EMMA- I
was making the kids’ packed lunch the other day.
NIKKI- For
school?
EMMA- For
school.
NIKKI- Go
on.
EMMA- And
I got the bread out, got the butter out, took the lid of the butter off, put it
down, buttered the bread, went to find the lid to put it back on the butter
before making the rest of the sandwich, and I couldn’t find the lid anywhere.
NIKKI- Where
was the lid?
EMMA- I’ll
tell you in a minute.
NIKKI- Hold
you horses, Fox, hold your horses.
EMMA- I
felt around the whole worksurface that I was working at. I asked the boys, they
were like, “Dunno, can’t see it,” and I even got my son to the look the in the
bin.
NIKKI- In
case you didn’t know everyone, she doesn’t go on about it much but Emma is
blind!
EMMA- And
I was looking for it all day. Got the lunch box into the school bag, sent them off,
but I was like, ‘Where could it possibly be?’ That evening I needed the butter
for something else and I was looking for the lid again, so I put foil over the
top of it to keep it fresh and stuff like that, I’m not an idiot, and then my youngest
son who’s 5 was like, “Ah-ha mum, you put it in with my sandwiches. I told Eric
and Alex and we had a great laugh about it.” I put this on my Facebook and a
lot of people got involved and some said, “Oh, that’s not a blind thing,” and then
some blind people told me their other stories. One person was cooking pasta and
she was serving out the pasta and there was something kind of heavy and blunt
on the spoon, and it was batteries. The batteries had been in the bowl of her
talking scales and she’d measured out the pasta, poured the whole lot in the
pot and cooked it!
NIKKI- And
you can’t eat that, can you, if you’ve got batteries in it.
EMMA- I
don’t know, I never asked her if they ate it afterwards.
NIKKI- I
don’t think you can.
EMMA- It’s
lucky they didn’t explode!
MUSIC- Theme
tune
NIKKI- Welcome
to Access All, the BBC’s disability and mental health podcast. You might not
think you want to hear, but you do I promise you. I’m Nikki Fox and I’m in London.
EMMA- And
I’m Emma Tracey and I’m in Edinburgh.
NIKKI- Right
Em, here is a list for you. What comes to mind when I say geisha, bullet
trains, noodles, Tamagotchi, Nintendo.
EMMA- Japan.
NIKKI- Pokémon,
Manga, anime, sushi.
EMMA- Japan.
NIKKI- Hajimemashite.
Watashi wa Nikki desu.
EMMA- Japan!
NIKKI- Yes,
all right. I just wanted to get to the end because I’ve learnt a bit of Japanese.
You’re right, Japan. We are going to be talking about Japan’s accessibility
with the star of a well-known hair brand commercial, it’s the wonderful Lucy
Edwards who has just got married as well, I can’t wait to hear all about that.
EMMA- We’ve
also got trains, science and world records, which basically makes us the blokeiest
show we’ve ever done, but we’ll give it a go anyway.
NIKKI- Lads,
lads, lads. Stay tuned everyone.
MUSIC- Music
NIKKI- Disabled
scientists are pretty much all over our screens, from Sheldon in The Big Bang
Theory.
[CLIP]
Bazinga.
[Laughter]
To
the wonderful Clarissa Mullery in Silent Witness.
I’m
trying to find the lab.
[END
OF CLIP]
NIKKI- And
we cannot forget this fella.
[CLIP]
Black
hole.
[END
OF CLIP]
EMMA- But
in reality, new Office of National Statistics’ data, revealed through a Freedom
of Information request by the Lightyear Foundation which s disabled
people getting onto science, shows that since 2020 the proportion of disabled
people in STEM jobs has fallen dramatically, and in some careers almost by
half.
NIKKI- So,
is enough being done to disabled scientists to become the next Stephen
Hawking, or indeed the next Paul Murdin who s us now, he’s with us, Paul. Hello
Doctor Murdin, how are you?
PAUL- Hello.
How are you, how’s things?
NIKKI- Not
bad. Just to let everyone know, Paul you are a Senior Fellow at the Institute
of Astronomy at Cambridge University. You also use a walking stick, don’t you,
after having polio as a child. So let’s just get it out there first of all, what
drew you to astronomy, Paul? What was it
that made you want to go into it?
PAUL- Well
I read quite widely when I was in bed with polio, I took books from the
hospital library pretty much at random, and the ones about astronomy and science
really grabbed my attention, even though I was only 7 or 8 years old, and so I
got really interested in science. When I went to school there was a telescope
in the school playing fields that belonged to a local astronomical society, and
so I went along to that and looked at the moon and looked at Saturn and so on. It
was kind of like going on a Star Trek voyage somewhere, even though I wasn’t
physically going there but my mind went there, and I thought that was just mind-blowing
to be able to do that.
NIKKI- The
thing you’re most well-known for, Paul, is identifying the first black hole. How
do you discover something like a black hole?
PAUL- One
of the problems in astronomy is that there are so many things to study, the
galaxy has billions of stars and there are billions of galaxies. My approach to
picking out something that was distinctive, something that had something going
on that was different from all the other stars and therefore indicated
something interesting was happening, was to look at stars that x-rays were coming
from. The tracking down a star that had x-rays coming from it was the way to identify
that there was a black hole in the star system. The star that I studied had an
invisible companion that turned out to be the black hole.
NIKKI- Wowzers.
Is a black hole when you go through it like in Star Trek and then you zoom out the other side and you’re
in another-?
PAUL- Yes.
There’s a whole load of crap that people talk about black holes in that sort of
way! [Laughter] But to me, black holes are simply massive stars that have a
very small size. The star that I discovered has a mass which is about the same
as the sun, but it’s all squashed into only a kilometre or two in size. Whereas
our sun, which has the same mass, that’s within a volume that’s measured in
millions of kilometres.
NIKKI- Oh
I love that. Thinking of other disabled people that might want to go into
science and go into your field, do you feel like a role model to others that
might be interested in having a career in astronomy?
PAUL- Do
you know, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve been conscious of the fact
that I must be a role model of some sort, because really I haven’t paid any
attention to my disability since I was at school. Except of course that it is a
limitation, it’s physical limitation. I never regarded myself as a role model,
but I never set out to do that, and I didn’t really think of myself as being a
role model until really quite recently when I’ve been invited to be on
programmes like this.
EMMA- Oh
fab.
NIKKI- Ahh.
EMMA- Speaking
of role models, the Lightyear Foundation has lots of disabled mentors working
with young disabled people who want to get into science, and one of those mentors
is Doctor Hamied Haroon. Hi, Hamied, how are you?
HAMIED- Good
thanks. How are you?
EMMA- I’m
really well, thank you.
NIKKI- Hi,
Hamied.
EMMA- You’re
a research scientist in magnetic resonance imaging. Is that something to do
with scans? Tell us a little bit about what you do?
HAMIED- It
is indeed. But first, I want to say how in awe I am first of all to be on this
programme, I love this programme, I love this podcast. I watch it, I follow you
on Twitter, and to be in the company of Professor Murdin as well is just incredible
to hear your story as well. I’m absolutely in awe. So, there you go. Role
models, right? We’re all role models for
each other.
EMMA- Yeah,
absolutely.
HAMIED- Inspire
each other all the time, it’s just incredible.
EMMA- It’s
your turn for the limelight now, Hamied. What do you do?
HAMIED- You
are very right, Emma, I am a research scientist, a Research Fellow actually,
recently promoted which is nice, at the University of Manchester. I work on
MRI, as you said, magnetic resonance imaging, and yeah it’s those really noisy
doughnut scanners in the hospitals that take scans of the brain, of the body,
of anything basically, and we’re analysing the images, so we’re trying to
measure how the brain and the body are structured, how it functions.
EMMA- That
sounds very cool and very important.
NIKKI- Yeah,
very much so.
EMMA- What
is your role as a mentor with the Lightyear Foundation? Because when people meet you and they find
out what you do, they must just be inspired really?
HAMIED- We’re
trying to encourage young disabled people to think about science. Me myself, I
went to a special school in fact for my primary school years, and there were no
science labs, there was no encouragement to go towards science or anything like
that.
NIKKI- One
of the students who has benefitted from mentoring in the past is Isi Smee from
Bristol. We’ve created a little science themed fact file with her.
MALE- What
is your name?
FEMALE- My
name is Isi Smee.
MALE- Why
do you like science?
FEMALE- Because
there’s so many things to learn about it.
MALE- Would
you like to be a scientist one day?
FEMALE- Maybe
I would like to become a scientist one day because I get to answer big
questions.
MALE- What
was it like to meet Lightyear role model Doctor Camilla Pang?
FEMALE- Meeting
Camilla was pretty cool. Plus, we both
have autism.
MALE- Do
you have any role models in science or people you look up to?
FEMALE- Chao
from the Sonic franchise because he’s a genius and he’s smart and has an IQ of
300.
MALE- Do
you enjoy your science lessons at school?
FEMALE- Science
in school is a lot of fun because we do a lot of experiments and test out
stuff.
EMMA- How
did you go then from special school where there wasn’t science, it wasn’t
particularly academic, to getting a PhD and becoming a scientist?
HAMIED- In
fact, I was really lucky actually, I was at the right place at the right time,
if you like. Manchester just brought in integration of disabled children into
mainstream schools. It was one of the roughest schools in Manchester but it was
such an experience, and that’s where it opened my eyes to science going into
the science labs and learning what all the other kids were learning.
PAUL- I
was asked to be a governor at a special school, and what astounded me and
appalled me actually was the lack of encouragement that went into the children
that were there. There was one boy that in particular who I thought was
particularly bright, he was ionate about learning French, and there was
absolutely no chance of him learning French at all, and other governors and the
other staff even similarly didn’t encourage it, it wasn’t even something they could
contemplate.
NIKKI- Hamied,
why is it important that we get more disabled people in this field?am
HAMIED- I
think it’s really important because science needs to be diverse, to have
diverse people working in science. If you have the usual people that are able
to access science, then that kind of imaginative spirit, or us to push the
frontiers if you like, in Star Trek lingo, and go where no-one’s gone before.
PAUL- It’s
important for the development of the individuals themselves as well, it’s they
who are the important thing, they have a contribution to make of some sort, and
they should make the best and biggest contribution that they are capable of.
NIKKI- Thank
you so much, it’s been a right treat. Like I said, I was a bit nervous thinking
I don’t know much about science, but I’m really, really chuffed.
HAMIED- You’re
a scientist too, Nikki. And you as well,
Emma.
EMMA- A
scientist of words.
NIKKI- Yeah.
EMMA- Guys,
I am so inspired by this.
NIKKI- Yeah,
100%. You can go to the Lightyear Foundation online, www.lightyearfoundation.org for
more on the work that they do. And Paul Murdin, as we mentioned, was the
subject of this week’s The Life Scientific, which is available to listen to on
BBC Sounds.
MUSIC- Access
All
NIKKI- We’ve
already overed plans by train companies to close most rail station ticket
offices in England, and it’s not gone down well with unions and disability groups,
we know that, we’ve overed it on the show, haven’t we, Em? This week a petition has reached the 100,000
signatures needed for the proposals to be debated in Parliament. The petition
says, “We want the government to require train operators to keep ticket offices
and platform staff at train stations to help maintain health and safety standards
and customer information.”
EMMA- And
the recent consultation that we reported on was extended but is now closed. That has had 700,000 responses.
NIKKI- Wow,
that’s a lot!
EMMA- That
is a lot of responses. And the findings are due to be published on 31st
October. Let’s hope they’re not too scary, that being Halloween and all.
[CLIP]
This
idea that staff currently being behind the glass is a problem that needs to be
fixed is not the case at all, it’s actually one of the most important accessibility
features of a ticket office. It’s a designated place where disabled people can
go and be assured that they will find assistance.
[CLIP
ENDS]
NIKKI- That
was Katie Pennick that you just heard there. She was giving evidence to the
Transport Select Committee this Wednesday. The government and industry maintains
that closing ticket offices simply reflects the fact that 80% of people now buy
tickets online and the world has changed.
EMMA- It’s
always busy on the train front, isn’t it?
NIKKI- Yeah.
EMMA- Let’s
see what happens when the results of the consultation come out on Halloween.
NIKKI- Yeah.
We will definitely be marking that and following that on Access All, so tune in.
I got an exciting email this week, Ems.
EMMA- Did
you?
NIKKI- Yeah.
I filmed with a brilliant fella called Tom a good couple of years back
actually, and it was when we were covering the Down Syndrome Bill which is now
obviously an Act, for BBC News. He was
great, I spent the day with him, we went to his local gym, he was a fitness
fanatic. His amazing mum, Nicola, who I also met, she emailed me saying that
apparently over the past year Tom has worked hard to achieve 25 Guinness World
Records.
EMMA- What?!
NIKKI- I
know! Across a range of physical exercises in an adaptive class. He’s done the
most burpees in three minutes. Don’t even know what a burpees is, well done Tom.
You probably showed me actually Tom, to be fair, but must have forgotten. Number
of times lifting his own bodyweight in a minute. All sorts of stuff Well done.
Tom. I just wanted to make sure that we got you in the podcast to say well done
because that is no mean feat, is it Ems?
EMMA- Absolutely
not. And excitingly, the Guinness World Records’ book is out today and Tom is
in it. I can’t even think of a world record that I could achieve, I can’t even
come up with one.
NIKKI- Do
you know, a young Foxy did go on Record Breakers. Do you Record
Breakers with Roy Castle?
EMMA- Yes.
Great show. I’m really hoping Dave’s going to put the music in underneath this.
NIKKI- Oh
yeah!
MUSIC- Music
in background
NIKKI- I
was in the audience and we were going for a world record, so Roy Castle came up
to me in the audience, I was like, ‘No, please don’t pick me, I’m disabled,’
but I was sitting on a chair so he wouldn’t have known. I had to bend my arm –
it’s really hard – bend my arm back so my hand would be where my shoulder is,
okay? And I had to put loads of coins, the most amount of coins I could put on
the back of my forearm, hold them there, and then we had to then fling our arm
down, the coins would fall, and we had to catch as many as we could in our
hands.
EMMA- That
does not sound like something you would find easy to do.
NIKKI- No.
This was not Nikki friendly even back in the day when Nikki could walk, this
was like a Nikki no-no.
EMMA- A
Nikki no-no!
NIKKI- Roy
Castle came up to me and it was all recorded and we were on TV, I was going,
“Roy, no, I’m disabled. Roy, I can’t do it, I’m disabled.” But no, obviously he couldn’t hear, no-one
could hear. I just went along with it as I do, and I managed to bend my arm
back just enough to get the coins on, literally as soon as they were on two
seconds later ‘neeon’ they all slid off and fell on the floor. And that was my
embarrassing Roy Castle Record Breaker moment.
EMMA- I
just tried to do it, that’s not that easy for anybody.
NIKKI- You’re
doing it right. You’re doing it right, that was it. I was very young, I was
like secondary school first year, I think. I was just chuffed to have been on a
show with Roy Castle. But it was an awkward age, it was that age when I was
like wobbling around the school and figuring out who I was, and trying very
hard to become a standup comedian in about three months just to get by. But
yeah, flipping hell they all fell. It was quite funny though.
EMMA- I
can see all the coins now.
NIKKI- Yeah.
Loved it.
MUSIC- Music
NIKKI- Speaking
of records, a British man has become the first amputee to swim the North
Channel from Northern Ireland to Scotland, and he’s done it solo. Jonty, I hope
I’ve pronounced this right, Warneken. Is
that right do you think, Ems?
EMMA- I’m
going to say yes. It’s phonetically
right anyway.
NIKKI- Good.
Jonty Warneken – apologies if it’s not Jonty – from North Yorkshire, who lost
his left leg after a car crash in 1994, he completed the feat in 15 hours and
24 minutes. The distance that he swam was 21.4 miles, Ems, but with currents
pushing him slightly off course he ended up travelling 33.5 miles.
EMMA- That’s
a lot more miles!
NIKKI- That
a lot, isn’t it?
EMMA- It
was a lot more than he was expecting.
NIKKI- I
know! Well done, Jonty.
EMMA- Well
done, Jonty. The North Channel is considered the toughest of the Oceans Seven
swim challenges around the world. It’s slightly longer than the English
Channel, the water tends to be colder, and there are strong currents and lion’s
mane jellyfish.
NIKKI- Blimey.
EMMA- They’re
very big and very stingy.
NIKKI- Do
they kill you?
EMMA- No,
I don’t believe so, but they would really hurt. Apparently when you swim into
the area of a lion’s mane, the water’s effervescent and you’ll feel quite a lot
of pain. That’s what Wikipedia told me anyway.
NIKKI- Oh,
okay. You know if you get stung by jellyfish, is that when someone has to-?
EMMA- Has
to wee on you.
NIKKI- Yeah,
that’s the one.
EMMA- I’d
say you’d need a lot of wee to cope with a lion’s mane jellyfish sting.
NIKKI- Really? Okay.
EMMA- But
anyway, Mr Warneken said at the end, “I was actually concerned because I
finished in the dark against the cliffs and the sea was bashing around on the
rocks, so I was more focused on self-preservation than thinking about what I
had achieved.” I’m not surprised.
NIKKI- Yeah.
Scary.
EMMA- Don’t
they rub you with goose fat before you do those swims?
NIKKI- I
don’t know, but if they do count me in!
MUSIC- Access
All
NIKKI- You
may have heard of the presenter, activist, content creator and journalist, Lucy
Edwards. She fully lost her sight 10 years ago, and since then she’s made it
her mission to share her experiences with all of us. She has a huge following
on social media with nearly two million followers on TikTok. Two million, Emma,
two million! But most importantly, she’s worked on a previous incarnation of
this podcast. There we go! Her latest project is with the BBC’s Travel Show
where she visited Japan. Let’s take a listen.
[CLIP]
I’ve
come a long way learning to live with sight loss, but I’ve never been this far
away from home. It’s just hit me like a tonne of bricks that it’s actually
really hard being in a new place when you can’t see it.
In
this first episode:
The
ferry’s about to depart. [Gong]
I’m travelling
from the mainland to one of the most remotest parts of Japan.
[Drums]
What are these for?
But
will I be able to make sense of a country so famous for its visual beauty?
[Music] This is Japan, the way I see it.
[CLIP
ENDS]
NIKKI- Hello,
Lucy. Welcome back to Access All.
LUCY- Hello.
Thank you so much for having me, guys, I’m so excited to be on.
NIKKI- We
love it when Lucy Edwards come on, don’t we Ems?
EMMA- Oh,
we do. So much lovely energy coming out of our Lucy Edwards.
NIKKI- Let’s
talk about Japan, eh? Let’s go straight in there because we’ve seen the episodes,
Lucy. What did you get out of that trip personally?
LUCY- Personally,
oh my gosh! I landed in Japan and the airport just smells like someone’s house,
it smells so clean. That was my first waft of loveliness. Then I jumped in a
taxi which unbeknown to me they have automatic doors, so I’ve shut it and the
guy went, “No!” I didn’t break it so that’s all good, but apparently it automatically
shuts. So that was very delightful and
unexpected. Then just the whole city, it’s so quiet, other than if you’re on Shibuya
Crossing which is the big crossing that everyone talks about. The rest of it is
just very accessible, tactile lines everywhere. If I could speak Japanese I’d be there.
NIKKI- Lucy,
hajimemashite. Watashi wa Nikki desu.
LUCY- Ooh! Does that mean my name’s Nikki?
NIKKI- Yeah!
EMMA- She
already knew that though.
NIKKI- Arigato
gozaimasu.
LUCY- Arigato
gozaimasu. Thank you very much. I said that a lot after meals, I was like,
“Thank you very much” and then I bowed.
NIKKI- I
can’t it now but I had to learn what sorry meant in Japanese because I
was often running over people’s feet
LUCY- Nik,
how did you find it, because I’ve heard that it’s not that wheelchair
accessible? I’m here raving about it with all the braille on the walls, the
tactile maps in the loos, on the bullet trains, but what about you?
NIKKI- We
were chatting about this before. I don’t want to dampen your amazing experience,
but I think for me as someone who’s physically disabled it was a totally
different experience.
LUCY- It
was a lot of step up and step down now you say it. But also I don’t know, I
came back and reflected on this and socially I think they’re not there yet. I
felt taken care of, I didn’t necessarily feel equal.
NIKKI- Lucy,
how did you find getting around?
LUCY- Oh,
I loved it. From point A to point B usually there was a tactile line, so in
museums, and then it even carried on into a museum, which is amazing because
usually you’re in a train station or a museum and it’s a vast abyss of nothing
and it’s quite echoey and your guide dog is finding it hard to shoreline.
EMMA- To
shoreline, I love it. Finding it hard to stay by the edge of the path or
whatever.
LUCY- Yeah,
exactly. Finding it hard to kind of stay to the edge of any building line. If
you’re a guide dog , I did speak to a contributor out there and he was
telling me it’s quite hard to get a guide dog from his perspective. They tend
to like rent them out more and you have them for a year or two years and then
not again. But there’s no guide dogs really anywhere and I’m like, ‘Where are
the blind people using the lines? I’m
the only one.’
EMMA- In
of the guide dogs, are they just going to go straight to robot guide
dogs?
NIKKI- Oh,
here we go.
EMMA- Because
I have to tell you, I’m massively, massively jealous of you on that programme
because you got to try out a robot guide dog, didn’t you?
LUCY- It
was so cool. It was like an AI suitcase, the first of its kind. Absolutely
loved it. It was a bit scary initially, you basically just squeeze the handle
and then it’s like ‘whoosh’ and you’re away, and you can set your speed with
like an up and down thingamajig [Doorbell rings] Sorry, my doorbell’s going off.
God, I’ve got the weirdest doorbell.
NIKKI- What’s
the tune playing, Luce?
LUCY- My
cleaner knocks it, and I think it’s a regal tune. It made me laugh so much that
it’s just stayed!
NIKKI- That
is a door knocker tune, I’m telling you. Do you think they’re then future then,
these robotic guide dog suitcase thingamajigs?
LUCY- I
do. I need to close my Smollie’s fluffy ears, but it did go round people, and
it got me in the lift to a point where I was standing there pressing all the buttons.
There was braille buttons which was really, really cool, and it got me there,
and then I was like, “Right, I want you to go forward now,” but it kind of didn’t
have the gusto to go when I kept going to the floor that I wanted. My producer
was like, “Meet me at the bottom on Floor 0” about three times, and I was like,
“Hi, I’m here again!” It was so funny, it was like a comedy show. Anyway, I got
there eventually. [Laughs]
EMMA- It’s
funny, because we’re hearing from manufacturers about these incredible products,
guide dog like things that don’t poo or puke. They’re the big things for me
that they don’t do, or shed hair. But
hearing it from another blind person and that it actually works, that’s even
more exciting actually.
NIKKI- Awwh.
LUCY- Yeah,
deffo. It really excited me, guys. It kind of gave me shivers because it just
took you up to different exhibits. Also, the museum that I was at, I’ve
obviously just got married, thinking about babies, there was like a tactile exhibit
of how a foetus grows in your belly.
NIKKI- Wow!
LUCY- So
they’re making it all more accessible, it’s really cool.
NIKKI- We’re
going to touch on this wedding of yours in a bit actually, Lucy Edwards. One of
the things I loved about the documentaries that you made, those two episodes,
they’re brilliant, but one of the moments that was really lovely was the
vending machine moment. We’ve got a clip.
[CLIP]
Yay,
I’ve got something and it’s dinging at me. Oh okay, this doesn’t feel like Coca
Cola! What’s this drink, question mark?
It’s
a latte.
Ooh,
it’s a latte. Why not? I don’t care, I
got a drink! I would have went with that to be fair.
[CLIP
ENDS]
EMMA- You’ve
got your phone speaking faster than I do.
NIKKI- Yeah,
I was going to say that as well, how on earth do you understand what on earth
that phone is saying?
LUCY- Everyone
says, “Oh my gosh.” I was just really chuffed
to bits that those tactile buttons which me and Em were talking about before
the pod started, we were talking about our washing machines, just bring back
the old tactile buttons. That’s basically what it was, and I just pushed one
and I was like, “It works! I actually got a drink that I can drink.”
NIKKI- Honestly
Lucy, whenever I see the commercial for a very well known brand of shampoo, I’m
like, “I know Lucy.” Obviously I make it
out like we’re kind of BFFs.
LUCY- We
are, babe.
NIKKI- Well
can we be? That would be amazing! But I just think amazing, it’s just so good
seeing you on these commercials. And it all came, didn’t it, from your social
media, from the fact that you’re so popular on social media and you’re an
influencer, and you’re – it says here – part of the new breed. [Laughter] You’re
part of the new breed, baby! Did you have a plan mapped out, Lucy, from the
beginning? When you first started all of
this did you think, ‘Right, this is where I’m going to be’?
LUCY- To
be honest, hun, it was in lockdown and I didn’t have as much freelance work and
I thought, ‘I’m just going to put all my
ideas online on TikTok and just see. I’m going to post three times a day,” and
everyone thought I was a bit cray-cray but it’s fine. The more I posted, the
more I feeded it, because it’s such a new platform and the algorithm was so
kind of all of over the place really, and there was a learn on TikTok hashtag trending,
I kind of found my home there. But I think I didn’t really realise how big it
would go so quickly. From August to I think the end of the November I was on a
million followers, so it kind of hit you all at once. It’s something I’ve
always wanted to do, I’ve always wanted to be a presenter from day dot really,
even starting at the Beeb. But I knew that I was kind of channelling it in a
way, because some things can be commissioned on my own socials and some things
can be commissioned on the telly, and that’s what I love.
EMMA- It’s
nice just to see a disabled person, a blind person out doing their thing with
joy in their heart, but a range of emotions. You did lose your sight 10 years
ago now and that was part of what you were saying on the documentary as well. How
has life changed for you since then, and what you have learned in the last
decade? It’s been so interesting
watching you grow and change and build confidence etc.
NIKKI- Because
I didn’t realise you had a breakdown, didn’t you? You say that in the
documentary. I didn’t know that about you, Lucy.
LUCY- Yeah.
Gosh, how have I grown and changed? I think that is a really important question.
Always thinking back to day dot when you first lose your sight, it’s so for me
quite... it’s my why. I always say why I do what I do every day, why I get up,
is I think back to those moments. I think there’s people today going through
what I did and I don’t want them to feel as alone, because there wasn’t loads
of stuff on the interweb and stuff about sight loss. I think for me, oh gosh,
having a breakdown I being 17 in the middle of my A-Level study years,
and I didn’t know braille yet because I was a rebellious teenager, ‘I don’t
need to know that, I’m not going blind ever,’ and then suddenly I was. Then I
was dictating all the commas and the full stops and everything to my teaching
assistant, so my exams took hours. I getting into law school and I
think it was finally getting through the exams, “I’ve just got to do this, I’ve
just got to do this. Even though I’ve lost my sight, I’ve just got to get
through my A-Levels.” That was the kind of goal in my head. Then when I did the
first term of law school I did it, but then I had a breakdown and I
thought, ‘I’ve got to stop. I’ve got to actually take in what’s just happened
to me rather that ignoring it,’ I think.
NIKKI- Is
that what you originally wanted to be, a lawyer then, Luce?
LUCY- Yeah.
I would say that was my sighted dream. I’m not afraid to tell people that I did
kind of dip out of law school because it wasn’t for me. Then I had a year at
home and I was like, ‘Who am I? Who do I
actually want to be? Who is blind Lucy,
not just sighted Lucy?’ I think I was just pretending I was someone that I wasn’t
for a while, and it was making me hurt more because I’d be like trying to
bargain with myself, the stages of grief. My boyfriend, husband now, was doing
a lot for me, and I’d be like, “Can you just do this? Can you just do that?”
and he was like, “Are you sure you don’t want to do it yourself?” and I’m like,
“I don’t have the mental energy.” I would
have to dig up my brain more if I wanted to do things. I mean it’s completely
different now.
NIKKI- Wow!
I mean look at you now, Lucy Edwards. And we have to say before we go, recently
married!
LUCY- I
loved our wedding. I walked down the aisle and I’d blindfolded everybody
because I was like, ‘Right, it’s [inaudible] and I want everyone to be a bit
like I do.’ Yeah.
NIKKI- Did
you? So you blindfolded all of your
guests?
LUCY- Yeah!
[Laughs]
NIKKI- What
about your hubby, was he blindfolded?
LUCY- Yeah,
he was blindfolded. Then I made him feel my dress and audio describe it to
everyone. They took off their blindfolds then he audio described my dress,
which consisted of “beautiful”, “lovely”, “with petal patterns”, because he was crying, bless him. [Laughs] He’s
just an amazing audio describer, but we’ve been together like 10 years.
NIKKI- Honestly,
it’s been such a pleasure. Congratulations on the wedding, Lucy. You can watch
the first episode of the Travel Show’s two part special on Lucy’s visit to
Japan, it’s called ‘Japan, the way I see it’, and it’s on this weekend on the
BBC news channel, and it’s also going to be available on the BBC iPlayer. Thanks, Lucy.
EMMA- Bye.
MUSIC- Theme
tune
NIKKI- Oh
Lucy Edwards, we just love her, don’t we Emma?
EMMA- We
do.
NIKKI- We
need to get her back on.
EMMA- In
the studio this time.
NIKKI- In
the studio, yes. She’s the ‘how to do social media guide’, isn’t she, she’s
just brilliant. We need a one day masterclass with Lucy Edwards to get our numbers
up, Emma Tracey.
EMMA- Absolutely.
She’s absolutely nailed it, hasn’t she?
NIKKI- She
has. And that is where we have to end the programme today.
EMMA- We’ve
got a lot of blokes on the production team this week, loads of them. Honestly, it’s full of men,
NIKKI- Lad,
lads, lads!
EMMA- Yeah.
They’ve asked me to do this a bit more blokey, so here we go. [Clears throat,
and then in a male voice] We are BBC Access All on accessall@bbc.co.uk on email, and you can
shout at the lady who lives in your speaker, she’s the one beginning with ‘A’
and sort of rhymes with dyslexia and sort of doesn’t. If you say, “Ask the BBC
for Access All,” she will serve you up our latest episode, yes she will. Especially
if I shout at her, she definitely will then.
NIKKI- I
think that was the best thing I’ve ever heard you do, Emma Tracey. And I love
you anyway, but I will love you forever for that. On that note everyone, have a
great day, and we’re going to go now because I can’t talk! Bye.
EMMA- Bye-bye.
[Trailer for Ukrainecast]
CLIP- “I
could feel our house shaking.” “That was
one of the scariest battles.” “I’m
traumatised, I’m completely destroyed.”
VICTORIA- Hello,
I’m Victoria Derbyshire, one of the hosts of Ukrainecast. We actually put out
the first episode of Ukrainecast on the very first day of the war when Russia
invaded Ukraine.
CLIP- “This
is a European country and it’s at war, it’s extraordinary.”
VICTORIA- So
much has happened since then, and all the way through we’ve been trying to tell
people’s stories, what’s really happening on the ground in Ukraine.
CLIP- “My
elder daughter was lying on the ground, she had been dead.”
VICTORIA- And
we’ll be here for you making sense of it all for as long as we need to be.
CLIP- “People
were being snatched and disappearing.” “People took to the streets even after
the Ukrainian forces had gone.”
VICTORIA- Ukrainecast
is made by the same BBC news team that makes this podcast.
CLIP- “This
is it, this is the war of the darkest evil against all humanity.”
VICTORIA- Do
listen to Ukrainecast on Tuesdays and Fridays, just search for Ukrainecast on
BBC Sounds.
