Autism & Comedy

When I was 23 I joined a local amateur stand-up comedy group in York called Can't Sing, Can't Dance, Don't Care. My aim in doing comedy was to work on my confidence and my skills in talking to people, and because I was single and inexperienced at the time I hoped it would then ultimately help me meet people and find love. In the end I met my wife through doing comedy so it definitely helped me achieve my ultimate goal and so much more, but my people skills and my confidence were no different from start to finish. Of course, since hanging up my mic a mere year after I started, I've had my eyes opened wide to the fact that I've been autistic the whole time, and so I've been thinking recently... If I knew I was autistic back when I was regularly gigging, would that have changed anything about my writing and performance? Would it have helped or hindered?

I was never the greatest comedian in the business and I knew it, but despite my flaws I usually got a reasonable crowd reaction. My 2 main feedback points were firstly that in the early days a lot of my jokes were things that you would only really get if you knew me. That bit of feedback was a fairly easy fix with a bit of writing help from the rest of CSCDDC. I began to write jokes that were still based on me and my life, but at the same time were open enough for an audience to follow along with and see the humour. I also learned what the group's target audience was (primarily students) and how to cater more toward them.

The other main point of feedback was the one that I really struggled with; my delivery. Try as I might, whenever I was on stage (or in front of people in any capacity in life for that matter) I never knew how to be, where to go, how to gesture with body language, who/what to look at etc etc. I was often told by both audience and fellow CSCDDC members alike that my jokes were fine, but my delivery needed work and I really had no idea what to do about it. Nowadays I know I'm autistic, I know about stimming, I know my own ticks and habits, and so I think that if I were to go back to 2010/2011 and re-do my comedy career I'd be able to incorporate autism into my set which would in theory put both myself and the audience more at ease about it and I'd have the confidence to stim a bit on stage, to not make eye contact with them, and to generally be a bit "weird" and make a positive out of it. Because my voice is quite monotonous and I'm a bit (read: very) wooden on stage I think a deliberately deadpan delivery would suit me best, but the jokes also need to be written to match the delivery style. For example, a one-liner machine like Jimmy Carr wouldn't do very well performing the rambling, energetic routine of a Michael McIntyre. At the moment I can think of 2 autism jokes that I could have added into my set had I known I was autistic:

"I often take things literally. I'm a kleptomaniac."

"If Autism comes from the Greek word Autos, meaning 'self', does that mean Autism is the art of taking selfies?" (I made a meme out of this one ages ago but never posted it online. I'll stick it at the bottom of this for you!)

So I think that self-awareness and knowledge about any of your own traits, conditions, habits and so on would be beneficial to doing things like comedy because it would go a long way to explaining how you are to those watching, and if nothing else it's another thing to pull material from. Sometimes when I'm watching live comedy or a comedian on the telly, I do sometimes think I should maybe get back behind the mic again now. But then I remember not doing great the first time round, and on top of that nowadays I've got adult responsibilities and commitments to take care of. Incidentally, the way I met my wife was by performing at a gig in what used to be the Tap & Spile in York. She was out with a friend because it was her 20th birthday and they came to watch our show. The gig as a whole went well, but my particular set went down like a lead balloon with only Sarah and her friend laughing at anything I said because they were drunk. That had to be the worst performance I've ever done and it effectively killed off my comedy career, although I did do a couple more gigs after that before I stopped completely. Sarah ended up talking to all of us in CSCDDC after my death show and she was really nice about my set. After that we got talking and it was only a matter of weeks before we officially got together.

My comedy career was a bitter-sweet time in my life because it was something that I struggled with when it came down to it because of my autism that I wasn't even aware of at the time, but it also led me to gaining everything I've ever wanted in life. I guess the irony is that if I'd never done comedy I still might not know I'm autistic to this day.

[Image description: The popular 'Philosoraptor' meme featuring a green velociraptor head in the centre with its index finger near its chin to appear contemplative. The text at the top reads "If Autism comes from the Greek word Autos, meaning 'self'" and the bottom text reads "Is Autism the art of taking selfies?"]

Special Interests

Autistic special interests are an intense interest in a certain subject, activity or hobby that goes beyond the usual level of interest that neurotypicals would experience, and is often a source of enjoyment and comfort to autistics. An individual might want to learn everything there is to know about their area of interest and/or participate in it all the time.

A myth about special interests is that the person's particular interest fixed and permanent, but this isn't the case in reality. I've had 2 main interests that I can remember between my early teens and now. The first one being Pokémon, which started way back when the Pokémon card craze was going on. I'm often reluctant to try or explore new things, so just like with most other things I got into it late. It started when I was with my 2 cousins who collected Pokémon cards. We were in Woolworth's at one point (yeah, that's how long ago it was) and their dad was buying them a pack of cards each, so he got me one as well. I really don't know why but I was hooked pretty much straight away from there. I remember the very first card I saw when I opened that first pack was Zapdos and I think I must have been intrigued by this spiky, yellow, electric bird, especially when I found out that it was a legendary Pokémon.

From there my interest steadily grew and I went on to collect more cards, games, posters, VHS/videos (DVD's hadn't made it big yet back in those days... Christ, how old is this making me sound?!) and everything else you could think of. I couldn't do it now, but at the time I used to be able to name all 151 original Pokémon in numerical order off the top of my head. I've never understood why Mew is number 151, and Mewtwo is 150, when Mewtwo is a clone of Mew, but I digress. I remember getting a Game Boy Colour and Pokémon Yellow for my 14th birthday. It was a school day and I had a quick go on it that morning and really didn't want to go to school. Outside of school hours I spent literally all day every day playing it because my parents would let me do next to nothing but play video games ever since I was little. I even remember at one point I would listen to the song Double Trouble from the album 2. B. A. Master on repeat for literally hours at a time.

I can't remember a specific point where my Pokémon interest started to wind down, but I definitely remember how much I got bullied for liking it and I also remember not caring and carrying on liking it and making no secret of it. At the end of the day it was my special interest and it meant pretty much everything to me at the time so I wasn't going to let a few nasty kids at school stop me enjoying it. My next special interest was pro wrestling, started again by the same cousins who got me into Pokémon. We used to spend a lot of time together as we're a similar age, although I'm the oldest, and they used to bring the WWF Smackdown! video game to my house and we'd play it on the original Playstation. There was an overlap for a while between wrestling and Pokémon, but I think eventually wrestling took over. I remember playing the game and being captivated by characters like Stone Cold Steve Austin (my all time favourite wrestler), Kane, The Rock, Triple H etc.

From playing the game (no pun intended) I moved onto watching Raw (known as Raw Is War at the time) and Smackdown! on the telly. This was just at the start of the WCW/ECW invasion angle and I think the war between the then-WWF and the Alliance helped to lure me in. Stone Cold Steve Austin was the heavyweight champion, Shane and Stephanie McMahon had just bought WCW and ECW respectively to try to run their dad and the WWF out of business, and The Undertaker's wife was being stalked by a mystery man who a couple of episodes later turned out to be Diamond Dallas Page wanting to be made famous. This was closely followed by my first wrestling pay per view King Of The Ring 2001 where Edge won the King Of The Ring tournament, Kurt Angle wrestled 2 tournament matches before taking on Shane McMahon in a street fight where Shane was suplexed through 2 glass panels. This bit stands out because he was meant to go straight through each one on the first attempt, but the suplexes to both panels were botched and Shane landed on his head with each one but still got up and tried again. Kane teamed up with Spike Dudley to take on the Dudley Boyz, and the main event was a triple threat match for the WWF championship between Stone Cold Steve Austin, Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit.

While WWE has changed completely since those days I'm still a die hard wrestling fan 18 years later, although there was a period of a few years between 2010 and 2014 where I stopped watching because I hated the anonymous general manager gimmick that they were running on Raw. I'd always been aware that there were other wrestling promotions outside of WWE, but I wasn't aware of any specific ones other than TNA (now re-branded as Impact) which I'd tried to get into before but couldn't. It wasn't until after I started watching WWE again that I became aware of other companies such as New Japan Pro Wrestling. It was also after I got back into WWE that I discovered the British independent scene when I saw a poster for a Leeds-based company called Grapple Wrestling when I lived over that side of Yorkshire, and I started attending their live shows as regularly as I could. I wish I'd known about other promotions during my break from WWE because I was still very much a wrestling fan in that time, it's just that I didn't watch it because I didn't like the product that WWE were putting out at the time and wasn't properly aware of any alternatives.

There was also a difference in how I watch wrestling when I came back in 2014. From 2001 to 2010 it was a very much more naive view of just this is the product they're giving us, I like it. Whereas when I came back to it in 2014 I started to learn more of the ins and outs of the wrestling industry itself, getting a bit more involved in the online community and learning from there about booking, what a mark is, what being/going over is, what a jobber is and so on. So from 2014 onward I watched it more through the eyes of a critic than I had done before, and I think this reflects a difference in the fandom as a whole between 2010 and 2014.

So there you have it, those are my 2 big autistic special interests in my life. Like a lot of autistic people I rely on my special interests to help me escape the world we live in, and if it wasn't for autism and/or my interest in wrestling I might not even have the job I've got now. This is because when I had my interview back in 2016, one of the tasks was to write a short essay about anything I wanted to. Of course, I chose to write about wrestling and massively put it over about how I love the athleticism, the larger than life characters, the stories, the fact that they have to be so many different things all at once. They have to be athletes, actors, singers, comedians, models and so much more depending on their gimmicks and the angles that are running.

I'll stop rambling in a minute and leave you with just 1 last thing. Wrestlemania 35 is coming up, and there's been a lot of speculation about who Kurt Angle will face in his retirement match. It's been said by a few people online and I 100% agree that Kurt's final opponent should be John Cena. I remember watching the episode of Smackdown! in 2002 where John Cena debuted and lost to Kurt Angle. We'd never have known back then that Cena would go on to become the mega star that he is today, and the face of the company for so many years. So with that, and with the wrestling tradition that when you retire you put someone else over on your way out, it'd be so fitting to bring it full circle and have Angle retire in defeat to Cena on the grandest stage of them all.

My Decision

I know it's past midnight now, so it's no longer Blog Day Friday, but I haven't been to bed yet so technically it still is for me!

Following on from my post earlier today, I've had a think about things and spoken to a few people and I've come to the decision that I'll continue to fund raise for the National Autistic Society.

While the things that happened at Mendip House were totally disgusting and unforgivable, I see these as the actions of the staff more than of the charity. I do accept that it's the National Autistic Society's responsibility to train, supervise and oversee what goes on in any care home that they run, and it was therefore right that they were fined (whether the amount was enough is a matter for another time), but ultimately I believe it comes down to individual responsibility and the staff should be held accountable for their own actions.

I do see positivity towards the charity as a whole and I'm willing accept this as just one incident that will (hopefully) be learned from and ultimately put behind us. I believe the charity does a lot more good than it's done harm so I'll carry on supporting them in my walk on 7th April.

Am I Doing The Right Thing?

I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to fund raise for the National Autistic Society through a 10 mile walk as part of World Autism Awareness Week, but there's recently been a scandal brought to my attention where NAS have been fined £4,000 over the abuse and bullying of residents in one of the care homes run by the charity.

Admittedly, my first thought was that it happened in 2016, we're now in 2019 and the care home has now been closed down. A lot can change in 3 years. However, it doesn't seem to be an isolated incident so it further depletes my trust in the charity as a whole. I still want to do my walk and I definitely want to make sure that I at least do something in World Autism Awareness Week, so I'm going to have a look at my Just Giving page and see if I can potentially change the charity I'm supporting without scrapping my existing page and starting all over again.

That then raises the question of who to support. I've had a quick Google search of other Autism charities, and the local ones to me include Leeds Autism Services, Autism Plus and not a lot more. Leeds Autism Services' website says they're accredited by NAS, so that rules that one out and leaves Autism Plus. What do you guys think about the NAS incident and their fine? Have you got any other suggestions for either national or Yorkshire-based Autism charities that I should support? Let me know in the comments or on social media where my handle is @The_Big_Shaw.

My Story

Welcome one and all to my new blog! For my very first post I thought why not go through what brought me to the realisation that I'm autistic, and ultimately to my late diagnosis in December.

The very first time that I ever considered that I might be autistic (although at the time I didn't see it as being at all likely) was way back around 2008 or 2009 when a girl I'd previously had a couple of dates with posted a link to an Autism Quotient (AQ - a bit like an Intelligence Quotient or IQ, but specifically designed around the autism spectrum) quiz on Facebook. I was bored so thought I'd give it a go and scored quite highly on it but I put it down to nothing but a daft quiz on Facebook and thought nothing of it after that...

That was until I met my wife Sarah a few years later and moved in together. We were at home one night in 2012 watching Embarrassing Bodies on Channel 4 and there was a bit at the end advertising their website and the quizzes and stuff you can do on there. So I had a look at it just for something to do, and when I came to the autism quiz I found that I'd scored the exact same on this one as I did on the Facebook one I'd done a few years prior - I think my score was 37 from memory. At this point I'm starting to consider the possibility that there might be something in it so I mentioned it to Sarah and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shocked at her response of "It wouldn't surprise me." From there I started to wonder whether it might be worth me getting checked out for it although I still didn't really know anything about autism at the time. I knew I'd always been REALLY socially awkward, found it hard to make friends, and that I had a few interests that other people didn't seem to share with me in both the subject itself and in the passion that I had for it, but I'd never realised that it could be because I was different, even though at the same time I always knew deep down that I was different.

So it took me a long time to decide whether I wanted to be assessed for autism, and a long time again to pluck up the courage to see my GP and ask for a referral. From an outside perspective it probably doesn't seem like that big a deal, but I must have been 26 or 27 by the time I actually bit the bullet and saw my GP about it, and in all that time the only person that seems to have indicated that there might be something like autism at the heart of it was my wife, so there was a lot of self-doubt there. They referred me and I was assessed in 2015 in Leeds by a team who didn't seem to take me seriously, with the main assessor talking to me like a child the whole way through, and I got the impression she just took one look at me, decided "Nope" and that was that. I get that the tasks and the assessment were designed to diagnosed children, but there was absolutely no need to talk to me so patronisingly like a child. Anyway, the outcome of that referral was that I wasn't autistic, and their "diagnosis" was a lack of confidence, which I'm pretty sure isn't even a thing in medical terms.

Initially, I was happy enough to be told that I wasn't autistic, but then the more I thought about it the more it started to bug me again as me and Sarah both still thought there was definitely something there, and I was also bugged a lot by thoughts of "if it's not autism, what is it?" We moved back to York in late 2016 and I  soon started to think about asking for a second opinion now that we were in a different area that's dealt with by a different team at a different centre. It was another game of plucking up the courage to ask for a referral again, which I finally did in July 2017 and that started a waiting period of well over a year before I was even contacted with an appointment. It's during this waiting period that I watched Are You Autistic? on Channel 4, and discovered the online autistic community through that and the #ActuallyAutistic hashtag. This is when I started to learn more about autism as a whole. I really started to understand myself and embrace my autistic identity as I reached a self-diagnosis while I waited for the appointments for an official one. Let me take this opportunity to credit Neurodivergent Rebel and Agony Autie on YouTube as 2 of the main channels that I went to for support and information at this point (and I'm still a keen subscriber to both).

September 2018 I finally had my initial screening appointment in York and I could tell straight away that I was being taken much more seriously this time. The appointments were much more in depth than the Leeds one, they treated me like an adult and it was clear that they genuinely wanted to help me establish the cause of my issues. It was so different to my Leeds referral that I made sure I thanked the psychologist at the end of my screening appointment for making it so much better. For a part of the assessment they needed to speak to somebody who knew me as a child to find out what I was like growing up. I was reluctant to ask my parents because of what happened in my first referral. By that I mean partly the fact that I wasn't diagnosed first time around, but mainly their reaction to when I told them I was being referred in the first place. The first thing my dad did was laugh, until he realised I was being serious. He then told me "You're not autistic, you're normal" and stormed out of the room. My mum didn't pretend to understand or think there was anything there to be assessed, but she was at least willing to help me look for answers. One of the reasons me and Sarah think I wasn't diagnosed in Leeds was because my parents basically don't believe in mental health, and they've always put my social problems down to me being in hospital due to asthma for a lot of my childhood so I missed out on a lot of time socialising with other kids, so we think my mum's input with that didn't help. But again, the York referral was much more in depth and spent almost an hour and a half speaking to my mum on the phone, which is more than just the couple of passing questions that Leeds asked her. The other thing that I think made a difference at York was that Sarah couldn't make the appointments with me so I had to go on my own. I think a lot of the time I hide behind Sarah, so it seems to have been helpful this time around that I had nowhere to hide and couldn't do anything but openly and honestly put myself forward.

All the assessment appointments had been and gone, so all that was left was to go to a separate appointment for the results. Aside from a bit of a hiccup on the receptionists's part, it was all good news as they diagnosed me with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) on 4th December 2018. What that meant to me was that I finally had the answers and the closure that I was looking for all that time, and I left the appointment feeling amazingly happy and giddy. The diagnosis was ASD rather than autism or Asperger's or anything else because it's all done under just the one umbrella term now, presumably in part due to the controversy over Hans Asperger's role with the Nazis, but I think that and the terminology that's currently used are different stories for another time.

So there you have it, that's my diagnosis journey, and because this year's World Autism Awareness Week is the first one since my diagnosis I feel like I should do my bit to raise funds, awareness and acceptance. World Autism Awareness Week is from 1st to 7th April, and I'll be doing a 10 mile walk on the 7th from York Minster to home. The link to my Just Giving page is below, and even if you can't donate you can help by sharing the link so that we can spread the word as much as possible.

www.justgiving.com/fundraising/DaveShaw13