Jamie McDonald
Appearances
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
Is that as high as it goes? Thank you very much. Good evening. So, October 2022, I was invited to be a guest on the long-running satirical panel show, Have I Got News For You. And if you're not familiar with the format, the show features two teams, each with a guest captained by comedy legends, Paul Martin and Ian Hislop. And together we answer questions humorously on that week's news.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
The show is an institution. It's been running for over 30 years and its panels are a kind of who's who of comedy greats. So to be invited on, it was a massive highlight in my stand-up career. Only slight concern. The show is riddled with loads of video and picture rights. Which is a kind of unique challenge for a blind comedian.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
But I wasn't worried, right, because in this game, you know, my concerns are more about, you know, how do I get to stage, you know, without killing myself or somebody else. So a few pictures, I wasn't bothered. I was just excited. And the day of the recording arrived and I was collected from St. Pancras Station in this air-conditioned Mercedes Benz. Like a superstar. It was driven through London.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
Up to the studio where I was greeted by a runner and I was whisked down to hair and makeup. Then it was up to this audience-packed studio where amidst this light flashing din, I met the captains, you know, Paul and Ian, who are two comedy heroes of mine. And we were applauded into our seats and from nowhere I was given a bottle of water and a layer of anti-shine powder. There was some shouting.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
The cameras started rolling. The theme tune blasted out. And with this kind of bowel-melting surge of adrenaline, we were off. Now, prior to the show, the producers and I, we had had a chat about the video and picture rounds. And we all just thought it would be funny. LAUGHTER that whenever a picture or a clip come up for comment, I just have a guess at what it might be.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
So a Ford Fiesta popped up. I guessed it was Vladimir Putin. More unseen images popped up. I kept guessing it was Vladimir Putin. It turns out it was a very effective answer. It went down well with the audience. The recording was good fun. The producers were happy. You know, I thought, I've done a good job.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
The morning after the show aired, my wife and I, we were driving to Bristol and I opened Twitter just to see if there'd been any buzz around the show. And boom, I was hit with this force 10 Twitter star. If you don't know what a Twitter storm is, it's where a ton of Twitter trolls decide to suddenly get incandescent with rage at a person or an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with them.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
They lampoon, they attack, they go nuts, in this case on my behalf, until something else as equally as nothing to do with them happens and they bugger off to shout at that for a while. These are some of the tweets from this storm. I've changed the names, the handles, just to protect identities. At I'm a patronizing bellend wrote, shame on you, have I got news?
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
You invite a blind person onto your show and you make absolutely no adaptation to the format so he can take part. Okay. and then at, don't worry disabled people, I'll stand up for you, wrote, am I missing something here? What's wrong with giving the poor guy, hey, poor guy, prick. What's wrong with giving the poor guy an earpiece for audio description?
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
Because that would be about as entertaining as a seat-heavy game of musical chairs. So I thought, hang on a second here. I'm going to have to set the record straight. So we pulled into this rundown motorway service station where I tweeted, last night was a career highlight. I absolutely loved being on at Have I Got News. I really appreciate everybody's concern on my behalf.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
But at no point did I feel excluded in any way. Job done. I nipped that in the bud. We bought ourselves a triumphantly horrible service station picnic and we got back on the roads. But even before the heartburn from my rank motorway pie could kick in, I got this reply.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
at shush now disabled shush wrote thank you Jamie but the concern wasn't simply personal it was lazy and showed poor production values you should have been facilitated to provide your very best contribution I thought I'd done alright blind people need to be shown to be provided with full inclusion Oh, how do we know?
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
I know sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons, but man, I was fuming. Because I have spent a long time trying to figure out how to own my disability. So to have these keyboard warriors wrestle it from me with a patronizing pat on the head and a, it's okay, Jamie, we'll take it from here. It really boiled my blood. Because I started seriously losing my sight in my mid-teens.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
And actually, to this day, people still say, oh, that must have been a very tough stage of life to start losing your sight. Which kind of implies there's a good time. Lucky you going blind in your 40s. And it wasn't a good time. And I was embarrassed by my failing eyes to the point I spent my late teens and a good whack of my 20s in denial, kind of pretending I could still see.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
But sight, sight is surprisingly tricky to fake. I mean, I was nailing myself off street furniture, stumbling into main roads, constantly smashing into strangers who just thought I was aggressive and rude. I had to stop kind of misrepresenting myself as this bollard-bashing yob before I get run over or punched. I need to accept the inescapable fact that I was losing my sight.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
which I did at the age of 25. And my transition from able to disabled came when I started using this, my white stick. Which, to my amazement, wasn't just an excellent mobility aid, but it was also instantly explaining why I was accidentally in various dodgy situations. It was transformational. Because before it would be, oh, quick, there's a big Scottish pervert creeping around the ladies.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
But now with the stickers, oh, there's a big blind sweetheart lost in the loos. It was brilliant. And strong human traits are often characterized through metals, you know, steely-eyed, iron-willed. My white stick was giving me a brass neck. Now, a brass neck is a very high tolerance to excruciatingly awkward or embarrassing situations. It's very popular amongst politicians.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
And it was lucky because I'd been running out of options. You know, what was I going to do? Was I going to spend the rest of my life being embarrassed by my eyes? Sod that, you know. Ironically, I was starting to see the humor in them. And the first sight situation I remember finding funny, I was in a supermarket and I reached out for an apple.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
And just as I was about to grasp the Granny Smith... LAUGHTER I glimpsed another hand going for the same piece of fruit. So I whipped my hand back and I said, sorry. Just to realize that the apples were next to a mirror. I just apologized to my own hand. I chuckled away. No, my brass neck was allowing me to own my disability, and that was incredibly liberating.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
And, you know, constantly finding my life funny kind of naturally led me into stand-up comedy. And now my comedy and my blindness are inextricably linked. So to be invited onto a show like Have I Got News For You, wonderful, you know, chatting over ideas with producers, brilliant. But now, I had all these faux-outraged trolls deciding I hadn't been in on the joke. I'd been exploited.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
Not only were these people hijacking my disability, but they were using it to go after a show I'd loved been on. And no joke, right, the Twitter storm, it made the papers. The Sun, the Metro, the Times all attacked the BBC and have I got news for you on my behalf, right? Not one of them asked me for comment.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
And tweeting my enjoyment of the show hadn't worked and I was very reluctant to engage any further in case this was taken as some kind of vindication or recognition. God knows how much the storm would rage if they felt they had agency. I was absolutely powerless in the face of it. So I did what you do in any store. I battened down the hatches. Hope it blew itself out before it wrecked my career.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
Producers don't love it when you turn up to their show completely your very own angry Twitter mob. And part of me started thinking, have I got this wrong here? Do I have the right to full ownership of my eyes or do others have a stake in them if I'm using them for entertainment?
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
It wasn't so much an existential crisis, it was more a question of, do I, as a blind person on a high-profile show, have a duty to entertain or to uphold best accessible practices at all costs? At the recording, if a voiceover had come on saying, Jamie, you're looking at a picture of a Ford Fiesta. It's brilliant. Yeah, that's accessible. But as a comedian, what am I going to do with that?
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
I'd probably say something like, just another car I can't drive. The trolls would go nuts. Insensitive monsters. How do you tell a blind person he's looking at a picture of a car? You can't win. And I think one of the problems is that some people, they see disability as one thing. It's not. Blindness is like infinite combinations of psychological and physical impacts on people.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
You could have relatively good sight, be miserable, vice versa, everything in between. Blind people, we're all different. We're like snowflakes. Not two of us the same. And if a lot of us fall, people panic. And I was reflecting, I was reflecting on all this when I opened Twitter to see how the storm was doing. And it was, it was finally fading. But one tweet did catch my attention.
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Realities of Balancing Growth and Profit
At, finally somebody with some skin in the game wrote, I watched this as a newly acquired sight loss woman. And I found Jamie the cup of tea with no sympathy had been needen. Being Glaswegian, I got both his personality and his patter. And that decided it for me.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
Thank you very much. Good evening. Hi. So, October 2022, I was invited to be a guest on the long-running satirical panel show, Have I Got News For You. And if you're not familiar with the format, the show features two teams, each with a guest captained by comedy legends, Paul Martin and Ian Hislop. And together we answer questions humorously on that week's news. The show is an institution.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
It's been running for over 30 years and its panels are a kind of who's who of comedy greats. So to be invited on, it was a massive highlight in my stand-up career. Only slight concern. The show is riddled with loads of video and picture rights. Which is a kind of unique challenge for a blind comedian.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
But I wasn't worried, right, because in this game, you know, my concerns are more about, you know, how do I get to stage, you know, without killing myself or somebody else. I saw a few pictures. I wasn't bothered. I was just excited. And the day of the recording arrived, and I was collected from St. Pancras Station in this air-conditioned Mercedes-Benz, like a superstar.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
I was driven through London. Up to the studio where I was greeted by a runner and I was whisked down to hair and makeup. Then it was up to this audience-packed studio where amidst this light flashing din, I met the captains, you know, Paul and Ian, who are two comedy heroes of mine.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
And we were applauded into our seats and from nowhere I was given a bottle of water and a layer of anti-shine powder. There was some shouting. The cameras started rolling. The theme tune blasted out. And with this kind of bowel-melting surge of adrenaline, we were off. Now, prior to the show, the producers and I, we had had a chat about the video and picture rounds.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
And we all just thought it would be funny. LAUGHTER that whenever a picture or a clip come up for comment, I just have a guess at what it might be. So a Ford Fiesta popped up. I guessed it was Vladimir Putin. More unseen images popped up. I kept guessing it was Vladimir Putin. It turns out it was a very effective answer. It went down well with the audience. The recording was good fun.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
The producers were happy. You know, I thought, I've done a good job. The morning after the show aired, my wife and I, we were driving to Bristol and I opened Twitter just to see if there'd been any buzz around the show. And boom, I was hit with this force 10 Twitter star.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
If you don't know what a Twitter storm is, it's where a ton of Twitter trolls decide to suddenly get incandescent with rage at a person or an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with them. They lampoon, they attack, they go nuts, in this case on my behalf, until something else as equally as nothing to do with them happens and they bugger off to shout at that for a while.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
These are some of the tweets from the storm. I've changed the names, the handles, just to protect identities. At I'm a patronizing bellend wrote, shame on you, have I got news? You invite a blind person onto your show and you make absolutely no adaptation to the format so he can take part. Okay. Okay.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
and then at, don't worry disabled people, I'll stand up for you, wrote, am I missing something here? What's wrong with giving the poor guy, hey, poor guy, prick. What's wrong with giving the poor guy an earpiece for audio description? Because that would be about as entertaining as a seat-heavy game of musical chairs. So I thought, hang on a second here.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
I'm going to have to set the record straight. So we pulled into this rundown motorway service station where I tweeted, last night was a career highlight. I absolutely loved being on at Have I Got News. I really appreciate everybody's concern on my behalf. But at no point did I feel excluded in any way. Job done. I nipped that in the bud.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
We bought ourselves a triumphantly horrible service station picnic and we got back on the roads. But even before the heartburn from my rank motorway pie could kick in, I got this reply.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
at shush now disabled shush wrote thank you Jamie but the concern wasn't simply personal it was lazy and showed poor production values you should have been facilitated to provide your very best contribution I thought I'd done alright blind people need to be shown to be provided with full inclusion Oh, how do we know?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
I know sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons, but man, I was fuming. Because I have spent a long time trying to figure out how to own my disability. So to have these keyboard warriors wrestle it from me with a patronizing pat on the head and a, it's okay, Jamie, we'll take it from here. It really boiled my blood. Because I started seriously losing my sight in my mid-teens.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
And actually, to this day, people still say, oh, that must have been a very tough stage of life to start losing your sight. Which kind of implies there's a good time. Lucky you going blind in your 40s. And it wasn't a good time. And I was embarrassed by my failing eyes to the point I spent my late teens and a good whack of my 20s in denial, kind of pretending I could still see.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
But sight, sight is surprisingly tricky to fake. I mean, I was nailing myself off street furniture, stumbling into main roads, constantly smashing into strangers who just thought I was aggressive and rude. I had to stop kind of misrepresenting myself as this bollard-bashing yob before I get run over or punched. I need to accept the inescapable fact that I was losing my sight.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
which I did at the age of 25. And my transition from able to disabled came when I started using this, my white stick, which to my amazement wasn't just an excellent mobility aid, but it was also instantly explaining why I was accidentally in various dodgy situations. It was transformational. Because before it would be, oh, quick, there's a big Scottish pervert creeping around the ladies.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
But now with the stickers, oh, there's a big blind sweetheart lost in the loos. It was brilliant. And strong human traits are often characterized through metals, you know, steely-eyed, iron-willed. My white stick was giving me a brass neck. Now, a brass neck is a very high tolerance to excruciatingly awkward or embarrassing situations. It's very popular amongst politicians.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
And it was lucky because I'd been running out of options. You know, what was I going to do? Was I going to spend the rest of my life being embarrassed by my eyes? Sod that, you know. Ironically, I was starting to see the humor in them. And the first sight situation I remember finding funny, I was in a supermarket and I reached out for an apple.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
And just as I was about to grasp the Granny Smith... LAUGHTER I glimpsed another hand going for the same piece of fruit. So I whipped my hand back and I said, sorry. Just to realize that the apples were next to a mirror. I just apologized to my own hand. I chuckled away. No, my brass neck was allowing me to own my disability, and that was incredibly liberating.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
And, you know, constantly finding my life funny kind of naturally led me into stand-up comedy. And now my comedy and my blindness are inextricably linked. So to be invited onto a show like Have I Got News For You, wonderful, you know, chatting over ideas with producers, brilliant. But now, I had all these faux outraged trolls deciding I hadn't been in on the joke. I'd been exploited.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
Not only were these people hijacking my disability, but they were using it to go after a show I'd loved been on. And no joke, right, the Twitter storm, it made the papers. The Sun, the Metro, the Times all attacked the BBC and have I got news for you on my behalf, right? Not one of them asked me for comment.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
And tweeting my enjoyment of the show hadn't worked and I was very reluctant to engage any further in case this was taken as some kind of vindication or recognition. God knows how much the storm would rage if they felt they had agency. I was absolutely powerless in the face of it. So I did what you do in any store. I battened down the hatches. Hope it blew itself out before it wrecked my career.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
Producers don't love it when you turn up to their show completely your very own angry Twitter mob. And part of me started thinking, have I got this wrong here? Do I have the right to full ownership of my eyes or do others have a stake in them if I'm using them for entertainment? I mean, it wasn't so much an existential crisis.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
It was more a question of, do I, as a blind person on a high-profile show, have a duty to entertain or to uphold best accessible practices at all costs? You know, at the recording, if a voiceover had come on saying, Jamie, you're looking at a picture of a Ford Fiesta. It's a brilliant... Yeah, that's accessible. But as a comedian, what am I going to do with that?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
I'd probably say something like, just another car I can't drive. The trolls would go nuts. Insensitive monsters. How do you tell a blind person he's looking at a picture of a car? You can't win. And I think one of the problems is that some people, they see disability as one thing. It's not. Blindness is like infinite combinations of psychological and physical impacts on people.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
You could have relatively good sight, be miserable. Vice versa, everything in between. Blind people, we're all different. We're like snowflakes. Not two of us the same. And if a lot of us fall, people panic. And I was reflected, I was reflected in all this when I opened Twitter to see how the storm was doing. And it was, it was finally fading. But one tweet did catch my attention.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Great Expectations
At, finally somebody with some skin in the game wrote, I watched this as a newly acquired sight loss woman. And I found Jamie the cup of tea with no sympathy had been needen. Being Glaswegian, I got both his personality and his patter. And that decided it for me.