When I received an email asking if I’d be interested in a finished copy of Fern Brady’s memoir I was typing ‘Yes please’ before I’d even finished reading the email. Something about Fern made me sit up and take notice when I was half-watching a late night showing of Live at the Apollo. She was such an interesting mix of intelligence, wit, forthrightness and that little bit of indefinable magic that captures an audience and takes them with you. By the time she appeared in Taskmaster I was a big fan. If you listen to my partner, this was because of her approach to tasks, which is very like my own. She dissected tasks in a very analytical way that was completely obvious to her, then when her team mates didn’t catch on (quite often in one case) she would speak to them as if they were insufferably stupid. Apparently the look in Fern’s eyes and her tone of voice reminded him of me watching a quiz show or reality series. Every Monday I become inexplicably wound up by Mastermind, especially when contestants pass questions instead of just throwing an answer out there. It’s obvious to me that if passes count against you in the tie-break situation, it would be better to simply shout ‘banana’ if you don’t know the answer. They might look stupid but they’d have no passes. So I guess I felt something of a kinship with her and the way our brains work, although in other respects we couldn’t be more different.
I had heard that Fern was recently diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum, a very hard won diagnosis for women and something I’ve had some experience of in my mental health work. Any mental health team has it’s share of people who are neuro-divergent, especially older people whose schools were simply unaware of the condition, whatever gender the individual might be. I’ve seen first hand the devastation that can be caused by undiagnosed autism. The inability to fit in at school, the crippling ‘shyness’ that leads to bullying, subsequent depression and anxiety, institutionalisation from long periods on psychiatric wards, coping strategies such as self-imposed isolation, drinking or drug taking. Then all the social issues that come along with these difficulties, like struggling to find or keep employment, poverty, neglect or even being preyed upon by those in society who look out for people to cuckoo or subject to modern slavery. This may sound extreme to some, but I’ve personally seen all of the above happen to people who were not diagnosed early. Not that diagnosis is the cure for all of these terrible life circumstances, but labelling does help because it enables the individual to access benefits, housing, support and some degree of protection in society. Fern was one of these people, born in an era when diagnosis was more common, but usually reserved for boys. The problem is that autism looks very different in women – women don’t fall into the Sheldon Cooper, no girlfriend, obsessive, Star Trek loving, nerd stereotype.
Fern was diagnosed exactly twenty years after she first told a doctor she had autism. Prior to that doctors told her she couldn’t possibly be autistic because she made eye contact and she’d had boyfriends (as if the ability to maintain a heterosexual relationship inoculated you from being neuro-divergent). One night after performing, Fern told her boyfriend that an audience member thought she might have Asperger’s and she should read a book called Aspergirls. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, but as her boyfriend started to read up on it he said to her ‘this is an exact description of you’. Often the signs of autism are simply missed in women because we have become too good at disguising or masking how we truly feel in a situation. Women are able, particularly in a work environment, to put on a mask. For example, all through school and university I was terrified of public speaking. I didn’t want everyone’s eyes on me, I would start to feel hot, sweaty and go completely purple in the face. Eventually I became so embarrassed about being purple in the face I became anxious about that too. These symptoms were exacerbated by a terrifying exercise at the beginning of teacher training where we had to pick a song that told a story and then sing it, unaccompanied in our seminar group. I felt like my mum’s pressure cooker, shuddering with heat and pressure until it gave a high pitched whistle and she would let the steam out. It felt like that but with nobody on hand to release the pressure. When things like this happened and even now when I’m involved in confrontation I’m right back there sweating, with a face like a giant blueberry. I didn’t last a term. However, if I am teaching a whole class of people, like one of my therapeutic writing workshops, I barely break a sweat. I have put on the mask of an expert, someone who knows what they’re talking about and how much it can help. So, as an expert, I can do the task.
Fern struggles to fit in wherever she goes in life, whether it’s school, college or work. She can’t fathom the unspoken social codes that govern our existence, especially in groups of women. Her obsessions are not the archetypal trains, sci-fi or comics. As a child she was obsessed with learning languages, culminating in a successful application to Edinburgh University to study Arabic and Persian. She had no desire to visit the countries where these languages were spoken, she just loved doing verb drills and was running out of languages. She played the piano incredibly well at a young age too, but because these were seen as ‘positive’ pastimes it never occurred to anyone to label them as autistic tendencies. She funded her studies at university by stripping, somewhere she felt that she fitted in. Although that was probably due to the fact that most stripper’s dressing rooms have their fair share of misfits. She didn’t have to be herself in the club, she put on a persona and got on with it. The early years of her comedy career were harder, mainly because there were more social codes to navigate, such as having to pretend she would like to have coffee and ‘get to know’ someone instead of just asking if she could be considered for a panel show slot. Sometimes it felt as if people wasted years playing games just to work with someone, when a simple ‘do you want to work together?’ Would have sufficed. She noticed that people didn’t like her to be so direct, particularly standing up in meetings and asking what the point was? This was something I used to do regularly in my last job as an advocate for people with disabilities. I had a huge case load on part-time hours so if someone called a meeting with no obvious point I would ask if they could quickly get to the point so I could assess if it was worth me sitting there. I remember saying that I’d like to get back to my desk and ‘do some real work’. I was there for the clients who needed me, not my colleagues. In hindsight I can see why our receptionist was terrified of me.
I loved the honesty of this book. Fern is brutally honest, even about those things that perhaps don’t show her in the best light. Her frankness about the autism, but also the mental health problems and addictions she experienced as a result of remaining undiagnosed, is admirable because it will help people who are in that destructive cycle. Her teenage years are particularly fraught and painful to read, mainly because she’s totally misunderstood by those who are supposed to love her. I found Fern’s retrospective take on those years and her post-diagnosis discussion with her mother was particularly moving. Fern is staunchly feminist and I loved that her inability to read social cues meant she didn’t internalise some of the bullshit that still exists in society about how women should behave. When in a shared flat at university, her flat mates basically slut-shamed her for having too many men at the flat. Hilariously, Fern replies that there seven days in a week and she’s shown restraint by only bringing a man back four times. There are other laugh out loud moments like this, where Fern is more than happy to create humour from her situation. There were some similarities in religious upbringing that resonated with me and made me smile.
This is not the typical redemptive narrative arc memoir where someone transcends their illness/situation in order to tie up any loose ends and become the ‘superhuman’ that we should all emulate. I have a disability and this is a narrative trope I can’t stand to see in disability memoirs. People don’t overcome a permanent disability, whether it’s visible or invisible; physical or mental. We learn to accommodate it and live alongside it if we’re lucky. Fern shows that beautifully by describing her difficulties working within her industry with her diagnosis. She describes the Taskmaster experience brilliantly and it’s refreshing to read a celebrity admitting to ongoing issues with their health. It’s more of that brutal honesty she’s famous for and it helps to know that what we see on TV doesn’t come without it’s difficulties, particularly the meltdowns which are a result of the stresses and strains of filming. As you can probably tell I identified strongly with this book and I have wondered if it might be worth mentioning to my GP that I have struggled with social codes; have been told that people are scared of my rather forthright opinions and ideas; have physical crashes after periods of stress; avoid parties; have repetitive mind games or movements that calm me and help me go to sleep; prefer to deal with people in writing; watch repetitive programs that are calming to me; prefer to see friends one to one rather than socialise in groups of women. These may just be personality quirks, but I have wondered and could see how a label might help me understand some of my behaviours. I really welcomed Fern’s story in terms of understanding myself better, whether diagnosed or not, but I also admired her ability to bare her soul and find the funny in her difficulties.
Meet the Author
Fern Marie Brady (born 26 May 1986) is a Scottish comedian, podcaster, and writer. Before becoming a stand-up comedian Brady worked as a journalist. She achieved fame as a stand-up comedian by entering stand-up competitions such as at the Edinburgh Film Theatre. As a result of her success as a stand-up she was invited on to comedy panel shows such as 8 Out Of Ten Cats. In 2020 she became a podcaster when she co-created a podcast entitled Wheel of Misfortune.
Brady was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum in 2021, as an adult. She has been active within the field of autism education since learning of her diagnosis. She has written how she has been dealing with the diagnosis in her 2023 memoir Strong Female Character.
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