Chris Packham

It's, it's, uh, there's a lot of references there that I relate to.

The only one that I, that wasn't included in there was Chris Packham.

Do you remember Chris Packham-

Oh.

Yeah

They'll then stream it in full, including the Q&A, and then hours afterwards, probably including Newsnight, they'll be talking about what happened.

The BBC this week, when I held a press conference, including a firefighter, a medic, someone who used to serve in the army and chris packham so i'd say it was definitely newsworthy and interesting the bbc completely ignored it they didn't stream a

single thing about just explain why because chris packham was there because he's a bbc presenter and they weren't going to cover him being allied to you

well the point we it was a non-party political um event so we're very much talking about the climate crisis rather than the green party yeah but i think there are I refuse to believe that because there was someone who's a presenter on the show that they couldn't let them talk about the climate crisis.

Like we hear him talk about the climate crisis all the time, including on Gogglebox.

You could argue maybe Gogglebox is not the best place, but he's often the grumpy man on Gogglebox talking about, I love Chris Packham, that wasn't calling him grumpy, just on Gogglebox.

They did do an article later on in the day, but it didn't even make the front page of their page.

Now, my point here is not to winch, because actually I always think as a politician, you've got to just go, okay, how can we find attention differently? How can we grab people differently? But my point is that much of those media organizations who...

Mm-hmm.

And I saw that Chris Packham, you know, uh, '80s and '90s hero of, um, Really Wild Show.

Really Wild Show, yes.

[laughs]

She claimed that far too many people were being diagnosed or as she would say misdiagnosed as autistic” a ninefold increase in twenty years since nineteen ninety eight according to one study.

The autistic spectrum a theoretical concept Frith helped to construct had she said collapsed to the point of diagnostic meaninglessness To illustrate this she told me that Chris Packham the TV wildlife presenter who Twenty One years ago was diagnosed with what was then called Asperger Syndrome could not be autistic in her opinion because his brilliance at communication was a blatant contraindication perhaps On reflection when she said that I did distantly perceive the faint buzz of a wasp Packer afterwards told the times that not knowing he was autistic caused him enormous mental issues and No He did not think the condition was overdiagnosed the journalist Florence Leslie wrote In the Times that while she agreed with some of Fritz points her own daughter's diagnosis Had allowed her to accept herself and no longer feel like a failure A reader wrote gently chiding me for writing that Frith was far too sociable to be on any Spectrum herself Reader said that her own autistic daughter was warm funny and kind On the other hand Two people told me of family members They felt had been wrongly Diagnosed as autistic One correspondent Was an upset and concerned Former pediatric nurse At no Time she emailed Me has my Daughter displayed Any autism characteristics And I'm sitting here Wondering how a Diagnosis can Be made From one assessment With no parent Present to confirm My adult child's Account of their childhood Now if frith Was outspoken So But probably More so Is Mary Dougherty An Irish Consultant anesthetist now affiliated to University College Dublin School Of medicine Autistic Herself In 20 Nineteen She Launched Autistic doctors international A group that Began with Seven Members and now Has fifteen hundred With Eight Other practitioners She has submitted To psychological medicine A riposte to Frith that warns that If put into practice Uncritically Her theories Could harm Autistic People Doherty speaks to me on Zoom from the back of her car parked on the southwest Irish Coast The soothing commentary of its waves Failing to quell Entirely her outrage Frith She tells me Is completely wrong She is Just so Wrong it's not Funny And it's embarrassing For her But frit does not deny autism She simply wants to chisel away at autism as a monolithic coverall diagnosis For her it Makes little sense to Group together even loosely children with a profound inability to read How others Think with much more able adults Some she thinks turn to autism to explain quite usual feelings of Being an outsider Or of being bad at sustaining relationships Frit wonders Whether Others are misguidedly inspired by those brilliant artistic detectives we see on television For derwent however Heroes such as the bridges saga Norren have merely Allowed people to recognize themselves and do so without shame It was unprofessional, she thinks for Frith to question Packham's autism.

"There is absolutely no way I would dream of speculating about somebody's diagnosis," she says.

And in any case, to her, Packham's autism is obvious.

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So to summarize Frith and Doherty's disagreement the question seems to me to be whether autism indeed covers a spectrum or where autistic symptoms are so different and their intensity so variable that some deserve diagnostic categorizations all of their own.

Doherty for instance has met and conversed with nonverbal autistic people but is herself highly articulate and socially skilled as we talk her only autistic tell would be that she plays with a hair band she calls this stimming although I think the world contains many neurotypicals who worry away with beads or jerk their legs rhythmically when they're nervous judging autism by how people present is anyway difficult because many autistic people deliberately mask their autism in order to fit in though it says i often say i speak neurotypical pretty well but it is like a second language yet as one of the mothers who wrote to me said autistic people can be naturally funny and warm dirty says of herself there's a lot about being autistic which i think is kind of bimodal i think what you find in terms of empathy is there are a lot of us who will be hyper empathic with really intense sympathy and i am in that category For Doherty to be correct that autism is just one condition with many shades There must surely be some characteristics shared across the spectrum frith and she agree on one thing there are probably genetic components to autism Although they disagree on whether or not that makes autism inheritable Doherty believes autism tends to come with co occurring conditions such as gastrointestinal problems epilepsy hypomobility allergies The big misconception in the field is that autism is a brain difference She says It's not It's a whole body difference Above all she would say there is a problem with sensory processing An intolerance of cacophony bright lights and unpredictable environments Such as hospitals For me she says that is without doubt the most disabling aspect of being autistic I have no difficulty in identifying as disabled and I absolutely am And it's mostly because of the sensory differences And I check and say does that apply to every autistic person? And she says Does anything apply to everybody? She recalls her autistic meltdown a few years ago A sensory nightmare at a venue Where she was to give a talk She says It just got to a point where I literally could not access fluent speech On a really bad day You will not see a difference you know In terms of my ability to manage safely to communicate Between me and someone who needs full time care In that moment So when diagnosing someone with autism I say Should a specialist take into account Their worst moments Absolutely Absolutely she says At heart then she believes All autistic people Are of the same tribe Without a doubt she says As it happens The week after we speak There is being held in Hertfordshire Autscape an annual three -day conference for autistic people hundreds attend and the only guests who struggle since though two other neurotypicals otherwise a party mood prevails in which autistic people stop masking I ask whether there is some hooking up oh completely yes she says it's fantastic because the expectations are different there's no small talk there's no social niceties you could be in the middle of a conversation and duck out it's all fine an enterprising documentary maker I think might ask Fritz to go along next year to this festival and record their conversations that ensue They might not all be confrontational Both sides of the argument certainly mean well And Frith has since written to me to say that she now realizes she crossed a line By discussing Chris Packham "I very much regret what I said," she tells me And Doherty Who has exchanged emails with Frith Says she would love to chat to her 'I do have compassion,' for her',she says.' I do understand where she's coming from But ultimately she adds I think she's completely wrong That was feature writer at The Times Andrew Billen reading his piece Which you can find online at thetimes .com And it's titled "'I'm a top doctor and I'm autistic': I know why diagnoses are up" The producer and sound designer today Was Olivia Case The executive producer was Sophie McNulty And theme composition was by Mal Assetto Thanks for listening We'll be back tomorrow

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Yeah, the stoat can go and do some collages with- Yeah ... pasta and glue or whatever it is that they want to do.

Yeah, the stoat can talk through its problems with Chris Packham.

[laughs] Such a good listener.

It's such a gentle scene.

Carol, what do you reckon?

hello james hello um thank you for talking to me again you're very welcome i'm optimistic because what we talked about last time chris packham's um emergency briefing

yes was

shown to a number of mps and business leaders and things but i'm not sure it was shown to mayors so i suppose i'm hoping he hasn't seen it yet and when he sees it he will obviously immediately be prompted to start to do some of the things they're suggesting, which I still don't know yet because I still haven't seen it.