Few people knew about Tourette's syndrome before the BBC documentary "John's Not Mad" was broadcast in 1989, and even now it is sometimes treated as something of a joke with the idea of swearing inappropriately being treated a funny rather than a crippling disability. John Davidson developed a severe form of the condition in his early teens and it blighted his life, with tics, involuntary muscle spasms, obsessive behaviour and swearing. He had little sympathy from teachers at school, and his parents evidently struggled to cope too, and it was only the friendship of a schoolfriend's mother who happened to be a mental health nurse that started to give him strategies for coping.
This biopic film opens with Davidson about to receive an MBE from the Queen at Holyrood Palace before going back to show his life as a cheeky and confident 11 year about to start high school with the prospect of being scouted by a football team. His first tics are shocking and distressing - swearing and spitting food at both parents and teachers, and earning him a cruel taste of the leather strap from an unsympathetic head master.
The story jumps forward to his life as a young man, where his involuntary muscle spasms land him in trouble for starting a fight in a nightclub but two people turn his life around - his friend Dottie who treats him with sympathy and Tommy, who offers him a job as an assistant caretaker at a community centre and acts as a character witness for him in court.
The film is sensitively done, with the portrayal of Tourette's as being a frightening and isolating condition but one that can be managed with understanding and coping strategies. There are moments of laughter, but it is the laughter of recognition at all of those moments where we have felt like shouting the most inappropriate thing possible.
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