The 5 Live Must Watch blog Feed

"I was lucky" - Shelagh Fogarty on her experiences with stammering

2013-11-12T16:11:50+00:00

"It's amazing how people's opinion of your age and intelligence decrease when they hear a stammer". This text came in as I was discussing stammering on 5 live, or more precisely, the difficulties many children and adults have in getting NHS treatment for a stammer.

Just in case you're one of the people who say it's not a serious enough condition for treatment to be automatically available, consider Rob, who sent this text: "I have been a covert stammerer for 30 years (I am 50 now). Despite holding down decent jobs, it has blighted my life even to the point of considering taking my own life. Non stammerers cannot comprehend the dreadful effects this disability causes".

Rob is the same age as Amanda, who was a guest on the show. She got help in her forties. She paid for treatment on something called The McGuire Programme and has gone from being a woman who couldn't order a meal in a restaurant to talking fluently on live radio about what can be achieved even later in life.

She hid her stammer too, describing it as an iceberg - most of her difficulty and pain hidden but ever present. She finally sought help after having what she describes a "complete speech breakdown". Hear her story:

Gavin Bergin joined the conversation too. He's 23 and has had a stammer since he began to speak. He's just finished his law degree and despite getting some treatment in his early years he had to supplement it privately as well.

At the heart of the discussion were figures which show huge differences in what NHS help you can expect depending on where you live. Oh and if you're an adult with a stammer you might well find your area only offers treatment for children. So unless you can afford to pay for help, pure chance dictates whether or not you'll get it.

I was lucky. When I was nine years old, despite always being a chatty happy little girl, I started to struggle with certain words, especially if they began with the letter 'J' for some reason (there's a lot of work to be done still on the reasons for stammering).

Every Saturday my best friend, Lynn, would gently push me to the counter in our newsagents to ask for the magazines we would read then swap. Our comics of choice were Jinty and Jackie. I can still feel my hot face and tight chest as I tried to ask for them. Then there was my increasing anxiety when asked to read out loud in school. Weirdly, acting in little plays we put on didn't bother me one bit. Cue Shelagh in the lead role of our Christmas Panto, Snow White (chosen more for my pale skin and dark hair than my acting ability).

It was only when a new teacher, Miss Croft, came along did anyone step in and try to help. God bless Miss Croft. She saw my horror at being asked to read aloud, made little of it at the time, but asked me to stay back and chat with her after class. After some really light touch intervention things improved enormously. She told me I needed to be in charge of the whole subject of reading and speaking in public. "Offer to do it", she said, before I went off to High School.

I think I took her rather too literally. Let alone what I now do for a living, there are comments in my school report like "perhaps the most lively member of the class when it comes to open discussion". So polite, Sister Catherine.

I include my own experience, not to indulge myself, but to show how transforming early help can be. Not every person with a stammer is like Colin Firth's King George, or Michael Palin's character in A Fish Called Wanda.

Some hide it by barely speaking. Some lose fluency in early childhood and left without help get worse and worse (would that have been me but for Miss Croft I wonder?) Others have an 'interiorised' stammer like the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, who talked to me for our special programme:

It's not all bad news. If you want to know more about some of the excellent work being done in centres in Leeds and London to help people with stammers click on the following links.

Action for Stammering Children

The Stammering Support Centre, provided by Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust Speech and Language Therapy service.

Download the podcast of the programme here

Life in a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan

2013-06-17T16:55:53+00:00

It would be hard to find a place more full of contrasts than Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. This vast lunar landscape is now home to more than a hundred thousand Syrians who've fled the fighting in their own country.

It's a place of safety for sure, but also a place where understandable distress and frustration can quickly take on an ugly hue.

Water is in short supply despite the best efforts of aid agencies from around the world. Heat and dust seem to goad you every step of the way.

Surges in the numbers of people arriving a couple of months ago put even more pressure on the UNHCR.

Their senior man on the ground here, Killian Kleinschmidt, tells me he drops into people's tents and caravans (really they're nothing more than a container with windows and a door) to listen to their requests and complaints and to involve the refugees themselves in as much of the decision making as possible.

You lose a lot when you become a refugee. First your home, your possessions, then your passport, even your freedom.

The camp has a perimeter fence past which people cannot go. Some of it is topped with barbed wire and there are checkpoints too all around.

It looks and feels like a punishment and yet it's a refuge. People arrive every day but others are desperate to leave.

We stopped at the place where hundreds go daily to try to get on a bus back home. Clearly for these people today was the day they'd had enough of being refugees.

Whatever it was that made them flee Syria, Zaatari isn't enough to stop them risking their lives again and those of their children.

We asked the men there if we could speak to them but the atmosphere quickly turned from restlessness to aggression.

"We want out! We want out!" They chanted, banging heavily on our car. They had nothing more to say.

Away from there, the vast stoney ground is dotted with the tiny figures of the children living here.

One boy wearing a scary mask follows us and when he gets close up removes it to reveal a cheeky smiling face. The balm of make believe I suppose.

There are imaginative projects to keep them occupied and to make fun a part of their broken lives. Oxfam's public health team at the camp hold painting sessions where each child paints his or her own large tile in bright colours.

They lay it out in the scorching sun to dry then it's used to decorate their communal wash units. It's an opportunity to teach them the importance of sanitation and give them places they care about.

I met a young couple expecting their first child, a group of mothers at a wash block trying to clean clothes (and children) with limited success, and a huddle of men who told me they would return to Syria tomorrow if Britain and others would arm them in their fight against President Assad's forces.

Later, a former fighter in the Free Syrian Army tells me the world has left it too late for that now.

Ahmed saw his mother shot dead by a sniper when she went to rescue a child shot seconds before. His handsome, young face tightens at the telling of it and does again when he describes being beaten and stabbed while under arrest by Government forces.

All the while his four tiny children potter in the tiny caravan they all live in, clinging to him from time to time.

Everywhere we go, what little people have is offered anyway. Syrian coffee, sugary tea, juice, water, sweets. Tiny displays of dignity made vital to people who have lost everything.

Farid, a singer, feels like his dignity has gone. "Refugee. It's a small word but it means a lot to me. A refugee is humiliated. Being a refugee is the height of humiliation".

You can listen to Shelagh Fogarty present from the Syrian border in Jordan on Tuesday 18 June at 12.00

Rome hosts one of the world's most theatrical electoral processes

2013-03-13T12:13:46+00:00

All eyes are on a simple rustic looking chimney atop a tiled roof in Vatican City on the second day of the conclave to elect the next Pope.

St Peter's Square filled steadily with the faithful and the curious yesterday for the start of one of the most theatrical electoral processes in the world.

First there was the public mass at the famous Basilica, then the liturgical beauty of the procession of cardinals from St Paul's Chapel into the Sistine Chapel.

Once each elector had sworn his oath of secrecy, anyone else inside was ordered to leave with the Latin words 'Extra Omnes'.

The large wooden doors of the chapel closed and the next time the group inside will be seen will be to present to the world the latest successor to St Peter.

Just a couple of hours later came the first smoke signal. Black and plentiful. No decision yet but it's clear the technicians have been working on their chemicals after several confusing moments in the recent past.

The smoke comes several times a day if the conclave continues undecided - black after every second ballot. White smoke, indicating a choice has been made, comes when it comes.

The crowds ebb and flow between signals and the usual Vatican tour groups come and go. The rain doesn't seem to deter them.

A city unmoved

The global reach of Catholicism means almost every nation in the world is represented in the square. Some carry banners with the name of their cardinals.

Others wave national flags as if to say "Choose us! Choose us!" but there are pilgrims here too who've come to pray for the cardinals during the conclave. The spiritual element of this event is very real for many here.

The street traders are making a killing. They stalk the streets around the main event, offering umbrellas and waterproof ponchos on the hoof. People seem to welcome it as the rain pours down.

When the crowd in St Peter's Square open their brollies as one it's a rather beautiful sight - like time-lapse photography allowing you to see flowers bloom in an instant. Necks crane from time to time towards the chimney.

In a city well used to the pull of The Vatican for visitors, Romans going about their daily business seem decidedly unmoved by it all in much the same way any of us ignore our own town's tourist attractions.

The balcony above the huge doors of the Basilica from which the new Pope will greet the world as the Bishop of Rome has been prepared for that moment.

The red of the drapes pulls the eye in and acts as a focal point for people's imaginations.

We don't know when but we do know that, in time, the French cardinal Jean Louis Tauran will announce from there "Habemus Papam" - "We have a Pope".

Unless, that is, the cardinals choose him.

Shelagh Fogarty is in Rome covering the papal conclave of 115 cardinals to elect a Pope. Listen each day from 12pm.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced for Octoberfest 2012 line-up

2012-09-19T11:42:27+00:00

Octoberfest, 5 live's free three-day festival of shows and off air events, is only a few weeks away now and we're putting the finishing touches to the programme line ups.

One guest who'll be joining us is Nick Clegg, who'll take part in a special one-off show hosted by Shelagh Fogarty from 12pm on Friday 12 October. The Deputy Prime Minister, leader of the Liberal Democrats and MP for Sheffield Hallam, will face questions from 5 live listeners about the coalition government.

The debate is just one highlight of the festival, run in partnership with BBC Radio Sheffield, which will also feature many other 5 live programmes including 606, 5 live Breakfast, Fighting Talk, Richard Bacon and Kermode and Mayo's Film Review.

There'll also be off-air events too that anyone who can get to Sheffield will be able to come along and enjoy in the 5 live activity 'Igloo', which will be located in Tudor Square. On top of all that we're also trying to break a world record forChildren in Need (more details of this one will come in the next few days).

The shows will all take place in the Crucible and Lyceum Theatres and free tickets are available now.

Click here for full line up and ticket information.

Adrian Van-Klaveren is controller of BBC Radio 5 live and BBC Radio 5 live Sports Extra.