Ouch Talk Show #84 April 2012
bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast

Presented by Mat Fraser and Liz Carr 

Mat	Thank you for downloading this podcast it’s the Ouch Talk Show. Next to me is Liz Carr and I’m the outgoing Mat Fraser. Outgoing as in not coming back not as in gregarious, although I am really gregarious. Hi Liz! 	
Liz	Hi Mat. Anyway this month it’s murder or rather murderball also known as wheelchair rugby, we’ll be explaining how it works. And did you know it’s a mixed sport? I didn’t! We’ve got the only female player on the team joining us. 	
mat	Now disabled chocolatier as they might say in France or chocolatier as they say here, Louis Barnett, will be joining us later as a pre-Easter treat and we have some awkward terminology chat and I understand we’re ending this show with some archive clips of me that they say are unmissable. 	
liz	Oh yes they are. Stay tuned. 
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mat	Oh my gosh!	
liz	Beautiful.	
mat	Do you remember?	
liz	I miss... I’d forgotten I miss it, but I miss it. 	
mat	That brings back the halcyon days of when we first started working together, Liz, and the excitement the THRILL of it all. 	
liz	Times have changed. I mean only this year I was at the Oscars you know Matthew? 	
mat	You were weren’t you? How very glamorous you are these days, Liz. 	
Liz	I was at the Oscars and everybody was going, “Oh is that because you work for the BBC?” No because they have a ballot and I entered it and I won tickets...	
mat	What?	
liz	... to be on the red carpet. 	
mat	Whoa! What do you mean?	
liz	Yeah, no seriously. If you’re a fan of the Oscars you can apply to a ballot and you can win tickets. You don’t get to go in and sit in with them or anything like that. But you do get to sort of line the red carpet and you get really...I’m in the background of so many pictures. I was in Vanity Fair the whole thing...	
mat	Wow!	
liz	... with like George Clooney.	
mat	Did you get anyone to like talk down your mobile phone?	
liz	No. No they’re not that, you know, they do come over and Clooney said he would but he didn’t. But he’s amazing.	
mat	Well he’s always been a liar, everybody knows that. 	
liz	And we got to wheel on the red carpet, the whole thing. So it was quite amazing. 	
Mat	You talked to George Clooney?	
LIZ	No I didn’t talk to him I got a picture behind him, Mat. 	
mat	Oh so you're new Facebook page...	
liz	Yes!	
mat	... which appears to be George Clooney that’s actually if I look closer you're in the background.	
liz	Yes there’s me and Jo waving between his head. 	
mat	Between his head?	
liz	And there’s one of us, you know, behind every star.	
mat	Who was the most glamorous? Why are we talking hold on this is the Ouch podcast. Were there any disabled stars there? 	
liz	Yeah well you can imagine America so accessible in so many ways and so you got to sit in the stadium seating, but not us. There was a special platform called the ADA platform. The ADA, right? And as we approached this guy “Yeah you're for the ADA. Yeah, yeah up you come, up you come on the lift.” And that really struck me in America this time is that they don’t seem to say disabled anymore they seem to use ADA as shorthand for saying disability, like it’s a euphemism. 	
mat	But it means the Americans with Disabilities Act. 	
liz	Well it makes sense but you don’t, you know, in the UK they don’t go, “Yeah we’ve got a DDA here”. I remember getting on a bus in America and they were like, “Yeah can you get the ramp out we’ve got an ADA.” 	
mat	This is like in the old days, “Oi, Dave, we’ve got one of the disableds in the back here, can you open up the thing.” 	
liz	Yeah. 	
mat	That’s no better. 	
liz	Well no, but it just feels like, you know we had enough problems with you know they used to use the word handicapped now they don’t seem to it’s all about yes we have an ADA bathroom, and we have the ADA parking. But, you know, instead of us just talking about this we do have a bit of an expert on, on the line. 	
mat	What you mean an expert in the Oscars because I thought you were our resident Oscars expert.	
liz	No, no an expert in the...you know looking at what are the alternative words that people are using when they’re desperately trying to avoid calling us disabled? 	
mat	Oh yes which happens a lot. 	
liz	Yeah. 	
MAT	Has happened all my life. My favourite one ever was I was once at ((Choc & Gilley’s - 0:04:24.2?)) disco, it was in the 70s and I was like one of the new punks on the scene. And all the punks wanted to accept me as a punk but clearly they were like, “Er?” with the old arms but they didn’t want to say anything. And so I went to the disco and asked for a song by a band called The Birthday Party and they went “And this one’s a new one by The Birthday Party from the bloke who, um, who asked for it” like that. But he did it on mic with everybody and they all looked round and laughed. And I still haven’t forgotten it. 	
liz	So they couldn’t say that you’ve got short arms. We’ve got Simon Minty on the line. Hello Simon.	
simon	Hi there Liz. 	
liz	Old friend of the show you have travelled the world so you know how different disabled people are referred to all over the world, disability consultant, what do you think here, what are the alternatives that people use as euphemisms? 	
simon	It’s tricky but I always...I never want to have a pop at people for making an effort as it were. But the one that always makes me smile, and I want to use it myself, is handicapable. Now I first came across that from the programme South Park but in actual fact it’s used quite a lot. There’s a few organisations in the US that use handicapable and I just don’t quite know what does it mean? 	
MAT	Well I was going to ask you, Simon, what does that mean?	
simon	Sorry.	
MAT	I was going to ask you that very question, what does it mean?	
simon	Well I guess they’re trying to say rather than handicapped as in the old school this is handicapable of doing something. But then just drop the handy, just go straight to able to do something. Which sort of well it’s very hard. I came across one the other day, I was speaking with a friend and we were talking partially sighted or visually impaired or blind and he said he’s had people come up to him saying, “Are you visually blind?” I’m sort of thinking that’s all one of the same thing. I see quite a lot that bit of taking the ‘dis’ out of disability.	
mat	Yeah concentrating on the ‘ability’. 	
simon	Yes. I mean it’s hard because I kind of think well these are noble assets but I just sometimes wonder are we kind of papering over the cracks a little bit. Or actually restricting the conversation. That’s the whole point is to make an easier conversation. 	
MAT	Go on Liz. 	
liz	I was going to say I was recently interviewed for a theatre magazine and he was... the person he said, “You know I’ve got a real problem with describing you as a disabled performer.” So he said you know I think you’re just differently creative. And I was like, “What?” 	
MAT	“Oi, Dave we’ve got a DC over here.” 	
liz	Do you think people just...you know I think they think they’re doing a good thing, do you think that’s right, Simon?	
simon	Well yeah they do and that’s why I’m sort of a bit cautious of mocking it too much and I like that attempt. I suppose the simple bit is just changing the word isn’t removing the barriers, isn’t removing the attitudinal blocks. So I’m a bit more let’s get some physical things done or let’s change some other bits and then you can start using the language. Although I know, I mean I discussed with a lot of Americans, and I sort of have some empathy, language is hugely important in the US I think around disability, perhaps a little bit more so than us in the UK.	
Mat	I’m interested to know what they described you in China, because I know you've been to China and I remember when the Beijing games were on and they were translating disabled exit and disabled entrance and stuff, one of the signs said, ‘Special for Deformed’ and I thought that was rather a good way of saying... What did they call you over there apart from obviously Simon?	
simon	You see I don’t think unless it was not to my face they were pretty okay. I always start fairly rapidly by saying, you know, you call me short or if you’re describing me to somebody else you can say Simon’s a short person. So I didn’t get into the sort of more, you know, tricky words such as dwarf and the one that’s considered quite offensive which is midget. But whether they have an equivalent in Mandarin I don’t know, or Cantonese, but I didn’t get that far. I didn’t hear anything to make me flinch or even smile. 	
mat	What about when an impairment is elevated like VIPs I know the London Underground call visually impaired people VIPs which is quite nice isn’t it? Elevation there. 	
simon	Yeah I like that because it becomes a little bit of shorthand or a very easy ((0:08:48.7?)). The tricky bit though, and this does sometimes happen, is that sort of organisations start using new words and they haven’t actually had a conversation with us who are the people who are affected, so they’re starting to use their new lingo and we haven’t even been consulted. Or, even worse, we don’t actually know what they mean. So as long as there’s a little bit of a conversation beforehand if we are changing some of that. 	
mat	What would you like to be... obviously midget is, you know, the one that short people with restricted growing don’t like sometimes. 	
simon	That’s a new one - restricted growing. 	
liz	Restricted growing?	
MAT	Yes. 	
liz	You see that’s an example you see here, Mat, of people just, on a whim, creating new language. 	
simon	Well there was a source I remember being in an airport, I was with my family, and a young child said to me - I wasn’t really listening - and I was on my scooter and this young child said, “Is that an elf” about me. But my brother-in-law unbelievably awesomely turned round and said, “No he has restricted growth” which is the words that we use here in the UK to the association. The problem was this child was about six and just looked even more blank. 	
liz	Yes. 	
mat	And you disappointed a young child, which I don’t think is very clever, frankly. 	
simon	Well if you note it’s my brother-in-law that confused this young child, I was somewhat oblivious to it although I did hear words ‘elf’ and ‘restricted growth’ and decided to just move on. 	
MAT	There’s got to be something between elf and restricted growth though hasn’t there, do you know what I mean? 	
simon	Yeah. Restricted growing’s become very popular in the last five minutes. 	
liz	Simon what do you think...is the word ‘disability’ is that passé, is that out of fashion now do you think there should be some different and better words? 	
simon	I always say with language it’s about your intention, you know where you’re coming from, and also as far as I’m concerned use the word pineapple I don’t really care. It will change, it will develop, it will evolve but that isn’t the crucial bit for me it’s more about, you know, the attitudinal, as I said already, it’s about response. If you just kind of ignore it altogether this handicapable stuff, I mean, does that mean people know how to make adjustments? Does it mean people will prepare for my arrival? So I think it will change, it will become different. I mean I was thinking the other day what am I seeing... a lot of the use of the word ‘able’ put into words. I can’t think of a good example right now.	
MAT	Simon, thank you for being there. 	
liz	Thank you, Simon, for putting up with us this month. 	
simon	Thank you so much for having me and obviously, Liz, a big thank you. But a huge thank you and goodbye Mat, thanks for all your efforts on the podcasts, mate. 	
liz	So have we missed any words that you love or hate? Email us ouch@bbc.co.uk or tweet us bbcouch and we’ll read them out. 
[Jingle: Mat Fraser, Liz Carr, BBC.co.uk/ouch.]	
MAT	Ah you know Liz one of the best things in life is chocolate. I know people talk about sex and love and all these other things. But the endorphin rush and the pleasure given from just...the serotonin alone from chocolate, good chocolate I’m talking about.	
liz	Good chocolate. 	
MAT	Not just the mass produced stuff. There’s nothing better. Which is uncanny because joining us down the line from Birmingham is chocolatier, Louis Barnett. 	
liz	Hello, Louis. 	
Louis	Hello, good afternoon.	
mat	Hi. 	
liz	Thank you so much for joining us. Wow your CV! Well some facts about you. You live in Staffordshire.	
louis	Yeah that’s right. 	
liz	You’ve owned your own chocolate company since the age of 12. 	
mat	Ding!	
louis	Yeah. 	
liz	You were named Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year 2011?	
louis	Yeah that’s right. 	
liz	And at 20 years old you have your former home school tutor working for you?	
louis	Yeah, yeah absolutely. 	
liz	Okay. You’ve got dyspraxia.	
louis	Yeah. 	
liz	Dyslexia.	
louis	Yeah.	
liz	Short term memory difficulties. 	
louis	Yes.	
liz	Okay well there’s so much to your story we kind of don’t know where to begin but we got you here because it’s Easter - chocolate associated with Easter, is it your busiest time of year? 	
louis	It’s not actually, no. 	
liz	Oh no! 	
louis	One of the things I mean to understand our industry a little bit better most of the time we work so far in advance that we actually end up doing Christmas in sort of summer. But for the thing is for us with Easter really it’s always been about Easter eggs. Unfortunately for us as an artisan production company we’ve always found it very difficult to compete with the large manufacturers on prices of Easter products and Easter eggs. So we’ve never really gone too much in the Easter market but we will be this year quite a bit in the UK which makes a change. 	
MAT	Tell us about the chocolates that you make? 	
louis	Okay. Well basically we make an entire range of products. We are predominantly, at the moment, an export business so our products very much change around the world. One of our biggest markets at the moment is in Mexico. But we’re also now breaking into Africa and Asia at the same time. But we make everything from specialist boutique chocolates, specialist bespoke collections right the way up to, you could say, sort of every day eaten chocolate bars and other everyday bought products as well. 	
liz	So hold on, you’re selling chocolate to Mexico, the home of chocolate?	
louis	Yes that’s right. 	
liz	How did you...	
mat	The phrase ‘coals Newcastle’ does come to mind. 	
louis	It does a little bit yeah. 	
liz	How did you get into this business? How does that happen that at your age and at the age of 12...	
mat	12 years old you started. 	
liz	... you had your own company. How did that happen?	
louis	Well basically what happened I’d always been very unhappy at school, always had a problem, never really understood why. And then finally coming up to my Year 6 SATS I was told by the teachers that if I didn’t improve my handwriting that I wouldn’t be allowed to actually take the exam. My parents found a local tutor in the village. I went away for a couple of lessons with her and after about I think two or three lessons she said, “I think you might have dyslexia.” My reaction was, “Yes! School note, no school” until she started to explain what it was. I was then professionally assessed by an educational psychologist and I was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, short term memory loss syndrome, mid type ADHD. 	
mat	A pretty good list. 	
louis	Yeah well you know...	
mat	You don’t get lists like that that much on the Ouch podcast but that is a good one.	
louis	And from that point onwards I sort of very much it was a relief for me because it was a greater understanding of why I’d had problems. But with that happening I sort of understood that I wouldn’t really fit into general education. And I went back to school for a little while, still had a lot of problems and eventually my parents took me out of school to be home educated. And literally the only two things I’ve ever liked in my life were animals and food. And about six or seven weeks later my auntie asked me to make her a cake for her 50th birthday and, hey presto, within six weeks I was producing cakes for family, friends, local restaurants and delicatessens and a Eureka moment I started the business. 	
liz	But Louis a lot of relatives talk to their nieces and nephews and grandchildren and go, “Make us a cake, make us a cake” and it’s usually some quite nasty sponge with icing and a lot of hundreds and thousands maybe a smiley face made of jelly pieces, okay. What age are you at this point when she asks you to make the cake?	
louis	I was 11. 	
liz	Okay. And the next thing you know you’re selling them to delicatessens. How did you know where to begin? 	
louis	Well fortuitously I actually bought my first cake book. When I left school - sort of long story short - I left school tried lots of different kind of vocational routes and ended up working a local falconry centre. And while I was at this falconry centre I picked up a book on Belgian chocolate cakes...	
liz	No I have to stop you. 	
louis	Okay, yeah that’s fine. 	
liz	Because I love it, I love it so anyway I left school about 11 then I went to a falconry centre. I’m only stopping you because obviously it’s not people’s usual path and that’s what’s fascinating about you. So how did that come about, how did you one day school isn’t working for you but you start to get a diagnosis and that makes a lot more sense, you can understand why you’ve not had a good time at school. And then how do you make that leap to go into a falconry centre, how did that happen? 	
louis	Well I think for me and this is probably something my Mum’s going to be smiling at, but I was quite a stubborn child as you can probably imagine. And I went down to my local barbers and was having my hair cut and he used to keep hawks. And I kind of sat talking to him, got in touch with the local falconry centre and my Mum bought me a day, A Bird Experience Day, to try and put me off the experience and I actually ended up asking the guy who owned the centre if I could work there. Not a big fan of kids let’s say he certainly wasn’t. I started work there voluntary, I would work from 6:00am until 5:00/6:00 o’clock in the evening doing all the awful dirty jobs and sort of worked my way up through the ranks. But what it really did for me was it was the first thing I ever enjoyed outside school. It was that first time where I passionately had a ‘love to do’ something and it forced me not only to read one book front to back but about seven or eight. 	
liz	So you found a cookery book away you go, you start making cakes etc and then you start learning more about chocolate? 	
mat	At what point did the Swiss chocolate manufacturer, Callebaut, decide that you to be chosen as one of the only 40 ambassadors of chocolate across the globe - how did that happen? 	
louis	Well that sort of, I mean that was only recently in sort of February this year, but really their sort of involvement in my career was at the age of 14. I’d started the company at the age of 12, I’d grown it from sort of families to then local restaurants and delicatessens. I was supplying Waitrose by the age of 13 as their youngest ever supplier, Sainsbury’s at 14, and at that time the pinnacle point between turning from a very sort of cottage industry business still producing in the garage to actually taking it to a larger company I went for some formal training and education in chocolate. And that was when I was sponsored by Callebaut because the minimum age for the course was I think 16 at the time and I was obviously 14 and they were very impressed with what I’d done. So I became one of the first ever sponsees of the company. And it was for all of my chocolate training so once, twice, three/four times a month I’d go down and learn about chocolate from a basic level all the way up to a molecular level and structure of chocolate. And then finally this year in 2012, February, I was named as one of only 37 world chocolate Callebaut Ambassadors. 	
mat	Okay. Incredibly impressive, but why? Why are you obsessed with chocolate, Louis?	
Louis	I don’t really know. I mean it’s a very difficult...everyone asks me that. And I think the only way I can answer it is from a very young age I’ve been always interested in the complexity of life and complexity of situations. I probably over think and philosophise way too much and chocolate was just such an exciting product because chocolate - I don’t know whether you know - but chocolate is the most complex ingredient on the planet. So you couldn’t find a better area for me to research and study in. 	
mat	Wow! So in a way life is [Forest Gump voice] ‘like a box of chocolates’. 	
louis	That’s right, yeah. 	
mat	Love the way you spell Chokolit because I love radical appropriations of the dyslexic situation. And you’ve...tell everybody how or if it’s not... it’s going to be easy for you to, but if you can’t then don’t and we will, how do you spell chokolit?	
louis	It’s C-H-O-K-O-L-I-T.	
mat	And that is how it should be spelt.	
louis	Yeah that’s right. 	
liz	And is that how you thought someone with dyslexia that’s how you thought the word was spelt?	
louis	Yeah well I mean originally I hadn’t noticed I was doing it but in amongst my notes when I was starting to write recipes for my chocolate cakes I’d been writing it like that, and it was my Dad who actually picked it up first and said, you know, “Why on earth are you writing it like that?” And I said, “What do you mean?” And much like most dyslexics you could write something a hundred times and it reads fine to you until somebody points it out and that’s when I realised the sort of mistake. But then I thought it was a really nice slant because, you know, dyslexia I felt was very much the pinnacle point and starting point of actually my company, so I thought it was a really good way of following through and keeping that dyslexic part of my company alive. 	
mat	I think that’s really good and to not kind of deny it and have it as a glorious part of your chocolate empire which sounds fairly phenomenal. You mix stuff up in your chocolates. Now lots of people, the jury’s out on the salty chocolate and the chilli chocolate, where are you with the pepper and the lime chocolate and all that kind of stuff?	
louis	Okay. Well I mean I do have some quite interesting combinations. Probably one of the most interesting I do a sea salt, black pepper and honeycomb in milk chocolate. 	
mat	Oh my god! Aagh!	
louis	So it’s a sort of crunchy, sweet, savoury, a little bit hot but sweet. But one of the things that always sort of irritates me is there’s a lot of chocolatier out there that go too outlandish. There’s even a guy in Belgium who makes chocolates made out of oysters. 	
mat	Oh that’s just too much!	
louis	Yeah exactly. 	
liz	Wrong. 	
louis	And you know the thing is you might have one, you might have two but you’re not going to really enjoy a box. So for me, however whacky and interesting some of my flavours might be, it’s always bearing in mind that really it’s everyone else who’s got to eat them and chocolate is all about enjoyment, it’s not about challenging your taste buds. And there’s a place for that in the gastronomy world. But I’ve always said that chocolate should be about enjoyment and whether it’s passing them round at a friend’s dinner table or sitting in front of the sofa just kind of eating them as you disappear into a film.	
MAT	You’ve got some really high class quality chocolate product clearly, I’ve looked at your website and we’ve seen the chocolate on display. We’re very gutted, by the way, that you’re not here in person because we were rather hoping for some...well basically free chocolate. But something that’s really important to you is the ethics with which you make the chocolate. And there’s a big thing about palm oil and I wondered if you perhaps, as succinctly as possible, might like to tell us about it?	
louis	Yeah absolutely. I mean the thing is with palm oil, I’ll give you a basis of why. I come from a very small village in the West Midlands, it’s called Kinver. There’s only about 1,000 people that live there and so we’re very, very close to the food industry and always have done. We’ve bought milk from the local dairy and cheese and so on. So I’ve always felt a kind of connection with the food industry. So when I started by business I did an awful lot of research into ingredients and where they were coming from and how the better quality they were how it would impact the flavour. And I kept coming across an ingredient called palm oil, not really knowing what it was, did a very little amount of research as many of you whoever’s going to be listening to this, you can just google it and one of the things that immediately jumped out at me was palm oil is the world’s move overly produced edible oil commodity. And at the time I was researching it, bearing in mind this was 2004, six football pitches - if you just take the time to imagine that - six football pitches’ worth of rainforest, some of the most bio-diverse rainforest on the planet, was being destroyed every minute of every day; so six football pitches every minute of every day. It’s now thought to be anywhere up to ten in certain areas; ten football pitches a minute. So instantly it was a product that not only I never wanted to use in my products but I actually wanted to bring a bit of awareness about it. I wanted to tell people about what was going on in the food industry and that this ingredient was only there to cheapen the products and no other reason. So, you know that sort of ethical outlook has followed me right the way through and obviously we still don’t use palm oil, we donate an awful lot of our profits every year to charities all around the world, everything from animal conservation all the way up to kind of human charities working within Mexico. And I also source all the ingredients and chocolate from ground up ensuring that really it’s...my outlook is a better than fair-trade approach. 	
Mat	Overwhelmingly impressive, Louis! But one of the things that I like the best is apparently you were called by a Mexican article about you, ‘Louis Barnett, El Justin Bieber del chocolate’ meaning the Justin Bieber of chocolate. 	
louis	Yes that’s right, yeah. 	
mat	Are you a bit of a chocolate pin-up?	
louis	Well, you know, I’m actually a secret Biebler, I’m a huge Justin Bieber fan and it was quite interesting when they wrote that article. But yeah I don’t know. And actually the same I spent five and a half months in Mexico last year and one of the articles called me ‘the Shakespeare of chocolate’ which was quite interesting. 	
mat	That’s quite a leap from Bieber to Shakespeare. 	
louis	Yeah. 	
liz	Well, Louis, it’s been fascinating talking to you. We have to say goodbye. 	
louis	Yeah of course. Well thanks for having me on. 	
mat	[Jingle: If you have a question or predicament that’s burning a hole in your brain and you’d like us to help then email the show now ouch@bbc.co.uk that’s ouch@bbc.co.uk if you don't you might explode. Fact.]
Tony Garrett is here. Hi Tony. 	
tony	Good afternoon to you. 	
mat	Now I’m assuming that it’s time, obviously because you're here, that it’s time to talk about the Paralympics again. How long is it now until London 2012?	
tony	Five months so time is fast approaching. 	
mat	It’s getting exciting.	
tony	And everyone’s very excited. 	
mat	Only yesterday it was three years to go and now here we are.	
liz	We’re there. Well let’s look back at last month. We mentioned the swimming was going to happen. I believe Ellie Simmonds did rather well, Tony? 	
tony	Absolutely. It was a great event at the Aquatic Centre, it’s both the Olympic and Paralympic trials. Tremendous week of swimming. Lots of swimmers trying to qualify for the games. And of course one of the big highlights was Ellie Simmonds, she qualified but she was the first person to break a world record, Olympic or Paralympic in that aquatic pool. She was so excited. She’d broken the women’s 200m individual medley. 	
MAT	That’s fantastic.	
liz	I have to ask, you know, brilliant, very proud of her, she’s a great British team member there, but she came last in the race didn’t she, and yet she broke a record how does that happen?	
tony	Yeah it was one of those slightly quirky things that we have in swimming is that at the Paralympics it will be absolutely first to touch will win. But what does happen sometimes because there aren’t enough swimmers in all the relevant categories they have what they call a multi-disability races. So basically you're swimming against a time. And in a sense they’re swimming against the clock and it’s done in percentage times so the nearest they are to their world record is the person who wins. It is confusing, I don’t think it helps the sport but that’s the reason why it does happen on occasions. 	
liz	Well she broke a record and we’ve got a clip of Ellie winning and her post race interview. So take a listen to this. 
[Playing clip: It’s all about what the clock will say here to get a feeling of how Eleanor is swimming, 308.14 that could well be the first ever world record in this Olympic pool. 
Eleanor:	I just can’t believe it. I just broke an Olympic world record. I’ve been training so hard for my IM I just ((0:28:00.8?)) I just can’t believe it.]
Oh bless her, ah. 	
mat	That’s beautiful. 	
liz	So emotional. She was overjoyed, Tony.	
tony	Absolutely. And she’d been a bit nervous during the week because, you know, in her high standards she hadn’t quite been getting the times she wanted. And I think that was just completely a big surprise and to do that. And as you can tell, and that’s what’s great about sport, people can still get really, really excited and emotional and that’s why we love it. 	
mat	Yeah. That’s what they all say is the feeling of winning the competition is like a euphoria that you never get in another part of life. Not something that me and Liz are ever going to find out, but maybe you’ve had experience of that Tony? 	
tony	Oh maybe. 	
liz	A little bit of news on goalball and volleyball can you update us?	
tony	Yeah absolutely. It’s been quite a busy month for Paralympic sport. Great Britain have just confirmed that the women’s sitting volleyball team will go to the Paralympic Games, the men’s had been already selected, but the women’s hadn’t. It was subject to their performances improving and that has been the case, so there’s going to be some great stories and some really good youngsters coming through and of course we’ve got Martine Wright who lost both her legs in the London bombing.	
MAT	That’s right, yeah. 	
tony	She will fingers crossed, names haven’t been confirmed yet, but she’s in the mix. And also in goalball which is a visually impaired sport, Great Britain have decided to take both the men’s and women’s teams so basically Great Britain will have a team in every sport at the Paralympics. 	
MAT	Fantastic. 	
tony	So that’s really good news. 	
mat	Great that’s really good. Now I understand we’ve got some wheelchair rugby coming up in April, Tony, is that right? 	
tony	Very much so. The focus moves to wheelchair rugby now. And we’ve got the test event coming up in London. We’ve got two days of wheelchair rugby. 	
MAT	Murderball. 	
tony	A couple of great murderball. And the tickets for that are already sold out for the Paralympics so this is going to be a tremendous test event. 	
mat	Sorry, Liz is looking incredibly smug at this point. 	
liz	Why is that? Oh yes. 	
mat	Why is that, Liz?	
liz	Because I got tickets for murderball, I did well for the wheelchair rugby. 	
MAT	Fantastic. 	
liz	Thank you, very excited. 	
tony	I’m sure we’ll sneak you in somewhere, Mat. 	
MAT	That would be nice. I think it’s widely felt that the wheelchair rugby is one of the more dramatic spectacles that’s why I want to see it. And of course the far wider audience is going to be enjoying it here in the UK this summer. So today we’re going to dwell a bit on the sport and try to explain it a bit. On the line from Guildford we’ve got two of the GB squad; first we’ve got Ross Morrison. Hello, Ross?	
ross	Hi guys. 	
MAT	And also Kylie Grimes. Hi there. 	
kylie	Hello.	
liz	Now I’ve heard lots about wheelchair rugby, very excited to be, hopefully seeing you in action. But, first and foremost, I hadn’t realised that it’s a mixed male and female sport. 	
kylie	Yeah. Back in Beijing was the first time that a woman had represented Great Britain in wheelchair rugby and that was Josie Pearson. 	
MAT	Why is it though, sorry to interrupt, Kylie, but why has it been made into a mixed sport? 	
ross	Well actually it’s always been a mixed sport. It’s just that the proportion of male to female athletes has always been higher towards male athletes. But about four years ago they introduced a change in the classification system to give female athletes a half point bonus just to reflect the difference or physical make-up. And that’s encouraged a lot more women to get involved and progress through to represent national teams hence why Kylie’s here. 	
mat	Right. Kylie, I hope you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a slightly personal question. 	
kylie	No worries. 	
MAT	Do you think that doing rugby in some way helps you accept your disability - I don’t know how else to put it but chunkily like that - so I’m just going to ask you straight out? 	
kylie	Yeah I think so. But with me not really it didn’t really help. I’ve always been involved in sport my whole life. When I had my accident I knew that I wanted to carry on doing sport, whatever sort of sport it was. And when I was in hospital they were playing wheelchair rugby at Stanmore and I saw it and I was like I’ve got to do that. Because I’ve never really been a girly girl, I’ve always like quite fast aggressive sports, to be honest with you. So I saw it and I knew instantly that I wanted to do it. And it did help with getting me stronger because when I had my accident being a C5/6 level you're very, very weak you can’t do an awful lot at the start. So by training and pushing yourself to the limits and your body it really does help you improve quite quickly. So I guess that side of rugby really helped it. It made all my muscles stronger, it made me feel stronger so my daily life was also better. So when you get training that really does help. 	
mat	What was the accident that you had, Kylie? 	
kylie	I had a diving accident.	
liz	And, Ross, how about for you did you, you know, have you always been disabled or did you have an accident as well?	
ross	I broke my neck playing rugby. 	
liz	Okay, so you were sporty beforehand. 	
ross	Yeah very much so. And it was actually almost a logical progression to go into wheelchair rugby. Very much like Kylie I was a demo of the sport and was hooked, I just had to get involved and one thing led to another. 	
Tony	And I think with wheelchair rugby it is that sort of sport where it is all action, it is all impact and it’s not a soft sport. So actually if you’re there and you’re recovering from your injuries and you’re thinking what the heck’s going on here that’s something that you can look at and you think do you know what that will give me a buzz because I liked sport before and you like the impact and the action and that’s where I think wheelchair rugby has been really popular. 	
MAT	Absolutely. And listeners just so you know, Kylie and Ross I think are sharing a microphone in a very cramped studio so if you hear the odd bish, bash, bosh it’s just them fighting for the mic. Now let’s get to the bottom of this game wheelchair rugby then. 	
Ross	Right, okay then. Well played indoors on a basketball court, four players to a team with a regular volleyball. And the idea is to score a goal at the other end of the court carrying the ball. You have to inbound the call within ten seconds, bounce or pass once every ten seconds. 	
liz	Yes inbound, Ross?	
ross	Oh sorry. 	
tony	Sounds like a medical disease. 	
ross	Yeah you’re absolutely right. No sorry that’s basically just a way of getting the ball in from the sideline. So yes do that within ten seconds. Bounce or pass ten seconds and you have to get out of your own half within 12 seconds. And on route to scoring everyone tries to batter you, knock you out your chair, whatever it takes to stop you. 	
mat	That sounds like American football. 	
ross	I hate to say it but it’s not far off it, you know, it bears more similarities to some of the technical aspects. 	
tony	Tell us about the wheelchairs, obviously they’re specially made for wheelchair rugby. Kylie, tell us about your defence chair first of all. 	
kylie	Yeah, okay. I’m in a defensive chair which is slightly longer in shape than the offensive chairs. It’s got a pit bar at the front because of my disability...	
mat	What’s a pit bar?	
kylie	It’s basically the shape of the chair at the front it sticks out...	
ross	I think if you can try and imagine like a bulbar on the front of a jeep or a Landover and the defensive players use that to try and hook the offensive players. It looks pretty vicious. 	
tony	And it really is. And I mean I think that blocking is quite a complicated part of the game but a very central part of the game because obviously one of the ideas is to stop the opponent scoring. Ross tell us about your chair which is probably a lot more attack minded chair.	
ross	I’m in an offensive chair which has rounded wings and a lot of protection on the wheels. And the idea being, that I’m going to crash through and knock people aside and not get caught up on a defensive chair. So my chair’s all about speed, aggression basically shifting people out the way. 	
mat	When you shift people out of the way how does that shift thing happen? 	
ross	Well if you hit someone with enough speed they’ll go either out or get knocked out the way. Either way as long as they’re not in your way anymore that’s a good thing. 	
liz	Oh it’s vicious isn’t it?	
MAT	It is, it’s more like rollerball than murderball. Come on, injuries guys, have you ever been injured?	
ross	Right. Well crikey I’ve been playing it for quite a while, I’ve been on the GB team for 11 years now and I’ve a catalogue of just injuries from broken finger to torn muscles to a cracked rib, cuts, scrapes and bruises of all shapes and sort it’s just part of the game. Unfortunately the one that kept me out most recently was I got a haematoma on my ribs which they had to cut and remove, so that kept me out for a few months. But thankfully I’m back training now, I’m sort of playing catch up and should hopefully be fit and ready for the test event. 	
Liz	Okay so my understanding of this, I’m not very sporty, but you’re allowed four people on each side, on each team is that right? 	
kylie	Yeah that’s correct.	
liz	And so they’re going to be a mixture of the offensive and the defensive players.	
kylie	Yeah.	
liz	And now from what...Tony’s tried to explain it to me, you help me out here. To ensure fairness I believe there’s this point scheme.	
ross	Yeah essentially because everyone has a different disability and different levels of function, we’re given a points grading to try and balance out in comparison what we can and can’t do. So, for example, Kylie’s a 0.5 player who has one of the least functions on court and I’m a 2.5 player with more function on court. But the four players can only total 8 points or less. So this means that although I might ball handle more than Kylie her contribution through her defence and picking and blocking is just as important, because essentially we need her on court to run certain line-ups. And this introduces the tactical element of what points do you play. If you field a very dominant player in at 3.5 then you have to balance that out by fielding a very low point player. 	
liz	So the more disabled you are the lower your number.	
ross	Absolutely. 	
liz	You have a 0.5 and you’re going to be defensive. 	
kylie and ross	Yes. 	
liz	You’re going to be a blocker person.	
ross	Yes. 	
liz	Okay and the more active you are sort of physically then you’re going to be the offensive and go racing for the goal or whatever?	
ross	Yes. And the classification doesn’t reflect skill or ability it’s just a way of determining function. 	
liz	I think Mat compared the game to American football and, you know, I think that’s known going on and on for hours and hours. Is wheelchair rugby the same? 	
ross	No not at all. It’s four quarters of eight minutes, but the clock stops whenever there’s a dead ball - it goes out of bounds or a goal is scored.	
liz	I thought you were going to say a dead body. 	
ross	We’ve never had one yet but you know there’s still time. But no an average game takes about an hour and 15 minutes. And there’s very little sort of stoppage time because even though the whistle’s blown for a goal or out of bounds to stop the clock players are always jostling for position and looking to the next play. 	
liz	And people mightn’t die but they do fall out their chairs do they? 	
ross	Of course, that’s encouraged! If you knock someone out their chair that’s a bonus! 	
mat	So what happens does play immediately stop? 	
ross	If it’s judged to be unsafe play will stop and then that player will be righted or they’ll play until there’s a convenient break in play. 	
tony	And quite often the wheels get buckled, they have to change the wheels, have to change the players as we can tell, so it’s a real...I think you know the public coming along to the test event next month and then to the Paralympics they’re going to love it because they will be seeing, most of them, a sport they have not seen before. And I think that’s what’s going to be really intriguing. And if wheelchair rugby’s marketed correctly and it’s presented in the right way it could really become one of the top Para--...well it is a top Paralympic sport, but I think the general public are going to really love it. Now Great Britain hasn’t medalled at wheelchair rugby before. You and I both know we’ve finished just outside fourth in the last two Paralympics. It’s very competitive. Briefly tell us the teams to look out for and can we get a medal? 	
ross	Well firstly yes we’re in a stronger position than ever, we’ve got a fantastic team, some real fresh talent, so I think medal absolutely it’s there. What colour is going to be tough because there are some great teams out there. Probably the top two in the world right now are America and Australia both with some very talented players, particularly Australia with probably the best player in the world, Ryley Batt, who is something of a phenomenon. But then there’s, I think it’s a bunch of teams with Great Britain, Canada, Japan, Sweden who are all in the mix and the competition’s actually that close that on any given day anything’s possible. 	
tony	And Australia are going to be at the test event, we’ve got Australia, Sweden and Canada so that’s going to be a tough test event. 	
mat	Yeah I’m hoping to come to the test event. I can’t come to the event because the tickets are all sold out, but Liz has got tickets for that so she’ll be there. 	
liz	Ah ha I shall be there. Guys, thank you so much for talking to us - fascinating. 	
ross	Absolute pleasure. 	
liz	Love hearing about it, love the violence. And we wish you all the best. 	
ross	Thank you very much. 	
kylie	Well thank you very much. 	
tony	Thank you. 	
mat	Good luck. 	
liz	Finally then, Tony, what else have we got coming up in the near future? 	
tony	Absolutely. Well coming in the near future the key thing for the month of April it’s the second lot of swimming trials. Ellie mentioned it right at the top of the show. So it’s in Sheffield, it’s over the Easter weekend. This is the final chance for Britain’s Paralympic swimmers to qualify to compete at the 2012 Paralympics. Quite a few already have, but there’s a few big names including Dave Roberts who needs one more gold medal to beat Tanni Grey Thompson’s record. 	
mat	Wow!	
tony	He’s been off the pace for a while, will we see him in Sheffield I don’t know. But the swimming trials are the next big thing apart from the wheelchair rugby in April. 	
liz	So it feels like it’s really all kicking off now. 	
tony	Oh very much so. And we’ve got, I mean May it’s got phenomenal, there are quite a few test events, teams will start being selected and announced. We obviously had the kit launch just the other day with the Olympic and Para--... so it’s really starting to gear up for a very busy few months. 	
liz	Thank you, Tony, we’ll see you again next month. 	
tony	That’s a pleasure. 
[Jingle: You can listen, download or subscribe for free to our show by going to the BBC’s main podcast site at bbc.co.uk/podcasts. When you get there click on entertainment and look for Ouch Disability Talk Show.]	
liz	So it’s almost the end of the show which means it’s almost the end of Mat Fraser’s reign. Almost six years of co-hosting the Ouch podcast now Talk Show. Mat, I can’t believe it, 84 shows we’ve probably done what 70 of those together?	
MAT	Yeah. That’s partially one of the reasons I’m leaving because increasingly it’s been with Liz Carr and not Mat Fraser because he’s away.	
liz	I did want to say is it anything personal you’ve wanted to tell me about...	
MAT	No. 	
liz	... and that’s why you’re leaving, have I done something wrong?	
MAT	No, Liz. And moment we decided you were gay - fine, I was fine with that. 	
liz	I did think that, you know, you were worried you thought well that’s my chance has gone. 	
mat	Well as a heterosexual one always, you know. 	
liz	Was this before or after?	
mat	You can have an understanding you know what I’m saying.	
liz	Before or after your divorce?	
MAT	Before the divorce...	
liz	Your first divorce.	
mat	...through the divorce and into the next engagement which I’m currently under. But no, Liz, I love working with this team. I love, hey, I love the podcast okay. I don’t know what to say, I feel awkward. 	
liz	No don’t be. 	
mat	No it’s these arms. 	
liz	Oh! Oh yeah.	
mat	No I do I feel... go on. 	
liz	For one last time would you like to describe to everyone what is wrong with you and tell them all about thalidomide and the evil drug that you took...that your Mum took when you were just...	
mat	Well basically it was all...	
liz	No, no. 	
mat	... my Mum’s fault. 	
liz	No it’s fine. Anyway the production team are in, yes that’s Damon Rose and Emma Tracey. Hello.	
damon	Hello.	
Emma	Hello, hello. 	
mat	Hello guys. 	
liz	Because we thought we couldn’t have a proper farewell they’ve pretty much...well Damon’s been with you from the beginning and Emma and here we are.	
mat	Yeah it’s a good team. It’s a great team. 	
damon	Thank you. 	
liz	You know what? Damon’s got a few like little clips of things. 	
damon	I’ve been going through the archives. We’ve done 84 shows now and as you say you’ve been in most of them. And we’ve got an awful lot of clips mounting up. Now we could have chosen stuff where we were being a bit silly or, you know, a bit jokey about disability. 	
mat	Yeah defensive stuff.	
damon	What I’ve done is I’ve tried to dig out some of the more poignant pieces. And here we go with clip number one, okay. It was an amazing moment right near the early days of the podcast when we had a woman who’d written to us telling us that she was a deaf pretender. And this means that she likes to go out into the streets and make out that she’s deaf and she does it by all sorts of means. Do you remember that guys? 	
liz	God yes.	
MAT	How can we forget?	
damon	With a hearing aid and she goes to other towns and makes out she’s deaf. And this was a great moment, Mat, where you were interacting with her. 
[Playing clip:]
Mat:		Do you pride yourself on getting it as accurate 		as possible? I mean do you make those funny 		noises that deaf people make when they’re 			talking like, that kind of stuff?
Woman:	No. I use a deaf voice I guess but it’s more of a 		lisp really than anything else. I know deaf 			people who make those noises and I know deaf 		people who speak but not very clearly. And I 		also know some deaf people who have 			perfectly clear speech and you wouldn’t know 		that they were deaf. And I kind of go 				somewhere on the very clear end of the 			spectrum. 
Mat:		Could you maybe say something in your deaf 		pretending voice for us? 
Woman:	I’m not that that would come through very well 		on the phone. I don’t know. 
Mat:		That came through fine. 
Woman:	I also have a cold right now so that kind of 			makes it worse.
Mat:		Or better.]
	
damon	So there we go, Mat Fraser.	
mat	I’d forgotten that. That’s outrageous. 	
damon	But to give her her due she wrote into us. I wonder how many people would have handled that in quite the way you did, Mat.	
emma	Who would have so unabashedly done a deaf voice themselves?	
mat	Indeed I mean I was fairly taken aback by her really. Is she still alive or has been been lynched by deaf people?	
liz	Who knows? I know that sometimes if you’re explaining the podcast to people I’ve talked about that a lot, about that we had somebody like that on the podcast and people are stunned. I mean she does rate, for me, as one of the highlights of... 	
mat	Absolutely, me too. 	
liz	...of the time. But I think that’s what I love co-hosting with you because you do go to those places and say those things that you’re going okay we really want to act come on do the voice if you’re going to be authentically deaf. But you just do it and often you do it with just a charm and you get away with it. I mean, Damon’s right, who else could get away with asking that and eliciting it. And also showing the example by doing your own deaf voice let’s not forget. 	
damon	Well it wasn’t so much a voice it was making the whistles and things. But I mean this is the thing you weren’t meaning to be offensive there. This is one of the big discussions we’ve had on the Talk Show isn’t it - how do we be honest about things...	
mat	Yeah. 	
damon	...and deaf people do make those noises, and let’s not single out deaf people too much, lots of disabled people do lot of different...slightly different things and we’ve talked about those ad infinitum on the show but we haven’t hidden those away have we Mat?	
MAT	No and we’ve always been, surely one of our unspoken remits when we started all this, was to say the things that everybody thinks but is too, you know finds too difficult to say for whatever reason possible, being polite or what have you. And we just go there. 	
damon	And that perhaps brings us quite nicely onto our second clip. Now this wasn’t so long ago, this was a couple of years ago, and we had a sex worker on the line. Now what this is she was a sex surrogate, a prostitute if you like, who spends time making disabled people who perhaps, you know, can’t find a partner making them a little bit more happy and we joined them, Mat’s great with her, we join her just explaining a little bit about what she does. 
[Playing clip:
Woman:	So I don’t have all the full make-up, I’m very 		natural. 
Mat:		We want to just come to a couple of points. I’ll 		call it the dribble factor if you like, for want of 		a better expression. Some clients obviously are 		going to, you know, not have full control over 		some of their bodily functions and what have 		you. What kind of...I know that you’ve got 			ways of dealing with this, perhaps you’d like to 		tell us about it quickly and succinctly. 
Woman:	Basically...what colostomy bags and things like 		that?
Mat:		I guess, I guess anything like that really. 
Woman:	Well basically I don’t kind of draw the 			attention to it as such. 
Mat:		No. 
Woman:	We don’t talk about it. And normally if 			anything happens I’m very discreet and it’s not 		discussed and I try to make sure their time with 		me is more of a, you know, sexual fantasy 			((0:48:44.4?)) more...
Mat:		Sure.
Woman:	...reality so I don’t kind of go down that line 			into discussing what they’ve got wrong or 			anything that’s embarrassing to them. 
Mat:		No fair enough.]

Remember that?
	
mat	Yeah. Wow. I also remember how I kept interrupting people - sorry – and you’ve managed to iron that out of us. Listeners, a good interviewer doesn’t interrupt people with ‘Huh-ha, huh-hm, yeah’ because no editing could be done.	
Liz	Do you know what that reminded me of I thought you were going, “Huh-ha yeah enough of that, but do you wipe their dribble?” You know that there was that question whether that’s what that was about that kind of irritation of, “Yeah you’re saying all the right things but come on.”	
emma	I have to say it was one of the most interesting episodes as a researcher. I was a researcher at the time on the show and I had to ring many, many sex workers who worked with disability, and her voicemail was particularly funny. It was real.	
MAT	Do an impression. 	
emma	No. But it was a proper phone sex phone voicemail with lots of deep voice and kind of breathiness and it was perfectly authentic. It was a really interesting day I must say.	
mat	I bet it was.	
damon	But again going back to it, we talked about it in the meeting beforehand, we were talking there quite openly, you know, about dribble and about other mess you might make if you have a certain disability. 	
MAT	Absolutely. 	
damon	And the reason we did that, the reason we decided that in the meeting, was because we were trying to work out what some disabled people what might hold some disabled people from going back and exploring that as an option. 	
mat	Yeah. And just because someone’s got a bag or you know can’t contain all their saliva or whatever it is, you know we’re so normalised in this society that that seems like a freakish difficulty, and it shouldn’t be it’s just a difference that can easily be accessed. I mean what’s the big deal? I know loads of people who dribble and quite a few people with bags and stuff. I know this sounds like a cliché but they lead terribly functional and good lives. 	
liz	But you know we began the show talking about, this show, talking about how people are using euphemisms instead of using the word disability, so miles away from being able to have this kind of frank discussion, particularly without it becoming titillating or amusing, and that’s the difference. Of course we laugh at lots of stuff but also I think we’ve really got...we’ve touched some really difficult subjects and you’ve done it in such a funny way and sensitive way.	
damon	But shall we come on to the last couple, last couple of clips here. 	
liz	Go for it. 	
damon	Are from a very special show we did from the BBC Radio Theatre one Christmas, I think it was Christmas 2007. We had loads and loads and loads of disabled people coming along to the theatre and here’s how it began, here’s how it started. 
[Playing clip:
It’s the Ouch Christmas Show live from the BBC Radio Theatre in London with Mat Fraser and Liz Carr. [applause]
Mat:	The entire front row and some front row in front of 	them are all wheelchair users.
Liz:	Yes. 
Mat:	It’s er...
Liz:	It’s like a special school assembly in here. That’s 	what it looks like pretty much. 
Mat:	Actually is there a fire officer anywhere in the 	building because I really want them to come in and 	just see this just for them to have a heart attack.]
	
liz	I love it. 	
mat	Happy days. That was a good one. You don’t see a crip sea like that do you? 	
liz	It was joy and you could hear that in your voice. And I think we’ve got another clip from that same event as well.	
damon	We have, we have. We had Rob Crossan who was there too and he was dressed as a little drummer boy, if I remember rightly. 	
MAT	Yeah. 	
damon	And we had him running round the studio with a microphone and we had one section where we asked people about playground bullying that they remember, and this is what happened. 
[Playing clip:
Rob:		What’s your name?
Julia:		My name’s Julia.
Rob:		Okay, Julia what did they used to say?
Julia:		Actually they didn’t say words, I would get 			barked at, like a dog, but I figured that’s not 			because I’m mental it was because I was kind 		of ugly.
Liz:		No way!
Rob:		Alright, Louise, regale us with your insult of 		bygone years.
Louise:	I used to get called spastic and fat and all that. 
Rob:		Boo!
Mat:		Make it funny Liz, for God’s sake, quickly. This 		is quite harrowing. 
Liz:		It’s painful isn’t it?
Louise:	I went to a special school as well and I got 			called names when I went to a special school.
Liz:		You see they’re worse aren’t they? People 			think send us to special schools it’ll be cool, 			they’re the biggest bullies.
Louise:	Bullies, they are bullies.
Liz:		It’s true.
Laurence:	And that’s just the teachers.]
	
damon	Laurence Clark at the end. 	
mat	Yeah that was fantastic. 	
damon	Can I ask what was it like doing that show with loads of disabled people in front of you at the BBC?	
mat	It was amazing. It was empowering, it was like we’ve taken over finally here we are as well. And I’d actually done like radio recording there with a comedy series called ‘Yes Sir I can Boogie’ a few years before. So I was used to being in there with a full house of people laughing a lot and the comedy, but the fact that everyone was disabled, well the majority of people they were disabled, it was just, just awesome it was brilliant. 	
liz	And also I think you know we do a podcast so you don’t see the listeners. 	
mat	No. 	
liz	But there they were in front of you and that, you know, it was a real...it was such a rush wasn’t it? And I wanted to keep doing it and keep...I wanted the podcast to be a monthly thing in a theatre, I mean it was an amazing experience. 	
mat	Yeah. 	
damon	They came from miles around.	
mat	Very liberating. 	
damon	They came from miles didn’t they?	
mat	Like from Croydon and everywhere. 	
emma	They made huge efforts to get there, huge efforts. 	
liz	What for you has been, what will you always take with you from this experience?	
mat	When we started this it was the old school, it was the remnants of the old school politicos, “No you can’t do this, you can’t say that and you can’t do...” and you know we blew a lot of that out of the water and the landscape’s just very different now. And I think, hopefully, it’s easier for non-disabled people to sort of approach disability and talk about it, and it’s also easier for a lot of us to, I don’t know, to get a grip really and not embed ourselves in that rhetoric -why do I sound like a sociologist - in that rhetoric of complaint and militance that it was when we started. Because, as we have found out, and all social change only happens when you learn to have a laugh with it. 	
damon	Hm. Do you know I only wish we’d bought you a present. 	
MAT	It might have been nice. I’ve got a little...	
damon	We haven’t, we haven’t got you anything. But it’s partly because...	
mat	My wrist though has got no golden watch on it. 	
damon	Partly because we’re hoping that you might drop in on us occasionally. 	
mat	Absolutely because it’s not goodbye folks, it’s au revoir, as they might say in French. And arrivederci as perhaps they won’t say in Italian. No I want to come back and if you’re have me occasionally for a sort of, you know, view from the weird bridge and that might be nice. Especially in sort of Augusty/Septembery time. 	
damon	But thank you. I mean certainly from Emma and I, I mean thank you, thank you very much for doing what you’ve done. And thanks ever so much for those award ceremonies we attended as well, they were really good dos that you didn’t go to actually did you? 	
emma	It wouldn’t have happened without you. 	
damon	I’ve got the awards on my mantelpiece at home still, thanks, thanks for those. 	
mat	Well thank you. And thanks for the job, mate, because you know without you giving me the job I would have never come here and watched...	
liz	It’s kept you off benefits hasn’t it? 	
mat	Kept me off benefits. Yes it’s stopped me from doing so many dodgy things.	
damon	Oh come on!	
mat	I still managed to get a few in but no. Well that was that then.	
liz	Shall we do a little hug? A little bent arm, short arm hug?	
mat	Yes let’s try.	
liz	Shall we do that with your little flippers and my little bent arms?	
mat	This is hug. Ow! 	
liz	It’s okay everyone, it’s fine. 	
mat	Ah!	
liz	We managed. Come on back to the script. 	
mat	Okay yes, sorry. Here we go then, last time I’m going to say this. Well that’s the end of the show. Thanks to Emma Tracey, Linda Debra and studio manager Phil Hutchinson. The producer was Damon Rose. 	
liz	And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Mat Fraser. We’ll be back, without Mat, next month. Until then goodbye. 	
MAT	Bye. 	
liz	Bye.	
MAT	Bye listeners. Bye Liz.	
liz	Bye. 	
mat	Bye BBC. 	
liz	Until next time. 
[Playing out with jingle]