	I thought I'd bring a radical new perspective to it.	
rob	I'm sort of like a chair with legs and arms. 	
liz c	What I'm actually doing is looking at the way that we have these public selves that… I mean for me I kind of go out there and try and be all energetic and busy and doing things. But then I come back and have this kind of hidden self where I kind of switch off, spend a lot of time lying down, a lot of time in bed recovering in order to go out and do the public face. But I hide that because it's not kind of socially acceptable. 	
rob	And this is the bed life that you're referring to the idea that when we do see people with disabilities out in public we're seeing them maybe being strong and garrulous and talkative and social whereas for the vast majority of the time they're in bed feeling dreadful and we miss all that I suppose don't we? 	
liz c	I think it is that actually life is just more complicated than the kind of two dimensional images we're given. So there's a pressure to kind of, particularly after last summer and the Paralympics, to be a kind of a super human when you're in public. And if you're not that, if you're a claimant then you're often cast as a scrounger. And to kind deal with those kind of really unrealistic and dangerous labels some people turn themselves into victims to try and say, "Look my life is really difficult you just need to help me." So what I'm trying to do is kind of find that space in the middle where we just acknowledge that life is more complicated and if you look at the kind of personal life, the private bed life, there's a kind of honesty in making that visible. 	
liz	Does it feel risky putting yourself out there so vulnerably really? 	
liz c	Yeah. I mean for me the most dangerous element is that people will look at me doing that and say, "You see it is bad, it is tragic, it's everything I thought it was and I told you it was." But what I'm trying to do and I've got kind of safeguards in place is show that actually life is just more complicated than any of the images that we're given. So we might even be super human some of the time, and we might actually be quite tragic even some of the time, some of us might scrounge some of the time but actually there’s whole mix and match of those different elements and nobody I know fits those stereotypes at all. So I want to get across that idea. But I'm also bringing in a series of bedside conversations where people gather round the bed, so not only do they see me doing the bed life, but we then have a conversation about the kind of questions that the work raises. 	
rob	So rather than people shouting at you from behind the rope you're going to actually let, I presume people at your own personal discretion, you'll invite them to duck under the rope and come and have a chat with you, is that how it works?	
liz c	What we've got is kind of scheduled conversations where people can sign up when they come along and there's up to about ten people around the bed and we talk about the work, and we talk about the bigger context what's happening with benefits changes, the way that it's linked into a rise in hate crime, and all sorts of an incredibly broad range of issues. When I've done this before we touched on art and activism and how we want to be represented and so on. But with this one I'm also bringing an extra strand in which is the virtual participation because last time I did it I was contacted by quite a few people who said this is great, thank you for making me visible I'd really like to be there and visit but I have my own bed life and so I can't. So this time we're going to have a live web stream throughout but we're also going to have a Twitter stream that's already got underway, and there will be a specific Twitter based conversation looking at the issues as well. 	
liz	Are you trying to also build a bed life community from this now, are you reaching out to other people who have this almost twilight life I guess?	
liz c	I think that's actually just happening kind of by default. In the Twitter field that's been going on for just a couple of weeks those connections are already happening. Certainly when I started on this project I had no idea that there are actually thousands upon thousands of us out there living this kind of life because we are really isolated and we are really invisible in the public life. So that is part of what I want to do is start connecting people. But also people who are incredibly marginalised and haven't had contacts with the kind of debates that we often have in disability, understanding that actually when they're missing out, when they're losing opportunities it can't just be put down to impairment that very often it's about the way that societies are structured, and I want them to have a chance to tap into those debates and understandings. One of the things that's really happened with the benefits campaigning, one of the surprising good things that's come out of it, is that I think there's been a re-emergence of a kind of movement of disabled people, campaigning movement, with all sorts of new people coming out of the woodwork who were never really active and involved in it before. And what we're seeing through social media is new campaigners and new methods of campaigning that people, even in a bed life, can actually join in and be active within it. So if I can help that process along that that would be fantastic. 	
rob	And I do hope they keep the central heating on in the gallery at night as well otherwise you are going to get rather cold, they can be a bit draughty art galleries, in my experience. 	
liz c	It's a converted church so it's going to be big and cold and…	
rob	And creepy. 	
liz c	…quite weird yeah. 	
rob	Well this isn't your first bit of political work I suppose maybe I should call it. A few listeners may know you from 2008 and 2009 where you brought awareness to the disability holocaust, and I know an hour of which you did that from the top of the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square dressed in full Nazi regalia; this is Antony Gormley's fourth plinth project wasn't it, so tell us a little bit more about that?  	
liz c	I did that, I'm not sure I'd ever do it again, but I did that because…	
rob	What stand on the plinth or wear Nazi uniform? 	
liz c	Probably both, but especially the uniform. 	
rob	That's a sensible answer. 	
liz c	We were actually coming up to the launch of a bigger touring installation about the Nazi campaign of mass murder against disabled people and about its contemporary relevance. And then the Antony Gormley project came up, and initially I just thought I want other people to know about this, we need to make sure disabled people are up there. So along with lots of other people I put my name in a hat and got drawn out of it and was thinking it's kind of a one in a million chance really this, it'll never happen again so I need to do something that counts. And I realised that it was coinciding with the 70th anniversary of that Nazi campaign which was, yet again, completely invisible in the press. So I felt the obvious thing was to draw attention to that. And what I wanted to do was create a symbol up there that would shock people so strongly that they would have to keep returning to it and try to work out what it meant for us now. 	
liz	We've already on the show actually earlier, Liz, we had the Comedians With Disabilities Act on and they started talking about the T4 project and the disability holocaust. We hadn't told them you were coming on that we were going to talk about this, so it's already come up on the show; what was the disability holocaust?	
liz c	It was the first official campaign of mass murder that took place under the Nazis. And it targeted disabled people who effectively became a kind of pilot scheme for looking for an effective way to murder large numbers of people efficiently. And at least a quarter of a million disabled people were killed under that scheme although I suspect the numbers were easily double that and I don't think we'll ever know. I think the thing that brought me to it as a subject was not only that I wanted to bring forward this hidden history but that when I read about it the values that underpinned it, the idea that disabled people were worth less, that they were a burden, that they suffered and would be better put out of their misery and so on, those ideas felt really contemporary. And that was one of the primary things I wanted to look at in the work. 	
liz	Why contemporary, why now? 	
liz c	If we look at the kind of ideas that are being put forward to justify the benefit changes and the benefits cuts, if you look at the kind of messages that are there in much of the media.	
liz	Like what, Liz?	
liz c	Well there's been a very strong campaign in the media that claimants are fraudsters or they are scroungers, that they're too lazy to work, that they are a terrible burden on the taxpayer, that we must have these cutbacks because disabled people are fundamentally irresponsible and not worth as much as other people. And the same kind of language is being used that was used back then. 	
liz	And actually we, in the research for talking to you we looked at some of the posters and some of the slogans from back then, from during the holocaust and a slogan on one poster 'Life Only as a Burden Life Without Hope', a picture caption 'A Moral and Religious Conception of Life Demands the Prevention of Hereditary Ill Offspring'. I mean powerful stuff and do you think that's relevant now? 	
liz c	Well I think it is because in the time that I've been working on that project I suppose I assumed things would either stay the same or they'd get better and I've actually watched them get worse. I think similar kind of ideas are being put across. I think although in the last 30 odd years we've found we're able to physical access social spaces better than we used to. In the past I wouldn't have been able to get into this studio, for example. Although on the surface those sort of things have improved the threat that we're experiencing are actually a lot more subtle and out of the public eye. So if you look at the kind of debates towards assisted suicide and the kind of headlong rush towards that without serious debate; if you look at in vitro testing for impairment, if you look at the number of people in institutions those kind of people on the margins there's an onslaught against those groups. 	
rob	So, to round this up, I'm really intrigued to know because I know this isn't the first time you've done this bed-in I suppose, I know you did it at the SPILL Festival in Ipswich. I mean what kind of things do people want to talk about, what's the most random, strange conversational topics you've found yourself getting embroiled with, you know, with a group of strangers? 	
liz c	I think the thing that struck me more than anything was the range of the conversations. I don't think there was anything really, really out there but the conversations ranged from benefits to newspaper coverage, to hate crime, to representation, to whether there is a role for art in activism, how do we take direct action, what are the most effective ways of campaigning? I mean it was just an incredible range. And what really struck me was how deeply a group of strangers were prepared to enter into that conversation and go away with a kind of resolve to actually act upon it. 	
rob	Well I'm hoping for some pillow fights next time around. I think this could be exciting. So can you give us the web address again before you go, Liz? 	
liz C	Yeah. It's www.roaring-girl.com 	
rob	And we will, of course, put that up on the Ouch blog as well. So very good luck with your show, the exhibit, I don't quite know what to call it - installation? What would you prefer it to be called?	
liz c	I'm calling it performance but whatever works really. 	
rob	Okay. Tomato sandwich. It's been lovely, anyway, talking to you, Liz, thank you so much. 	
liz	Thanks for joining us, Liz, bye. 	
liz c	Thank you. 
[Jingle: Ouch, talking disability. 
Liz:	We will never think of disability in the same way again. From Sebastian Coe’s closing ceremony speech. Tanni, do you think that’s true? 
Tanni: I think it was absolutely, definitely true around the time of the Paralympics and I think people are more positive towards disabled people. But I guess when we see next year’s hate crime figures then we’ll have a better view of whether there’s been a real change or whether it’s been a moment in time.
bbc.co.uk/ouch]
We've had some tough subjects today on the show; we've had shootings, anti-disability propaganda from the Nazis, putting down disabled children, and benefits; and in our meeting we did try and come up with some of the worst things that people can say to you, the things that really hurt; and we thought about parenting. So on the line we have Laura Miller, and you're from Glasgow. Hello Laura.	
laura	Hi Liz.	
liz	Now you're from the Disabled Parent's Network, you're the mother of 13 month old Jonathan. 	
laura	That's correct, yes.	
liz	Well Happy Mother's Day to you for this week. 	
laura	Ah thank you, thank you so much. 	
rob	Happy Mother's Day Laura. 	
laura	Thank you. 	
liz	I want to get it out the way that when your parenting ability is questioned because you're disabled it hurts a lot doesn't it, Laura?	
laura	I think it's actually quite traumatic and it can be devastating for parents. And myself and other parents that I know of have come across situations where you know when you talk about something hurting it can be more than that, it can actually affect your mental health, it can start to make you feel depressed and quite anxious because of the amount of pressure that's put on you as a disabled parent. And I'm sorry to say that's been my experience in quite a lot of circumstances. 	
liz	So what's meant to be an amazing time…	
laura	Yes.	
liz	…you become a mum, it's so exciting for so many people normally, you get your ability questioned. What sort of things were people saying to you? 	
laura	Well during the pregnancy and after I had Jonathan we had questions from professionals. And it's mainly professionals I say who give those kind of comments like have you even thought about how you're going to look after your child, and making a lot of presumptions. A lot of them presumed that my husband would have to give up work to look after the both of us, which was actually quite undermining because that wasn't our situation. 	
rob	And I know Jonathan was taken into hospital at six weeks old…	
laura	Yes that's right. 	
rob	And so it seems that you had to become a parent very publicly, straight away, was that the case?	
laura	Well I kind of rolled into there and he was in a great big cot with metal sides up. And so my baby's lying in this big cot and I realised that I didn't know how to get the cot side down and that I was going to have to go and ask a member of staff to show me how to do it. And because he was in for a week it meant that everybody could see me looking after this tiny, little baby…	
rob	And this is you as a wheelchair user? 	
laura	Yes. And it was a fascinating experience I had both positive and negative comments there from parents. But it was kind of like a fast forward of getting used to people watching. Because when you use a wheelchair and you're a parent you obviously attract more attention. 	
rob	So it sounds like also it almost became bizarre and surreal at some point. Now you know me I can't deny that I love a good epidural story and I know you've got a cracker, so let's hear it. 	
laura	Well when I was having Jonathan my husband and I had a code word ready which was Armageddon which meant I need an epi…	
rob	How apt!	
laura	…meant I need an epidural now. And when I gave the signal two anaesthetists came and I had to explain to them… They wanted to sit up for the epidural and I wasn't physically able to do that. It was actually quite dangerous to do that because part of my condition could mean that I could collapse. One of them started arguing with me. So I was on gas and air at the time and I told him it was time for him to get ****ing creative. 	
liz	And how did he respond?	
laura	I got told off. I got told off for swearing and I told him he could ****ing get over it. Eventually I did get my epidural and my C-section went very well. 	
rob	I'm fairly sure that in a Glasgow hospital he's heard worse. 	
laura	I'm fairly sure he has.	
liz	And so you get the epidural, Jonathan comes out, it's all fine was it then okay in hospital, was it plain sailing?	
laura	No it was absolutely awful. And I felt that I saw the worst and the best of the treatment. The best of the treatment was the section and then after that. The whole way through the pregnancy I'd tried to get a care plan put together and part of it was used but most of it was disregarded. I felt like I was arguing with staff all the time. I was in a bed that I couldn't lift my baby from the bed so I had to rely on staff. They ran out of bedpans. They argued with me how I was going to transfer from the bed to the chair and backwards again. I had nurses shouting at me to do things I couldn't do. And I was absolutely exhausted. 	
rob	Did you feel that they also doubted your mental faculties in your ability in that sense, intellectually just because you were a wheelchair user? 	
laura	Actually I'm not sure if it is to do with it. I kind of have a theory that some of it's to do with staff are just used to people listening to what you…telling you what to do and they're not used to people having to take control of their situation and be quite verbal about what they need done. And that was very frustrating because when you're a disabled parent you're the expert in your situation. And that means quite often you've got the solution already sorted, how to do things, how to do things best for you and your child, and I was having to constantly think like that, communicate it and then have it disregarded. And that's really, it's not just frustrating, it's actually quite frightening. 	
liz	So at what point were you involved with the Disabled Parents Network; was that before you had Jonathan, was it support there, or is it since then?	
laura	Well the Disabled Parents Network have got a fantastic website which is www.disabledparentsnetwork.org.uk and I would really suggest any parent to have a look at it as it's got a whole range of advice and support for parents who are either disabled or have got a health condition. It's got a forum on it, there's booklets on it and I looked at absolutely everything I could on that website during the pregnancy. And I enjoyed the support from it so much that it's very recent I've become a volunteer, because I think it's really important to let parents know that they're not on their own and that you know the negative experience that they may have they're not facing it by themselves. 	
rob	So what have you learnt from other disabled parents?	
laura	I've learnt so much. 	
rob	Give us an example. 	
laura	Well we mentor each other. I'm in contact with a number of parents online and we discuss how to do parenting stuff, you know, which I would describe as alternative parenting stuff. You know how do you discipline your children when they're older when you struggle to use your arms and your legs. And how do you get good voice control with children. And it's great to be able to talk to other parents. We're basically writing the stuff online that needs to be given out to the professionals, so that professionals know that we could show them how to show other parents how to look after their children. 	
rob	I mean I hope this question doesn't sound too crass – which is famous last words from me - Jonathan's 13 months old now?	
laura	Yes.	
rob	So if you can't pick him up which I guess is rather an important thing to do at that age, how do you get around that?	
laura	Well my situation is, is that I can transfer from my chair onto the floor so I'm a crawler, I'm a crawling mummy. And what I do is…	
rob	Who's the better crawler though you or Jonathan?	
laura	Him, and he knows it and he goes really fast, which is why my knees are black and blue at the moment. My main thing with Jonathan is that I cannot stand and hold him up and support him so I have to persuade him to come to my chair. And when I go out and about it's very simple I use a simple baby sling on my lap and take him out when we go out and about. Things like that when I was pregnant seemed really difficult to think round how I was going to do it and I could tell you all sorts of ways that we do things now that we've just kind of got together.	
rob	Oh please do, tell me some. 	
laura	Well apart from the baby sling that we use because I can't stand with Jonathan we do lots of game playing to try and move him from room to room. So I'll do things like I'll get a noisy toy and move him from one place to the next. Or what I do is I switch all the lights off in the rooms I don't want him to be in and I switch the light on the room I do want him to be in. And that's what I do if I need to get him back into his cot at night time. 	
liz	And that works?	
rob	How interesting it's like Pavlov's dogs. 	
laura	It is. And the thing that's important to realise as a parent that just because you have to do things differently doesn't mean you can't have fun at the same time. And we've done a lot of that with a lot of fun. Jonathan is great with it because it's fascinating because he's picked up on things like he'll run to his dad to get him to lift him up but he won't do it with me. And it makes you realise that children do tune in to what you're doing. 	
liz	And do you plan ahead or are you just going to take it time by time now?	
laura 	I think that's one of the biggest differences; I know that obviously parents plan and they have to plan. But I have to be super ready for situations. My little boy wasn't well this week and in order to get him to hospital we ended up going in an ambulance actually; and it was a situation where it was one of the things I wasn't sure how it was going to work because I didn't know whether a power chair could get into an ambulance; technically it can but not brilliantly. So you're always having to think through what would you do in an emergency situation, what would you do with this and that. And I think you have to watch because it can make you quite anxious. 	
liz	So you have to be an amazing problem solver? 	
laura	You do. And I think that is the unique property of a disabled parent is we have to do it just at a higher level. And that's why we need encouragement from other parents because obviously that can get exhausting and you just need other people to cheer you on and keep feeding you ideas because you can get stuck. 	
liz	And that's what you get from other disabled parents. 	
laura	Yes.	
liz	Must just check - Jonathan's okay though?	
laura	He's fine. He's with daddy just now and he'll be absolutely fine. He's all been checked out and stuff. 	
liz	I bet he loved the ride in the ambulance - stressful for mum but I bet it was great for a 13 month old?	
laura	Totally. There was so much to look at and because he's already been in hospital he kind of takes it in his stride. He's kind of here I am again and here's the stethoscopes, fantastic.	
rob	And if you really must take one ambulance ride in your life do it when you're 13 months old and you've got your mum with you not when you're 17 and you've had 18 cans of Red Stripe. 	
liz	You speak from experience there, Rob, almost.	
rob	I sadly do. 	
laura	Is he blushing, Liz?	
rob	When am I not blushing? I'm an albino, come one, my skin. Anyway it's been a pleasure having you on the show, Laura, thank you so much. 	
laura	Thank you so much. 	
rob	And do send our regards to Jonathan. 	
laura	I will do. 	
rob	Maybe one of our youngest listeners. 	
liz	Absolutely. And details about the Disabled Parents Network will be on the blog as well. 	
laura	That's fantastic. 	
liz	Thanks, Laura, take care. 	
laura	Pleasure. 	
liz	That's it! Programme 95 under our belts. So thanks to Emma Tracey, Philip Ashley and producer Damon Rose. 	
rob	And we'll be back in early April just after Easter. But now it's finally time for Dan the Rapper Man with his song 'Dan the Rapper Man'. I've some of the lyrics here in front of me which I'd like to read, so Elizabeth, could you assist me please.	
liz	My name is Dan, the rap man	
rob	And I've got wheels of steel 	
liz	I may have cerebral palsy	
rob	But man I keep it real 	
liz	Peeps, you can catch me online	
rob	There's nobody in Hull like me because I'm so hot	
liz	Girls love me and the dudes all shout	
rob and liz	Leave our chicks alone.	
rob	It's epic. It's CP rapping. It's Dan the Rapperman. 
See you next month. 	
liz	Bye bye.
[Playing music]