Fern Brady on her recent autism diagnosis

This is a full transcript of 1800 Seconds on Autism: Fern Brady on her recent autism diagnosis, as first broadcast on 25th February 2021. Presented by Robyn Steward and Jamie Knight.

[Jingle: 1800 Seconds on Autism. With Robyn Steward and Jamie Knight]

FERN - I’d really waited until things had got really, really bad in the pandemic to get help, because it’s something I’d been putting off for years and years. It was costing me more to keep repairing my house where I’d punched walls and cracked light switches, and all sorts of damage, than it cost me to go and get a private diagnosis.

[Music]

FERN - I thought I wasn’t an exercise person, but actually I just hate other people and being in group exercise situations.

[Music]

ROBYN - It’s the podcast that makes you think about how you think. I’m Robyn Steward.

JAMIE - And I’m Jamie Knight. Emma, our very neurotypical producer, is here too.

EMMA - Thanks, Jamie. Hello.

JAMIE - Our guest is successful stand-up comedian, Fern Brady. Fern got an autism diagnosis a few weeks ago, and in a change to our usual format she will be asking us some questions later in the episode.

ROBYN - Stay tuned.

JAMIE - I don’t think so.

EMMA - [Pause] Yeah, she’s coming. She says her laptop is being a dick. That’s what she says. She says she’ll be there in two seconds two minutes.

JAMIE - Disconnecting internet system kit. No, hang on, that’s disc. Oh, disconnected internet kit emergency. Oh no, that’s D-I-K-E.

EMMA - Diky. Disconnect… I think we’re using too many spoons on this problem.

JAMIE - Yeah, probably are.

ROBYN - Disconnected internet catastrophe killing.

JAMIE - Oh, that’s… That sounds bad.

EMMA - That sounds really bad.

JAMIE - I did valentines for the first time this year, for like the first time in a decade.

ROBYN - Ah!

JAMIE - I sent three friends little valentines cards and I used little emojis to represent them. And then the Lion emoji to represent me and Lion. And I always thought, talking about taking things literally, that valentines was like strictly limited to one person, like, you can’t have multiple valentines, that would be naughty but, you know, there’s three or four people in my life where, you know, they stray slightly beyond platonic from time to time. And I sent them valentines and it all went down really well and I think everybody got a nice warm fuzzy feeling. And I was, like, oh so that’s why people do that.

EMMA - Is that off the record, Jamie?

JAMIE - That can be off or on the record.

EMMA - Well, with the straying beyond platonic I just need to check because…

JAMIE - Yeah, go for it.

ROBYN - Does your boyfriend know about that?

JAMIE - Yeah. And straying beyond the platonic for me probably means having hugs. You know, remember I’m quite not snuggly.

EMMA - No, I did get a box of chocolates this year.

ROBYN - Ah! That’s nice.

EMMA - Handmade ones.

ROBYN - I got nothing.

EMMA - Sorry.

ROBYN - But, my keyboard had a birthday because I bought my keyboard on Valentine’s Day in, I think, 2014.

EMMA - Does your keyboard have a name?

ROBYN - That is a great question. My keyboard does not have a name but the reason I bought a keyboard on Valentine’s Day was because Valentine’s Day, I’ve never had a valentine on Valentine’s Day and it makes me a bit sad. So I thought, well every Valentine’s Day I’ll have something to celebrate because my keyboard is a keyboard and it’s just going to, you know, it likes being turned on and played. [Laughter] And it’s always going to like that, and it doesn’t matter who turns it on and plays it.

JAMIE - Robyn, your ability to casually mention something that is deeply hilarious is just brilliant. I was not expecting a reference to being turned on when you were talking about your keyboard, so it just completely…

ROBYN - Well, I wasn’t expecting it either.

JAMIE - It completely caught me sideways. That’s brilliant.

[Jingle: 1800 Seconds on Autism. With Robyn Steward and Jamie Knight]

EMMA - Is Fern here?

FERN - Hello.

ROBYN - Oh there she is, there she is.

FERN - Thanks for having me.

ROBYN - Thanks for coming.

FERN - Do you think it’s better or worse that we can’t see each other’s faces?

ROBYN - Well, me and Henry would love to know what you look like, but we have seen your picture on your podcast.

FERN - I look really different today. [Laughs] Just because I woke up with a swollen lip and I don’t know why.

ROBYN - Oh.

FERN - So I’m actually kind of glad my face isn’t on this.

ROBYN - Do you have a support animal?

FERN - I’ve got a cat called Roar who’s a Maine Coon and I really hate cats except he’s like a dog type cat in terms of how he is, he just likes being picked up and cuddled all the time.

JAMIE - Maine Coons are dogs running on cat hardware, and foxes are cats running on dog hardware.

FERN - Yeah. And actually the place that diagnosed me, the doctor had two Maine Coons and she said they use them at the centre a lot.

JAMIE - We’re slowly in the process of stealing a cat from up the road. Whenever it wonders by we leave the door open and we give it a little bit of food and stroke it and…

EMMA - Jamie, that’s not cool.

FERN - This is my worst fear.

ROBYN - It’s illegal! You can’t steal someone’s cat.

JAMIE - Well, it looks cold. And it’s allowed to come in if it’s cold. We close all the other doors and let it sit down for a bit and then it goes away again. I don’t know.

ROBYN - Right, shall I get on with the script then? Fern Brady is a Scottish stand-up comedian and co presenter of another BBC Sounds podcast called Wheel of Misfortune, and they sing their jingle. We should do that.

JAMIE - No. No, we shouldn’t.

ROBYN - Fern was diagnosed autistic just a few weeks ago, and is with us to tell us her story, and in a change to normal service… [in announcer’s voice] Bing bong. Ladies and gentlemen, we are having a change to normal service. Thank you. [Laughter] She’s going to ask us a few questions. Hello, and welcome, Fern. First of all…

EMMA - No wait, let her say hello. “Hello, welcome, Fern,” and then let her say hello.

FERN - Hiya. [Laughs]

ROBYN - It doesn’t say wait in the script…

EMMA - Oh God, sorry.

ROBYN - Anyway, despite the fact that I’ve just said it’s a change of service, first I’m going to ask Fern questions. This makes no sense. So it says that I’m supposed to ask you about what the assessment process was like.

EMMA - Well, can you ask it in your own…? You see, this is what happens every single month. I write the script and you totally tear it apart.

ROBYN - Sorry.

FERN - I can answer that, that’s easy to answer.

ROBYN - Yeah, so can you tell me a bit about what it was like going through the diagnostic process?

FERN - The build-up to finding somewhere to get diagnosed and the build-up to contacting my GP was much, much worse than the actual diagnostic process, if that makes sense. Because I really don’t like going to the GP at all, and I don’t like having any dealings with mental health services because I had negative experiences of them when I was younger. Over the phone this GP who I had never ever met before in a ten minute thing just flippantly said, “Well, maybe you have a borderline personality,” and that was so far from… Like, I didn’t fit the criteria for that at all, so straight away I was like…

JAMIE - Autistic people are commonly misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

FERN - Yeah, and I found that out from talking to people on Twitter after the diagnosis. And I hope I’m not talking out of turn, but I do sometimes feel like personality disorders are used by people in the health professions in a sort of dismissive way?

JAMIE - That GP assessment sounds like it didn’t go so great. Where did it go from there?

FERN - Yeah, and I actually tried to… I’d been trying my best to learn different social skills for quite a few years and try and learn how to manipulate people the way a neurotypical person does. So I thought I’ll do what middle class people do, which is where you act really entitled, like, and say how you pay your taxes and that you should get a referral. Because I’d heard that posh people do that. So I said to the GP, “Well, you know, I could go private but, you know, I pay my taxes, so please give me a referral.” And he just got really annoyed at that [Laughs] and it’s just like one of loads of loads of instances where I’ve tried to mask and I’ve made the situation worse than it was before.

JAMIE - I know that feeling very, very, very well.

FERN - Oh, cool. So then he was like, “Well look, we’ll give you a referral but you’ll have to go to a psychologist before you get an autism assessment.” And I thought, well what’s the point of that, because I already… I was in a CAMHS unit when I was 16 with a misdiagnosis of OCD, again, incredibly common in women with autism. I just didn’t need to go and see a psychologist before getting the autism assessment. I didn’t need to go through that again. So I waited for about three months. I’d really waited until things had got really, really bad in the pandemic to get help, because it’s something I’d been putting off for years and years.

JAMIE - That’s something really common. I know a lot of people who are going through the diagnostic process for ADHD or being autistic because the pandemic has just broken a lot of their coping mechanisms.

FERN - Completely.

JAMIE - So what was mildly under control has now become a massive problem for them.

FERN - Completely. So to give you a picture of my life before the pandemic, I was touring all over the world doing stand-up. I went to about 14 different countries in the last two years and it was amazing, because I’ve been going out with the same person for nearly nine years, but it meant that I was only ever at home for maybe two weeks of every month, and he worked during the day so I really didn’t have to see him too much. And even though he’s really lovely I don’t think I’m really made for living with another person. And then the pandemic happened. The stand-up comedy world was destroyed overnight and my boyfriend was working from home all the time, and it was just unbearable. Nothing personal to him at all, it’s just that I have such a routine way of living. It might sound odd that I had this life that was going all over the place, but I’d built a really great routine so that I had a routine whatever city I was in, and it was, like, a really great way of living.

EMMA - How do you have a brilliant autism routine when you’re in a different hotel every night and different place every week?

FERN - It involves a lot of planning around my food and my breakfast and stuff. This is so sad. [Laughs]

ROBYN - Jamie’s had the same pasta tea for ages.

FERN - Aye, I listened to that episode, yeah.

EMMA - So what was your routine when you were on tour?

FERN - I find the best coffee shop and breakfast place in any one town and I go there. And also, because I’ve been doing stand-up for a long time you’re going back to the same towns a lot so I have to go to the same place when I go back to a certain town. I’ve basically been to the same coffee shop in Glasgow so many times they think I live there. I don’t, I live in London. And I went to the same coffee shop every day that I was in Melbourne doing the Melbourne Festival, kind of to the point that the staff started to, like, laugh at you a bit and think you’re weird. [Laughs]

JAMIE - Cafes are great because they’re a really low demand environment. Somebody else is keeping it safe. There’s a nice clean desk to go sit at. You can get on with stuff, and you’re not really responsible for anything. It works really well for me, so I wonder if that is kind of like a similar thing for you?

FERN - Yeah, it is incredible and I have really good noise cancelling headphones that pretty much transformed my life, ‘cos one of the ways I struggled to hide autistic traits was getting really angry at people making noise on public transport, in a way that would be embarrassing if anyone saw it.

JAMIE - Because there’s a difference there in how much it impacts you, versus how much they think it impacts everybody.

FERN - Yeah, I would find that kind of thing intolerable, or the sensation of people touching the back of my seat on aeroplanes and stuff. It’s so weird talking about this because only my boyfriend knows about it, and I was really good at hiding this stuff for a long time, but consequently I had meltdowns… I’ve only just found out that the more you mask the worse your meltdowns are. Is that…?

JAMIE - Very typically, yeah.

FERN - Yeah, so I was… To get straight to the point, the reason I got diagnosed was I bought a house last year and it was costing me more to keep repairing my house where I’d punched walls and cracked light switches and all sorts of damage, that was costing me more than it cost me to go and get a private diagnosis. Because I actually got offered a diagnosis through the NHS, and then I wanted to be referred to the Lorna Wing Centre, and then I filled out a private referral, and then both things came through at the same time on the same day, and because Lorna Wing specialises in women I was like, I’m just going to pay the money.

JAMIE - Yeah.

ROBYN - For people that don’t know, the Lorna Wing Centre is run by the National Autistic Society and they specialise in diagnosing girls and women who are probably autistic.

[Jingle: Send any questions or thoughts to stim@bbc.co.uk]

JAMIE - Getting the results from that assessment, how did that go? Kind of who told you you were autistic and how did they frame it?

FERN - I think when she was telling me, I think they do… I think part of the assessment is they secretly test you, so she kept chatting to me about my cat and I’d be like, we should get on with this assessment shouldn’t we? And now I think that was a secret test. Or when she was about to give me the diagnosis she said, “Do you want to, like, have a little break before I tell you what the diagnosis is?” And I said, “Would you like to have a little break before you tell me?” And then I only just got my report last week and it was like, ‘Fern has trouble dealing with uncertainty, and really needs questions to have a definite answer’. [Laughs] And I think she was secretly testing me just when I thought she was chatting to me casually. Does that make sense?

JAMIE - Yes, that is part of the process. There’s nothing underhand or manipulative, that’s kind of important to note. But when I went for my ADHD diagnosis the doctor said, “How many times did you lose your paperwork before you got to this diagnosis?” And I was, “Er, four times and then a friend had to do it for me.” He was, like, hmm, that’s interesting.”

FERN - So the very first time I read about autism, or Asperger’s as it was called when I was younger, I was 16, it was well before there were a lot of women getting diagnosed, and I read it and I was like, oh that’s me, that’s what I have. And I went to a psychiatrist and he said, “You can’t have it because you’re making eye contact with me and you have a boyfriend.” And, er…

ROBYN - That’s the biggest amount of crap I’ve ever heard.

JAMIE - Yeah.

FERN - Yeah. Yeah, and I wasn’t sure if I had eye contact problems, and then during the assessment she was, like, “You know, Fern, whenever you address me your eyes look around the room, rather than looking at me.” And then I found out there was all this stuff when they interviewed my mum that I didn’t know about, like I didn’t make eye contact as a child, and finding out all the things that I did as a child I was pretty much a textbook case and it’s insane to me how much I learned to mask. Pretty much from 18 onwards was when I started to get good at it.

JAMIE - There are some people who end up with really successful masks. The upside of that is there’s a certain pattern for a lot of autistic people where they have a successful mask for ten or 15 years and they earn enough money to, say, buy a house or set themselves up financially, and then just at the step where they’re going to become the most senior person in their job or something suddenly the burn out hits, the mask drops, and they’re suddenly dealing with a level of impairment that seems to come completely out of nowhere.

FERN - Yeah. [Laughs]

JAMIE - It’s a very, very, very common path, I’m sorry to say.

FERN - Oh my God. Jamie, this is crazy. You are describing things which have happened to me.

JAMIE - Can I also mention another thing which is known as the permanent crisis mode. For a lot of autistic people we end up in crisis mode all the time, coping mode, and it becomes a way that we can motivate ourselves, and we end up acclimatising to being in a crisis. So flying around the world constantly doing things that most people would go, oh my God, that’s really, really hard, and working out how to do it, it sounds just like that permanent crisis mode. And the thing is, it just takes more energy than we’ve got available, and then eventually something breaks the bubble.

EMMA - Fern’s wanting to go back to this, I assume.

JAMIE - Yeah, but it’ll be different.

FERN - I am wanting to go back to it, but one of the best things about the diagnosis was the doctor gave me this thing to give to my agent which, it was like a plan for how we work together moving forward, because I have a weird thing where even when I don’t want to do a bit of work I say yes because I don’t really know how to… I don’t know how to negotiate my way out of things. And I was so embarrassed to send it, because the weird thing since getting diagnosed is it wasn’t this thing where I was, like, felt great about it, I actually went into fairly serious denial about it where I thought maybe the doctor wasn’t a real doctor. [Laughs] And then I looked her up and she’s, like, one of the leading experts in the UK.

JAMIE - Yeah. That’s also really common.

FERN - Yeah. And I tweeted about it just because I told my dad about it and my dad had a very autistic response - it wouldn’t surprise me at all if my dad was that way as well - and then the tweet kind of blew up and then I said, “Oh, here’s some resources I’ve found helpful, but I’m not going to go on about autism now,” because I still had this thing where I was, like, if I’m open about it now what was the point in getting good at hiding it for all those years? Which I know is not, like, a nice… I feel like that’s the incorrect way to feel about it.

JAMIE - There’s a name for that. It’s the sunk cost fallacy. It’s the idea that I’ve put all of this energy into building a mask and if I now destroy that mask in front of everybody why did I do that?

FERN - Exactly.

JAMIE - And it can feel like a giant hole opens up in your chest. I went through that exact process.

FERN - Oh, this is insane.

ROBYN - I don’t talk about my sexuality to the rest of the world particularly, ‘cos it’s none of their business, and really your autism diagnosis is none of the world’s business and it’s your choice who you share it with.

FERN - It wasn’t benefiting me hiding it so why would I cling on to that now? And I actually, when this was all going on on Twitter I ended up having to change my password to something that I couldn’t remember and deleting the app for a bit because autistic Twitter was raging at me. And someone was like… Someone retweeted me and said, “It seems like she thinks she’s better than us,” and I had an immediate thing of, yeah I do because I just go home and I smash up my house in private. And, like, I just had this… But the thing is, is when I watch autistic people with higher needs than me, if that’s the correct thing, I see more of myself in them than I ever do in the neurotypical world. So why did I have this immediate rejection of the diagnosis?

JAMIE - I can tell you about a path that I’ve been through a lot, and I know a lot of other people go through, which is when you get an autism diagnosis, often people start with the medical lens, autism is a thing I have, I have autism, I’m with autism or whatever, but then it slowly becomes part of somebody’s identity as it becomes more accepted and integrated and they’ll say, “I am autistic.” That is very uncomfortable, it’s a re-examination of who you are and what you consider part of yourself.

ROBYN - But also, just to say, Jamie, that I mean, I’m someone and I feel like I’m someone with autism or I have autism. I’m not that comfortable with saying that I’m autistic because I feel like, yeah, it’s a part of me but it’s only one part of me. So I think there’s lots of different ways for someone to feel comfortable with their identity and how it relates to themselves.

JAMIE - Yeah.

EMMA - And Fern’s way might end up being totally different to both of your ways I guess.

JAMIE - Yeah, but that path of how you get to that point is very similar, no matter where the point ends up being. That’s kind of the point that I’m making, that this period of identity - identity sensitiveness? - is just really common, and I suppose I’m trying to reassure Fern that it does pass. Almost for everybody who I know who’s been diagnosed, it does pass.

FERN - Yeah, it’s something I wasn’t prepared for at all, I guess, and it’s really nice to hear that, because you’re not the first person that’s said that to me. Because the biggest help I’ve found since the diagnosis hasn’t been talking to neurotypical people, it’s been talking to other autistic people, because they just get it. One thing that really helped me dislike myself less was I’ve got a friend who has it and everything that I like about him is because of… Like, because he knows really random facts, and knows really interesting things, so if I can really like… Oh, I’m not explaining this... Do you know what I mean? Basically, I really like other autistic people so why would I find it a boring…? Not a boring, why would I find it so unlikeable in myself?

JAMIE - Could it be described as having a positive role model and going, oh hang on, I could be like that?

FERN - Exactly.

JAMIE - Or I am like that and that’s a good position.

[Jingle: 1800 Seconds on Autism. With Robyn Steward and Jamie Knight]

EMMA - I clearly didn’t frame this whole interview right because I said, oh Fern’s going to ask us questions and we’ve just asked her questions for the whole time…

ROBYN - For like the last hour…

FERN - I’m really sorry, I think I’m using the wrong language. That’s the other thing, is it’s hard to try and concentrate on.

JAMIE - Language is very, very, very tricky, because language isn’t about the words, it’s about the trauma that people associate with those words. So you often end up standing on other people’s trauma which gets in the way of communication.

ROBYN - Can Fern ask us some questions now please?

EMMA - If she would like to. So, it sounds… For me, as a neurotypical person sitting here, you sound, Fern, like you’re getting a bit distressed…

FERN - Yes.

EMMA - …and I just wondered if you’re okay to keep going or if you’d like to finish. And if you’re okay to keep going you can throw a few questions…

FERN - Oh yes, I’m okay to keep going but that was unnerving. I didn’t know about alexithymia until I got diagnosed, so I usually think I’m fine until I suddenly start crying openly or something. [Laughs] During the diagnosis I told her that I hadn’t been worried. I was like, “Yeah, I don’t sleep the night before any of the assessments, but I think I’m fine.”

ROBYN - Alexithymia, for people that don’t know, is difficulty in knowing which emotions you experience. So you still absolutely experience emotions, but you can’t necessarily explain that to other people or know which emotion you’re experiencing.

EMMA - That’s why we’ve got our Robyn here. [Laughs] You can always explain everything.

FERN - I listened to a bunch of episodes, and I’m excited to… Like, I’m not saying this to be fake, that’s… Well, I can’t be, but I’d been bingeing a lot of autism podcasts because they were making me feel better and then I listened to your guys’ one on meltdowns and I was so glad I found it because that’s what I had the biggest trouble with and it’s also been the thing that I’ve struggled to find answers with. Because I really only got diagnosed so that I could find out how to stop meltdowns. And Robyn, it sounds like yours aren’t too frequent compared to mine.

ROBYN - Yeah, now. When I was a kid they definitely were very frequent.

FERN - And how did you learn how to…? If you don’t mind answering…

ROBYN - I don’t mind.

FERN - How did you learn how to reduce them? Because for me, I’ve been keeping a little diary to work out what makes them worse.

ROBYN - That’s a really good strategy. The way I did it really was to, firstly try and avoid situations that it might occur. So, like, some people… I don’t know how you say that without a metaphor, but some people just sort of rub me up the wrong way. Like, some people, they’re not, like, horrible people, I’m not talking about bullies, there’s some people I just can’t stand, they just irritate me so much. So I have to just not be near those people. But I probably annoy them too, so I mean, I’m sure it works both ways. [Laughs] But I think also being careful about my environment. So I live on my own and I’ve found when I lived with other people that that was a bit over stimulating. I’m much better on my own. So there’s that. I think also noise cancelling headphones, they’re helpful, but I think I’ve also really having meltdowns really stopped once I started taking antidepressants. I mean, I had, or have depression, but primarily my problem was anxiety. I take an SSRI for anxiety and I take another medication to help me sleep. So that seems to have sorted that out really.

FERN - Yeah, one of the biggest changes for me before even diagnosis, was unbeknown to me my boyfriend had been reading up on autism and meltdowns and he got a book on relationships with autistic people. And it was so sweet, but he started responding differently to my meltdowns and that changed things massively. So he wouldn’t get angry at me, he would just go, “Poor Fern,” and then I’d just sit on the floor crying for a bit. And then I would calm down quicker. Sorry, it’s really embarrassing talking about it. I have to go up and lie down after it but then I get angry because I’m, like, oh this has just used up more time in my day. So I’m currently sticking to a fairly, like, rigid thing of weightlifting in the morning and… This is another thing, I thought I just liked weightlifting because I like it and then I found out quite a lot of autistic people like it.

EMMA - Really?

FERN - Yeah. Counting the numbers. It’s a very solitary exercise. I thought I wasn’t an exercise person but actually I just hate other people and being in a group exercise situation. And it’s the thing of, like, shifting really heavy weights really calms me down.

JAMIE - Yeah, 100%. If I’m really stressed, going and riding my bike up a really steep hill until my lungs hurt is actually quite a good way of letting the baseline stress leach back out and then kind of getting back to a calm place.

EMMA - Robyn?

ROBYN - Yes.

EMMA - Fern keeps telling us that she’s embarrassed by what she’s saying about being autistic because it’s so new to her. I thought you might want to have a little chat about that.

ROBYN - Yeah. Well, Fern, I’d like to say please don’t feel embarrassed, because there’s nothing wrong with being autistic and maybe you process the world in a different way to other people but it’s really, I think, important that the world has a mix of people and also that we don’t make people feel guilty for how they are.

FERN - Yeah. Absolutely. I feel like it’s important to talk about this bit that I’m going through just now of the embarrassment, because I know it is from living in a neurotypical world. And I also… I mean, I should add as a bonus that everything that’s good about me and my job comes from autism because all my stand-up is about being very direct and honest. And I do believe that’s because of autism. And also I get very intensely focused on topics and I have a strong sense of what’s right and wrong.

ROBYN - Yeah, they’re very positive traits that a lot of people experience. And I think you’re right, it is really important to talk about it, and I think sometimes on online spaces, like you were saying earlier, it can be really hard because you have to navigate the language and sort of… You know, particularly on Twitter when you’ve only got a certain amount of characters to express yourself to, like, not be… Being autistic lends yourself to being sensitive to language, that there’s so many sort of minefields to navigate. Do you have any other questions that you’d like to ask? I’m just aware of time.

FERN - Not really. I just wanted to say I’m really… I love this podcast because you guys have a massive… Well, you come across as having a great acceptance of yourself, which is something to learn from.

ROBYN - Oh, thank you. Yeah, well I think, like Jamie was saying, that acceptance is definitely a journey and it definitely takes time to go on that journey, but I think the majority of people find a way of making peace with it. And also, being proud of who you are, you know, just like you were saying with your stand-up that you have parts of your stand-up that maybe a non autistic person wouldn’t be able to do in quite the same way about, you know, being honest and having intense interests and having a sense of what’s right.

FERN - Yeah. And I read a really great quote the other day by some Russian journalist who was talking about Greta Thunberg. She said with autism, basically a lot of the neurotypical world engages in double think, whereas if you’re autistic it’s physically uncomfortable for you to do that, which is why Greta Thunberg can’t stop talking about climate change and why she gets angry at the hypocrisy involved in what world leaders say about it and what they do about it.

ROBYN - Yeah.

FERN - And that made the biggest load of sense to me and made me feel so much better about autism because any bit of stand-up I’ve done that I’m proud of has come from being unable to do double think.

EMMA - So what do we mean by double think?

FERN - For example, women who say they’re a feminist and then change their surnames when they get married is completely inconsistent and they try and make up fake reasons for why they do it. This is something I’ve been preoccupied with for years. Basically it’s really easy to point out that there’s hypocrisy between what people say and what they do if you’re autistic and people don’t like that.

ROBYN - Thank you very much, Fern.

FERN - Thank you so much for having me, and I hope you’re both well, and I’m going to keep listening to this.

ROBYN - You can find the Wheel of Misfortune podcast which Fern co-hosts with Alison Spittle by searching on the BBC Sounds app, or asking your smart speaker. We recommend you do.

JAMIE - That’s almost it for this episode of 1800 Seconds on Autism. We’ll be back with another one in late March or so.

ROBYN - You can subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds, and please do tell your friends and anyone else you think might be interested in our podcast. You can email stim@bbc.co.uk. That’s S-T-I-M @bbc.co.uk. That’s our email address if you’d like to get in touch.

JAMIE - Thanks Fern Brady for joining us and to you for listening. Bye.

ROBYN - Bye.

[Jingle: That was 1800 Seconds on Autism]