What can disabled people get away with?

19th June 2025

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – episode 164

Presented by Emma Tracey

 

EMMA-         Hello Paul Carter, you’re very welcome to Access All.

PAUL-           Thank you for having me, it’s a pleasure to be back.

EMMA-         Shall we talk about one of my favourite headlines from this week, I think one of yours too, “shopping centre in Nottinghamshire have decided to limit scooter speed to four miles per hour.”

PAUL-           Yes. My favourite bit about this is “a spate of near misses.” Have you seen this?

EMMA-         I mean what kind of scooter racing shenanigans have been going on in Nottinghamshire?!

PAUL-           I can’t actually decide what’s funnier, as in do we think there’s one singular person that’s responsible for this carnage in the shopping centre, or is the Idlewells Shopping Centre in Nottinghamshire cursed by an army of reckless mobility scooter riders?

EMMA-         I’m going to go with the second.

PAUL-           [Laughs]

EMMA-         Although you had a scooter in university, didn’t you?

PAUL-           I had a power chair, yeah.

EMMA-         Did you have a spate of near misses across campus?

PAUL-           I did have more than a spate of near misses, and not so near misses, well hits I guess. I was a pretty reckless driver. I mean obviously mixing students and power chairs probably isn’t the best idea. There was I think a slightly epochal story, but I don’t believe this is true, my friends tell me there was a story in the local paper when I was a student of a power chair user obstructing traffic in the early hours of the morning and police were called, and by the time the police arrived the person had disappeared into the night. And that’s been falsely ascribed to me.

EMMA-         And was anyone able to describe the person? Because you’re pretty describable.

PAUL-           [Laughs] Well, I don’t think the local paper went quite that far. Anyway, it wasn’t me.

EMMA-         Oh, it wasn’t you. Are you sure?!

PAUL-           [Laughs]

EMMA-         Now listen, the other interesting thing to me is the four miles per hour. I mean you have to be going at a bit of a click when you’re walking to get to four miles per hour, and in a shopping centre you wouldn’t necessarily always be doing that unless you’re lost and desperately trying to find the way out, like each bit of it. What was your speed like in your power chair do you think?

PAUL-           I never actually measured it, but probably about that, yeah, it was pretty quick. They’re quite difficult to control, you know they’re quite sensitive, and people always think, ‘Oh, that looks really easy,’ and then they get in and try and drive it and crash it into a door or a window or whatever.

EMMA-         Or a big rack of very expensive pottery maybe?

PAUL-           Indeed. Indeed, yeah. So I don’t know, I kind of want to see the CCTV.

EMMA-         That’s what we need to do, we need to request it with an FOI and have a good look at it for next time. I think some scooters go up to like six or seven miles per hour, don’t they, so I guess there was some sort of room for that spate of near misses.

PAUL-           And they’re pretty weighty as well, you wouldn’t want to be clobbered by one that’s doing seven miles an hour I wouldn’t imagine.

EMMA-         That’s very true. And I wouldn’t see it coming either so we’d have a problem. See, this is the thing, sometimes disabled people don’t gel with each other. I’m blind, slowly walking round with my cane trying to find a shop to no avail, someone comes along seven miles an hour straight in the back of me and that’s the end.

PAUL-           Oil and water. Oil and water.

EMMA-         Oil and water.

MUSIC-         Theme music.

EMMA-         Hello, I’m Emma Tracey and this is Access All, the weekly podcast where you will find the best disability interviews, news and discussion. Later I’ll be chatting to disabled comedian Rosie Jones about her new sitcom Pushers, alongside co-star Ruben Reuter. But first, you’ve heard him already, he is a BBC journalist and presenter, joining me to talk through the headlines is Paul Carter. Hello, Paul.

PAUL-           Hello. I appreciate the big build-up, thank you.

EMMA-         Woo-woo-woo-woo! I didn’t even get to say what we can find you in. We can find you in TechNow, is that right, on BBC, used to be Click?

PAUL-           TechNow, yeah. I’m in too many places to be honest. TechNow, yeah, and then TechXplore, which is on BBC News and iPlayer, and also a new programme, World’s Greatest Train Journeys, which is quite exciting.

EMMA-         Okay, you like trains do you then, Paul?

PAUL-           I love a train.

EMMA-         Ah, that’s nice. Tell me about the headlines that have caught your attention this week.

PAUL-           Yeah, there’s quite a lot of disability stuff around in the news this week. A bit of a warning, most of it isn’t the most uplifting or happy of stories.

EMMA-         We have literally had to put in a particularly positive element to the podcast because the stories are often so gloomy, so this is not news to me.

PAUL-           Yeah. I mean there’s lots and lots of stuff, as you would expect, across the papers on the various developments in benefit reform and whether any concessions might be made on that going forward. But just to look at a few of the other things that are kicking around, The Sun are saying that Jamie Borthwick from EastEnders is set to return to Albert Square. He was suspended recently after allegedly making a disablist slur on the set of Strictly. In The Telegraph, “end of life care must improve before assisted dying.” And also in The Telegraph, they’re reporting that talks to solve the social care funding crisis have quietly been abandoned. Baroness Casey is choosing to have an independent body to assist with the social care review, rather than by having across party talks, as was previously on the table.

EMMA-         Thanks Paul, that was pretty grim actually.

PAUL-           [Laughs] Sorry about that.

EMMA-         And just to keep the tone sort of serious, maybe we’ll just pop back to the welfare bill for a minute. Sir Keir Starmer has offered some concessions to the backbenchers who are rebelling against planned cuts to disability benefits. He said that once people’s benefits have changed, they have a 13 week period before those benefits are stopped, instead of the four weeks that there are at the moment. That’s one concession he’s given. But he’s keen to put the bill through, isn’t he?

PAUL-           Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a lot of talk and a lot of licks coming out of whether these concessions are going to be enough to stop Labour MPs rebelling against it, some saying it’s not. I think that’s a watch this space, I think.

EMMA-         And the second reading might happen on 3rd July specifically, so let’s see if that’s what happens. At that stage the bill is debated in the House of Commons and a vote is taken. And then Paul, there is so much more. It’s so complicated, I don’t know how much more you want to know, how much more you can take in. There’s a third reading, which could take ages or it could take one day, depending on the type of process they put in place. It is unwieldy and it does feel complicated, but we’re going to be across it all for you on Access All. And hopefully we’ll be able to bring it to you as it happens, the changes, and when it goes through Parliament, and it when it gets to the House of Lords etc, if indeed it does go to the House of Lords. Intriguing.

PAUL-           And one other headline I saw that is away from welfare which I found quite interesting, obviously I’m a tech reporter so this flagged up to my interest, it’s the AI therapy bots. Several scientists and psychiatry experts are warning that they could give dangerous advice to people that are using them for therapy.

EMMA-         Do people use them for therapy?

PAUL-           Well, I think some people are. The major kind of AI players, ChatGPT and the like say not to do that, but there are other AI providers that are providing so-called specialist therapy chatbots, and it’s a pretty unregulated world at the moment.

EMMA-         Would you use it? Would you encourage people to use it? You know a lot about AI at this stage I’d imagine from your work?

PAUL-           Yeah. I mean look, it’s not something I would use. It’s one of them things you can certainly see the potential for it, right. I’m just not 100% convinced we’re in that place yet.

EMMA-         Why?

PAUL-           Well, because I just don’t think it’s reliable enough.

EMMA-         You’re the tech expert here, Paul, I certainly am not.

PAUL-           Allegedly.

EMMA-         What would you use? What do you think AI can be used for reliably maybe as a disabled person?

PAUL-           It has so much potential, and that’s a word we keep using, so much potential, and I think we’re starting to see a lot of that potential realised in description, in navigation, also in being able to write stuff and summarise stuff and make things easier to understand. I have to admit, and this is probably going to surprise a lot of people, I’m a little bit of a luddite when it comes to AI.

EMMA-         What?! You’re like one of the BBC’s most prominent tech journalists. How did that happen?

PAUL-           [Laughs] I’m still struggling to find a use case that kind of works for me personally.

EMMA-         I have found ways that it’s been quite cool for me. I never thought I’d say this in real life or on a podcast or whatever, but I have new glasses.

PAUL-           Oh.

EMMA-         I’m blind, I’ve been blind from birth, and I’ve got new glasses. What’s that about?

PAUL-           Okay, go on. I think I know what you’re going to say, but tell me about your glasses, what are they?

EMMA-         They’re smart glasses. They’re wearables I think they call them.

PAUL-           Okay, yeah.

EMMA-         And they can tell me what’s around me. If I look at a flower, they can tell me what it is, that’s quite nice. They can describe a scene. They read me my messages. I can reply. I can take videos and photos.

PAUL-           You should have worn them for the podcast, Emma.

EMMA-         I mean I can show you them if you want?

PAUL-           Hmmm. This is exciting, isn’t it, real-time reveal!

EMMA-         My eyes move round a lot, so people who look at me are used to my eyes sort of, I mean I’m not going to say rattling around my head but, you know, moving around a bit, and I look like a blind person.

PAUL-           Here we go, I’m going to have to describe this to the people that can’t see. Oh wow! Oh, I like those, they really suit you.

EMMA-         Oh, I forgot the best part! The best part, Paul Carter, is Judy Dench is the voice.

PAUL-           Sorry, what?

EMMA-         Judy Dench. You know the voice that reads out whatever I want it to tell me, my glasses, it’s Judy Dench!

PAUL-           Actual Judy Dench, not someone who sounds like her?

EMMA-         It’s actual Judy Dench. Honest to god, the name of the voice is Judy Dench.

PAUL-           Amazing.

EMMA-         She tells me the weather. She’s adorable.

PAUL-           Have you had any weird stuff, any weird comments? Do people think like you’re videoing them or anything like that?

EMMA-         It will come, this is the problem, but at the moment people are like, “Oh, you’ll know where I am in the cafe because you’re wearing your glasses, you know you’ll be able to do this,” because they think there’s ongoing description of my surroundings, whereas actually have to take a photo to get it to describe. Right, so I’m going to take a photo and see if you can hear it. [Takes photo] Look and tell me what you see.

FEMALE-      I see a radio studio with various equipment and devices. There is a clock on the wall and several monitors and screens displaying different information. There are also various buttons, knobs and levers on the control panel.

EMMA-         It’s good, she’s reading me the stuff that’s in the studio, that’s quite cool. But it’s just that it’s Judy Dench really.

PAUL-           [Laughs]

MUSIC-         Music.

EMMA-         You’re listening to Access All, and we are available on BBC Sounds. Go on there and subscribe to us if you haven’t done so already. You can listen to our back catalogue and get each new episode as it drops onto your device every single week. And we do have some interviews coming up exclusively on the podcast feed, so another reason to subscribe so that you don’t miss those.

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EMMA-         Pushers is a new Channel 4 comedy series which follows a motley crew of disabled people who unexpectedly pivot from being charity volunteers to cocaine dealers. Intriguing, right? Fortunately for me, two of the stars of the show, comedian Rosie Jones who also wrote Pushers, and actor Ruben Reuter, are with me to tell me all about it. How are you both doing?

ROSIE-          Hello. Yeah, how are you?

EMMA-         I’m really well. It’s nice to have you in person. And Ruben, it’s lovely to have you as well. Let’s talk a little bit about who you both are first, both complete disability legends I would say. Rosie is a standup comedian, you’ve been on all the best panel shows, you’ve had your own stand-up tour, you’ve made a documentary, but this is your first fully written series where you also star, yes?

ROSIE-          Yeah. Which is an absolute dream come true. I mean right from deciding to become a comedian, I feel like writing and having your own sitcom is the ultimate. And I mean it’s not been easy, we’ve been writing and developing it now for several years, so to be able to now be at a point where it’s out and we can talk about it, yeah, it’s brilliant.

EMMA-         A bit of a relief. And also, amazing to have such brilliant disabled cast onboard as well, because we’ve got Ruben here who reports for Channel 4 News, was in CBBC’s The Dumping Ground for years and years playing Finn, which lots and lots of people will know and love. What was it like, Ruben, working together with Rosie on this show?

RUBEN-        Rosie’s actually marvellous, and she looks out for everyone.

EMMA-         And Rosie, what was it like working with Ruben and the other disabled performers? And non-disabled, obviously.

ROSIE-          It was so brilliant. Actually from the start, me and my co-writer, Peter, were so passionate about making sure that we represented so many different types of disability. Because when you have three/four/five disabled characters in one sitcom, it opens you up to talking more about who that person is beyond their disability. It’s incredibly freeing, and it made for such a rich diverse group of people.

EMMA-         Let’s hear a bit of what they sound like. Here is a clip from the trailer of Pushers.

[Clip]

FEMALE-      Do you regularly soil yourself?

ROSIE-          Don’t write that, [inaudible].

MALE-           Look who it is, Emily Dawkins.

MALE-           Give me fifty squid and deliver this.

ROSIE-          [Inaudible] a bit dodgy.

MALE-           Name me one person who’s ever died from drugs.

MALE-           You lot.

ROSIE-          Am I in trouble?

MALE-           Of course not.

MALE-           The ideal drug mule is a girl with an obvious disability.

FEMALE-      Who else did you have in mind for this organised crime group? [Gun shots]

MALE-           Welcome to the inner rectum.

ROSIE-          Sanctum.

[End of clip]

EMMA-         So that trailer kind of shows how Emily, Rosie your character, gets into the situation where she was a charity volunteer and is then a cocaine dealer. Why did you want to write Pushers, something about I want to say people doing criminal activity?

ROSIE-          Even now when trying to [inaudible], society underestimates disabled people and what we’re capable of, and not only is it a funny and joyful premise, but we’re actually saying something about society not taking us seriously, and actually disabled people using the system to get their own way. So I feel like that is true equality, disabled drug dealers.

EMMA-         The character, Emily, that you play, actually gets into it when her benefits are cut after an appeal, and obviously benefits and government’s plans for changes and getting people back into work is very high up in the news at the moment.

ROSIE-          We actually wrote every episode of the series during the Tory Government, so let’s show us really a comment on how the Tory Government treated disabled people. And it won’t surprise anyone here but I voted Labour, I’m very liberal and left, so when Labour got elected last year, personally I was elated. But in terms of the show, knowing that it wasn’t coming out until June ’25, I thought we’ll be a year into a Labour Government-

EMMA-         Will it be relevant?

ROSIE-          Yeah, we’ll be living in a utopia for disabled people. Turns out June ’25 is here and unfortunately we need a show like this more than ever.

EMMA-         Do you think, Rosie, that disabled people, or have you ever heard of any disabled people turn to crime? Maybe not cocaine dealing necessarily, but because they’ve felt kind of pushed down by society, or because they don’t have enough money because they’ve lost their benefits, or they’ve given up on the legitimate route of getting what they need.

ROSIE-          Well, I don’t have any firsthand experience of disabled people turning to crime yet, but I do a lot of work with the excellent Shaw Trust.

EMMA-         Food banks’ charity, yeah.

ROSIE-          The food banks are seeing a real rise in terms of disabled people coming to food banks as a result of having their benefits cut. So definitely out there right now if you’re disabled and you’re working class, it really is a struggle.

EMMA-         Yeah. Ruben, tell me a bit about you character Harry, what’s he like?

RUBEN-        Basically my character is unique. He likes to dance. He’s a filmmaker, and he wants to work on TV. He likes to dress up with different characters. And I think he’s bored in the shop.

EMMA-         In the shop that they all work in at the start?

RUBEN-        Yeah, yeah. So he’s a bit bored in the shop, so he wants to break free and he’s up for anything.

EMMA-         Oh brilliant. He sounds like one to watch, for sure. Now listen, I feel a bit like the reason that a whole pile of disabled people were assembled as a dream team of drug dealers, was because or at least partly because it was thought that maybe they could get away with it a bit more, and that people might not think that someone with cerebral palsy or someone with down syndrome like Ruben has, would do something like that. So it made me think, what’s the best thing that you’ve gotten away with because of being visibly disabled? Ruben?

RUBEN-        Okay, so getting away with things, it is the dinner ladies at school always give me an extra pudding, so that’s a plus! [Laughs]

ROSIE-          That’s a good one.

EMMA-         Rosie?

ROSIE-          I need to say I’m a big drinker and a big clubber, so if I get to a nightclub and I see a long queue outside, I absolutely play the disabled card, I go right to the front and I get myself on that dancefloor with a bit of tequila, job’s a good’un.

EMMA-         Absolutely. Dead right too. Pushers starts on 19th June at 10.00 pm on Channel 4 on TV and streaming as well.

MUSIC-         Music.

EMMA-         Thanks so much to Rosie Jones and Ruben Reuter there. Loved the end of that interview where they talked about what they’ve gotten away with because they are visibly disabled. And having you, another visibly disabled person in the studio today, Paul, I need to ask what have you got away with because you’re disabled?

PAUL-           Similar to Rosie in a lot of ways. I travel a lot for the various programmes that I make, so I make full use of it at airports to be able to skip all kinds of lines and queues and various things like that. But in terms of perhaps more audaciously getting away with stuff, I’m going to make myself sound like I was some sort of teenage tearaway, but back in the day in the dark mists of time when I was younger, I used to go to a lot of gigs and festivals, and me and my best mate had a ruse basically where we would use my impairment to blag our way backstage. And it was a lot more successful than you would imagine that it actually would be!

EMMA-         Who have you met by doing that?

PAUL-           Oh god, most of the Britpop luminaries back in the day. I have a whole selection of photographs of me with people like Liam Gallagher, Richard Ashcroft, yeah, all of the classics. Basically we used to go – I’m not sure I should be admitting to this on such a platform.

EMMA-         Oh no, walk me through it. What did you, how did you do it?

PAUL-           We used to go to the bit where they had the security standing and you’re only going to get through if you had the lanyards etc, and basically say that I had to use the special disabled toilets backstage because I couldn’t use the ones that were out in the main venue. Which was obviously nonsense, but the number of times it worked. We would say, “We only want to come in to use the toilet and then we’ll come straight back out,” and of course we never did.

EMMA-         Wow! And did you chat to them? What did you tell the famous people that you were backstage?

PAUL-           Oh, I just used to be open about it, completely front it.

EMMA-         Did they think it was like a “Make a Wish” thing or something?

PAUL-           [Laughs]

EMMA-         Or competition winner, Paul Carter, gets to meet Liam Gallagher.

PAUL-           You see, if my 16 year old brain had been smarter, that’s what I should have gone with.

EMMA-         I love that. Mine is actually festival related as well, you know. And again, I shouldn’t really admit this. I think I’ve told the story to people before to be honest. I was basically the booze mule going into festivals. Very expensive booze, warm beer at festivals, so people have been known to try and bring in their own, and they’d search the bags. But mine, if it got searched at all, it would be like a little look in the top of it. So we would hide the drinks underneath my rain jacket and stuff and bring it in. And same when I used to go out with the cool kids, they’d be smoking fags, I wouldn’t be, out into the playground, and we used to go behind a shed. We got caught one day, and I used to always have my laptop bag with me, so when we got caught they would shove all their cigarettes into my laptop bag. So basically I was taken – what do you call it?

PAUL-           Taken advantage of.

EMMA-         Taken advantage of basically. But it gave me a little bit of kudos so I didn’t mind at the time. I’d just joined a new school, I needed a bit of help with getting in with the cool crowd, so that’s what we did.

PAUL-           So you turned to smuggling to achieve that.

EMMA-         I basically was a smuggler, yeah, pretty much.

PAUL-           [Laughs]

EMMA-         But I’m such a goodie-goodie though. Nowadays I don’t know how much I’d get away with. The odd First Class on a train and stuff, that’s it really.

PAUL-           I should stress, I no longer lie to get into areas that I shouldn’t be getting into. Yeah, you’re right. That’s funny, isn’t it, you’ve mentioned First Class on trains. I’ve had that a lot as well, you sit down and they say, “Would you like to sit in First Class?” and it’s like, “Okay, I’m not going to say no. But I think the only reason you’re doing that is because I’m disabled.”

EMMA-         If you end up in First Class for an accessibility reason, then the food comes round and you have to decide whether to eat it or not. You’ve been put in there because it’s the best place for you to sit to get assistance at the other end and then they’re like, “Do you want your dinner?” and I’m like, “I don’t know” because I’m not supposed to be here.

PAUL-           Totally. It’s a really guilt thing, isn’t it? It’s like I haven’t paid for this, am I allowed to touch it? Especially when they just put it down and you leave it sitting there. Sometimes do you wait for the ticket person to come through and then once they’ve checked your ticket, then you can sort of go for it?

EMMA-         Yeah.

PAUL-           It’s like a dog being told that they can eat their dinner, isn’t it? [Laughs]

EMMA-         Once the ticket man says it’s okay, I can tuck into my pie or whatever it is, or have a free drink or whatever. I will go with the free tea, I feel like a cup of tea is okay.

PAUL-           Yeah. I don’t think they’re going to boot you out for a cup of tea.

EMMA-         No, absolutely not. Paul, why do disabled people get away with more stuff?

PAUL-           I think it’s a double-edged thing, isn’t it? One, I think it’s people want to do nice things and think that they’re somehow doing us a favour I guess and doing the right thing, But also, it’s this sort of presumption that we couldn’t possibly be anything other than 100% upstanding members of society, which obviously both yourself and myself are.

EMMA-         Absolutely we are. And I think people feel, and I’m going to go with this because I think you need to take some perks – tell me if I’m wrong – but I think people think they deserve it, there’s some bits of their lives is quite tricky or they find other stuff hard, maybe they can just skip a queue or have a free whatever.

PAUL-           Yeah. And I think that they’re completely right.

EMMA-         Absolutely. Do you think that disabled people got away with more things in the past than they do now because of like security and maybe more awareness?

PAUL-           Yeah, I’d say so. I think it was a bit of a free-for-all when I was a kid. But maybe that’s just because I was bolder and more willing to try and get away with stuff.

EMMA-         You were the first one they’d seen out in the community.

PAUL-           Yeah, totally. [Laughs]

EMMA-         It’s been great having you.

PAUL-           Aww really? It’s gone so quickly.

EMMA-         I’ve really, really enjoyed our chat.

PAUL-           Same.

EMMA-         And thank you to you for listening. You can contact us, accessall@bbc.co.uk is our email address, we’re on X and we’re on Instagram @BBCAccessAll. Don’t forget to comment on the videos that we pop up there, and you can even, Paul, get in touch with us on the WhatsApp, which I love, I love getting voice messages. You can send them to me, or you can send a text, with the word “access” at the beginning of the message. Our number is 0330 123 9480. Bye.

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