‘Doctors took one look at her and alarms bells rang’
For the first time, comedian Al Murray opens up about raising a daughter with a disability. By Maureen Paton
Al Murray’s man-in-themoon face is dimpled and benign, as you might expect from a stand-up comedian who knows how to be funny about everything from Brexit (both sides) to the religious politics of pork scratchings – without giving offence.
His alter ego, the garrulous, fatheaded, xenophobic Pub Landlord, shares nothing but a disarmingly wide smile with the Oxford-educated Alastair, who can count his great-great-great grandfather William Makepeace Thackeray and the 3rd Duke of Atholl among his ancestors. With a passion for military history, he also has the vital populist touch that has seen his career span almost three decades, after beginning in the Oxford Revue. All would therefore seem very rosy in Mr Murray’s multitasking garden, but it turns out he’s very good at hiding the “difficult stuff ” behind a brave and stoical face.
Not one for over-sharing, the twicedivorced 50-year-old has carefully avoided discussing his personal life over the years. As he once told me, “I’m quite English: I find even sex jokes a bit embarrassing and rather peculiar.”
Yet for the first time, the comedian has decided to reveal publicly that his daughter Scarlett, 19, has grown up with hemiplegia, a form of cerebral palsy that affects all the responses on one side of the body.
“It’s effectively like you’re born having had a stroke, with part of the body in paralysis or in a spastic state because of an injury to the part of the brain that controls muscle movement,” he explains, before graphically comparing the exhausting struggle to get Scarlett the right treatment to trench warfare.
Neither Murray nor his second ex-wife, Amber Hargreaves, realised there was anything wrong when the elder of their two daughters was born.
“She was a happy, healthy-looking baby who began to talk at the right time; she’s never had a slur to her speech,” he says. “It wasn’t until she started to toddle at two that we noticed she had issues with her gait and her left hand, which she was clenching a lot. Doctors took one look and all the alarm bells went off.
“We were told that it was something – we still don’t know exactly what – that had happened in the third trimester, during the final three months of pregnancy.
“Being a parent is daunting enough anyway, but we began to wonder how the world was going to work for our child – or if it was even going to work at all.”
Although the condition is incurable, it can be managed with occupational therapy, orthotics and medication. Yet, because growth spurts can have an effect on a CP patient’s bones and muscles, Murray and Amber found themselves in a gruelling race against time to get the right treatment: “I’ll be quite honest with you, we were fortunate enough to afford to go private on some of the stuff she needed, because it’s not there otherwise,” he says.
One of the many cruelties of the condition, which affects one person in every thousand, is that it only reveals its effects on the body bit by bit.
“Hemiplegia can affect your eyes, your hearing, all your responses or functions on one side,” says Murray, “but you only find out what’s affected as they grow up.”
Scarlett’s mobility issues presented first, and although she can see very well – “she’s an avid, rapacious reader” – they only discovered in her late teens that the vision in her left eye is very different to her right.
Their biggest battle was with bureaucracy. “We were really in the trenches with it 10 years ago when Scarlett was nine, trying to get things set up and in place before puberty. People don’t know enough about the condition, which can vary so enormously from person to person, so the real issue was getting it taken seriously by the people we were dealing with,” explains Murray.
Scarlett was 10 and her
‘With Scarlett, we were fortunate to go private, because the help’s not there’
younger sister, Willow, six when their parents split up in 2008; although Murray has always refused to talk about it, Amber was quoted at the time as saying: “It’s just one of those very sad things. There’s no one else involved and it’s very amicable. We still love and respect each other a lot.” They seem to have succeeded in sharing parental responsibilities, with the girls reportedly living with Murray in Chiswick, west London.
The reason he is talking about his family struggles is because tomorrow he’s hosting a gala concert in Birmingham by disabled classical musicians, a curtain-raiser to a conference by the musical disability charity OHMI (the One-handed Musical Instrument Trust), which pioneers the development and adaptation of musical instruments for physically disabled people. Founded by Dr Stephen Hetherington in 2011, following his hemiplegic daughter Amy’s frustrated attempts to join her school orchestra, it’s a cause close to Murray’s heart – along with charities Hemihelp and Grief Encounter (for bereaved young people).
“I love playing music and wanted Scarlett to enjoy it, too,” he says. “When she was eight and wanted to play the recorder like everyone else at her school, she couldn’t, because she hasn’t got the mobility in her left hand for it. Which is upsetting for any kid, because they want to fit in. If we had known about something as brilliant as OHMI, that may have made a huge difference for her.”
To keep things as normal as possible, he and Amber sent Scarlett to mainstream schools. “The disability wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t look after herself,” he says. “She never needed a wheelchair, but along the way she has had to wear right-angled splints on her left leg, day and night, to stretch the muscles and get the right neural information back to the brain to help her walk properly, otherwise she would have ended up with one leg shorter than the other.”
Yet being taught alongside mostly able-bodied children brought other challenges. “I was bullied myself [at Bedford School] and learnt to combat that with humour, but when it’s your own child, it’s terrible,” says Murray. “We’re very proud of her. She has battled on – she’s always been very phlegmatic about it.”
One of her inspirations has been the stand-up comedian Francesca Martinez, who styles herself “Wobbly” because of her cerebral palsy – especially since Scarlett seems to have inherited her father’s comic timing. “I always remember one time when we were in a department store with Scarlett, who was about four and wearing her leg splint, a clunky plastic thing with straps. A woman said to her: ‘Are you all right, little girl? What’s happened to your leg?’ And Scarlett just looked at her and said: ‘Long story’,” he recalls, chuckling.
As for Murray, the focus that has always driven his comedy career has come in very useful when fighting for his child’s rights. “The great thing about being self-employed is that you’re your own boss, but that means you’ve got to push,” he explains. “I’ve always thought that if I stop, everyone will forget about me. Even though we all pretend we love each other, showbusiness is red in tooth and claw, and very competitive. When I first started in stand-up, I even thought that if I took a week off, I would forget how to do it.”
Not one for self-pity, when I ask him about the emotional pressures on parents with a disabled child, he brushes it aside: “The person under pressure when you’ve got this in your life is the child,” he says, firmly. “Whatever else is going on, they’re the one having to deal with it.
“I try to be upbeat. I wouldn’t want to say ‘Poor us’ because other people have it much, much, much tougher. At the moment Scarlett is independent – she’s now reading English at university: she’s very bright and has always taken the attitude that she’ll play to her strengths.”
As a little girl, Scarlett would overhear Murray trying out jokes at home and call it his Funny Daddy Work. So will she be going to the concert? “I’ve asked her but we’ll see – she’s like any other 19-year-old, she wants to do her own thing,” he says, taking that as a very healthy sign indeed.
‘We’re very proud of her. She’s always been phlegmatic about her illness’