Michael Hughes, who is a blind radio producer, is on "Big Brother" in the UK.James Medhurst, who has autism, spent four years working for the BBC as a question writer for the Weakest Link and writes in the New Statesman about his experiences trying to get more disabled people on British TV shows.
One of the earliest of my recruits on Weakest Link was a blind radio producer from Ayrshire called Michael Hughes. He is now nine weeks into his stay in the Big Brother house.
In 2004, while I was working as a researcher on ‘The Weakest Link’, the BBC set itself a target that one in fifty of the contestants on its quiz shows should be disabled.
This low figure suggested a box-ticking exercise but it was certainly better than nothing. I played a role in persuading potential contestants that this promise was not too good to be true and one of the earliest of my recruits to be featured was a blind radio producer from Ayrshire called Michael Hughes.
He is now nine weeks into his stay in the Big Brother house, the second openly disabled person to have appeared on the show after Pete Bennett, who was the series winner in 2006. Another housemate this year is Darnell Swallow, who is black but whose light skin is the result of albinism. Although this would not feature in a list of stereotypical disabilities, it is certainly something which, historically, would have made a television production company reluctant to cast somebody. The selection of two disabled applicants so soon after Pete’s victory indicates that this is no longer merely tokenism.
This development is refreshing for two reasons. Firstly, it is great that disabled people are no longer considered to be ‘too hot for TV’ but there are also subtler benefits. In contrast to Pete, Mikey is incredibly boring and, should he be nominated by his peers, the chances of him surviving a public vote are slim. In the past, disabled people have been portrayed as brave and heroic or as tragic charity cases, and it is reassuring to see the message that some of us are as unremarkable as the rest of the population and that we do not need to be patronised if we spend our days moaning.
