Scottish comedian Fern Brady has opened up about being a 'positive' depiction of autism as she stars on Taskmaster.
The West Lothian comic has finished her time on the show as the 14th season aired, and came in joint fourth place with John Kearns. The Bathgate-born star has been going from strength to strength after having her first professional comedy gig in 2010, she has since appeared on 8 Out of 10 Cats, Live At The Apollo and toured her own 25 date show Autistic Bikini Queen.
The 36-year-old comedian announced she had been diagnosed with autism in 2021, and spoke candidly to The Guardian where she recalled her audition for Have I Got News for You. The last minute audition resulted in what she now knows was an autistic shutdown, where she froze up and was unable to function.
Taking to Instagram after the Taskmaster finale aired, she wrote: "It is absolutely staggering to me that a show where I painted a self portrait with a raw sausage on a toilet seat was the thing which made me profoundly accepting of my autistic self but there you go. Initially I was just excited about getting the job as I’d wanted to get a new kitchen put in.
"But when I was lurking on the TM subreddit before this series went out, it was pretty apparent how many autistic people watched the show. I realised that by being my unmasked self while having fun I’d reach them way better than by doing some serious on-the-nose documentary about how s*** my life had been when I was undiagnosed (I mean it WAS, but there are so few media images of happy autistics and I want newly-diagnosed people to feel some optimism moving forward.)"
Fern has been in comedy for 11 years now, and fronts a BBC podcast with fellow comedian Alison Spittle called Wheel of Misfortune. The pair are regularly joined by celebrity guests like Kerry Katona, Katherine Ryan and more.
Continuing her lengthy post, Fern added: "I’d noticed that, no matter how much weight I lost or nice clothes I wore on TV, I could still spot my autism and failed attempts to mask it onscreen (moving and speaking in an overly stylised way that is just ‘off’ enough that it appears uncanny.)
"Even when people don’t know what autism ‘looks’ like, their lizard brains recognise something different about us and they use that as an excuse to exclude us. I knew a big part of doing well on Taskmaster was being yourself but if you’re autistic you’re so frequently punished for being yourself that it was a scary move.
"I figured instead of trying to blend in & failing as usual, I'd try being the MOST myself. I'd wear a costume that made me look like an alien, a secret wink to any ND folk watching."
Taskmaster might have little to do with autism and neurodiversity, but Fern was proud to give a 'positive depiction' of herself on the show for others to embrace. She continued: "I could do some BBC3 doc where we go into my diagnosis and I cry at the 45 minute mark. But I’d so much rather that for once, people see a happy positive depiction of neurodiversity.
"And you can see it in Taskmaster, a show which ostensibly has nothing to do with autism. It’s in the ridiculous way I solved my final task, in my openly stimming on camera while I concentrated on my next task, in my screaming at the birds to shut up because I hear all noises at the same volume, in my tendency to anthropomorphise every inanimate object on set."
She added: "So cheers to Alex and the whole TM crew for being the kindest and the best, there’ll never be another job like it. #taskmaster "
Fern is currently gearing up to release her book, Strong Female Character, which will be released in February 2023.
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