In new BBC show Blind Ambition, MacDonald and Jamie O’Leary meet artists who have lost their sight – including a rapper, a photographer and a wood turner ‘who still has all his fingers’
I’m a blind standup comedian, currently co-starring in the BBC Two documentary Blind Ambition. As the title suggests, the show is about blindness. But please don’t think this is a violins, tissues at the ready, “oh didn’t they do well” type of documentary. The show creator and Essex wide boy Jamie O’Leary wanted to make a different kind of show about disability.
You’ll know the classic disabled show formula: person has a dark phase then overcomes their disability and achieves something wonderful. In this paradigm the disability is a hurdle that needs to be jumped over. Or, if there are mobility issues at play, an obstacle to get around. In the Blind Ambition paradigm, blindness – a disability readers of the New York Times voted the worst thing a person could have in the world (which is bollocks as blind people can’t read the flipping New York Times so couldn’t vote) – is positive.
