Parkinson’s is funny, seriously
The Cambridge branch of Parkinson’s UK had a problem. For 40 years this community group had been meeting regularly, providing information and support for thousands of people living with the world’s fastest growing neurological disorder, and they wanted to celebrate this important anniversary. Should they hold a grand dinner in one of the ancient Cambridge colleges, hold a worthy conference or perhaps invite some eminent neurologist to give a lecture?
Instead, for some unfathomable reason, they asked a slightly shambolic elderly man with a bit of a twitch to stagger around a stage for 75 minutes, occasionally picking up a scrap of paper and reading from it. And, if you’ll pardon my French, it was @$%$^ brilliant.
Because the shambling man in question was the comedy writer Paul Mayhew-Archer who gave us his one man show about Parkinson’s, the Incurable Optimist. Paul, who for 50 years has been involved with hits from I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue to The Vicar of Dibley, believes there are jokes aplenty to be mined from Parkinson’s and a packed audience in a Fitzwilliam College lecture hall agreed.
Parkies and non-Parkies alike tittered, chuckled and guffawed at a routine which had many of us nodding - or maybe twitching - in recognition as he documented the many embarrassing, painful and yet comical aspects of life with Parkinson’s. Walking ever faster through Chichester as he tried to conceal from his daughter-in-law an outbreak of uncontrollable farting was one highlight - apparently ‘Chichester’ has entered the Mayhew-Archer family lexicon, a word guaranteed to produce hilarity.
One of my Parkinson’s symptoms is an inability to remember jokes - or indeed those same five words which as Paul reminded us the Parkinson’s doctors always give you as a memory test. Church, velvet, face, red…….and…it’ll come to me.
But what I did love was Paul’s wife Julie promising that if life with this incurable condition became unbearable she would take him off to…Sweden. As he said, Ikea is rarely the answer to anything.
It wasn’t all jokes. Paul spoke movingly about how Parkinson’s had made him take a step back and ask some questions about his life, and in particular come to terms with the early death from cancer of his mother.
We filed out afterwards, invigorated and uplifted by what we had heard, and swapping our own anecdotes about the funny side of Parkinson’s.
Laughter is the best medicine, the old cliche goes - trite nonsense that is not backed up by any peer-reviewed research study in The Lancet or a randomised control trial. Mind you, when they do hold that trial can I be in the group which gets the Mayhew Archer medication rather than the one which has to listen to the radio news bulletin every morning?
in reply to Jonathan ... The show isn't recorded because I want to perform it as many times as possible. This is so I can a) raise as much money as possible for individual Parky branches, and b) benefit from the fact that every time I perform it I feel FANTASTIC!!!!. I will record it at some point. Meanwhile, my documentary "Parkinson's: The Funny Side is permanently available on BBC iplayer.
It's quite amazing how different people respond to PD and how much they can inspire others. My old friend Ben, newly diagnosed, told me 'I used to think PD was funny and now I don't' A bit of PM-A might have helped - is his show recorded?