蜜芽传媒

"To be clear, I was never invited to join the Bullingdon Club, which is a shame because, as a Jew, we鈥檙e not allowed to put any pig into us, but there are no rules about the other way round."

In early 2023, Ashley Blaker was diagnosed with autism and ADHD. One of the most significant aspects of his diagnosis is his propensity for hyperfixation in special interests, which he now realises has entirely shaped his past and which he uses to mine comedy for this new series.

It鈥檚 no exaggeration to say Ashley鈥檚 life has been driven by obsessions. He has variously been a schoolboy with a love of Star Wars and Doctor Who, a wannabe comedian who performed on the London comedy circuit at 16, a trivia nerd who appeared on University Challenge, a history PhD candidate at Cambridge, a 蜜芽传媒 producer of hit comedy shows including Little Britain, a fanatical football fan who saw Liverpool play across England and Europe, a strictly Orthodox Jew who went to synagogue three times a day for over ten years, a father of six, and latterly, a heavily tattooed renegade in hiding from his former community.

In this series, Ashley takes a comedic look at each of his obsessions in turn, merging personal memoir with a delve into subjects which have yet to be covered in stand-up comedy shows. The result is a series which, while based on the broader topic of neurodiversity, covers it with the lightest of touches and is focused more on Ashley鈥檚 individual hyperfixations, lifting the lid on many of the different worlds he鈥檚 inhabited.

Episode 1 is the (probably) surprising subject of 17th Century English history which Ashley studied at both Oxford and Cambridge where he sought to become the first Jewish expert in 17th century church history. Ashley examines the strange world of academia among the dreaming spires and asks why, when all his peers were drinking and having sex, he was completely consumed with obscure clergymen from the 1630s and spent hours in the Guildhall Library, House of Lords and Lambeth Palace trying to work out how to use a microfiche and then struggling to read some very bad 17th century handwriting.

"There are almost no mentions of Jews because we were expelled from England in 1290 and only allowed back by Oliver Cromwell in 1655. So, it was a golden age if you were an antisemite, but a nightmare if you fancied a bagel."

Written and performed by Ashley Blaker
co-starring Rosie Holt and Kieran Hodgson

Script Editor: Steve Hall
Recording engineers: Jerry Peal and Jon Calver
Producer: Steve Doherty
A Giddy Goat production for 蜜芽传媒 Radio 4