Joey Deacon’s life, his birthday and his impact on me

24 May 2017

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Joey Deacon.  He is someone I’ve come to greatly admire, and whose book greatly influenced me.
Let me explain.

If you are under 40, you will probably have no idea who Joey was.  If you are in your 40s like me, you will probably remember with shame the playground ‘jokes’ of the early 80s, where being compared to Joey Deacon was a source of mockery and insult.
Thatcher’s children were a cruel lot.

So if you don’t know who he was or have blocked it from your memory,  Joey Deacon spent most of his entire life in a hospital institution, due to severe cerebral palsy. In the 70s, he wrote a book on his experience called 'Tongue Tied' under a series of publications called ‘Sub-normality in the 70s’ published by MENCAP.   He sadly died soon after his Blue Peter appearances in 1981,  but his book had a profound impact on me when I tracked down a copy about 10 years ago.

So why remember Joey Deacon on his birthday?  For me there are several reasons:

1)      His determination was incredible.  He wrote a wonderful short autobiography by combining the skills of 4 close friends. His best friend Ernie (who also had cerebral palsy) was able to understand Joey speech and effectively translate Joey’s actions to words. Another patient, Michael then wrote down these verbal words into hand written longhand. It was then typed with an old typewrite by a fourth friend, Tom (who was initially unable to read or write but taught himself to type in order to help). Together it took them fourteen months to write forty-four pages.  Each friend had a skill and together they achieved their goal.  To me, that is a simple put powerful example of asset based thinking and what can be achieved in a world of co-production. This shows that a focus on what people can do, not what they can't do can achieve the goal.

2)      Something that struck me when I re-read his book, is how long he spend ‘institutionalised’. The lack of support or personal plan for him is shocking compared to modern times. He was intelligent,  yet was unsupported/under-stimulated for long periods. Thankfully supporting people with disabilities has changed for the better with some great pioneering work done here in Wales.  I recently spent some time with Cartrefi Cymru and was constantly impressed with their focused approach for each person they support, ensuring each individual’s aspirations are at the heart of each and every support plan.

3)      As a society, we are good at airbrushing over the past. To put it bluntly, Joey Deacon was famous with children in the 80s for being ‘a spastic’. Even writting that word now is not easy.   It was a source of mockery and insult. People of my age will likely deny calling their friends ‘Joey’ or stealing someone’s shoe.  I remember being in University in the mid 1990s and it was still a term of insult then. I think I last heard it in the early 2000s.  However, a quick online search shows hundreds of insulting Meme’s in Google Images sadly demonstrating that this still exists.  A quick look at Twitter has a couple of 'Joey' insults a day. Interestingly, Wikipedia has removed and completley toned down the section about ‘Blue Peter and cultural impact’ on the Joey Deacon page, which feels like we are pretending it never happened. I supect it will eventually be removed.   We shouldn’t forget what makes us uncomfortable.

4)      Equally some of the language and phrases used in the book gave me occasional shocks . Even the book's official strapline of ‘Sub-normality in the 70s’ caused some discomfort in the TPAS office this morning.

5)      The final thing I took away was how positive Joey and his friends were despite all the obstacles that society at the time (and their disabilities) presented to them.  They were creative, funny and inspirational and have had a profound and positive impact on me.  

So on the anniversary of your birthday Joey, I raise my morning paned (Welsh for cup of tea) to you. Penblwydd Hapus! 

 

David Wilton, Director

TPAS Cymru

Twitter: @Dai_TpasCymru

Linkedin: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/davidwilton