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1 + Downloaded from THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. IN TOUCH - Action hotels update, TV licence concession, Comedian Chris TX: PRESENTER: PRODUCER: PETER WHITE CHERYL GABRIEL Good evening. Sheer weight of demand has dictated tonight s programme as we return to the subject of the proposed closure of three specialist hotels for blind people and the lack of consultation listeners claim has taken place so far. And stand up and be counted. The last time she dragged me to the pictures was two years ago and it was Captain America. What a pointless exercise that was just two hours of nothing but explosions and wallops and bangs and the classical music I might as well have stayed at home and put the knives and forks in the microwave. [Laughter] On stage and backstage with comedian Chris. A month ago, we reported that the charity Action for Blind People was on the point of closing its three so-called Vision hotels: at Teignmouth, Windermere and Weston Super Mare. These hotels specialise in holidays and short breaks for blind and partially sighted people.

2 At the time a spokesperson for Action told us that demand for the service amongst visually impaired people was falling. And that with the other demands on their resources the hotels were becoming financially unviable. I can t remember the last time the In Touch inbox was quite so full. With an almost unanimous questioning of these reasons and a request from many of you that we return to the subject to examine the lack of consultation listeners told us had taken place. Well we ll come back to that a little later but first a flavour of the things you ve been telling us about the hotels themselves and their value to you. Bryan Mathews is typical and only recently enjoyed a stay at Teignmouth with his wife and daughter, both like him, visually impaired. Bryan particularly wanted to question the argument that mainstream hotels could do just as good a job and that specialist hotels went against the principles of inclusion. He says I d be amongst the first to argue in favour of the inclusion of visually impaired people in the mainstream, whether in relation to holidays, education, transport or any other area of life, but I think what the Vision hotels are providing is a model of inclusion which they should be holding up as a beacon for other providers to emulate, rather than seeking to get rid of them, implying that providing an inclusive holiday for visually impaired people is just too difficult to do. I simply don t understand the assertion that visually impaired people make up a minority of guests at the hotels. I m not aware that the hotels require guests to declare a link to visual impairment. Purely from observations while we ve been there, there seems a very strong contingent of visually impaired people, their friends and families. And the fact that it s not exclusively visually impaired serves to add to the experience of inclusiveness for all. Gill Cousins is also a big fan. Read The Vision hotels have offered blind and partially sighted people a place where they could holiday without anxiety or stress. I can be served my breakfast, have my tea poured and even my meal cut up if it s too tricky to manage. As a braille user I can read my menu myself or I can ask for someone to read it to me. If I accidentally pick up too large a piece of food and end up with it hanging half in and half out of my mouth for a second I needn t be too ashamed. And if I fork nothing other than air into my mouth it s not a major issue. All the daily bumps and blunders associated with life as a visually impaired person are accepted and met with both help and humour. For many people it s the only sort of holiday they feel confident enough to take. And Chris Copeman has shared with us a long letter he s written to the chief executives of Action, GDBA and the new acting head of the RNIB. He says: I can honestly say that these hotels give me the most relaxing stress-free and truly independent holiday experiences I ve ever had as a blind person. I go on other holidays as well but no matter how I m protected by equality legislation, other hotels and holiday

3 opportunities always involve substantial challenges. Other establishments may be prevented in law from discriminating against me, they can t, though, be expected to provide dog equipment, such as beds, bowls and dog-food. As non-drivers like all people with sight loss, my wife and I would have to carry all this clutter with us, or leave my dog behind. If you ve never had to rely on public transport, make a long journey with a number of changes, and manage all this with several pieces of luggage, you can have little idea of how stressful it can be. Staying here makes people more independent, not less. There s much more of that letter but you get the idea. As to the issue of consultation, David Haynes is a member of a council of consumers which was set up by Action specifically to find ways of developing the hotels and widening their appeal and yet the news of the demise of these hotels reached him like a bolt from the blue. Haynes There was a meeting in Birmingham on September 6 th and Paul Morrison, who is the head of the Action hotels, but he s not one of the trustees that made the decision, he was given the brief of having to inform us that the trustees had decided to withdraw the funding. And the whole atmosphere changed from being a very compliant, cooperative atmosphere, people were just aghast. And the biggest concern was the fact that our remit was to look at the development of the Action hotels and yet we were not consulted by the trustees when they took this decision. So you had no inkling that this was going to happen? Haynes No inkling at all. And in a previous existence, when I used to lecture at Leeds University, I used to run corpus sessions for management with regard to the management of change and this was the last thing that I would recommend that change should be made without any consultation. Can you just explain your own personal reaction to this decision? Haynes I have to look at it in terms of the impact that it s going to have, not only on myself as you know Peter the RNIB estimated that 180,000 visually-impaired people who don t come out of the house without assistance now I won t go on holiday now unless I ve got assistance. And one of the reasons for going to the Action for the Blind hotels is that you were always met off the train, you re taken to the hotel, all the staff are trained and you feel totally happy that you re having a safe and secure holiday. And without sight those are two aspects of being safe and secure are of paramount importance. What are you now saying should happen to these three hotels in this current situation? Haynes

4 Well Action is a charity, charities are not supposed to be profit making and I m sure with consultation from the trustees with Action for the Blind council we could made other suggestions as to the way in which Action are spending their money. Well given the strength of these reactions we ve been back to Action to ask for someone to answer some of those points. They weren t able to offer us anyone for interview, but they sent us this statement: Statement This has been a very difficult decision to make because we know how much Vision hotels mean to customers, staff and volunteers. If Action had continued to run the hotels we would have had to divert funds from other services and after careful consideration we decided that this was not the right thing to do. It s too early to say when the hotels might pass to new management but we will provide our customers with an update as soon as we know more. For now it s business as usual and we are continuing to take bookings. And Guide Dogs who own two of the hotels, confirmed that they had received a great deal of feedback on this too and they say they re working with Action in their bid to find a buyer for the hotels. I don t think somehow we ve heard the last of this story. And now, for some potentially good news which TV Licensing think may not be reaching all the people who can benefit from it. There is a concession price for the TV licence for visually impaired people and this also applies now to people who do not watch live TV but who do use catch up services like iplayer. Well Jason of TV Licensing reminded us who was eligible for the concession. The TV licence 50% reduction on the cost of the annual TV licence is available to anyone who is blind, severely sight impaired. And what criteria do you need to fulfil, how do you prove that? What you need is a photocopy of either your certificate of visual impairment CVI or a BD8 or a letter from your local authority or a note from your ophthalmologist indicating that you are severely sight impaired and that will be sufficient proof for qualification for the concession. Who do you think might be missing out on this licence concession? Well it s not a case of people missing out. We really want to highlight the fact that if someone who s got the 50% concessionary licence, as long as the licence is in their name it

5 covers everyone in the household, so everyone can take advantage of the licence fee to watch live TV and also catch up programmes on iplayer. You re concentrating I think on one particular age group, can you just explain who they are? The 50% reduction is available to anyone who is severely sight impaired. There are obviously other concessions as well. As soon as you re over 75 you can claim the free over 75 licence, as soon as you turn 74 we re asking people to get in touch with us so that they can set up a short term licence which carries them up to the age of 75 and from then on they benefit from a free TV licence. So in particular if you re listening to this, you ve not done it before, you think you qualify what should you do? Well it s quite simple, you can either apply online or call the TV licensing call centre and we ll be able to help you set up that concessionary licence. So given the fact that there are still quite a lot of visually impaired people who find going online a bit tricky there is a phone number and someone you can speak to? Yes there is, yes. Jason. More details about how to apply at the end of the programme. Now you learn early in this business never to say the words the only one but we think we can say that Chris is one of the very few blind professional stand-up comedians in this country. I first saw Chris in action at a fringe event at the Edinburgh Festival almost 10 years ago. A couple more in the audience that night and we would just about have had enough for a game of Five Aside football but times have changed for Chris whose career since then has gone from strength to strength. This week he starts in his own one man show for a three night stint at London s Soho Theatre. Well Tony Shearman has been talking to Chris, who admits that the blind comedian tag can have its advantages. It s a USP isn t it? [Laughing] You know I think it s the truth. I suppose I m a comedian who is blind. I think if you call someone a blind comedian it kind of invokes the image of them just standing up there just that s all they ve got, they re a one trick pony and that s all they talk about. I think you d be stupid to ignore the thing that makes you you. Being blind isn t just what you are, you re also well I m also from Liverpool, I m also married, I ve also got a kid there s other things that make you you, so you ve got to cover all the bases.

6 My daughter, she s only kind of just over one and we took her to the local park. It was chocalotta families, lots of kids. So we walked into the middle of this playground and I put her on the floor and vroommm she was off like that and straightaway my wife went into police helicopter mode, she was da da da just tracking her and within about five or six seconds I suddenly became very consciously aware that I was now just a grown man stood on my own in the middle of a children s playground. [Laughter] Without any of the mobility skills required to remove myself off somewhere a little less conspicuous. In my opinion if you flog it to death it becomes boring and clichéd and predictable very, very quickly. So I deal with it, I sprinkle it throughout very sparingly. What I realised is just because you can t see anything doesn t mean you don t have to look somewhere. I just had to pick a direction and stare and hope I wasn t looking directly at a family [laughter] or even worse a single child on a slide [laughter]. At this point I just had an empty baby carrier and so it looked like I d come prepared to just snatch a child. [Laughter] Shearman So do you go out of your way to tell people when you go on stage that you re blind? Yeah, I ve got to. I get shown up to the microphone, so you ve gotta you ve gotta nip it in the bud straightaway. Maybe you ve got difficulty walking, maybe you ve got MS, maybe they might be thinking oh how drunk s this fella. There s a few different things that could go through their mind trying to figure out what s going on here. So I know that there s going to be apprehension of ooh what s this going to be, what have we got ourselves into here. And it s good to break that ice and make everyone laugh and burst attention and then move on. And if you can make them forget you re blind rather than just yacking on about it. We ve got five Petes who drink in our local pub, right, we ve got Gay Pete, we ve got Fat Pete, now Fat Pete s not actually the fattest Pete, that s Gay Pete, but Fat Pete was Fat Pete before Gay Pete was on the scene. [Laughter] Shearman What about the practical side of things about sort of writing material and even remembering it, I mean do you have braille notes up your sleeves and things like that when you re on stage? No, no I don t read braille. The good thing with comedy is often when you write something if you write something that s five or 10 minutes long you can often break that down to a funny minute and then you can go out and try that funny minute and if it works you can stick the next minute on it and then stick the next two minutes on it and you can build it up, build it up slowly. And if you if you can learn the gist of it and the points that you need to like a dot to dot you don t kind of you don t try and remember the picture exactly, you just

7 remember the dots that you ve got to pass through to get to the end. So that s what I do, I try and remember the gist of it and obviously along the way there will be the odd line here and there that for impact I do need to remember correctly to get to get the impact at the right part of the sentence or the punchline, that s a lot less than trying to remember everything word for word. We ve got Peat Pete he s a gardener. [Laughter] And we ve got Motorbike Pete, who doesn t actually ride a motorbike anymore but you know the name has stuck, mainly through lack of alternatives. And you see Motorbike Pete is also gay but you just can t go round having two Gay Pete s can you? I know what you think we could just update the whole thing, I suppose, and make Motorbike Pete Gay Pete and then Fay Pete Fat Pete but that would just leave the current Fat Pete as just Pete and you can t just say Pete, can you? Everyone would be like well which Pete, you d have to go you know, Pete Pete and we ve already got one of them. [Laughter] Shearman So you re at the Soho Theatre this week, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. You re headlining your own show. Would you say that this is the biggest gig of your career so far? There s always a lot more pressure when it s just you, yeah it s always a step forwards doing your own thing. The gigs that you play up and down the country can be a lot more daunting, in terms of the audiences. When you ve got people who have paid and they know what they re coming to see they re very well behaved and they re very appreciative and they really want to listen and laugh. The last time she dragged me to the pictures was two years ago and it was Captain America. What a pointless exercise that was, just two hours of nothing but explosions and wallops and bangs and the classical music, I must as well have stayed at home and put the knives and forks in the microwave. [Laughter] Shearman And what about hecklers, I mean do you find you get more or less heckled as a blind comedian? I do think that there probably is a feeling within even the rowdier members of an audience that they shouldn t shout out at the blind guy because they might end up spending eternity in hell or something. No, what does get a laugh quite often is if I do ask a question to the audience and I say don t be putting your hand up, you ll be sat there for ages. And then there s a massive release of laughter in the room and I think that a lot of people do put their hand up, they completely [laughter] they completely forget that I can t see it and they release their own stupidity. [Laughter] Let me hear it one more time please for Chris. [Cheering and clapping]

8 And you can find details of Chris s show at the London Soho Theatre on our website or you can call our action line on for the next 24 hours. They will also have more details about TV Licence concessions for visually impaired people. And while we re on the subject of visual impairment and comedy how would you like to walk the tight rope of disability and humour by telling us your own experiences of visual impairment which made you laugh and find out if anyone shares the joke. Who knows your story might end up on air. From Me Peter, producer Cheryl Gabriel and the team, goodbye.