Here's to 'Freakshow TV'

All of a sudden you can’t move for disabled actors in TV shows. But, says Mat Fraser, don’t knock it: it’s been a long time coming

You all know the saying: “You wait an hour for a bus and then three come along together.”

Well, in the case of the realistic portrayal of disability on TV, it’s more like you wait 23 years for a show in which disability is represented by disabled rather than non-disabled actors, and then about seven come along together, and all in the space of about four months! What happened?

It was 23 years ago when disabled rights groups first began asking EastEnders producers when they were going to properly represent us in their soap. The reply, as Jamie Beddard recalls on pages 24-28 of this magazine, was famously: “We don’t want to turn EastEnders into a freak show.”

But things have changed. It’s been a huge struggle to get TV companies to use us as actors, presenters and writers, let alone as directors and producers, but finally, people like Ewan Marshall at the BBC, Alison Walsh at Channel 4, and a few other mavericks have emerged who see no problem with our appearing on the nation’s screens.

The Disability Discrimination Act has helped greatly, and under pressure from the Broadcasters’ Disability Network, suggestions have become directives. We now seem, finally, to be enjoying the hard-won fruits of our labour. We’ve had Lisa Hammond on the recent Psychoville, Luke Hamill in Casualty, Kelly-Marie Stewart in Hollyoaks, Kiruna Stamell in the BBC drama All The Small Things, me and a deaf actress in the same episode of Holby City, Kitty McGeever as blind Lizzie Lakely in Emmerdale, and the recent addition of David Proud as a regular on EastEnders. And that’s before we mention the six disabled lead actors in Cast Offs, soon to go out on Channel 4.

It’s a freak show!

No, its not: it’s the result of years of pushing by disabled people and their allies, of continuing to per­sist after meeting upon meeting that seemed to be getting nowhere.

Now, at last, disabled people have started to get into positions of power in the industry and there’s a concerted effort to end the cultural apartheid that we experienced before.

But rather than complain about the past, I for one am celebrating the present and looking forward to the future!