The actress and the stolen photos

EMMA- I am born blind. Colours mean nothing to me. We had a painter in painting a bedroom yesterday and my husband had gone swimming wit the kids, and the painter said, “So what colour do you want this room?” I was like, “Oh god, Robin said something about mushroom. He said something about pink sand”.

NIKKI- Nice. 

EMMA- And they were like, “Aha”. I actually said, “Look I am the actual worst person to ask this question and we’re going to have to, he didn’t write it down for me, so we’re going to have to wait until he comes back”.

NIKKI- So, do colours not have any impact? I wear a lot of pink; does that make you feel anything when you hear pink?

EMMA- I think it’s not a dark colour, so it’s probably a bright colour mostly. There are probably dark pinks but probably not that dark. And also girlie, cute; they’re all the things that I think of when I think of pink. 

NIKKI- That’s good, yeah.

EMMA- Or meat that’s not fully cooked. 

NIKKI- Yeah, that’s kind of how I like it. Brown, what do you think about brown?

EMMA- I think of tans and brown skin, lovely brown, and chocolate and stuff. But then there’s also a dirty brown. So, I find it hard to know one is the other, but I just go with it. So, I just think of the things depending on what the context is.

NIKKI- What about green? 

EMMA- Grass, Ireland.

NIKKI- Yeah.

EMMA- The colour the face goes when you’re going to be sick. 

NIKKI- You're very good! How did you learn all this stuff?

EMMA- Well, these are word. I know words, I don’t know colours. Feelings, I know feelings. 

NIKKI- As Damon did point out in the gallery, you don’t actually go green when you’re sick; it’s just sort of a saying, isn’t it? I could have gone green that day I did the podcast when I wasn’t very well because I’d gone out the night before. I felt a bit green that day.

EMMA- But is not like a greenish tinge, grey, then sort of green?

NIKKI- You mainly go pale and sweaty to be honest.

EMMA- So, why do they say green if it’s not true?

NIKKI- Well, exactly. There we go, we’ve stumbled on something here. 

EMMA- What? You’ve ruined my day now. 

NIKKI- Sorry, Ems.

MUSIC- Theme music. 

NIKKI- Hello, and welcome to Access All, the BBC’s disability and mental health podcast, which is really just Emma and I having our weekly catch-up.

EMMA- Yeah, our weekly get stuff off your chest from the week about disability pretty much.

NIKKI- Well, it’s so lovely to be back. I missed you all. I’m Nikki Fox and I am in London. 

EMMA- And I’m Emma Tracey in Edinburgh.

NIKKI- And later we are going to be hearing from actor, Melissa Johns. 

MELISSA- I would just get myself into the most ridiculous situations. I would get to dates early so I could plan which side I’d be sitting. I’d go to the kitchen and ask the chef to cut my food up for me. I would choreograph sex. I literally became this master of manipulation. 

NIKKI- Stay listening to find out what that was all about. 

EMMA- Nikki, do you like shopping? 

NIKKI- No. No, do you know what, I don’t love it, Emma. I mean, obviously I’ve shopped in the shops. I used to when I was younger go round our local shopping centre pretty much every weekend, had a little browse, got some bronzing balls, came home. But as I’ve got older I’ve tended to do everything online now. 

EMMA- I’ve done a bit of shopping this week and I have to be honest, it’s been quite frustrating, even in the shops that I’m quite familiar with online wise. So, my supermarket stopped showing me product descriptions there for a while, and stopped putting my basket items in a list that I could properly follow. 

Have you heard of the purple pound? It refers to the spending power of disabled households, so households with a disabled person in them. And it’s estimated to be worth £274 billion. 

NIKKI- £274 billion! Billion! Billion!

EMMA- Yeah. So, new research from the Business Disability Forum kind of tells us what a lot of us already know, that the purple pound money isn’t being tapped into by lots of businesses. I mean, 90% of people who took part in the research said they struggled with shopping because the information wasn’t there or the shop accessibility wasn’t good. And 43% said that they actually gave up on a purchase because it was just too hard. 

NIKKI- Well, let’s talk about this more actually because we’re joined – well I’m in the studio with him, Emma, I’m sorry you’re not – the lovely Harry. And we’ve got Fearne online somewhere. Hello Fearne.

FEARNE- Hello. 

NIKKI- Fearne, I’m going to start with you. Can you just tell us a bit about yourself and how your disability affects how you shop?

FEARNE- Yeah sure. My disability I have inflammatory arthritis in my joints, and fatigue, and bowel issues. So, I generally use crutches, but I don’t have access to a mobility scooter. But I do find shopping out and about in person very difficult because I have to really research how far a shop is from where I’m parking and if I can get round. Amazon, I find it a lot easier to return products because if they don’t fit or they’re not suitable for me then I can just pop down the nearest shop and return it. But a lot of the information I need just isn’t on the description, so it is frustrating. 

EMMA- So, do you end up having to send back a lot of things then? 

FEARNE- I’m worried that Amazon are going to flag me as a fraudulent shopper because I return so many parcels. Because if I’m buying mobility aids or medical devices or just day-to-day living kind of things they’re not going to be suitable so I send them back. 

EMMA- If the information you need isn’t on the packaging how do you find out what you need to know about the product to try and avoid sending it back?

FEARNE- I go by recommendations through like the disabled community on TikTok, through like videos and that kind of thing. I just have to do a hell of a lot of googling basically.

EMMA- And what sort of stuff do you need to know about a product? 

FEARNE- Clothing, I like trousers with pockets, which is a definite woman problem, because if I’m moving around with crutches I like to store things in my pockets. If like zips or toggles and things on jeans are going to bubble my back, descriptions of clothing online don’t show that kind of thing. It’s only till you get it in person and you can touch it and feel it that you really know. So, it’s just so difficult. 

NIKKI- As well as shops on the high street there are plenty of lovely coffee shops. I love my coffee. It’s one of my biggest joys in life. I try to nip into as many coffee shops as I physically can. But they can also be a challenge when it comes to access. 

EMMA- There is one coffee chain, Nikki, that is trying to buck that trend. SEND coffee, S-E-N-D coffee, has three coffee shops, and it’s focused on providing barista employment opportunities for disabled people. The founder is Harry George and he is with you. 

NIKKI- I love this. Just tell our listeners why you started this, what it is, just hit me, Harry?

HARRY- Yes, obviously I didn’t start out to be a philanthropist or non-profit founder. Like most young men from a council estate I wanted to make a lot of money, and I started getting into restaurants, bars, cafés and opening cafés. And very luckily along the way I realised that, very selfishly, I love working and helping people. And I worked for a bunch of different disenfranchised groups, the homeless, young offenders, victims of domestic abuse, and throughout those different groups there was a common thread of people who were probably there because they had a disability; they had become disenfranchised into the other categories because of their disability. And a few years ago I was lucky enough that Newham Council approached me and asked if I’d cast eyes on a project they were piloting working with young people with SEND, getting barista jobs. 

NIKKI- That’s special education needs and disabilities, yes?

HARRY- Correct. It’s a great code word because people who work in the industry they see it and they recognise it immediately. People who just want a coffee they come in and they just think it’s a word. 

NIKKI- It’s perfect. It works so well. Carry on. 

HARRY- We piloted it for three months with a few young beneficiaries. We work with 18 to 25 year olds who are making that awkward transition from being kids into adults. And we essentially decided to go all in on it. So, we founded in January 2020, six weeks before the global pandemic, which in hindsight was a terrible time to start a non-profit. We’re still here, still smiling. 

NIKKI- And I was reading that you’ve got dyspraxia. Was that partly the reason you started?

HARRY- Yeah. As I say, I kind of noticed people with disabilities in those other categories when I was working with them, and I think because of my own hidden disability I started to become more and more aware of the fact how much I repressed my disability and pretended that I didn’t have anything. I think the school systems are actually reasonably good at supporting disabilities, but once I made my way into the working world I was completely in denial. I was trying to pretend that I didn’t have anything that causes issues.

NIKKI- Yeah.

EMMA- And how does it affect you the dyspraxia?

HARRY- My biggest challenge is my fingers and my hands, I don’t have much feeling in them. When I was younger I had sensitivity in my ears, so conversations around me I’d find very hard to filter out the different conversations happening in a room. I’d constantly be distracted by what another table were talking about. I wanted to open a restaurant, I wanted to be a chef, and once I started working in kitchens I realised that I was really going to struggle with that because I think a few key situations where I’d have my hand on the grill and it would be burning and I wouldn’t notice it immediately, and I’d smell it before I felt it. Kitchens can be quite dangerous places. 

EMMA- Yeah. So, you designed your coffee shops then around what you needed then, is that right?

HARRY- Yes. Can I do this was never the question. It was always how can I do this. 

NIKKI- How.

HARRY- And I kind of applied that to when I started the coffee shops. And I think that within our shops a great example would be we work with some young people who are deaf, and in a normal kitchen working through a kitchen with a knife you would be calling out, ‘knife, knife, knife!’, just so everyone around you knew not to step backwards or turn around. But that system doesn’t work for somebody who’s deaf. If you tap them on the shoulder to tell them you’ve got a knife they’ll turn around and potentially put themselves at risk. So, we’ve had to come up with loads of tiny little systems that we just incorporate into it. And some of those systems are actually more effective than just shouting ‘knife!’ aimlessly in a kitchen. So, I actually feel like the improvements we make benefit the wider team as well for each disability. 

NIKKI- And how have you designed your shops for disabled customers as well?

HARRY- I think people think of accessibility in retail and they think of toilets and they think of disabled toilets. The financial obligation to build and kit out a disabled toilet can be quite massive. So, I think a lot of people kind of shut down on that and say, we’re not going to do anything like that because we can’t do a disabled toilet. But I always wonder how do we make it accessible, even if we can’t do a disabled toilet. So, finding one nearby and signposting people to it. It really bothers me some of the basics that people skip. Like it doesn’t have to be cost prohibitive. Some doors are very heavy, shockingly heavy, and I always wonder how they think people are expected to get in and feel welcome when the door is just too heavy. You come up and you’re using a walking stick and you can’t move the door, it couldn’t be a more direct sign of you’re not welcome. And a door stop costs a couple of quid. I think people get kind of caught up on thinking about the big holy grail of disabled toilets, but if they taught their staff sign language for free that’s something that could make a huge difference to the accessibility from a bunch of different questions. 

I feel like the sunflower lanyards, we get a lot of people coming to our shops once they know what we do, they come in with those on, and it’s an interesting challenge. I’m glad they exist, but they shouldn’t have to exist because in a dream world everyone that comes in should expect to be treated with enough respect that if they have a special accommodation that they can just ask for it and people give it. 

NIKKI- Fearne, is that the answer do you think for people with all kinds of disabilities being able to go out and about and shop? It certainly would help you, wouldn’t it?

FEARNE- It would certainly take that element of dread and doubt away. Because when I need to go out it does fill me with dread: oh what’s going to happen today, where can’t I get into, that kind of thing certainly. 

NIKKI- And that’s really to dread everyday tasks is quite upsetting, and it shouldn’t be that way. 

EMMA- I did a couple of little callouts recently for some thoughts on shopping. And Selina can’t get around her favourite lingerie shop without getting her wheels caught in underwear. 

NIKKI- I once dragged out a pair of thongs actually, that reminds me, back in the day in my scooter. I went in for a bit of undie shopping, came out, all the alarms went off, I had a rack of clothes attached to the back of me and a pair of Union Jack thongs going around the wheel of my scooter. 

EMMA- And Selina talks about the accessible changing room being used as storage. We all know that one. 

NIKKI- Yes.

EMMA- Lifts not working as well.

NIKKI- Just out of interest how do you order a coffee in sign language? 

HARRY- Well, what would you normally order? 

NIKKI- I would order an espresso with whipped cream if I wasn’t anywhere near some honey. 

HARRY- On nice.

NIKKI- Like a con panna.

HARRY- Makes sense. I think the key thing is with sign language your fingers on your hand are the vowels, so a-e-i-o-u.

NIKKI- Okay.

HARRY- If you wanted to go all in you could spell out espresso. 

NIKKI- Just espresso. 

HARRY- We found that takes a very long time. So, what we just do, because it’s the only coffee on the menu with an e, we just do the symbol for e. 

NIKKI- Nice.

HARRY- And then we’ll do the symbol for coffee, which is this little c shape near to your mouth, and doing it as a dip. 

NIKKI- And that does look like a little mini espresso, doesn’t it, as well. Well, guys thank you so much. This has been really interesting. Thank you Harry for coming into the studio. Fearne, thank you so much for your time. It’s lovely to see you, albeit online. 

FEARNE- Thanks for having me. 

NIKKI- I’m sorry this shopping causes you such anxiety. One day let’s hope it gets better for you. It’s been a pleasure speaking to you.

FEARNE- Thank you. 

MUSIC- Access All.

EMMA- Nikki, we just can’t get away from air travel. There are news stories popping up all the time. Frank Gardner was left on a plane again last weekend. 

NIKKI- Again. 

EMMA- And you’ve been flying as well, you’ve been on holiday. How was your flying experience this time? 

NIKKI- It really was one of the worst experiences that my sister and I have had flying actually. Waiting, check, yes we had to wait. But the biggest problem, as a lot of physically disabled people will know, was the transferring from the wheelchair to the aisle chair, from the aisle chair to the plane seat. Now, I won’t have to tell many physically disabled people this, they’ll have been through this rodeo many a time: if you need help transferring, if you’re somebody like my sister and I, we have a muscle condition, our arms are just as weak as our legs, you do need assistance to get on the plane. So, what generally happens is you can take your wheelchair to the side, plane door, and then they’ll offer an aisle chair for you to be lifted onto it. 

EMMA- Which is?

NIKKI- My boyfriend described this, and I think he’s very right, like the chair Hannibal Lecter had before Hannibal Lecter had the chair he had for the film, you know, with less straps. 

EMMA- Okay, so is it just a basic skinny chair with a strap across it?

NIKKI- It’s the skinniest chair, Emma, that I’ve ever seen. I’m a size 8, 10, I’m spilling all out of that chair. It’s got a tiny narrow, narrow seat. Not enough straps.

EMMA- It needs to be narrow so it can get down the aisle. 

NIKKI- Yeah, but it doesn’t need to be that narrow. Because Rachel and I, my sister, have a solution to this, and that is to take our chairs onto the plane. Now, we do that by spending a bit of extra money and booking the front row. So, we’ve got the front row. Our wheelchairs will get into a position where we can get from them and on to the plane seat, so long as we are on the front row. But there was a big old hoo-hah about not being able to get on the plane in the chairs, and we needed a ramp and where was the ramp, and blah, blah. But actually from Heathrow we did manage to do that. When we got to Faro the assistance guys came on and they just didn’t have a clue how to lift. So, my sister was going to go first, they were like, “Can you move your legs?” and she was like, “Well, no I can’t walk”. They said, “Can you move your arms?” and she said, “No, I can’t lift them very high”. And then the  guy just went, “So, you can do nothing then? You can do nothing!” I was like, woah steady on there. 

EMMA- Wow. 

NIKKI- I said to Rachel, “Look, cross your arms” I tried to show her what to do, because she’s a bit nervier than I am about this, because Rachel has broken bones before and so the goal is that she doesn’t break another. And so she was trying, but they didn’t know how to grab her arms, it was all going to be…oh. Honestly Emma, my heart was racing. They didn’t have a clue. This happened on the way out and the way back. I want to start a campaign to update the aisle chairs because even when you actually get onto that aisle chair they don’t strap you in enough. Like your head’s falling back, they’re tipping you back, you’re falling off, your legs are going everywhere. Also when they went to lift Rachel they put on these massive gloves like they were going to stick their arm up a cow’s arse or something. It was the weirdest thing, and it was just not nice. 

Also, loads of disabled people know this, we spent ages beforehand when booking inputting all the information that we had to: that we couldn’t transfer, our scooter measurements, our wheelchair measurements. We did every single thing we had to do beforehand, we were fully organised, and you get there at check-in and they don’t have your scooter measurements, they don’t really have much information written down. And you’re like why? 

EMMA- Yeah, so you’ve spent all this extra time that nobody else needs to spend, and the information hasn’t been passed along. 

NIKKI- There was a guy, cabin crew fella, who when he was waiting for us when we landed back said, “I just don’t understand why now, in 2022, there is not a better, safer way of getting disabled people onto planes, I don’t understand it”. 

EMMA- This is what I’m wondering for other people how they get on aeroplanes, how they get on with the aisle chairs. Tell us. Let us know. 

NIKKI- Yeah, I’d love to know. Get in touch with us. Email accessall@bbc.co.uk, or you can message us on WhatsApp. Our number is 0330123 9480. But crucially can you start your message with the word access. If you want to send a voice note just do the same thing too, just write access, and then send the voice note. That would be fab. 

MUSIC- Access All with Nikki Fox.

NIKKI- If you’re listening to this edition of Access All on 5 Live and you like what you’re hearing then subscribe to us on BBC Sounds. You can also listen to other news podcasts like Newscast, Ukrainecast and If You Don’t Know. 

Our guest this week is an actor known best for  her roles in Coronation Street and Grantchester. But she’s also something of a legend for her disability advocacy in the arts. And she’s also just finished a UK tour of her one-woman show Snatched. Welcome Melissa Johns. 

MELISSA- Thank you so much for having me. 

NIKKI- It’s lovely, lovely to speak to you. Now, you’ve just finished touring this debut play. How are you feeling about it all? Are you exhausted? Exhilarated? 

MELISSA- I’m all the feelings. I literally did my final show on Friday, and after a UK tour we ended in my home city in Hereford, where I was born. And we had an audience of over 300. It was glorious and it was wonderful and I got very drunk afterwards. 

NIKKI- For people that didn’t get to see the play, Melissa, tell us what it’s about. 

MELISSA- So, Snatched is an autobiographical play about obviously me and my life. And I always knew there was a story to tell. Growing up I absolutely hated my body. I couldn’t stand the way it looked. For those that don’t know my right arm finishes just below the elbow. And that led to just some really scary moments, because I look so different to everybody around me and I would cover my arm up, I would just get myself into the most ridiculous situations. I would get to dates early so I could plan which side I would be sitting. I’d go to the kitchen and ask the chef to cut my food up for me, but really I said I was going to the toilet. I would choreograph sex. I literally became this master of manipulation and it was draining, it was very draining. 

NIKKI- And was it just because of your limb difference? Was that the only reason? 

MELISSA- I think it ended having a knock-on effect on my whole body. It was like I magnified this part of my body that I saw as wrong, and then I let that seep into other areas of my body. And so I really did, I just put this huge kind of barrier around myself and refused to let myself indulge in anything free, like dancing. Like I’d go to a party and I’d sit down all night, I wouldn’t get up and dance because that’s when people would see me. And so for me the worst thing that could have happened would have been for my iCloud to have been hacked and my intimate explicit photos released online, and that is exactly what happened. 

NIKKI- That honestly it makes me feel a bit ill. 

MELISSA- My agent called me up at the time, and my incredible, wonderful agent, who I’m still with, to say that a particular newspaper had been in touch with her and they had picked up these photos. And they were making their way across lots of porn sites, it was being picked up by lots of newspapers. And so suddenly I had to become okay with my body essentially being classed as public property, because these photos were online for the world to access. 

NIKKI- And this was a body that you weren’t completely happy with at the time. I mean, this was 2018, wasn’t it?

MELISSA- Yes.

NIKKI- Were in Corrie at the time? 

MELISSA- I’d just left Corrie. 

NIKKI- You’d just left Corrie. And had you not come to terms with your body at that point or were you starting to?

MELISSA- By that point yes, I was starting to. I was really starting to make great efforts. And the way that I did that was I was with my family one evening and my grandad, who’s sadly no longer with us, he bought his first video camera in 1990 and that was the year I was born, and he documented my entire life. And so we were watching some childhood footage and I just saw this little girl on the screen and she was dancing and she was so free, and she was moving her body in ways that I hadn’t moved my body like that in years. And I just remember sitting and watching her and thinking I’m not giving you the life you deserve, you are so precious and you deserve so much more than I’m giving you, and if you were stood in front of you now the last thing I’d say to you is I hate the way you look. But she’s still there, she still exists, she’s still in me. And for me that was a massive turning point where I just thought I need to change the way that I’m living my life, because even if I’m not ready to do it for me I have to do it for her. 

EMMA- So, you were starting to come to terms with it a little bit when the photos were leaked. And then they generated some absolutely awful comments. Tell me about the steps you had to take to come to terms with what had happened and to keep that sort of love for your body as well.

MELISSA- Yeah absolutely. So, the day it happened I had like 21 missed calls off my agent. And as you can imagine I was like, gosh this is going to be a good job, it’s like Spielberg’s called, I thought she really wants to get hold of me. And then I listened to her voice message and she said, “Darling, don’t answer the phone to anybody, I need you to call me straightaway”, and that’s when she told me on the phone. And I spent the next few hours just in a real mess, I was full on like ugly crying, because I just thought everything I’ve worked for, not only my acting career but the work that I do with young people, my work with disabled young people, what is going to happen. My life is about to be over, and I don’t know how to navigate this. And it was that loss of control; I suddenly felt so out of control with the situation. And I’m  somebody that’s not very good at not being in control. 

So, to get myself back in the kind of driver’s seat I forced myself to go onto the website. I remember typing it into Google and it was just growing the amount of sites that it was one. And so I just went on the first one, first thing I noticed was my photo was next to Jennifer Lawrence’s, and I just thought well, I’ve made it, there I am, chilling next to J-Law herself. And then the realisation of it kind of crashed down on me. When I saw the way that my body had been ripped apart, not just as a woman but as a disabled woman, I mean we’re all used to being bullied, right, people can be mean and they can pick out what they perceive to be your vulnerability, so I’m not new to hearing bad things about my body. But when I read the way that my body had been just completely and utterly ripped apart I’d never seen anything like it. And that for me is what kind of fuelled that fire and I just thought get angry. If you have your privacy disrespected get angry. But what we don’t need on top of that is shame for our bodies. That’s what I’m trying to eliminate. I’m not the one to blame here.  But as you can imagine, there were a lot of, ‘oh what did you do that for?’. And that’s what we need to twist here, it’s not the ‘what did you do that for?’ it’s, ‘why did they hack it?’.

NIKKI- Yeah.

EMMA- I feel like what you’re saying is if you’re a disabled woman and you’re proud of your body don’t think that you can’t do whatever anybody else does if you want to.

NIKKI- Yeah.

MELISSA- Yeah, it wouldn’t have got as much traction I don’t think because it was this blonde-haired actress or whatever, and oh, she’s only got one arm, oh my gosh, does she have sex, how does she do it. So, yeah it was a real kind of minefield. It got completely fetishized because, I’m sure you're aware, that as a disabled person god forbid you are just a sexual being in your own right. According to the rest of the world you either don’t have sex at all or you do, you only exist for somebody else’s sexual pleasure, and therefore you get fetishized. So, for me it was all the things that people thought I should or could do with my right arm, and suddenly I was just no longer a sexual being in my own right; it was purely for the pleasure of those around me. 

EMMA- Do you mean devotees?

MELISSA- Yeah.

EMMA- Is that the people that we’ve heard about over the years, lots of amputees have issues around their privacy in terms of photos because devotees fetishize the part of you that’s had an amputation or that stops after the elbow or whatever? 

MELISSA- Yeah, absolutely. And the knock-on effect kind of ripples through everybody then. It sort of becomes a bit of a running joke. And I think as disabled people we’ve been the butt of the joke for so long.

NIKKI- And where are you at now? Do you feel you’ve come to terms with the whole hacking? Have you come to terms with your body? Do you feel in a much better place now?

MELISSA- Oh my gosh, doing a one-woman show is like the best therapy out there. 

NIKKI- Yeah, I bet. 

MELISSA- It probably costs a little bit more money actually, but I can talk about it so confidently in the sense it doesn’t hurt me anymore. 

NIKKI- You’re owning it, hey?

MELISSA- Yeah.

NIKKI- There are a couple of things you’ve said today that have struck me, very much so actually. One of them was about hiding your disability, because I used to walk badly for a while, but I was quite obviously disabled. And when I was on the dating scene or just going out with my mates, I used to stand at the bar and a lot of people didn’t know I was disabled when I was standing at the bar. And I used to choreograph it at the time, because I was sort of coming to terms with everything, and I’d be like, right I’ll wait till he walks in.

MELISSA- Planned your routes, yeah.

NIKKI- Yeah. So, he’s not going to see. And also when I first started in TV doing all of this and I was on TV a lot more, and I didn’t really know how to dress and my make-up was horrendous and my hair was horrendous and everything, but I did used to get quite a lot of negative comments. They weren’t always disability related. I remember I did have one that was quite funny, like the very first one I had was, ‘Nikki Fox is either a very strange looking woman or a very attractive hamster. You decide’. 

MELISSA- Oh wow. 

NIKKI- I know. 

MELISSA- Why does the world feel like it has to comment on the way that we look? It’s boring and it’s draining. And just like just be funnier. Like you poor person that you’re not that funny. 

NIKKI- Yeah. 

MELISSA- Well, I’m sorry that they said that. 

NIKKI- To be honest I’ve got to the age, I’m 42, where I do just brush it off. And I’m quite content with myself. But I remember at that particular time just starting this kind of career, which is a bit brutal anyway…

MELISSA- Absolutely.

NIKKI- …it kind of does hit you a little bit, you know. 

MELISSA- Yeah.

NIKKI- And what is next for you, Melissa Johns? Are you doing more Grantchester? 

MELISSA- So, Grantchester series 7 came out at the beginning of this year. It actually lands in America in, oh god, like a few days’ time. 

NIKKI- That’s exciting. 

MELISSA- The Americans love it. There’s definitely future life for Miss Scott. It’s a period drama, it’s 1950s, as an actor to go back to a time that you didn’t live in is such a joy. The team is incredible. And so yeah, I’m really exciting to see where Miss Scott goes from here. 

NIKKI- Oh Melissa, thank you so much for joining us today. That was so interesting. And please let us know when you’re next going to be performing Snatched, we can do a little group outing if we can. That would be nice, wouldn’t it, Em?

EMMA- Absolutely. I’d love to see it. 

NIKKI- We’ve also talked a lot haven’t we recently about festivals on Access All. And if you’d like to hear about the experience of two young women at the recent Wireless Festival then head over to our sister podcast, which is called If You Don’t Know. They weren’t impressed with the setup at Crystal Palace so check that out. 

Thank you for listening. Subscribe, send us a message, we’d love to hear from you. 

EMMA- Goodbye.

NIKKI- Bye.