‘Anyone particularly stand out?’ I asked on the phone the day before filming. ‘Oh they’re all lovely. But maybe Paul. Yes, you have to meet Paul. He’s hilarious. He co-wrote the Vicar of Dibley’.
Day one of filming. Upstairs in a panelled room in Oxford’s town hall. A ballet class. Nothing particularly remarkable about that. Except this one was for people with Parkinson’s. Which turned out to be very remarkable indeed.
‘You know what – you ask the questions’. You’re much better placed to ask people what life’s like with Parkinson’s. And you know what, that thing you just said to me; say it straight into the camera’. And so it began.
Comedy writer Paul Mayhew-Archer became the presenter not of a documentary about Michael Parkinson as one person thought but of a film about the degenerative brain disease he was diagnosed with five years ago.
‘Sometimes it’s like life’s in slow-motion, ’ Paul said which is what inspired the slowmo sequence shot by Joe Cooper on a Sony FS 7 and edited at the BBC in Southampton by Steve Holdsworth.
Every shoot was fuelled by chocolate because we read somewhere it might replicate the effects of dopamine which - if you have Parkinson’s - is in short supply. And if things took longer than expected it wasn’t because of Parkinson’s. It might have been because of a man flying a drone in a park in Oxford whilst we were doing the final sunset piece to camera but mainly it was because we spent too much time laughing or trying to be funny. When something is so serious, trying not to take it seriously by looking for the funny side felt like the best way to take things very seriously indeed.
So over to Paul…
My career as a comedy writer means I’ve rarely been in front of the camera - I had a small part in Mrs Brown’s Boys and in Drop The Dead Donkey.I had the unforgettable role of “Man at Urinal."
But that was it until Parkinson’s came along and gave me my on-screen moment, my chance to say something.
There is an irony here because what Parkinson’s normally does is remove your abilities to communicate.
Firstly it makes your handwriting smaller and smaller until it is impossible to read.
Secondly it weakens your voice and encourages stammering so speech becomes increasingly difficult.
And thirdly it freezes your facial muscles so that smiling becomes a problem. I remember sitting opposite a woman at a dinner thinking “Cheer up love” and then discovering she was very funny but could not wrench her face into anything approximating a grin.
So I feel very fortunate that the BBC Inside Out and Jane Goddard gave me an opportunity to say what I think about Parkinson’s.
Which is that it’s a pain but it is also comic. Imagine a committee meeting where one member of the committee cannot remember names, another cannot remember nouns, another has no voice, another hallucinates and a fifth keeps walking backwards shouting “Effing Move"
When toddlers fall over there is a moment when they look at you as if to say “What do you want me to do? Laugh or cry” And I sometimes feel like that about Parkinson’s - I could get upset that wobbling around we are sometimes mistaken for being drunk. Or I could be delighted that when I genuinely am pissed out of my skull I can pretend it’s the Parkinson’s. I could get upset that at 58 I was diagnosed with a serious illness or I could be amused that several friends invited us to stay and we had several free holidays because they thought it was terminal. In fact we’ve been back to one couple in the Lake District five times. “Amazing I’ve made it this long’ I say. “I’m just taking it one day at a time"
What the future actually holds I have no idea. I won’t be playing “Man at urinal' again obviously. Not with a Parkinson's tremor.
Paul Mayhew-Archer is nominated for Documentary Presenter of The Year for Parkinson's: The Funny Side at The Grierson Awards 2016.
Jane Goddard for BBC South; first shown: BBC One
