Asperger's.

What most people will deduce from my writings on here, for the past 11 years or so, is that I don't profess to know anything about anything. You read my views and opinions at your peril.

I was watching Jeopardy one evening in Los Angeles, a quiz show that I enjoyed right up to the day we came back. One of the answers – they always give you the answer first, and then you have to answer with a question – was 'I coined the phrase autism' and the question to the answer was 'who is Asperger.'

I am sure I heard it before, and it intrigued me so I looked it up and from then on I could usually tell, when I met someone who had Asperger's Syndrome.

First of all let me say here that I am not talking about you or our other friends and acquaintances so rest assured. None of you know these guys.

There is an English TV host here who would go on and on about how the way the Americans pronounced it; he would say, they say AssburGers – AssburGers! The usual, oh the yanks are saying it wrong, act, as if they should say things the way we say them – even if we're wrong. I mean the guy, Hans Asperger was Austrian and worked with the Nazis during the war and sent Asperger people to the camps. Asperger should really rhyme with Hamburger but it has been un-nazified for the English ear.

I had to meet a film director, one day, at his lovely big house in Beverly Hills and when I got there, he answered the door. There was something about him, something about his eyes which seemed half closed, kind of with a few blinks, looking away and then back again and he would make a wise crack at nearly everything.

I was supposed to audition for a role and as we chatted I made him feel more comfortable and I said 'do you want me to read?' and he said 'oh er, yes . .yes. I can see you can act, but er . .yes . .why not?'

So I read for the role and we eventually worked together.

There were other things about him, later on, which made me doubt his Asperger status and I got used to it but eventually I settled at my first impression.

I do things like looking up a name when I hear it and these days, with the Internet, it's a lot easier.

I saw a movie called 'The Land that Time Forgot,' years ago, Doug McClure was in it and there was a line 'Plato was right!'

So I had to find time to look up Plato – a Greek Philosopher. And what was he right about? His name – Plato – platonic?

He taught Aristotle – another Greek philosopher, but don't worry; we're going back to Hans Asperger. What was his nickname at school? Arse? Ass.

My film director guy used to think the world revolved around him. He made many documentaries in foreign countries making fun of the Russians, the Armenians and other countries and I never saw him eat. He would sit and watch me eat because by the time I got to the table he had finished his meal. All gone, down like a dog.

The best demonstration of Asperger's is a film about someone who doesn't have it. Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman. Tom Cruise is also in the movie playing Hoffman's brother. They build up a relationship, what we believe is a strong relationship, and he finds he has many talents. He can remember numbers, facts that we wouldn't necessarily think of and the audience feels a warmth to him. We can see that Tom Cruise is loving him as a brother and we think we can see an improvement but there is nothing there. He has no feeling at all for Tom Cruise. And at the end he just walks away.

Most movies about people in crisis are about that crisis and the crisis gets better or it is solved. Not with autism. Not a jot, they never ever change, they can seem normal – and in fact they are but just not our kind of normal – but they have problems communicating, don't read body language and have no empathy.

 Psychopaths have no empathy, get bored easily etc. and other things which are in the book The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson.

But the Asperger is no psychopath. They can be depressed, can be alcoholics and never figure out why ceasing to drink will bring their problems to an end. They could read this and get nothing from it. They will threaten suicide when up against it. My pal the director had it figured out exactly how he would top himself and went into it with me in every frightening detail.

Today the people with Asperger's run the world. They are the people in Silicon Valley, they built Google, Facebook and the rest of it. Einstein, it is said, had Asperger's even though it wasn't fully diagnosed by anybody till 1991, and if he'd have stayed in Germany he would have been sent away as he had two minuses, as far as the Nazis were concerned; Jewish and an Asperger.

But we all remember those strange kids at school. Not the ones who had no hope but the ones who would be obsessive with things, doing every painting in the paint by numbers series, remembering every date and happening, when their pets were born, when they died, what time their dad came in last night. The Asperger guy would be the guy who would go to Wembley to see the cup final and go on and on about the décor in the bus that took them there.

But the thing about Asperger was that he did work with the Nazis – this from Wikipedia - Asperger managed to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded for his affirmations of loyalty with career opportunities. He joined several organizations affiliated with the NSDAP (although not the Nazi party itself), publicly legitimized 'race hygiene' policies including forced sterilizations and, on several occasions, actively cooperated with the childs 'euthanasia program.

Look at those last three words and the first two in particular 'child's euthanasia'. Here is a picture of the bastard.

 

Stammering and Stuttering.

 

                                                                  Michael Palin.

The strange thing is, and this is a strange thing to say as an actor: most of my life I suffered from a stammer – a stutter. Apparently the Americans say stammer and the UK stutter; I found that out yesterday. Not many people notice it and one time I met a well known actor who had one. It disappeared when he was working and that's what happens to me.

Most of the time I don't have one but I would be in – shall we say – a town hall meeting and I wanted to say something and as my turn came I would start my sentence with 'err' and then ask my question. I asked a question once when my dad was with me and he said he could see me contorting in the seat as my turn got nearer. I didn't notice that, of course.

My dad had a friend called Kendrick. He had a terrible stammer and one day he wrote his name on a piece of paper as Kackity-Kackity eeegh effing Kendrick. The effing means the F word and this isn't the place for it. Kendrick would use it all the time and my mother would say 'he doesn't stutter with that word.'

He had a sense of humour about it and the other day I saw a comedian who stammered. When talking to the audience one of his comments was 'people come up to me an tell me I have a stammer; as if I didn't know.'

If ever I'm in the company of someone who stammers I feel uncomfortable and feel I might stammer if I say anything.

One of the things I realised is I didn't stutter when I sang. So I kind of sung answers on things I was going to say – it seemed to work and it really only happens now if I'm some kind of insecure situation which is not often.

When I started school I had an Irish accent and when I met the other kids they spoke with Birmingham accents. You many notice that some vowel sounds are the same in each dialect. The 'U' in Dublin, for instance, but that is the same in the north of England too.

At that age I didn't want to stand out so I gradually started to speak the way they did but when I got home in the evenings I reverted back to the Dublin. I think this did me good as I developed an ear for accents and also the pitch people spoke in so I could impersonate a lot of people. I wasn't the best there was always someone else who was a better mimic that me and that goes for when I went to work and even as an actor. Always someone else funnier but I remember all those people and their talents so that has stood me in good stead.

I think the last words to go from Irish into Brummy – or the sounds – were walk, work, talk etc, but when we went back to Dublin for the summer we – me and my two brothers – came back with Dublin accents. It seemed to be okay for the other two as by the time they started school they could hear how I spoke.

One time we got on the bus in Birmingham from the station and heard the Birmingham accents for the first time in months; they all seemed to be singing.

The big trouble for me was when my two worlds collided.

Sometimes I couldn't get any words out at all – the Irish side of my life and the English side of my life coming together almost struck me dumb; which way to speak should I choose; my insides would be panicking and I would be churning up inside.

Many years later when my mother was dying she came to live with us and I looked after her. Of course a lot of the Irish came back but I would go out each lunch time and leave her in the wheel chair watching TV. I would go for a couple of pints of Guinness in an Irish pub close by. I can't remember or didn't notice how I spoke.

But one day I was somewhere else, talking with a load of Londoners and one of the guys from the pub came up and said 'hey Chris: why are you speaking in an English accent?'

I hadn't noticed.

These days if I meet someone from Dublin or Birmingham I tend to slip into a bit of one of those accents.

When we lived in Los Angeles, I knew an Irish actor who brought his English wife and their two children across from London. The children had well spoken London dialects, the mother was quite posh and the husband had a lovely Dublin accent.

After a couple of months we went to their house and the children asked how 'we guys' were doing; we guys!!! I think they'd be between five and ten years of age, and those accents were certainly American which had developed in that short period.

It brought me to mind when I started school, in Birmingham, I didn't like it, I didn't know why I was there and why I was left alone. So I screamed the place down and when the teacher, Miss Jones, picked me up I kicked out and must have hurt the poor woman and didn't deserve the kindness she always showed me.

I was speaking to my cousin over the phone yesterday, who was in Dublin, and my wife said the longer the conversation lasted the more Irish I became. I think it was the same as a child when we would go to Manchester, where my other granny and granddad lived as they had come over to England too.

I would always say 'I don't know' in the Manchester accent. They wouldn't say things like 'I'll be here till ten-o-clock' they would say 'I'll be here while ten-o-clock.' There were lots of other things, other phrases and sayings, and I would get mixed up sometimes.

Last night there was a programme on TV about stuttering and stammering – that's where I found out that the Americans say stammer: hey! They say stammer here too.

They seemed to figure out that it was caused by the way our brains are wired – a bit like autism. I don't know if I agreed with that no matter how clever and well researched they are as I think it has something to do with confidence.

Most of the time I appear confident. 

Lately I have a problem remembering certain words or names but I think that has always been the case with me. One time I could never remember the name of the actor Ray Winstone. No reason why I should remember but when you see people on TV you do remember and that's all that's to it.

At the same time I can remember cast lists from films many years ago. Scripts from plays I've been in – I did The Caretaker once by Harold Pinter and I can still remember one of the speeches. This is not unusual when it comes to actors remembering Shakespeare's speeches and I can remember some of them too.

Michael Palin, who played someone with a stammer in the movie A Fish Called Wanda (above) has started a school where they coach or teach a way to rid people of the stammer. I don't know if it works. His father had a terrible stammer and he had reservations when accepting the role but he did and it was funny. But so is falling on a banana skin – especially if you can see the banana and the person walking towards it. A lot of comedy is laughing at other people's misfortunes – I wonder if they all mind.