Still loud, still proud

The actor and writer Mat Fraser talks to Paul Carter about freak shows, performing in the nude and the 50th anniversary of the drug Thalidomide that caused his impairmentMat Fraser remains one of the most recognisable disabled people in the UK today.

“Apparently, I’m like, 5th, he says. “I used to be 3rd. Still, we’ve all got to be yesterday’s crip sometime!”

Despite the wry humour, Mat, now 46, shows little sign of fading quietly into obscurity.

In the next few months alone, alongside travelling to California to lecture students in disability at Berkeley University, he will be putting the finishing touches to his new play, A Multitude of Elvii, as well as working on a live art/theatre collaboration of Beauty and The Beast with non-disabled performance artist Julie Atlas Muz, who he met while doing some burlesque in New York.

“It’s quite a rude show. I’m nude for the entire thing,” he says.

“I’m really into my Chinese horoscope and it said, ‘this year, stop doing everything on your own, it’ll be good to share and collaborate,’ so I’ve also started writing a sitcom with Liz Carr that’s so offensive that I doubt it will ever see the light of day.”

Despite the fact that he’s still clearly very busy on stage and in the arts field, Mat makes it clear that he would still like more roles on television.

So does he think that the representation of disabled people on screen has improved in recent times?

“Yeah, but it’s still shit,” he says. “It’s getting better because there used to be nothing. Now there’s something. I’m glad All About Me [the BBC sitcom] has been decommissioned.”

“I guess it was good to have Beyond Boundaries on screen because any kind of disability visual presence on screen is better than none, but it wasn’t quite the representation that I would be hoping for. Nothing against the participants, but it was a bit ‘hero’. And I thought it verged on the pornographic at times when it delved into people coming to terms with their impairments.”

The conversation soon turns to the recent spate of shows on Channel 4 and Five such as Extraordinary Bodies.

“Please can we stop having the caring, sharing voiceover. Have: ‘Roll up! Come and see the Elephant Man!’ because that’s what’s going on. It’s revolting.

“Don’t get me wrong. As I get older, and less bristly and more mature and hopefully more accepting of other people’s points of view, sure, we do need to learn about people with extraordinary bodies. But only if that’s offset by seeing that many of us with extraordinary bodies have very normal lives. If it’s not offset with that then it’s rubbish.”

Mat is well placed to talk about freak shows, having done a lot of work with them over the past 10 years. This month, he is appearing at the Coney Island Superfreak Weekender, a freak show in which only the “born freaks” are allowed on stage.

“I’m fine with that, because I own the stage and I can control the relationship between me and the audience, albeit they’re only coming to look at my hands, but I think there is a two-way energy there and it can be a positive thing.

“I mean those people are pretty fucking stupid that come to that freak show. They really do need to know that it doesn’t hurt, and that I can wipe my arse and things like that, which I tell them, and they seem happy about that. Relieved almost.”

One subject on which Mat remains as vociferous as ever is the issue of Thalidomide. It is 50 years ago this year that the notorious drug was first licensed in the UK, and the campaign for adequate compensation for those affected goes on.

I ask how the ongoing portrayal of those affected by Thalidomide as “victims” sits in the context of the social model.

He agrees that as a “proud, disabled person, proud to be different” there is a dichotomy between the two relationships.

“All I can say is that the victim status that the Thalidomide Organisation are trying to push to get our profile higher to get us more compensation I think is legitimised because there are some people in really abject misery and poverty and pain.

“So on the one hand it does seem that the two are contrary beliefs, that they might cancel each other out, but I actually don’t think so. I think that it’s OK to use the victimhood. I don’t go ,‘look at me, look at my poor pathetic hands,’ but if they were hurting I’d go, ‘Ow! Look, man, this is hurting and it’s your fault, give me some money to make it better.’”

It is this relationship between campaigning and culture that Mat finally seems to be at ease with.

“I still think of myself as a disability rights activist, and I would always man the barricades should they be needed to be manned for the cause,” he says.

“But I still think it’s OK to flap my flippers occasionally. For a laugh.”