Moved to tears by the bootcamp that gives voice to stammerers
Ev erybody who watched School For Stammerers ( I Tv) must have given up and blubbed at some point. It’s just a question of when. Those who cry easily will have been in tears almost from the start, as 53-year- old lorry driver Tony admitted he didn’t feel a ‘real man’ because of his stutter.
others will have gone to pieces when 13-year-old riley described himself as ‘unrepairable . . . a jigsaw with too many pieces missing’.
For me, the lump in the throat became unbearable when another 13-year-old, James, plucked up the courage to ask a white-haired lady on a London street for directions. She seemed to understand by instinct that he was fighting down a speech impediment, and listened patiently with one hand pressed to her chest.
When James got his question out, she looked moved and proud — as though she was his own grandmother.
This was a remarkable documentary, told simply and respectfully. It followed six people through an intensive course, with 53 hours of lessons crammed into four days, on the McGuire Programme — a therapy that uses breathing and posture.
every one of the six was an impressive individual, even before the lessons began. emily was a supply teacher, Jessica a wedding photographer and Mueid a pharmacist: they were determined to work in spite of being unable to say their own names without verbal agonies.
but to see Mueid struggle to converse with customers, or hear that Jessica was afraid to get married herself because she thought she couldn’t repeat her wedding vows, was sobering.
It’s difficult to comprehend how much we rely on our voices, every hour of the day, until we see others deprived of theirs.
The course was no picnic. The six were forbidden access to Tv, radio and the internet. Talking between l essons was not allowed, and neither were calls home. Teenagers riley and James each had a parent with them, but pep talks were banned. This was SAS boot camp for stammerers.
And it worked. In fact, the results were stunning. Within a month, emily was able to take charge of a boisterous class without any hint of her old stutter. Tony was on stage at his local pub, telling gags — ‘I went to this fancy dress party as a loaf of bread... the birds were all over me!’
Inevitably, condensing a month of dedicated work i nto 90 minutes of Tv makes it look too easy. but if this programme inspires some of britain’s half a million stutterers to believe they, too, can conquer their problems, that’s beyond criticism.
reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, the performers who also write t he darkly comic playlets of Inside No 9 (bbC2), seem to actively invite criticism, with the wild variety of their stories.
Last week it was a pastiche of Shakespeare, packed with toilet jokes, that I found tiresome. This time, it was a heartfelt homage to the end-of-the-pier double acts that both men adored as children. They played Cheese and Crackers, a fourth-rate version of Morecambe and Wise: ‘ We weren’t even as good as Mike and bernie Winters.’
The characters were rich, constantly revealing new depths as they bickered their way through a reunion rehearsal — and the twist at the end came like the turn of a knife.
because the subject matter and the style of each episode are so variable, there’s always a touch of trepidation about sitting down to watch Inside No 9. The failures wouldn’t seem quite so disappointing, if the triumphs were not so superb.