I have severe dyspraxia, which can make me sensitive to distractions, and hyper-sensitive to sound. A couple of years back – after sitting through the clacking and flashing silver gleams of a knitting session so extreme that a performer acquaintance in the show even texted me in the interval to say it was putting her off – I had the nerve to point this out to the malefactor sitting next to me.
Life in modern Britain sometimes seems to constitute an ongoing battle of protected characteristics. This week, I thought back to my theatrical spat while I watched Gregg Wallace roll out a series of excuses for his conduct as host of BBC’s MasterChef. The Wallace saga has all the ingredients for a classic competition of entitlements and grievances: neurodiversity, the eternal battle of working-class man and middle-class woman, and an Englishman’s inalienable right to wear a sock on his penis like a tea-cosy for his todger.
Reports like this are often released only as dry, euphemistic summaries, supposedly to prevent identification of the complainants. But previous claims in the press include the allegation that Wallace held the head of a female staff member while she knelt before him to wipe a stain from his trousers – he was the star, she was the junior who cleaned up mess on her knees – and thrust his groin at her, mimicking a demand for oral sex.
Wallace is still blaming everyone but himself. For the first time, he managed to push out a limited apology this week – apologising for “any distress caused” – while blindly insisting that “none of the serious allegations against me were upheld”. This is only true if you still don’t understand that humiliating your female and ethnic minority staff is a serious matter.
But now, his main line of defence is that “a late autism diagnosis”, which came during the investigation process, proves that Wallace, not his victims, deserves special protection. In an attempt to pre-empt the report last week, Wallace reportedly threatened to sue the BBC for discriminating against him on the grounds of disability – despite the fact that for most of his career, he had no autism diagnosis. This, too, is the BBC’s fault, because “nothing was done to investigate my disability or protect me from what I now realise was a dangerous environment for over 20 years”.
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As the report notes of Wallace’s targets: “freelance staff in particular often felt unable to raise issues due to concerns of potential impact on future employment”. How lucky for autistic Gregg to hit on these people at random. Perhaps it’s simply a coincidence, too, that the other powerful man on MasterChef, co-presenter John Torode, was also found by this report to have used racist language (although he denies this) and has since been sacked too? Wallace’s autism may have made it harder to navigate social norms, but he enjoyed privileges in his workplace that he seems unable to acknowledge.
But this does come at a time of social tension: the rising rate of neurodiversity diagnoses coincideds with a competing moment of greater sensitivity to workplace behaviour. Wade through forums like Reddit’s “Am I The Asshole” or Mumsnet’s “Am I Being Unreasonable”, and you’ll find schoolgirls claiming to have been told at school that they have to put up with the advances of “creepy” boys because their classmate has an autism diagnosis. (Verifiable or not, such stories speak to a tension in the zeitgeist.) In at least two recent trials of young men convicted of harassment, an autism diagnosis has been offered in mitigation.
I have always found it helpful to think of neurodiversity as a useful tool for recognising one’s strengths and weaknesses, rather than a political identity or excuse for victimhood. I was diagnosed with a textbook case of dyspraxia as a child. It means, for example, that I struggle with spatial visualisation of scheduling, so I have customised ways of constructing a calendar. (The fact that I am able to employ a diary assistant for a few hours a week is undeniably an advantage.) Dyspraxia is also associated with poor timekeeping – but although I am indeed no star in this arena, it has never occurred to me to keep someone waiting, breeze in late, and suggest they should just put up with it. When your own weakness starts affecting other people, you tackle it.
As neurodiversity diagnoses soar, we have a choice: either we can all use our diagnoses to compete for special protections, the latest in modern society’s hierarchy of grievances, like Gregg Wallace, or we can all agree to learn better how to manage our strengths and weaknesses.
Reddit and Mumsnet are messy online forums for procrastination and drama, but there is one important lesson we can learn from them. Neurodiverse or neurotypical, whether you prefer to wield knitting needles in the theatre or an egg whisk in the TV studio, society depends on us regularly asking ourselves one question: “Am I the arsehole?”
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