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16th July 2025

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – Ep 167

Presented by Emma Tracey

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EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello, I’m Emma Tracey and this is Access All, where you will find the best disability news chat and interviews. And this week it’s specifically about neurodivergence because I get to chat to comedian Robin Ince. Take a listen:

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý With me is comedian and co-host of Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage, it’s Robin Ince. Hello.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We’ve brought you in here because you’ve just published a book about ADHD called Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal. Tell me what that is in your own words, please sir.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, basically I found out by chance that I was ADHD, even though audiences have been telling me for 25 years. I would get it the whole time, and also a lot of audiences actually would come up to me and say, we’ve made a list of all the stories you started and did not finish, please finish five of them so we have a sense of closure before the end of the evening. And then a wonderful young autistic man called Jamie, Jamie and Lion – I don’t know if you’ve ever come across?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I know Jamie and Lion really well.

[Clip]

JAMIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Part of autistic life is that thing of breaking conventions that people have that they don’t know they have or decisions they make without ever being taught.

[End of clip]

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And I’m so excited that we have him in common because every conversation I’ve had with Jamie has been just a total eye-opener.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I was so lucky because what happened I was still on Twitter social media then, and I noticed there was someone following me called Jamie and Lion. And I thought this person looks interesting so I followed him, and almost immediately got a DM from him which said, this is all a bit surreal, thank you so much for following me, there’s some things I want to talk to you about, can I blurt them out. I said, please blurt them out. And that led to a four-hour conversation a couple of days later where he explained to me about how pretty much everything that was going on in my mind was very much an ADHD processing of the world. It’s an odd thing because basically what I wanted to do, I’d written a book also which covered some areas of mental health, anxiety etc. a few years before called I’m a Joke and So Are You, and what I’d been seeing more and more was realising how many people in my audience and how many people I met were, to use the words of Thoreau, living quiet lives of desperation, but brilliantly masking it.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Right.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And so I really wanted to write a book which was, because I would often get people coming up to me and saying, oh I wish I had your confidence, not realising of course that in my head was an angry perpetual heckler, and I would wake up in the morning anxious and I would go to bed anxious and be anxious in between. So, I wanted to write a book which wasn’t just about my experience, it was about the experience also of many people who were ADHD, autistic, dyspraxic, dyslexia and cover as much ground as possible.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Neurodivergence just overall.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, basically. And I wanted to write a book that wasn’t going the science of this and the science of that. I wanted to write a book that I hoped would help people walk unafraid through the world.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I mean, there is plenty of science in it and there’s plenty of chat, as Jamie and Lion told me when I emailed him and went, oh my goodness, you helped Robin Ince, la, la, la. He said the legwork you’ve done for this book is unreal. Now, Jamie and Lion, I just want to explain Lion is a plushie who comes everywhere with Jamie, and when we say Jamie we say Jamie and Lion because that’s what he prefers and Lion’s really important to him. And I used to produce a podcast called 1800 Seconds on Autism.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh, I didn’t know. That’s a fantastic show, fantastic.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. I produced at least one series of that with Jamie and Lion and Robyn, and just every day was a school day but also just a wonderful conversation, every single day was just such a… I mean, he helped you get your diagnosis or he helped you realise you were ADHD and then you went to get your diagnosis, which you’re in your 50s now and you’ve not had it very long really. It feels like you’re a new man. It feels like you’ve sort of found yourself and discovered new things about yourself. Are you much happier now?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh hugely. I mean, that was again a very important part of why I wanted to write the book, which was there’s a beautiful term that I’m sure you probably know which Jamie and Lion told me which was, confident vulnerability. And confident vulnerability is where you understand what is seen as your vulnerability in the rest of the world and you work out to go, this is not for other people to turn against me, this is for me to hold tightly and say yes, in this situation I’m anxious. To expose what is considered to be your vulnerability, and by doing so control it.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, you were hiding all this stuff, and this helped you to say right, I’m going to show it and own it?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, exactly. And I’m in an advantageous position, I’m a middle-aged white guy, I already know that there’s a lot of things that I don’t have to contend with which a lot of… At the moment when I’m touring with this book every single night I meet so many women who have been late diagnosed autistic, so many young people as well who are battling. I had a lovely thing the other day, two young lads, I think they were about 13 and 15, and I got a message from their mum the other day and she just said they’re so pleased that they found out that it’s normal to be unnormal. And at the moment I find all this stuff about over-diagnosis really unsettling because I think it’s moving from the real issue, which is the system does not work, that’s the system of diagnosis is tremendously underfunded, that also the system of the world. The problem is not those people with differences – not disorder, differences – the problem is that the world has such a narrow this is the socially acceptable thing, and it has no room for this incredible diversity of minds which also bring so much difference, wonderful difference to the world.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. I mean, how is your sense of self and your identity and your sense of who you are within that society with that narrow view of diagnosis etc, but in society in general changed since you had an ADHD diagnosis?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think one of the important things is that it’s given me so much more confidence where I’ve always tried to stand up for what I think is right, but sometimes people are able to go oh no, but you see, oh with this topic there’s a lot of this and that, and I can kind of be talked out of it or lose my confidence. And now I don’t, so I’m a lot more bolshy. I watch the way people like Greta and Chris Packham use their platforms to be socially active. So, I think it’s really helped my social activism.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But the main thing is, I was describing it to an audience the other day that I used to tell them about how many voices I had in my head. And I’d say I have five voices when I was performing: the first voice was roughly what they what they were hearing; the second voice was loads of little monkeys with typewriters going, I’ve come up with an idea, I’ve come up with an idea, I’ve come up with an idea; the third voice was saying, don’t do that idea, oh they won’t like this in Guildford on a Friday night; the fourth voice was my mother saying, why are you even doing this, you could have just done a normal job, you got very good A-level results; and the fifth voice was mainly screaming. And I would kind of sum it up like that. But now I only really have one voice. There’s a very small divide between who I am on the exterior and who I am on the interior. And what I particular find as well is that, like I used to have a level of hypervigilance, when I was walking through the world I would always, you’re not just walking through the world, you just sat in the world, always noticing the possibilities of where jeopardy lay, where I would let myself down, where I would let other people down, where there would be… Whereas now I find that in some ways I still have that hypervigilance, except it’s all positive. So, walking here can sometimes be a slow business because of so many of the different experiences of hearing a certain bird call…

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Stop and looking at the flowers.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, exactly. And I do, that is literally what I do, I look at anything that’s growing out the cracks of a wall, all of those things. Like, I got off the train at Euston and I had to put my cup down just to put something in my bag, and I just noticed there was a really interesting line of rust near where the yellow and blue had been painted, and it fascinated me so immediately I go, I must capture that and turn it into something.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Wow, that’s also exhausting [laughs].

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh yeah, but it’s the best exhausting. People often say after gigs, why aren’t you tired, we’re exhausted [laughter]. So, I think I might start charging gym membership prices actually for people coming to my gigs; I think they might be burning off…

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, I feel like I’m doing a workout right now because…

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý …I keep coming up with questions and then you go on to something else, and then I’m like, oh maybe I should ask about that, maybe I should ask about that. I’m actually really intrigued with how the voices have turned into one positive voice and things have changed. How has that impacted on you and the other people within your relationships, so your wife and Professor Brian Cox for example? Do you know what I mean, has it really changed? What do they think? What are they saying to you?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, Brian Cox always used to say, ‘You do know no one understands what you’re talking about, no one gets your references?’ And when he said no one understands what you’re talking about I thought, that’s a bit rich coming from a particle physicist. So, I think for instance one of the great things that comes with us understanding our own minds and having a user’s manual and a roadmap for what is going on is it also helps other people sometimes realise that things we do are not done out of a deliberate wish to be annoying. For instance, the classic one that Jamie asked me when he was going through all of this long list of different scenarios was, do you leave cupboard doors open. And I said, well I don’t think I do but my wife would disagree. And now that understanding that I don’t leave cupboard doors open because I don’t care, I leave cupboard doors open because I open the cupboard, I get out the coffee and I’m just about to close the door and then suddenly I remember a story from the Unexplained magazine in 1984 which was about a vole that apparently could speak fluent French and lived on the Channel Islands. And suddenly the whole of my world is a French speaking vole on Guernsey, and the door no longer exists.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. But are people less frustrated then about that sort of thing because you understand it and you can explain it and you’re less frustrated with yourself?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think predominantly yes, but I think we do still have, you know, there’s a level of cynicism out there. But definitely I think it’s really helpful for people. Because I think one of the problems with empathy, you know about obviously all of the different kinds of ideas of empathy, and we have the double empathy problem of autism where it turns out that when people used to say, autistic people don’t experience empathy, was because those people had failed to work out how to empathise with the processes in an autistic mind. And I think that’s still the battle we have which is there are still a large number of people who think the way they think is the correct way of thinking, and they demand an object… And again going back to that neurodiversity, going back to that idea that we experience the world in different ways I think is a really important thing for people to know. When someone goes into a room with a different set of skills we have to acknowledge that as well as the skills they’re bringing they may well require something different from the room as well.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, how do you define normal then? What’s the difference between neurodivergent and being, quote, normal, whatever that is?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That’s so hard, isn’t it? It’s like trying to define…it’s easy to define madness, but is it easy to define sanity? I think to me a lot of it is about the inability to easily accept the rules of the society as it is. So, I find that both with ADHD people and with autistic people if someone says something it isn’t immediately, okay; it is your mind’s immediately going, why are we doing this, and it starts to take it apart and it cannot just…

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Blindly follow…

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý …the so-called rule made up in that second?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. And it’s a level of the irritation that comes from the rules of the social world in one way. That’s part of it I think, the fact that we have all those different rules where, stop fidgeting! In school there’s so much about fidgeting. And of course as we know it turns out a lot of women who aren’t diagnosed till very much later on in life they weren’t necessarily doing the really big flamboyant ADHD display, which people imagine is a boy banging his desk and singing opera or doing whatever, and shouting and throwing erasers, but of course other people are sat there seemingly incredibly still but unpicking their cardigan, and just taking away bit by bit. And it’s that bit where I think it’s that you can’t get comfortably lost in the world until you understand your mind a little bit more.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think that might be part of it which is, so you’re always… But with diagnosis I think the incredible power comes from that, with everyone that I spoke to.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You’ve talked about getting an ADHD diagnosis, but you talk about autism and other aspects of being neurodivergent in the book, do you think you’ll be coming back with an autism book or another diagnosis book in the future? Because it feels like you’re still figuring things out, and you use all the different terms in an interchangeable way in your book, and I just wondered are you still figuring things out?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh, always. That’s me the whole time. I hold any of my beliefs with a very, very light grip. It was interesting when – do you know Kate Fox?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes.

[Clip]

KATE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The thinking we were autistic did become a thing.

[End of clip]

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Kate’s brilliant.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý She’s a poet, autistic poet.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, wonderful poet. And we did a gig in Whitney Bay and I wasn’t late but I was nearly late because I hadn’t known there would be an Oxfam bookshop on the way, so I suddenly had to dart in and buy far too many things I don’t need. And when I got there I went into the back room and I went, ‘Hi Kate, we’ve not met before, but of course we did those two Zoom things and you’re brilliant and I love…oh my god that book is so amazing, have you read Birding by Rose Ruan, it’s really…do you know, is there any way I can get a cup of coffee?’ And afterwards she said, ‘I’d always wondered if you were a bit autistic, but I think that was the most ADHD entrance I’ve seen for quite a while’. [Laughter] But I’m always…because I want to know how other…it’s why I try and read as widely as possible and try and mix with as broad a group of people as possible is because understanding… I mean, I might have mentioned it in the book, I can’t remember, but most of my closest friends are women, and I sometimes wonder if part of that is down to the fact that women are initially taught to mask more than men. There isÌý a way that you are meant to behave, which I think is far more dominant for women than men. And of course if you’re neurodivergent very often you’re masking as well. And so I’m always intrigued with so many different ways of… I find it hugely frustrating about the fact that we still read about the fact that the majority of men don’t read books by women. And I think the moment you’re missing that perspective on life, the moment you’re missing the perspective of what it might be like across the spectrum of the autistic experience of the world, of how the bipolar experience of the world think of mental health, all of these different things. I think there’s also so much work to be done because there is such cynicism.

MUSIC-

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý This is Access All. I’m Emma Tracey and you have joined us in the middle of a chat with comedian Robin Ince, who’s just brought out a book about having ADHD.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Something that I think really comes across since your diagnosis is the lessening of anxiety, and there’s sometimes called RSD isn’t there?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hmm.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Have I got that acronym correct? And it comes with ADHD apparently, but you’ll explain a bit more for me. But it’s something that we don’t talk about a lot. We talk about ADHD in terms of fidgeting and in terms of maybe even zoning out, blah, blah, medication, but not this anxiety. Tell me about that aspect?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think you have got… I’m terrible on acronyms as well. There’s so many, aren’t there?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Rejection sensitivity dysphoria, RSD. So, a tiny turn of phrase can entirely destroy you. So, a simple, very dull example would be, I wasn’t late for a gig but I wasn’t the time I said I’d originally arrive so I texted someone and said, oh I’ll actually be there at 6:45 rather than 6:30. And he replied okay, so that’s what he replied, okay. But I didn’t hear that. When I saw okay I heard [big sigh] okay. And immediately all of the sense is your failure as a human being and the way that you’ve let down people; I think you become very… I mean, sometimes I wonder if it’s because you’re having so many thoughts some of them will just statistically be negative thoughts. And of course we’re evolved to really take note of the negative. I would sometimes have periods of months where I would be able to go out and function doing the things that I had to do, and then I would just spend the time in my attic just having sometimes very dark thoughts about myself. And there’s very often a lot of suicide ideation and sometimes people as well going as far as suicidal thoughts. It’s one of the things that I think is really important to talk about because I think people often go, everyone’s a bit like that. And the point is it’s when it’s not a bit, it’s when it’s everything. And it doesn’t make sense. That’s the thing, the human brain often doesn’t make sense because the logical bit of your brain is saying with anxiety or rejection, but you know this is a silly thing, but unfortunately a lot of your brain doesn’t understand language so you can’t talk to that bit which is generating that sense.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Like the fight or flight bit.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Or the bits that make you feel things without thinking them through I suppose. So, dysphoria, rejection sensitivity dysphoria, just to sum it up it’s a kind of a warped…dysphoria sounds like… Can you sum it for me, Robin, because I’m struggling here?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No, I think it’s the inability, and it’s something which is basically in the prefrontal cortex, in what you would call the executive function which is diarising for you and it’s putting your emotions in order. And what happens is those emotions are not ordered in a convenient and simple way. So, something very small happens but the way that it is then read within the mind it becomes vast. So, a tiny piece of failure, possibly not even failure, just something that you see as something that wasn’t good enough, suddenly expands like the beginning of the universe and becomes all-encompassing, the sense that you have failed, that you are terrible and that there’s no point to you.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That’s awful. That’s so dark and it sounds like the worst part of ADHD to me, as someone who thinks they might be neurotypical. Do you still feel like that?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Very rarely. I’ve had a little bit of it.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý How have you changed it? Because it’s bits of your brain that you can’t talk to, so how do you change that?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think again the knowledge is incredibly powerful. Like, I had an experience – I think I might have written about it in the book – I was just finishing writing the book and it was 5:15 in the evening and I suddenly went, what time am I doing that event with that author tomorrow. And of course, you know what happened, I looked up, it wasn’t tomorrow, it was today.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Stomach dropped.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. It was in 75 minutes’ time. I don’t drive a car. The sense of failure, I hadn’t read the whole of the book, I’d only read the first, like, 25 pages. I felt physically just so wretched, and just everything in me just contracted and felt like I was the worst kind of malignant creature possible. I eventually remembered the cab company’s number, which I normally know off by heart, got a cab there, one minute late, and walked on stage, and then had this really fluent conversation for 90 minutes. And afterwards someone came up to me and went, ‘Oh I didn’t know you were such good friends with that author, how long have you known her?’ I said, ‘At the current time, 93 minutes’. And before I would have only seen that as my failure which I then was very lucky to get away with. Whereas now I think I’m able to say yes, sometimes due to this disorder in my frontal lobes I do get things wrong in terms of diary dates and planning, but also the bit of my brain which has all of that disorder can also then deliver a 90-minute conversation with very little information beforehand that is fluent and fluid. So, I think it’s that bit of I’m now able to understand that many of the things that deliver the problems in my life also deliver things that are wonderful and useful.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And do you think the anxiety is all caught up in the ADHD? I mean, what’s one and what’s the other? But you’ve had to deal with the anxiety slightly separately, haven’t you, with medication and with some therapy. Which is interesting because I’ve talked to lots of autistic and people with ADHD who have found finding a therapist and therapy really, really tricky because their minds are different to the therapist’s minds, and the therapists try to fix something that’s maybe for them not the thing they want to be fixed. How did you go about doing that as a neurodivergent person?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Ah, but you see the thing is that the therapy was before I knew.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Ah.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, the therapy was…and I think it’s interesting to note, the breakthrough with the therapy was I started to realise that what I saw as lots of different issues, both psychological and physical, were one issue, which was anxiety. That all of these different things, like a physical issue would be something like irritable bowel syndrome which for me personally, and this would not be for everyone, but for me personally turned out to be almost entirely anxiety based. And yet it felt very physical, very real.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, it’s all in your body. I mean, as someone who lives with anxiety too, it’s all in your body.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, because of course what’s one of the most shaming things socially you could do? Imagine incontinence on public transport or in the middle of a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or whatever it might be [laughs]. And I do wonder, it’s interesting you say that about therapists, I wonder if the therapists, how much they acknowledge ADHD. Because I think there’s loads of things had I…say I’d be lying on the couch and someone was a therapist who also had ADHD, I think they would have gone, oh I think I know what this is, and I think they would have led me down that route. And I think that is one of the problems we have, in the same way that I meet a lot of people who have been diagnosed with depression, but the depression actually the source of it may well be their ADHD or their autism. So, they’re then on the wrong drugs, they’re not going to be able to get through that.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That happens an awful lot.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, they’ve not found the real issue.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, it’s all very, very, very interesting. Now tell me, you do a whole chapter in your book about work, we talk a lot about work on this podcast and about unemployment of disabled people and the employment gap and work is a four-letter word is the name of your chapter, but part of that is your mind going off in lots and lots of different directions and sparking different thoughts and struggling with the background noise of life to keep focused and keep things going. How do you manage that? And is that again, it all comes back to diagnosis, but have you found that easier and found ways around it?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Again, I’m very fortunate, I live in a world which is predominantly I have more control than most people have. Most of the gigs that I do, most of the work that I create I’m the boss of me. So, I realise already I have a huge advantage there. I think one of the things is that I no longer beat myself up. For instance, if I’m trying to write a book, that’s one of the questions that I always get asked, how do you write a book, and I go erratically. I will suddenly have an incredibly intense burst of creativity that might go till 5 in the morning, and then have four days of creating nothing. Now, before I would be so angry, come on! And of course that doesn’t help because the more enraged you become with yourself actually the more you close down your creativity. Very often we’re told, right Monday, 9 o’clock you need to do this, and then at 10 o’clock we want you to do this, and then at 11:30 there’s this meeting, and it’s this incredible time-tabling of life. Where in fact for a lot of us that’s not the most productive way of functioning. But it does mean that sometimes the managerial people will go, why haven’t you done this yet. And you go, well don’t worry, all of these things are going to happen and possibly more magnificently than should I follow your very simple, almost… it’s one of those things, it’s the paranoid nature of business in the same way that they don’t like people working from home.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah [laughs].

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Because they cannot imagine…

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý They can’t understand it.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý They can’t see the timetable, the spreadsheet.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, will you do this if I’m not lurking over you. Yeah, I will because I want to do it and I want to create these things. It’s a bit like I always say, if I’ve got young people in the audience and they’re still at school, I’ll say when you're doing English and you have to write a story do you have to write a story plan. And they go yeah. And I say, do you like it. And more often than not they don’t because more often than not they’re kids who probably are within what I would call the other section of school. And I always say to them, what you need to do is leave a blank page, write your story, and then when you’ve finished your story write the story plan; people will be so impressed by the way you’ve followed your story plan.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And I always found this at school, if I was made to do a story plan it was an awful story because I knew what was going to happen. It was very important for me when I’m writing, when I’m doing anything, the unexpected. And again now, one of the first things – sorry that these answers are so long.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No, please don’t apologise. I was totally expecting this.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Have you noticed I just read my script, read a few questions and then went, oh do you know what, whatever.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh, the poor person that interviewed me at Hay, she didn’t know what a small part it was going to be.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, so I always used to come off stage believing that I’d failed the audience because I hadn’t done the show that I’d imagined in my head. And the realisation that the people who come to my shows more often what they want to go is go, oh my god, he has no idea what he’s doing either and he has no idea that that was going to happen. And they actually got a great deal. Had I become one of those linear performers they would have been really disappointed. So, realising again that a lot of the things that I do, and also realising that some people have to have a very specific work system, someone could say we need three scripts now, and I can probably do them in half an hour.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Wow.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý In the right state of mind I can go vroom, vroom, vroom. I think it’s also just realising that the negative thoughts are so lacking in any constructive content, if you see what I mean. That bit of going, right I do things my way, and I never do anything by halves, but I might not do them in the order of fractions that people might wish them to be in. And I think one of the horrible things to see with again so many people that I’m talking to on this tour where they work in an office and all they need are tiny changes, they need such small things. It might be about the texture of a chair, it might be about the lighting or the noise or whatever it is, and immediately it becomes this [big sigh], oh why do they need… And again, you just go these are really small… Until we start to make environments where everyone can thrive, I find it so frustrating. A woman said to me she had to get diagnosed with autism, she said, ‘Because if I don’t get diagnosed the office I work in won’t be able to give me a quieter space’. How can a quieter space be such an enormous ridiculous demand, you know?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. Now, you talk about having intense interests, specialists interests, and we love hearing about those on Access All because they’re always really interesting because people have so much knowledge about them. Have you got any at the moment that you're happy to talk to us about?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh yeah. I mean, at the moment I’m really into the cracking of paint at the moment. I’ve got a thing where when I wander around a town and whenever I see a wall where… So, that particular. But the main thing…

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hang on, you can’t just stop there. Cracking of paint, tell me, what do you mean? You’re walking around town looking at the designs?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, you see something that once was beautifully painted, but over time and just from being left for so long it has now… So, I love, I’m very interested in decay generally, if you see what I mean, those things as they start to fall apart, because it always reminds me that nature will always find a way. So, you see something that human beings have said, we have finished this, we have made our powerful technological future whatever it will be, and then nature goes, you left a little gap there and I’m going to start growing out of that.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, I’m always intrigued by that. And then the other thing is in the last year I’ve written about 700 poems, and they just come. And again I think this is all of that energy that used to be taken up with anxiety, the energy… In fact a woman asked me the other day, I can’t remember where I was, I think it was Market Harborough, and she said, ‘Do you ever miss your anxiety?’ And I said, ‘Never. Sometimes it creeps back, but now it’s not all-encompassing fog, now I can still sometimes just see the little bit of light in the corner and that changes everything.’ I said, ‘You must be asking me this for a specific reason I presume?’ She said, ‘Yes. I’ve spent my whole life with anxiety, and I worry that if I don’t have anxiety who am I’. And I think is a very common worry. And I said to her, ‘I’ve spoken to hundreds of people, both for the book and just in my life who have found ways or been helped to ways that have got rid of some of these appalling negative things, and none of them have then said there’s nothing left of me. What they’ve found out is that the wonderful youness of you, the themness of them, suddenly has this space to expand’.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I reckon if I got rid of all my exhausting, paralysing anxiety I could do three episodes of this a week, Damon. Just talking to my producer there.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, if you could get me some sort of anxiety removal plan then you could get quite a lot more work out of me.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think it is such an important, you know, because I just love doing… Again, that’s the excitement I have from the world.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. So, you’ve got rid of some of that anxiety or some of that anxiety has gone away because of the knowledge that you have. And how do you know then how to convert it into the energy to write 700 poems? Does that just happen naturally?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, it just happens. It was basically one of my nieces was getting married and I was on the way to the wedding and I suddenly went, oh no, she wanted me to write a poem for the wedding ceremony. So, I hurriedly wrote a poem and then performed it at the wedding. And then the next day, I was very lucky, I was going off to do an event with Jane Goodall, who of course is just this remarkable human being who’s changed our understanding of ourselves and chimpanzees and so many other things, and I thought, oh I must write a poem for Jane. And then they didn’t stop. It was like I’d cracked open whatever it was and I would just see things and suddenly a poem will form in my head, and I’ll write it down and it will be almost complete. And then also I notice sometimes if I see something or I hear something or there’s just a thought that comes and it creates a poem then if I don’t immediately just go, I’ve got to take down this, by the time that five minutes later that I’m sat on the station platform it’s gone. But I’m not annoyed because I go, that’s all right, there’ll be another one along in a minute.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And that’s kind of how I feel.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Have you got a short one that you know off by heart that you could tell me?

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes. I’ll tell you what, this is one of the first poems that I wrote, and it’s about how – I’ve not performed it for ages so let’s see what happens – it’s about how we must express our love for people while they are with us and not wait until they’re gone. Let’s see if I can remember the first line. This is where the challenge begins:

Let me celebrate you now while you can still hear the cheer. Don’t let me wait until you’re gone to be fond. Don’t let fear of disparagement stifle my delight. How the worry of impending shame leads us to talk about love only when there can be no response. I loved their mind, I loved their voice, I loved them – past tense.

Do you know what, that’s all I can remember of that one, but that’s the basic gist. I’ve got a short one about Greta, if you want?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh, yes please.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I admire the strength of her so much. And this is when Andrew Tate, the monetised misogynist decided to try and wind her up, and she ran rings around him, and he as an alpha male kind of just could not deal with the things. She was so funny. In one line he was destroyed by her. ÌýÌýÌýÌý

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý There are few things I like more than seeing Greta get the better of yet another pompous predator. With this new fail the alpha male slides down the Greek alphabet, like a mole rat on a helter-skelter, bumping his head on kappa and falling ever deeper into the crapper. Another autistic hero shows up another macho zero.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs] brilliant. Robin Ince, thank you for joining me on Access All. It’s been a pure joy.

ROBIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Thank you.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Robin Ince there, finishing with a poem about Greta Thunberg. That was unexpected. You can send me a poem, a story, anything you like to our email accessall@bbc.co.uk. Our WhatsApp number is 0330 123 9480. And we’re on social media as well, we’re on Instagram and X @ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½AccessAll. We’ve been changing up the format a little bit, don’t know if you noticed, but next week I’ll be back with one of our usual episodes with Paul Carter. See you then. Bye. Ìý