INTERVIEW WITH JEREMY BEADLE
Featured in Ouch Podcast #3: June 2006

TRANSCRIPT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/

Presented by Mat Fraser and Liz Carr

MAT:		This month’s guest is king of trivia, TV stunts and beards. A round of applause please, ladies and gentlemen, for Jeremy Beadle!

[Cheers, whooping and applause in studio]

JEREMY:	King of beards? I’ve got some sort of little stubbly growth that I shave into shape – and you call that a beard?

LIZ:	[Laughs] Do you still have a beard, Jeremy?

JEREMY:	I still have a beard, yes. It covers my several chins.

MAT:	Oh, that’s one of my favourite things about you – the beard.

JEREMY:	Well, one of the things about playing practical jokes is wearing a beard to disguise myself, despite the fact that I wear a beard.

MAT:	I remember your comedy beard from Beadle’s About as if it was yesterday. I loved it. OK, we’re going to ask you some questions, Jeremy, because there are just so many things to talk about with you. You’re just such a broad man …

JEREMY:	Fat is the word, but carry on.

LIZ:	On the Ouch Podcast, Jeremy, we tend to have disabled guests. When we told people that we’d got you coming onto the show, quite a lot said, “Why?” And I have to admit that I was one of those people.

MAT:	Me too.

LIZ:	So really I just wanted to start off by asking you to give a quick nod as to why. You’ve got something called Poland Syndrome, and much as we hate dwelling on medical stuff here at Ouch, could you sum it up for us in a few words?

JEREMY:	Yes, basically I have got a withered right hand, which actually is a genetic disease that affects, I don’t know, one in every so often. Generally, Poland Syndrome affects the whole arm, so it can be anything to do with arm deficiency. The thing is, as I tell a lot of people who have this, when you try and hide it, people actually spot it. But if you’re like me and you’re a sort of talking windmill and you gesticulate a lot, people don’t even see it quite a lot of the time.

MAT:	I have to corroborate with you there, because I actually know someone who is a member of the organisation that you’re a patron of – and that’s Reach – and she was the one who told me that one of your hands was different. Because I had watched you for years and not even realised.

JEREMY:	But if you watch again, knowing, you’ll see that I do not hide it. It’s not held in the pockets, it’s not round the back, and it’s one of the things I always try to tell the particular children. In fact, it’s not the children that have actually got Poland Syndrome that I always have to spend time with – it’s their bloody parents! Because they do all the worrying, and they’re the ones with anxiety, they’re the ones with guilt, they’re the ones who think “oh, what have I done? What can I do?” The kids just get on with it. It’s actually offering therapy and advice and comfort and reassurance to the parents.

MAT:	That’s right. We find the same kind of thing in the Thalidomide society, Jeremy. You’ve had a long history of working in TV and you’ve created some TV formats as well. Now, one thing I’d like to know – given what the tone of this programme is – if you were to be given the opportunity to do a really relevant and cool disability TV show, what elements do you think it would have? What would you call it?

JEREMY:	Well, the first thing I’d do is that it wouldn’t have any relevance whatsoever to do with disability. Far from it. It’s all about personality. You watch personalities – you don’t watch injuries, you don’t want people making excuses or bleating. They don’t want any people who want advantages. They want to be entertained – and entertainment is about finding good personalities. There is no shortage of good personalities in every aspect of life. There are some people who are shy, some who are noisy; there are rowdy, louts, heathen, pagans. Altogether, they are all different, and what you try and do is just try and cast. That’s the single most important thing. When you say to me what sort of show would I make around disabilities – I wouldn’t. What I’d do is find some really good personalities and say, “Right, now what are we going to do?”

LIZ:	What about you, Jeremy? Have you got anything coming up in terms of TV in the next few months?

JEREMY:	Well, funnily enough … I spend an awful lot of time turning work down. I know that sounds like a real ‘out’, but it’s absolutely true because I do get offered some absolute crap. And then they don’t want to pay, or …

MAT:	Oh, I see. They want you to do it for free because you’re disabled?

JEREMY:	[Laughs] No! No one’s ever come that line with me before.

LIZ:	That’s just you that gets that, Mat.

JEREMY:	I do get some pretty evil and nasty phone calls, and I do get abuse in the press occasionally, which is rather unnecessary and tells me more about the person writing it than me. You learn to live with all that stuff. But in the last week, funnily enough, I had three offers of three programmes – and every single one of them I actually like. So I’m in a slight quandary.

MAT:	Hold on a minute! Is this news going to break on Ouch? Sorry, not just Noel Edmonds coming back to the fore, but Mr Jeremy Beadle too?

JEREMY:	Well, you get offers, you chat to them and then they come to nothing. But these are actually a couple of very, very good ideas – and they’re not even my ideas, which makes me spit.

MAT:	Because I was going to ask if you wouldn’t mind presenting I’m a Monstrosity, Get Me Out of Here! Or Game for a Laugh at Disabled People.

JEREMY:	I’ll tell you what – I have been asked to do I’m a Celebrity and Celebrity Big Brother, and I’ve said “no, thank you very much indeed”. They must think you’re a fool.

MAT:	Word of advice, Jeremy: stay away. Don’t do it.

JEREMY:	I don’t trust them. If you watch the credits, you’ll see ‘Story Editor’ – which should tell you all you need to know.

MAT: 	Yes, thank you very much.

LIZ:	We’re reading about that you’d been diagnosed with kidney cancer, and you’ve got leukemia …

JEREMY:	Yes, I had my kidney out. That was fascinating.

LIZ:	Really? In what way?

JEREMY:	It’s when they turn round to you and say … well, I went in for something completely different, and they tried all the scans and all the bits and pieces, and then I eventually saw the specialist and he said, “Well, we don’t know what’s wrong with you – but do you see what that is?” I said, “Yes, but I don’t know what I’m looking at.” “Well,” he said, “we call that a lump.” “Do you mean cancer?” He said: “Yes.” And I was absolutely fascinated. I asked what the prognosis was. He said surgery. I asked, “Any alternative?” and he said death. So I said, “Well, no, I don’t fancy that too much.” And then he said, “Well, I don’t suggest for a moment that I’d be the person to do the operation, even though I am the most experienced person in Britain”. Now, that bit confused me. But the thing was that he did it by traditional procedure, whereas he recommended keyhole for me. And to be quite frank, by the time it was all done – well, I went in on the Monday and I was out on the Thursday, minus a kidney.

LIZ:	And how are you now? How’s your health now?

JEREMY:	Fine. It hasn’t affected me in the slightest. The only thing is that once you’ve had cancer they keep a very close eye on you, and so then they do blood tests on you. Now these are very vigorous blood tests, and they located the fact that I had leukemia, which is a rather grand term for a disease that has several degrees – and I’m unfortunately right at the bottom.

MAT:	Is that good or bad? I don’t understand.

JEREMY:	Well, I got all these thousands of emails and letters. It was deeply embarrassing to have people wishing me well on my way to heaven. And I had to explain that it wasn’t quite like that. I’ve got a type of leukemia which is basically non-life threatening, it’s long-term, but as long as you’re not cavalier with your health you’re going to be all right. A lot of men go to their grave with it without ever knowing.

MAT:	Wow.

LIZ: 	Well, it’s good to hear that you’re doing OK and that you’ve got projects coming up.

JEREMY:	It has not affected my life in one single way. It hasn’t changed my life in the slightest.

LIZ:	So it hasn’t stopped your love of trivia, Jeremy?

JEREMY:	Yes, I do like a bit of trivia!

LIZ:	I’m dying to ask you this. What’s your favourite piece of disability-related trivia? Can you share it with our Ouch listeners?

JEREMY:	Disability? Oh, now you’ve really put me on the spot there.

LIZ:	Come on, then! Rise to the challenge!

JEREMY:	This word ‘disability’ – I don’t recognise it. I really don’t recognise it. I actually see triumph, I see advantages, I see people actually making a difference because of it. I don’t like these labels. But I do have, in terms of trivia, a huge list of people that have overcome handicaps, and I do collect the medical biographies of the famous. There are some really, really fascinating examples, but I can’t really go through them now that you’ve put me on the spot! I did actually do a thing for Irving Wallace called The Invisible Man, which was about the famous parts of people that never existed – so obviously you can have Nelson’s arm …

MAT:	Oh, OK, I get it – George Bush’s brain.

JEREMY: 	But I did the whole body, which was quite jolly.

LIZ:	 And if you could be asked one final question, what would that final question be?

JEREMY:	[Laughs]

MAT:	We don’t have one, honestly. We’re done.

LIZ:	Define your own question – make it a positive one.

JEREMY: 	I would say, “Who, at the moment, is your champion? Who’s the person who affects you? Who’s the person you listen to? Who’s the person who is wise and whose words make it for you? Really good reading, really good listening. Who do you actually believe in?”

MAT:	That’s really good.

LIZ:	Who is it, then, Jeremy, for you, at the moment?

JEREMY:	Pat Mancini, Queen of Blackpool.

LIZ:	Oh, now who’s that? Tell us more. That’s blown us away!

JEREMY:	Ah, now … now you can find out.

MAT:	OK, well, we will. Pat Mancini – look out, because we’re going to Google you when we’ve finished.

LIZ:	Thank you, Jeremy, for your time.

JEREMY:	It’s a real pleasure, it’s a real pleasure. Have fun, have fun.