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	TX: 03.09.09 - The Specials PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON

	Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 麻豆约拍 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON A new reality programme starts this week - the Specials is a docusoap about five students who share a house in Brighton and they all have a learning disability. CLIP - THE SPECIALS My name is Sam and I'm 22 years old. I live in Brighton with my housemates - Lucy, Lewis and Hilly. Hilly's parents - Carol and David - and our carers help us out. Lucy goes to work. We go to college. We all like going out and having fun. We have good times. We have bad times. This is our world and we want to share it with you. ROBINSON Well Katy Lock is the director behind the Specials project and I asked her why she started it. LOCK Well originally I met the guys when I was brought in to do a pilot for TV, unfortunately the pilot didn't end up happening but I loved the project so much that I went home, talked to my boyfriend, Dan, who's a web developer and we thought let's do it anyway and let's try and make it on the web. And it's very exciting to try a new medium. ROBINSON Who's paying for it? LOCK Me and my boyfriend are spending our mortgage deposit on this at the moment but actually it's not that expensive, that's the great thing these days is you can make TV very cheaply compared to when I started many moons ago. ROBINSON We have three of the housemates in the studio with us - Sam, Hilly and Megan. Megan, can you tell me what did you think it was like being filmed, you know when Katy comes out with you with the camera, what's it like? MEGAN I like being filmed because when she's around I get really comfortable and I like being filmed so much, I like being famous. ROBINSON Hilly, do you like being filmed? HILLY Yeah I really do, I really like it, it's really good. ROBINSON Can you tell me why, what's good about it? HILLY It's really good having a star [indistinct words]... ROBINSON Sam, tell us what happens in the first programme. SAM When we were doing the first episode in karaoke I mean fell in love. ROBINSON You go to karaoke? You go to the pub don't you? SAM Yeah. ROBINSON And you fall in love at first sight. SAM Yeah, yeah. ROBINSON I think it's fair to say that you probably emerge as the star of certainly the first programme from the moment you come out of your bedroom in your designer underwear. SAM Yes, yes. ROBINSON What was in like being filmed? SAM It was good and it's entertaining. ROBINSON Carol Williams runs Small Opportunities, it's the company that provides the carers who help out in the house and she's also the mother of Hilly, who lives in the house. What I felt watching it is that obviously when you make a drama like this it all has to be about film sequences doesn't it, things have to happen, so their life looks absolutely fantastic - is it really like that? WILLIAMS I think it's very true to say that it's as they live their life. I mean none of the scenes in there were produced, it just happened naturally and this is how the guys live and I think this is what Katy and what we wanted to get across is that these guys do live a normal life and that they do the same things that everybody else does. ROBINSON Well the saddest bit in episode one, I thought, was the bit where Sam falls for the girl in the pub, as you said, and she dances with you and then you find out, don't you, that she's already got a boyfriend. I think we're just hear a bit of that. CLIP I've asked Pippa's friend, Karen, to go out if she's single. She's got a boyfriend I'm afraid. Sorry she's got a boyfriend. She said though, Sam, you might be glad to hear this, she was really flattered but she has a boyfriend. Chin up mate, don't let it get to you, trust me I've been knocked back by many a bird and I'm 42 and I'm still single. ROBINSON Katy Lock, what I wondered watching this, and I thought that was one of the carers who was with them because I thought he handled Sam really tactfully and kindly, in fact it's just a punter who was at the pub. Don't people get a special treatment because they're with somebody with a camera? LOCK Well actually I mean I would say that it's quite different with these guys, I mean they've been going to that pub for many, many - is it a few years now guys? WILLIAMS Since we've opened yes. LOCK Yeah and they go every week and at first maybe people react differently to them because they have a learning disability but over time, certainly, they have got to know them as individuals and as people who go to that pub every week and scream the house down. So actually they already knew the guys before the cameras turned up and they already had a connection with Colin, the guy who you see in the film, already knew Sam before I was filming. So I don't think anybody feels that people act differently with them because I'm there with the camera - it's a very small camera, it isn't like a big film crew following them around - I'm very low key. ROBINSON The set up in the house where the young people just come and go as they like, as any other group of students would, how easy was it to find a house like that? LOCK Very, very difficult. I mean we've spoken to the various charities who deal with learning disabilities and it would appear that this house is very unique, I mean it's been set up completely to give the guys as much freedom as possible and choice in what they do. ROBINSON Carol Williams, you set up the business that runs the house with your husband, my guess is, I suppose, to try to provide the best accommodation that you could for your daughter Hilly. WILLIAMS Yes I mean it all came about really because Hilly was sort of coming up to the age of 16 and we started looking around in adult services and there really was nothing around that we were happy with and Hilly had always sort of said that she wanted to live in Brighton, she wanted to be with friends, she wanted to house share. And so we started doing a bit of research to see whether that was actually a viable option. And as it turned out, after lots of hard work, it was. And we actually got to the house in 2005 and we spent two years researching and going through all the red tape, the paperwork, and we opened in 2007. ROBINSON If it's a business is it running at a profit? WILLIAMS It is running at a profit yes, yeah. ROBINSON And is your plan to open more houses like it then? WILLIAMS We have just taken on a second property and we're opening the second one on the 1st October. ROBINSON You see I'm surprised to hear that this kind of provision is unique because when the long stay mental hospitals closed down lots of local authorities opened this kind of shared housing with carers on site. WILLIAMS There are lots of options available still and there are several in Brighton but unfortunately they don't run quite the same way as us, I mean everybody that's in the house in Sisbury are friends and they've been friends from a very young age. And I think when council run or charity run places open they don't necessarily think about the people that are going in there, they have come from maybe different counties and so they don't know each other, so they are literally put together in somewhere that is very, very unnatural. ROBINSON Katy Lock, what are you hoping to achieve with it? LOCK Well first of all I'd like to see how successful a series on the internet could be. ROBINSON So does anyone want to watch it - you want to know that? LOCK Exactly, I mean we've been open for one day and we've already got people coming in their thousands to the site, which is wonderful. Getting some wonderful comments. I'd also like to see that the issue of learning disability is dealt with in a different way in the mainstream media, I think there's an awful lot of focus on how people struggle and maybe what I love about this series is they've voiced it themselves, so they're inviting people into their world. And hopefully what you'll find is it's a world just like the mainstream, actually they live in our world. ROBINSON The producer and stars of the Specials speaking to me a little bit earlier. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The 麻豆约拍 is not responsible for external websites

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