91Èȱ¬

22nd December 2022

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – episode 32

Presented by Nikki Fox and Emma Tracey

NIKKI- Hi everyone, it’s Nikki and Emma here. 

EMMA- We’re passionate about stories on disability, mental health and wellbeing, and we really want more people to hear them through this pod, Access All. 

NIKKI- So, if you can please can you follow and subscribe to Access All on 91Èȱ¬ Sounds, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It really helps others find this pod, and we’d really appreciate it. 

ANNE- My diagnosis was Asperger’s syndrome. I didn’t really mind which they say. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that Lorna Wing established that the whole thing was in fact a spectrum, and that you could be someone who seemed to function, but at the same time was on the autistic spectrum, along with the Kanner kids. 

NIKKI- [Carol music playing] Welcome to a Christmassy Access All. I’m the 91Èȱ¬â€™s disability correspondent, Nikki Fox.

EMMA- And I’m journalist and presenter, Emma Tracey.

NIKKI- Now, thank you so much for taking some time out of your Christmas schedules to join us wherever you are in the world. This episode we’re having a little break from sitting in the studio and have taken ourselves out to a little café to reminisce about the past year and have a hot chocolate. Although you’ve got a mint tea, haven’t you? 

EMMA- I have a mint tea. We’ve got the team here, so we’ve got Amy, and then Dave made the most amazing and vegan mince pies that I have been scoffing. 

NIKKI- Oh hello, I haven’t had one of those yet, Dave.

EMMA- Oh, there’s one with your name on it. 

NIKKI- Oh my goodness, Dave has got a jumper and he’s just lit it up, Emma. 

EMMA- No!

NIKKI- He’s wearing a Christmas jumper. 

EMMA- Oh, bless him. 

NIKKI- That is the best jumper, Dave. That is brilliant. 

EMMA- What does it do, Dave?

DAVE- It lights up. 

EMMA- Which bit?

DAVE- The front. It’s got little fairy lights on the front. 

NIKKI- Actually on Christmas trees on the jumper, with fairy lights at the top. 

EMMA- It would have to be dark for me to see those. It’s bright right now, so.

NIKKI- And I’ve got a bauble bra.

EMMA- Oh, like baubles on your boobs?

NIKKI- Yeah.

EMMA- I’m just non-Christmassy all together. 

NIKKI- Yeah, and I don’t have a bauble bra, just to make that clear. 

EMMA- What a year it has been. And we actually have an Access All best bits episode of the podcast dropping early next week with all our favourite moments on it. 

NIKKI- I just love the fact that we’ve got a best bits episode. 

EMMA- We launched back in April. In one way it seems like a long time ago; in another way it’s absolutely flown by.

NIKKI- It’s flown by. And while we were thinking through all our best bits one name kept coming up time and time again. It’s The Governess from ITV’s The Chase, Anne Hegerty.

QUESTION- What’s the difference between an animal and a mammal, other than a few letters jumbled up and the letter n? 

ANNE- A mammal can feed its young by producing milk. This also applies to monotremes such as the duck-billed platypus, which lays eggs and produces milk, and is therefore the only animal that can make its own custard. 

EMMA- She was an absolute joy. And today we’re going to let you hear the full and uncut version as a Christmas treat. [The Chase theme music plays] Yay!

ANNE- Hello, how are you? 

NIKKI- We’re all good. Now, Anne people do know you obviously more so from The Chase, but you used to be a journalist, didn’t you?

ANNE- Yeah.

NIKKI- How did that career change come about?

ANNE- I was a journalist for about ten years, and then I went into publishing and became a copy editor and proof-reader for about 20 years. And then I just kind of fell into whatever it is I’m doing now.

NIKKI- What I loved when I was reading about you, Anne, because I had a period where I was a bit on my tush – I’m not going to say a rude word – I was working hard but not making much money and I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do, but I still had a tiny shred of belief that actually one day it would all come good. And I read an article where you were saying that even when you were younger you kind of had this belief that you would be famous one day. Where did that come from? 

ANNE- I don’t know. It may have been something to do with my dad; he always vaguely assumed that he was a superstar and one day he was going to be famous. Although he was never quite sure what he was going to be famous doing. He’d be watching Casablanca on the telly, pointing at Sidney Greenstreet saying, ‘He didn’t start acting until his early 60s’. and I’m sort of like, ‘Yeah but dad, he did start acting. You don’t actually do anything that could possibly make you famous’. But I spent much of my life thinking I want to be famous, while not actually do anything that could possibly make me famous, so I’m a lot like my dad in many ways. 

NIKKI- But it’s incredible, isn’t it, that you have become so well known, so famous on a quiz show. I guess you never planned that you would be famous through a quiz show called The Chase, hey?

ANNE- Well, no. I used to think as a child I’ll be a famous writer. My grandfather was a publisher so I did occasionally meet writers. And there was this tremendous discouragement from being a writer: writers don’t make any money, they’re all broke; publishers don’t make any money either. All these things you would quite like to be, like a writer and an illustrator and an actress and a pop singer, you will not succeed at them and you will make very little money, so seriously don’t bother. 

NIKKI- Blimey.

ANNE- Well, to be honest they were right, most people don’t make much money at those things. 

NIKKI- It’s a hard gig. It’s a mixture of luck and hard work, isn’t it? 

ANNE- Yeah.

NIKKI- But it’s often right place, right time as well. How did The Chase come about, was it right place, right time? 

ANNE- It kind of was, yes. What happened was, this happened in about April 2009, I happened to find out almost accidentally that there was a high-level quizzing circuit in the UK, and I was given the details of a website. And I went and looked at the website and it said yeah, there was going to be a quiz in Liverpool, which was like 30 miles away from where I lived in Manchester. And I thought okay, so I signed up and went along. And one thing that was happening at that particular quiz event was that the 91Èȱ¬ were auditioning for the second series of Are you an Egghead, which was to find another egghead. So, I auditioned, got on. We filmed at that sort of ten days later. So, it was right, let’s hurry up and try and find out the sorts of things quizzers know. I took part in that, I ended up coming third. And I didn’t realise it’s a tiny incestuous world, quizzing, and everybody in the quizzing world, even though it didn’t go out until November, everybody knew that I’d done really well. And everyone was like, who is this new woman who’s just come along. 

And then I went to the world championships, the British end of the world championships the following month, this is now we’re into June 2009, and there I met Mark Labett who told me that he’d just finished making the pilot series, just ten episodes, called The Chase. And he said you should watch it because it’s going to be really good. So, I watched it and I thought yeah, that’s good. And then the following month I went to yet another of these quizzes, and the woman who runs the circuit said, ‘What do you think about maybe being a Chaser?’ So, she said, ‘Well let’s wait and see if it gets picked up – because it was just a pilot – and if it gets picked up then we can put your name forward’. 

NIKKI- Amazing. 

ANNE- And a few months later I heard it had been picked up. I emailed the production assistant who passed it to the producer, and we had a series of emails back and forth in the space of a few hours. And one of the things that I mentioned during one of those emails, I think I said something like, ‘Looking forward to meeting you, and you can hear the story of how I chased off a mugger with a combination of swearing and walking really slowly’. And that apparently piqued their interest. And when I got to the interview and did a bit of an audition and some quizzing and told them the story about the mugger they were sort of like, ‘Actually yes, we reckon this is the one’ although I had to go through several other auditions first. 

NIKKI- Oh, I love it, Anne. 

EMMA- What is it about quizzes that you love so much?

ANNE- I was always just kind of interested in stuff. I was a nerdy child, and I discovered that I could learn things off by heart. And once I’d learned things off by heart then I’d sort of got them in my mind and I could think about them. I mean, this morning lying awake, trying to get back to sleep, I decided to reel off to myself American presidents working backwards. And by the time I got to Lincoln I thought okay, this is ridiculous, I obviously don’t want to sleep, so I got up. But yeah, I’ve just always been someone who’s quite enjoyed learning things and learning stuff. 

NIKKI- And this is not uncommon for a lot of autistic people but you got quite a late diagnosis, didn’t you, of autism?

ANNE- I did, yes. My diagnosis was Asperger’s syndrome. I didn’t really mind which they say. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that Lorna Wing established that the whole thing was in fact a spectrum, and that you could be someone who seemed to function; was not like one of the children that Kanner studied, but at the same time was on the autistic spectrum along with the Kanner kids. So, it took some time for people to figure that out. 

NIKKI- What’s Kanner, Anne?

ANNE- Kanner was a bloke who studied very severely disabled children, non-verbal, completely uncommunicative. People sometimes refer to that as Kanner autism. And then it wasn’t until the 1990s that Lorna Wing was studying the works of Hans Asperger, and she was like, actually he’s describing the same sort of thing, just at different levels, different degrees, but this is actually the same sort of thing. So, Asperger’s syndrome is actually a kind of autism, it's all the same thing, it’s all a continuum. 

NIKKI- Is it overly simplistic to say, Anne, when you got this diagnosis it was like some kind of life-changing moment and suddenly everything made sense again? I mean, how did you feel? 

ANNE- Well, the diagnosis came in 2005. It was really in 2003 that I figured out for myself I think I’ve got this, I think I have Asperger’s. But I wanted a formal diagnosis. I wanted, this is important to me, I wanted to subject my judgement to the judgement of experts. I didn’t want just to say, but I know my own mind, because I was brought up around psychologists. My mother was a psychiatric social worker. And there’s a reason we have psychologists. You may be the expert on how you feel about things, you’re the expert on the data that you produce; but you’re not necessarily the expert on interpreting it. So, I wanted the experts to look at it. 

NIKKI- Yeah. I remember – again this might just be my own overly simplistic idea of Asperger’s and autism – but I remember when we spoke, we were having a little chat off camera you were saying that you get up in the morning – it was something like, you probably remember this – you pour a pint of coffee or something, and you sit down and you do like 25 quizzes. 

ANNE- Yeah, basically. 

NIKKI- And that’s the easiest part of your day. The rest is showering and getting ready. 

ANNE- Yes, I do quizzes until I’ve properly woken up, and then I do the difficult stuff like going upstairs and having a shower and getting dry, and then putting some clothes on, and making sure they’re clean, and then actually sort of getting myself out of the house, into the car to the studio, and actually sitting down and being made up and actually getting my costume on. All of that is hard work. 

NIKKI- But why is that so hard, Anne? Because obviously for a lot of other people that would be the easiest part of the day. I couldn’t do one quiz, let alone 25.

ANNE- Partly because for me it’s a whole load of little bits of tasks: do this bit, then do this bit, then do this bit. I can’t see the entire picture; I can see the little details. So, having actually got myself dressed and put on various items of clothing in the correct order and correct places, this feels like I’ve climbed a mountain. For everybody else it’s just got dressed. 

EMMA- Yeah, my friend Jamie who’s autistic, who used to be on 1800 Seconds on Autism podcast with me, he has charts up everywhere of like, do this next, do this next, do this next, do this next, because it just doesn’t come naturally. We have a natural order of things, and it’s not like that for some autistic people.

ANNE- Someone said somewhere, there’s some person who’s written on autism who says that we have difficulty with thresholds. I mean, sometimes quite literally you’ll see an autistic kid appear in the doorway and they actually sort of have difficulty stepping into the room. It’s like they have to make themselves do it and think about it. But you can also have difficulty with more metaphorical thresholds, actually going from this to this. I mean, at the moment I’ve got a note in my diary saying, do washing. But if I was feeling very, very stressed I would have a bit of paper in which I’d write down: go upstairs, take washing bag, dump on floor, sort out tights, put in this container, sort out hot wash, put in that container, take bag downstairs – literally have to just write it all out like that. 

NIKKI- Is it tiring, Anne?

ANNE- Yeah, it is. I don’t do as much as other people do. And there are some people who get irritated by this. I need a lot of time to kind of get all my neurones lined up and pointed at something before I do it. You know the artists Gilbert & George, have you heard of them?

NIKKI- Yes, they’re very quirky, aren’t they? 

ANNE- They are. They tell a story, which always really resonates with me, about a time when they shared a studio with a potter. And he would come in at 9 o’clock in the morning and put out all his potting tools, and sit at his bench, and then do nothing but stare at his hands. And then at quarter to 5 in the evening when they were packing up to go home he would suddenly say, ‘These are the hands that can do it’, and he’d set to work and in the next 15 minutes he would make the most beautiful pot.

NIKKI- Wow. 

ANNE- The kind of pot you’d be quite proud to have spent the entire day making, which in a sense he had, it just took him that long to get it all lined up. 

NIKKI- Oh my goodness.

ANNE- Whenever I think to myself I haven’t done anything for the last three days I think it’s okay, it’s okay, because these are the hands that can do it, and tomorrow you’ll suddenly find you can get everything done. 

NIKKI- Do you think you’d have struggled if you hadn’t fallen into this kind of world of TV?

ANNE- Well, yes, I mean I was struggling. I was good at proofreading, but I was bad at all the stuff that goes along with it, like actually getting the job finished. As I say, it’s a difficulty with thresholds. I sometimes find it’s hard for me to get something finished, because there are going to be moments of, well what do I do next. Which is ridiculous; there’s always something to do next. But it sort of meant yeah, I’m actually going to sort of have to think about what I do next. So, it’s a bit like being on the computer and playing endless games of Solitaire because you just can’t make yourself go to bed. And I was good at the proofreading, but I was not good at actually getting the thing finished, parcelling it up, putting all the questions in an email, and sending out an invoice, and just the admin stuff. So, by the time the call came from The Chase I’d been on benefits for a couple of years. 

NIKKI- Really? And had you ever got to the point where you thought to yourself, I’m going to need some outside support? 

ANNE- Absolutely. And I think it was something like early 2008, I think that was kind of the low point. It was either New Year’s Day or it was the day after New Year’s Day, and there was a ring on the doorbell, I went downstairs and it was a bailiff. And then while we were talking ten minutes later there was another bailiff. And bailiffs are sort of like vampires, they can’t come into your house unless you let them; but if you do let them then that means they can come in any time. What happened after that they said, okay. I did say to them I had a couple of valuable books I could sell, and if they would just sort of give me a fortnight I could deal with that. And then what happened I hadn’t been paying my rent for some time, so a woman from the Housing Association came round and knocked on my door. And I sort of opened it, and she just kind of pushed it open, walked through the hall across the piles of unopen mail, and she said, ‘Right, don’t worry, we will fix this’. 

NIKKI- Ah.

ANNE- And she got me a social worker, a lovely bloke called Jeff Mackenzie. I always feel like I have to name Jeff because he’s such a lovely guy. And he came round and he sorted out things like, he knew for example that United Utilities, the water people, actually keep a fund of money to pay the water bills of people who can’t pay. So, he was on the phone to people about all sorts of things I didn’t know about. He helped me fill in forms for Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Jobseekers Allowance, and then he made an appointment for me to see a disability advisor at the town hall, and they helped me apply for Disability Living Allowance. 

NIKKI- Right.

ANNE- And once you got that, not only do you get that, but it means you get a bit more Jobseekers Allowance. 

NIKKI- Yeah, it’s a pathway to a little bit more support, isn’t it?

ANNE- Yeah. It just gave me a breathing space where I could kind of work out what was going on. 

NIKKI- How soon was it from that point that you got The Chase?

ANNE- It was about another two years after that. The problem was the paperwork involved in signing on every two weeks was so heavy that it was pretty difficult to actually keep trying to work as well. And the Job Centre were always a little bit suspicious of the fact that I was attempting to work; was I trying to put something over on them. 

NIKKI- I’ve been there and it’s a difficult balance. 

ANNE- I was telling them how many hours I’d done, I always had the feeling some different Job Centre was then going to get in touch with me and say, could you please give us a breakdown of all of this. And I’d think to myself, I gave you exactly that on the form. But apparently no, you’ve decided you need it differently. Gradually I just stopped proofreading because I couldn’t do both. Once I got the job on The Chase the Job Centre stopped paying me immediately, as they do, but the thing is I had then been offered a proofreading job with a government department in Edinburgh, so they actually wanted me to go to Edinburgh, do this job on a, I was going to say on a full-time basis, it only ended up being about seven weeks across the entire year, but it did at least bring me in a bit of money. 

EMMA- Good old Edinburgh. That’s where I am, Anne. It’s a good old city. 

NIKKI- Beautiful. We haven’t got that much time left, Anne, which is devastating me inside. There was one thing I noted that you’d mentioned in an article, that when you got your diagnosis it made you understand neurotypical people a lot better, which I thought was brilliant. Is that the case? Is that really what happened? 

ANNE- Well, there are times when I’ve looked back on things and I think there are things that I resented at the time, and I think oh actually, you know what, I see, they were trying to be nice, or they thought that I would appreciate that, or they thought it was something I wanted to hear, and they didn’t realise how I would take it. I can kind of understand how neurotypicals feel about us. I was always aware as a child that I was a problem to my parents, especially to my mother, and I couldn’t understand why or what I could do about it. It’s worth remembering it’s not our fault, but at the same time it’s not their fault either. Everyone’s just trying to figure it out. 

NIKKI- Anne Hegerty, I adore you.

ANNE- Thank you. 

NIKKI- Isn’t she brilliant, Emma?

EMMA- She’s absolutely brilliant. When can we watch you next? Are you going to pop up on our TVs or radios, in our bookshops, any time soon? When can we see you? 

ANNE- I’m in panto in Swindon this Christmas.

NIKKI- Oh fab!

EMMA- Is that your first panto?

ANNE- No, I’ve been doing panto since 2014. They can’t stop me.

NIKKI- And who are you playing, Anne, what character?

ANNE- Well, I’m playing the enchantress who puts the spell on the prince to turn him into a beast. The question is whether I’m actually evil. My name is Fairy Flutterby, and I’m going to be wearing white, so it’s arguable that I’m actually quite well disposed but I think the prince needs to be taught a lesson. I don’t know because they’re still writing the script. I might be evil after all. 

NIKKI- You’re not evil. 

ANNE- I might be.

NIKKI- But you could be firm. 

ANNE- I was evil last Christmas. I’m usually evil. 

NIKKI- Don’t say that, no. 

ANNE- Last Christmas I was Mrs Blunderbore in Jack and the Beanstalk, which actually was rather fun because Mrs Blunderbore she was a happier character than most of the evil people I play. She’s happy in her personal life, she’s got this nice giant, and she gets to be evil, which she enjoys. 

NIKKI- I was going to ask you whether you’ve got a nice giant in your life, Anne?

ANNE- I’m not very good at holding down relationships. It’s better for everyone if I’m not actually doing that. 

NIKKI- I just don’t believe that, Anne.

ANNE- Well, I know. Everyone tries to set me up and I’m like, you know what, it’s terribly kind of you, but, um, could you not. 

EMMA- Fair enough. 

NIKKI- You’re better off anyway. 

EMMA- Absolutely. 

NIKKI- Oh Anne, thank you. 

EMMA- Thank you so much. [The Chase theme music plays].

NIKKI- So, Anne Hegerty was very much Nikki Fox back in, I don’t know, 2020 really. I loved being single; I’m with her. I mean, I love my Dave, as you know. It’s not like I don’t mention him that much, is that? 

EMMA- But is he your lovely giant?

NIKKI- Yeah, he is. You know, I kind of got her, she’s happy being single. And I love how honest she was with us throughout that whole interview.

EMMA- She was honest about everything, and really warm and comfortable with it as well. She was honest about when she was struggling with her job and then being on benefits, and then not knowing whether to keep working or not because it was really difficult because it affected her benefits. It’s something that so many people can relate to, isn’t it?

NIKKI- Yeah, that’s what got me when we were talking about her career before The Chase; she was talking about because of her autism, she was a proof writer, wasn’t she, and a journalist, but she couldn’t keep to deadlines. And because she couldn’t keep to deadlines her whole life spiralled, and she wasn’t earning enough money, like you say. And she really did get herself into a real predicament. But yet she always had that inner belief that she was one day going to become famous. And I love that. 

EMMA- I think they call it manifesting now, don’t they? 

NIKKI- Well, yeah, they do. My god, manifesting, I hear that all the time. 

EMMA- Where you say something enough and think about it enough, and put it out there and then it happens. 

NIKKI- The things is though even when I was down on my arse for a very long time and I was trying and hustling and hustling to get work, I did still have some kind of inner belief that one day I would get to where I wanted to be. So, I related to her on that. 

EMMA- That’s absolutely amazing and such a wonderful gift, I think. Can I tell you, I was listening to this and enjoying it thoroughly, and Anne said that when she was joining The Chase she said that she would tell them a story about how she got away from a mugger by walking really slowly and swearing. And we never asked her to tell that story. I can’t wait to have her back to tell us the story of how she got away from a mugger. 

NIKKI- I am very excited for some more celebrity interviews next year, Em. Who have we got lined up?

EMMA- Well, it depends on who’s making headlines in 2023. But also we love to hear from you, our lovely listeners. If you’d like us to have someone in particular on to have an in-depth chat with or a disability debrief we’ll see if we can work on it and make it happen. 

NIKKI- I wouldn’t mind John Bishop and his son Joe. 

EMMA- That’s a good call.

NIKKI- Yeah, they did a great documentary about his deafness, didn’t they?

EMMA- They did, so let’s keep saying that. 

NIKKI- Come on John. 

EMMA- Our Lady Gaga manifest hasn’t quite come through yet. 

NIKKI- It hasn’t.

EMMA- Yeah, Michael J Fox.

NIKKI- Love him. Where we’re going we don’t need roads. 

EMMA- Yeah.

NIKKI- That’s Back to the Future. 

EMMA- I’ve never seen Back to the Future.

NIKKI- You’ve never seen Back to the Future?

EMMA- No. 

NIKKI- What!

EMMA- I know. Dave just went, what!

NIKKI- Dave actually gasped then. 

EMMA- They weren’t audio described when I was a kid. I was less into films. 

NIKKI- We need to get Georgina on the case. 

EMMA- I was less into films when I was a kid because they weren’t audio described. 

NIKKI- Well, there’s so many ways you can get in contact with us, and please do. We love, love, love hearing from you. You could email us, accessall@bbc.co.uk, and that’s if you want to tell us anything about your life, if there’s anything you want us to look into, something that’s happening that you feel like you’re hitting your head against a brick wall and you want us on your side, get in contact. You can tweet us as well @91Èȱ¬AccessAll. Or we’re on Instagram, @91Èȱ¬AccessAll. Or you can send us a voice note to our WhatsApp, that number is 0330 123 9480, and tap in the word Access if you can so that we know that it’s for us and not our sister podcasts, Newscast or Ukrainecast. 

EMMA- We’re in quite a good family, aren’t we?

NIKKI- Yeah, we are. 

EMMA- So, Merry Christmas. I hope you’re all having a fabulous time. And for anyone who’s finding this time of year difficult every single person on the Access All team sends you their love. 2023 is going to be a big year, I can feel it in my bones, and I cannot wait for us to share it with you. 

NIKKI- Ah. Merry Christmas. 

[Trailer]

PRESENTER- You know when you’re worried about something, but then you talk to your friend who knows more about the subject than you do, and straightaway you start to feel better? That’s what we try and do every day on Newscast. 

CLIP- Now, they’re saying that that would be simple to do, it would give everyone certainty. 

PRESENTER- We talk to people who are in the news:

CLIP- You were chasing me round with a plate of cheese. 

PRESENTER- We talk to people who know what’s going on in the news:

CLIP- At least I didn’t get up and slap anybody. 

PRESENTER- We talk to people who understand what the news means:

CLIP- I think that he’s decided he’s going to listen, and then he might just intervene.

PRESENTER- And we talk to the best 91Èȱ¬ journalists, asking the most important questions: 

CHRIS- What’s wrong with chinos? You don’t want them, people to start wearing chinos? 

CLIP- Don’t start me, Chris. 

PRESENTER- That’s Newscast from 91Èȱ¬ News, the podcast that knows a lot of people who know a lot about the news. 

CLIP- And I was like, go on Kate, put some more welly into it!

CLIP- Listen to Newscast every day on 91Èȱ¬ Sounds. 

CLIP- I’m glad I asked that. 

CLIP- I’m very glad that you asked that!