Over the past few weeks here on Ouch, we've been asking you to nominate your Greatest Disabled TV Character (the nomination stage comes to an end this Friday 27 May, with the top ten being put to the vote soon after). Of course, one of the things about asking you to choose a character rather than an actual performer is that the actors behind the roles will end up being a mix of disabled and non-disabled people. It's going to be interesting to see how that balance pans out when we unveil the ten most popular characters.

In the meantime, though, the situation for disabled actors looks less than promising if the results of a new survey from Scope - as part of their Time To Get Equal campaign against disablism - are anything to go by. In answer to the question: "Do you think it is unacceptable for a non-disabled person to play the part of a disabled person in a drama or film?", an astonishing 78 per cent of respondents thought that, yes, it was acceptable, while only a third of respondents thought there were too few disabled people currently on TV.

Crippled Monkey wonders: so if the majority of the general public think there are quite enough disabled people on the telly, where on Earth are they seeing all the crips that are supposedly filling our screens? Is there some secret TV channel I don't know about, which shows programmes featuring wall-to-wall disabled people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Maybe someone's launched Ouch TV on the quiet, without giving me my own show? I think we should be told.