Original subtitles

I think I'll do the one about the disabled person that swam the channel.

And he had no arms and legs.

And he had to pack it up about a mile from the end because he had cramp in his

ears.

I think I'll get him.

Don't put it on me. I'm going to get the elastic band.

And that lovely one about the coloured boy in the wheelchair got bit

by a guide dog.

The thing that annoyed him was the guide dog had to have an injection.

But they could do the one about the fellow in the wheelchair who was a sex

maniac.

Spent all his time trying to get his wheel over.

I've got the net. Always gets me off.

Yeah, OK.

Have I done?

Yeah, no, I've done that. I need the, um... The car.

Oh, that's great.

Well, whatever happens tonight, at least I won't die on my arse.

I suppose I could do.

I'm already on it.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Thanks for being such a super crowd. I knew you'd respond nicely.

It's time now for your star cabaret. Tonight, he is going to entertain you

his most original style of comedy.

So I want you please to put your hands together and give a very warm welcome to

Mr. Super Wheels himself, Tony Geras.

Thank you very much. Beautiful.

Thanks a lot.

Very nice to be wherever the bloody hell I am.

It's been a long push from Croydon.

Sit down, sir. Have you seen the jacket?

Lovely when it's clean.

As I say, you've heard of Meals on Wheels, I'm a muck on trucks.

Everywhere you go, they always say to me, Tony, why on a wheelchair? I tell

I'm Jewish, was circumcised, and they threw away the wrong bit.

Also on the show will be Ironside.

I don't like him. He's got a better wheelchair than me.

A V registration.

He had it under sealed last week, can't go to the toilet now.

I went to a party with Ironside at Christmas, got drunk and I walked home.

He spoke to me, Ironside, because I'll tell you where I met him. I met him at

dancing classes and we were in the Douglas Bader formation team and

Barry Sheen wanted to join.

We told the bugger to clear off.

Well, he's got better now, isn't he? He's all right until he passes a magnet.

They reckon when he first had intercourse, they had to burn him off

bloody blowtorch.

I sometimes feel I'm doing people a favour.

I mean, look at their faces.

At least they can laugh at someone in a wheelchair.

I think... Things are changing.

Do you know, I had a bad week financially last week. I had a bloody

sexually.

Well, I got new brakes.

You can always tell the birds I've been with have got tar marks on their tummy.

But there is one good thing about being in a wheelchair.

When you're having intercourse...

You don't have to take any precautions at all, because when the exciting bit

comes, the wife just sets the handbrake off, you see, and... The only thing is,

you have to make love uphill all the time.

That makes my neck ache, that.

Especially in Sainsbury's, and... You see,

it's not embarrassment, this laughter.

I mean, it's a relief.

They're saying...

God, he's human and he's funny, and yet he's in a wheelchair.

I wonder if they really think I make love in a wheelchair.

As I say, my mate had an affair with this woman, and I can't say what he was

doing.

Well, because, you know, we're on telly.

But he was shaving, and he was making love.

Of course I can do it, though.

And... Ring up the wife, tell her.

And... Gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, if I've offended anyone in my tonight,

soldier. And... I'm bald -headed, Jewish and in a wheelchair. I think you've got

troubles. And... I mean, I do all the gags about

race and politics and sex and disability and...

And they really love it.

I think it's the unmentionable.

I mean, they're saying to themselves, can he?

Can't he?

Has he got one?

Where is it?

And all those things that go through their minds.

I read this article in the front page of a Sunday paper.

And it was all crammed in one big screaming headline.

Sin, sex and the disabled.

And I thought, what's all this about?

And it turned out to be a dating agency for disabled people.

But for the newspaper, the thought that disabled people might be having sex, I

mean, it was bloody unthinkable, wasn't it?

The Outsiders Club exists simply to give isolated people a chance of meeting

each other and to give disabled people the opportunity to meet others, whether

they're able -bodied or not, and to have a good social life and a nice time.

It's also to help people with their sex lives if they want that help. They don't

all want that help.

And it's to give people the opportunity to find exactly what they want. Most

people want to get married.

And some people say they don't and do.

Do you share as much?

Oh, no.

I've never been allowed into this flat.

I've been trying to get an invitation.

Some of the members of our club are extremely vulnerable, and the attacks

innuendos we have to put up with, like that newspaper article, just send them

back into their shells.

The thing is, if you've got an incomplete body, all you have to offer,

is your intellect.

and your capacity to love professionals spend far too much time talking about

the needs of disabled people and maybe it's about time to ask them what they

feel their needs are

Catherine, today we're both at the Outsiders Club lunch.

I guess not many of your fellow patients are members of the Outsiders Club. Can

you tell me how you find your way here and what it's done for you?

Yes, I can tell you...

You find a man.

Yes.

Dear Jack, I felt I didn't do that interview justice on Saturday.

I wanted to do my best, but thought I did it very badly.

So perhaps I can make amends now.

I thought you might scrap my voice and have this read out by someone who can

speak properly.

You asked me how I might spend a normal day.

Well, all my days are much the same here, and I've been here for 34 years.

At 7 .30 in the morning, I am washed, dressed, and put in my chair.

I go downstairs, and there I remain with the other incurables until after

supper, when I am put back to bed by a nurse.

Can you imagine being trapped here for 34 years?

Sometimes I ache for the human contact that I've been denied, for a new faith

that isn't a nurse or another incurable.

I suppose it must be hard for you to imagine how I live.

And that's why, Jack, your questions were difficult to answer.

I've got some fantasy about living in the Royal Hospital and home for

and writing a letter to my loved one.

And before I write darling or my dearest or beloved on the left -hand side, on

the top right -hand side, I have to write the Royal Hospital and Home for

Incurables.

And I'm not really encouraged very much by the fact that if I stick it out there

for ten years, they might move me into the new part of that building.

And there...

Above what I write on the left -hand side, I have to write the young chronic

sick unit.

And it would seem to me that we should try and find a name which reflects a

person's ability rather than their disability.

I think that everything that's wrong in residential places for disabled people

and in fact maybe everything that's wrong in the lives of disabled people is

that the nursing and medical profession have been given their heads and they are

after all trained in what's wrong with people.

And everyone's got ability and disability.

And if you have to live your life in some community which is devoted to your

disability, then there isn't any opportunity to be a fulfilled person.

It's this sense of waste that I resent most of all.

It's as if people like me are somehow supposed to live our lives beyond

frustration.

as if part of accepting our lot should include the complete denial of any

emotional life at all.

Yours, Kathleen.

P .S. I loved my visit to the outsider's party and seeing my man again.

I put my arm down. You'll have another one.

That's it.

Tell me what they're looking for. What are they doing?

Oh, that's it. Another one.

No, of course not. Okay, let's see what's in there.

Oh,

you found me that.

Oh, thank you. I've been looking for ages.

Amen. Oh, thank you.

Oh, thank you.

Will you bring a roll?

The club isn't just a place where boy meets girl. We've also got a crusade,

we do a lot of campaigning to try and help able -bodied people realise that

are actually condemning disabled people to a life without love, simply because

of their attitude.

And we know they're embarrassed to change their attitude, they've got into

habit of thinking one way, but it really isn't fair.

If I'd thought about it before I started, I don't think I ever would have

to do it because I never really thought it would work. Everybody said it

wouldn't work.

But actually, however disabled you are, you're still able to, you know, love

somebody and be loved. And so the most amazing marriages and pairing have taken

place, despite the fact that they might not only be disabled, but they might

also be homosexual or goodness knows what, they're just like anybody else.

Thank you.

I think that in the end, the people you like, the people you love, you almost

love them for their strangenesses and their differences, and that's very

important to consider when you consider a disabled person.

Whatever it aspires to, it's the images that dominate this film.

those images of disability.

And the viewer's eyes will always travel there.

One gets to see more disabled people on the bot than one ever sees in real life.

What Dennis Potter calls this parade of the halt, the lame and the blind.

What we think about them starts from how they look.

That makes them special.

I want to look.

to see whether I can find them sexually attractive.

Could I imagine nibbling her ear, whispering sweet nothings?

When I see them, of course, I like to compare them with their able -bodied

partners.

Why are they dancing with him, pushing him about?

That's not real dancing.

How can you smooch with her like that?

When I dance with a woman, I like to place one hand on her shoulder, my right

hand, and rest my chin on the other shoulder, glaring down her neck,

nibbling her ear, whispering sweet nothings, and place my left hand

around her trim waist, firmly grasping it, and allow my knee

to occasionally...

Gently caress her thigh.

In the world of sexuality, there are three genders.

Female, male, and disabled.

And what is more, traditionally, in the disabled group, we are categorized into

monsters or children.

I am Madame Tetralemy.

These children are in my circus.

Children? Oh,

your circus. I understand.

So you see, Monsieur, when I get a chance, I like to take them into the

and let them play like children.

Children.

Children.

Children, eh?

So we're either monsters or children.

We're either abused or patronized.

We're either a fetish or sexless.

Never in between.

Mind you, we're not the only one.

Enter Mr.

Universe!

Notice we can only take this amount of beauty, this amount of perfection,

hand, from the TV screen, the pages of a glossy magazine, a strip show.

Affection becomes an imperfection, a curiosity, a handicap. And the handicap,

taken to its physical extremes, becomes an end in itself.

Hence, King's size.

Johnny the what?

Chesley Morgan.

King Dong, Big Bum, and all those freaks we have learned to love and loathe, and

for some people, lust after.

It's only a short step from this, to, in the same magazine, this.

And from this, to this.

A book that's gone to three reprintings within the space of a year.

Looking at these images, what do you feel?

Astonishment?

Disgust? Pity?

I reckon there's a bit of reassurance in there.

You may not be Mr. Universe, but you're certainly not one of those.

Browning in his film Freaks captured the ultimate horror by turning that idea on

its head.

You are one of us.

We accept her. One of us. We accept her. One of us. Super gobble. Super gobble.

We accept her. We accept her. Google gobble. Google gobble. One of us.

One of us.

Google gobble. Google gobble.

They're going to make you one of them. Bye.

is by no means normal, but a part is designed to represent the stereotyped

attitudes of so -called normal people to people like me.

In the real world, it's the normal ones, Mr Average, who are the perfect people,

but we who exist at either end of the dimension are public property because of

our curiosity value.

The popularity of the Guinness Book of Records is a testament to your obsession

with extremes and novelty.

And what do we find in Chapter 1, The Human Being?

the most, the least, the greatest, the tallest, the smallest, the fattest, the

thinnest, the longest, the shortest.

And when you're thinking about the longest and the shortest, and you're

at me, as a curiosity, a freak, and you're wondering about my sexuality,

what are you really asking yourselves?

Has he got one? And if he has, can he use it?

Oh, God, now I'm embarrassed, sermonising like some bloody preacher.

Still, you're probably not surprised. In a way, you'd expect it.

We're either out and out villains, a la Richard III.

Or we're pain -suffering angels always smiling at our misfortune.

You'd think that a person in my position would know better and not display the

usual prejudices.

Well, you're wrong.

Most disabled or deformed people I met at special school, sheltered workshop or

crip college couldn't wait to go to bed with an able -bodied person.

I know that to be true of me.

And if I pretend otherwise, my dreams at night will always come back with a

forceful reminder.

The problem of exploring one's own sexuality is a problem that everyone

The problem of being disabled, I think I'd sorted it out for myself before

But obviously the two are interrelated in that being disabled

is harder to explore in sexuality.

34 years without any sexual experience was long enough really so I determined

initiate myself and I had a good mate there who was one of the care assistants

and sort of spoke to him quite a lot about this and he said well if you find

yourself anybody a prostitute or whatever then depend on me I'll take you

and bring you back so I think it was About four months after I'd moved into

place, I found this prostitute in Reading, and he gave me a lift

out there about 7 o 'clock at night, I think it was. It took absolutely ages to

find her.

I thought she'd have gone into bed by the time we got there.

But anyway, we actually got in there, and she was really sort of a bit freaked

out by the fact that this guy sort of carried me up the stairs and sort of

plonked me on the bed, and there he is.

And...

I stayed there for about three or four hours.

One hears so many terrible things sort of said about prostitutes, and I believe

it's still illegal and all that. But in that case, in point, the lady who

I saw fulfilled a very useful purpose, and I'm eternally grateful to her

I, you know, I don't know, I got the smile off my face for about three days.

I know the jury, the consentment.

the freedom of spirit, the utter relief from the

limitations of my body, which comes from sex.

Just going to sex is a very limiting word.

It's far more than people just think.

It's just one word.

My body is very limiting.

But in those particular circumstances, I feel totally free.

When I did actually go to that prostitute, that didn't immediately

life, but the events leading on from that did make me much more

relaxed and more self -confident in myself as a sexual person

to meet other people, to make relationships.

I suppose over the last two years, that has been growing and is still growing.

I still don't think I've solved all the problems. I don't think anybody

does. But at least I have started to grow.

He was looked after by volunteer nurses, whose help was somewhat formal and

constrained.

Merrick, no doubt, was conscious that their service was purely official.

that they were merely doing what they were told to do, and that they were

rather as automata than as women.

They did not help him to feel that he was of their kind.

On the contrary, they, without knowing it, made him aware that the gulf of

separation was immeasurable.

Feeling this, I asked a friend of mine, a young and pretty widow, if she thought

she could enter Merrick's room with a smile.

Wish him good morning.

and shake him by the hand she said she could and she did as he let go her

hand he bent his head on his knees and sobbed until i thought he would never

cease the interview was over he told me afterwards that this was the

first woman who had ever smiled at him and the first woman in the whole of his

life who had shaken hands with him from this day on The transformation of

Merrick commenced, and he began to change, little by little, from a hunted

into a man.

Mr. Treves tells me that you're in the theatre.

Do you live there?

Oh, no, Mr. Merrick, I just work there.

Well, it must be wonderful just to work there.

It's beautiful.

You've never been?

I'm afraid not.

Oh, Mr. Merrick, you must go. The theatre's the most beautiful place on

Of course, I am a bit partial.

The theatre is romance.

Which reminds me, I've brought you something else.

Oh.

Thank you. Have you read it?

No. Oh, but I... Oh, I certainly shall.

Oh. Romeo and Juliet.

Yes, I've heard of them.

Profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine.

The gentle sign is this.

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

to smooth that rough past.

With a tender kiss.

Good pilgrim.

You do wrong your hand too much.

Which manly devotion shows in this.

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch.

And palm to palm is holy palmless kiss.

Oh, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They

pray.

Grant thou that they turn to despair.

Saints do not move.

Though grant for prayer's sake.

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

Loss from my lips, by thine my sin is purged.

Yes,

and then it says there it is.

Then have my lips, the sin that they have took.

Sin from my lips?

Oh, Christmas with the earth.

Give me my sin again.

Oh, Mr. Merrick.

You're not an elephant man at all.

Those tears of Merrick's are two -edged because they reflect a dawning

realization that at last a door was being opened to him.

Should he go through it with all the risks and possible rewards of coming

contact with the outside world?

Or should he remain where he is, a cosseted curiosity, a pampered prisoner,

like thousands of disabled people still are at home?

or in hospitals or institutions, never allowed to take a chance to experience

the joy or liberating effect of sex, to run the risk of love.

Even for Merrick, insulated in a world of Victorian charity,

this urge for some degree of normality becomes irresistible.

For all his life, he has been unable to lie down, his head being too heavy for

his neck, and to keep it from snapping, he must always sleep upright.

Yet, on the night of his death, haunted by an image, he desires at least to do

one thing in his life like other people.

For the medical reductionist, Merrick died of his gross deformity.

For the romantics among us, his death depicts a glorious escape.

Yet even in this, he was cheated, because here he is, with us still,

still being exhibited.

And that's me, Osteogenesis Imperfecta.

In layman's language, brittle bones.

I once did a picture which I considered to be a self -portrait. I called it The

Nowhere Man.

In it, there's a door.

Out on the street, there's noise because let loose is a doodle of a man, or half

-man, being pursued by an accusing finger.

All around this yellow, sexually ambiguous misconception,

me are references to what he believes the world is telling him is the point of

life as a responsible member of the human race go forth find a mate and

multiply but the nowhere man harassed and paranoid cries out i am a freak i've

allowed my body to oppress me i haven't the will perhaps if the nowhere man was

not so self -obsessed about his own freakishness He might notice a door

opened to him, an entrance to a realm where he has a chance of becoming real.

Some people see me as an ugly thing.

They can't see me as a being and as a sexual person.

Never.

Christ, I don't mind being seen like that.

What's the point of militant feminism?

I like men.

I don't want to take refuge in something that disabled women lose as an excuse

to suppress their sexuality.

I sometimes feel unnerved by a lover's eyes, even if I know them well.

It's like a cloud passing over someone's face.

I'm snapped back into the memory of that mask.

Sometimes I eat in front of the mirror.

to see that mask as other people see me and try and see their feelings

but this is what they see

it's got nothing to do with me the

real me a lover sees that the real me but i still never quite

quite believe it

But my God, I'd rather this than some celibate marketing.

Once the scene is set, Once we can acknowledge the individual behind the

something else happens, for this recognition has its origins somewhere

It seems we need freaks, not only to reassure ourselves of our own normality,

but more importantly, to help us rediscover something.

Perhaps that's why we create them in myths, legends, in fairy stories,

literature and films.

Perhaps that's why we impart a certain humanity into them and allow them to

and be loved.

Of course, only in fiction.

From childhood, we learn there is always more than meets the eye, that external

appearances are misleading, that what exists within us all is always greater

than the sum of the parts.

E .T. may be ugly, but he's also love incarnate.

To admit love is to admit there is more to appearances.

And to admit that is to admit we all have to work much harder at being human.

We have to consider not only the body, but also the soul.

The body and the soul.

The body.

What is real, asked the rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near

the nursery fender before Nana came to tidy the room.

Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick -out handle?

Real isn't how you're made, said the skin horse.

It's a thing that happens to you.

When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really

loves you, Then you become real.

Does it hurt?

asked the rabbit.

Sometimes, said the skin horse, for he was always truthful.

When you are real, you don't mind being hurt.

Does it happen all at once?

Like being wound up, he asked, or bit by bit?

Oh, it doesn't happen all at once, said the skin horse.

You become.

It takes a long time.

That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily or have sharp

edges.

Generally, by the time you're real, most of your hair has been loved off and

your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.

But these things don't matter at all because once you are real, you can't be

ugly except to people who don't understand.

I suppose you are real.

said the rabbit.

And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the skin horse might be

sensitive.

But the skin horse only smiled.

The boy's uncle made me real, he said.

And that was a great many years ago.

But once you're real, you can't become unreal again.

It lasts for always.