91¸£ÀûÉç

EMMA- Hello, Emma Tracey here. This is Access All. And we’ve got someone on the line who you might recognise. Hello Nikki Fox.

NIKKI- Oh, Emma, hello.

EMMA- Lovely to hear your voice as well. And you are already in Paris for the Paralympics, you lucky thing. 

NIKKI- It just feels buzzing at the moment. We’re not far from the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe, which is where the whole opening ceremony is going to kick off. But there’s just like people performing outside, people dancing, there’s music, the cafés are full.

EMMA- I am so, so excited. So, what have you seen and who have you spoken to so far? We haven’t even had the opening ceremony yet, but I assume you’ve been rocking around doing your thing?

NIKKI- We have spoken to a couple of Paralympians. We had Sammi Kinghorn.

EMMA- Is she a wheelchair racer? 

NIKKI- Yeah.

EMMA- She got a spinal injury, didn’t she, and went through rehabilitation and everything before she started her Paralympics journey. Now, you reported earlier in the year that Paris wasn’t the most accessible of places for wheelchair users. Nikki, have they ramped things up?

NIKKI- Yeah. Well, when we came out before it was the Metro that we were really focusing on. So, the Metro’s kind of like our Underground, isn’t it, and it only has one fully accessible line. The IPC, the International Paralympic Committee were hoping very early on to make improvements, but there’s just a lot to make in that so they couldn’t really do much about that. So, what they’ve done is put money into the fact all buses are accessible, there will be shuttle buses taking people to and from the venues, they’re laying on loads more accessible taxis. I mean, I have been to Paris before a couple of times actually with my sister, who you know is also disabled, and we find the taxi situation here quite difficult. But I’ve seen so many G7s around – that’s the company they’re using; there’s definitely noticeably way more accessible taxis around. And then that obviously means that people are getting around on the roads because they can’t use the Metro, so I don’t know what the traffic situation is going to be like. 

EMMA- Now, what can we expect to see over the next few days, particularly around the opening ceremony?

NIKKI- It sounds quite exciting. There’s something I’m not allowed to tell you but I’m really excited about it. 

EMMA- Ah, but you’re amongst friends here. Surely, I mean, we’re like…

NIKKI- I know, Emma, I’m dying. I don’t because when…

EMMA- We won’t tell anybody.

NIKKI- …when you hear this you’ll be like, I know why Nikki was so excited.

EMMA- Is it like a big star in the opening ceremony? 

NIKKI- I’ve said too much already, Ems. 

EMMA- [Laughs]

NIKKI- Moving on. So, yeah, expect something exciting and a bit different from the opening ceremony. I mean, it’s not in a stadium. 

EMMA- Okay. And are there a lot of fans around? 

NIKKI- We’ve seen disabled people knocking around the place. And then we’re going to meet a guy called Archie who is a huge Paralympics fan, and he’s travelling from Gloucestershire with his parents. 

EMMA- Lovely.

NIKKI- And he’s here for the whole Games, so he’s taking in loads of events so we’re going to chat to him ahead of it. So, I think from today onwards we’re going to start to really bump into the fans that are coming over to watch the Paralympics. And of course they’re not all going to be disabled, are they?

EMMA- No, no, they don’t have to be disabled. You don’t have to be disabled to be a fan of the Paralympics. Nikki, before I let you go can I ask you, what is the most French thing you have done since arriving in Paris? 

NIKKI- Well, this morning – [laughs] this is not French in the slightest – but they gave us a croissant, and then I went and got a massive jar of Nutella and shoved it on, so it’s not quite French. 

EMMA- [Laughter] so you de-Frenched it. 

NIKKI- I don’t think the French do that. Yeah. We had a little lunch, you know. We haven’t just had lunch by our computers; we’ve gone out and done it French stylie. It’s right up my street this, Em. You’re going to have so much fun. 

MUSIC- Theme music. 

EMMA- Coming up this time: how are Paralympians affected by extreme heat and what do they do to cope? Paul Carter has been finding out. And have you seen any of We Might Regret This, a cracking new 91¸£ÀûÉç TV drama? Well, before you get fully stuck into that on iPlayer listen to my chat with Kyla Harris, the proud disabled woman in the lead role, and she wrote it as well. Absolutely brilliant. More of that later on. Subscribe to us on 91¸£ÀûÉç Sounds, and you can contact us by email accessall@bbc.co.uk, or we are on the socials @91¸£ÀûÉçAccessAll.

Paralympics GB bosses have been preparing athletes for the Paris Games by making them train in a heat chamber set to 40 degrees centigrade. That is hot. When I was on my holidays Paul Carter found out more. And this conversation involves sweat hoovers. Hmm, intriguing. 

PAUL- The Paralympics in Paris are just around the corner, but one of the issues competitors may have to contend with is hot summer temperatures. The last time Paris hosted the Olympics it was 1924, 100 years ago, and 3.1 degrees cooler than it is now due to climate change. It means members of Paralympics GB have been preparing themselves in case things get hot and steamy. They’ve been training in a heat chamber at Loughborough University set to 40 degrees centigrade so their bodies can acclimatise. Rather them than me I must say. Joining me to tell me what it’s like are two of the people involved, Ben Stephenson, the performance support lead for British triathlons Paralympic world class programme, and Paralympic triathlete, Claire Cashmore, who was born without her left forearm and is using the chamber as she prepares for her sixth Games. Hi to you both, thanks for coming on. 

CLAIRE- Hi, thanks for having us. 

BEN- Hello.

PAUL- Claire, we’re going to come to you first. We mentioned that Paris is going to be hot, or at least potentially it might be hot. What sort of challenges does that bring to you as an athlete?

CLAIRE- As athletes we’re actually quite experienced with the heat. Going back to Tokyo when it was ridiculously hot and ridiculously humid we did so much heat prep that we stood on the start line and we just felt like we were the best prepared up there. So, we’re just kind of replicating similar strategies and protocols to what we did back then. We don’t know what the temperatures are going to be like in Paris, but it’s more preparing for it could be hot, but also there’s like a massive fitness gain that can be had from training in heat. 

PAUL- I’m someone that gets sweaty just looking at the sunshine. Can you explain to people listening what’s it like running in a chamber at 40 degrees centigrade?

CLAIRE- Yeah, it’s pretty grim. 

PAUL- [Laughs]

CLAIRE- You’ve got, especially when there’s three of you in what ultimately you have to think of as just a room, that is like a normal sized room and the temperature is cranked up and the humidity is cranked up and there is just a lot of sweat. And I train with my boyfriend and his guide in there and they sweat I think it’s, like, three litres an hour. So, just the amount of water that is coming out of them is pretty disgusting [laughs]. 

PAUL- Wow.

CLAIRE- So, you step off the treadmill and it’s just pools of sweat everywhere. And you just feel like your head is pounding because it’s just so hot, your heart is going extra fast [laughs], and you feel pretty sick. But it is good and you know it’s worth that. It’s definitely a mind game. I play games with anagrams where the letters, so there’s an RPE chart in front of us with different words on there, like very uncomfortable, and I’m trying to create as many words as possible out of this just to keep my mind busy, because otherwise I’d go crazy [laughs]. I’m not sure everybody does that but it keeps me entertained during it. 

PAUL- It’s quite interesting because I was going to ask, do you enjoy it, and obviously it sounds it’s one of those things that is probably impossible to enjoy doing that. But there’s a particular athlete mindset, isn’t there? You mentioned that you know it’s a good thing, so is it just something that you have to do as part of the job? 

CLAIRE- Yeah. And I think to be honest I do kind of weirdly enjoy it. 

PAUL- I knew it [laughs]. 

CLAIRE- I don’t at the time. And Ben will probably disagree [laughs] with all my moaning. But I do in a kind of sadistic way. You feel good after it. It’s very rewarding, so you come out and you feel like you’ve worked blooming hard, which is always a nice feeling when you’re an athlete.

PAUL- Ben, at this point I’m just going to bring you in. So, you’re the performance support lead. Can you just tell us a little bit about what that means and how Paralympians in particular are affected by these levels of heat? 

BEN- I’ve been a physiologist for the Paralympic programme for nearly ten years or so now. So, it means that any projects like this, preparing for the heat, preparing for Tokyo, obviously Paris on the horizon, is part of my remit. And in terms of how athletes are affected by the heat, in reality it’s no different to the athletes competing in the Olympics in terms of the effects on performance: as athletes get hot core temperature goes up, performance generally goes down – so the overall outcome is probably no different. What is different is probably the susceptibility for that. As a very large generalisation Paralympic athletes probably are more susceptible to temperatures going up and therefore performance going down when the weather is pretty hot and humid. 

PAUL- Why is that? And does that vary between people with different impairments for example? 

BEN- Yeah, it’s very, very impairment specific. So, if we take an impairment such as spinal cord injury, which is quite a common impairment, quite common in Paralympics, if an athlete has a complete spinal cord lesion, so their spinal cord is completely severed, below that point in their body they will not be able to sweat and they will not be able to send blood to the skin for cooling. So, roughly about 80 per cent of the heat that we lose comes from sweating. So, if you’re automatically taking away a portion of your body that can’t sweat you’re automatically losing a big ability to lose heat. And in reality that’s the same for athletes with limb deficiency. Limb deficiency automatically comes with a lower surface area of skin, and skin is the place that we are losing heat, so that in itself reduces your capacity to lose heat. But also athletes, especially with a lower limb deficiency are generally less efficient as well, so not only can they not lose as much heat, but typically might also be creating more heat as well. And even athletes with neurological impairments, who again might have full body surface area for sweating and for convective heat loss, actually some of the inefficiencies we see there further drive up actually how much heat their body is losing. 

PAUL- For blind and visually impaired athletes as well? 

BEN- Yes, not as much, but that is definitely a factor. And again, I suppose with every impairment it’s a spectrum. Every impairment has a more impaired end of the spectrum and a least impaired end of the spectrum. But generally the more visually impaired athletes again can be less efficient. If we take an activity such as running in particular if you’re completely visually impaired it’s very hard to run efficiently without seeing anything, even if you have a small amount of sight you’re probably holding your head in a way where you’re trying to maximise your field of vision to see if there’s anything you might trip over, which again probably isn’t the most efficient way of running. And that lack of efficiency creates more heat. So, there’s a potential consideration there. But there’s also considerations for behavioural thermal regulation. So, athletes with full sight if they go to the toilet and they see that their urine colour is quite dark that’s a cue to drink more, they’re probably not hydrated. If you’ve completely visually impaired you don’t have cue. 

PAUL- Oh, that’s super interesting. 

BEN- So, again, in the grand scheme of things that’s probably a minor consideration compared to something like a spinal cord injury and not being able to sweat for half your body, most of your body. But again, it’s very different from the athletes who have world class level efficiency, they have the ability of full vision and to have some of the behavioural cues of seeing how much I’ve sweated and seeing what urine colour is. 

PAUL- So, how do you go about monitoring all this? What does the heat training involve? Talk us through the process. 

BEN- In reality it’s quite simple. It’s chucking athletes in the heat chamber and having them work hard enough that their core temperature is elevated by roughly a degree, a degree and a half. So, we’re not looking to take athletes to the limit every day in the heat chamber because we just don’t need to. Roughly what we’re looking for is a core body temperature of around 38.5C. So, like I say it’s about a degree, a degree and a half increase on what they would be normally. So, in reality it feels relatively uncomfortable without being intolerable. And we’re continually monitoring that core body temperature. So, what we often use are ingestible core body temperature pills. Athletes would take that either the night before or the morning of when they’re coming into the heat chamber and we can see wirelessly what their internal body temperature is. And then it’s just a bit of guidance to turn the pace or power up or down to maintain that body temperature, which is we know is about right in terms of achieving the maximum adaptation. 

PAUL- And do you combine that with other metrics and measurements as well? Are you measuring things like lactate and stuff like that also?

BEN- Not so much during the heat chamber sessions. A big thing that we measure is sweat rate. So, very simple getting athletes to weigh in, weigh out, and weighing how much fluid they consume we can easily see what the sweat rate is. 

PAUL- Wow.

BEN- But sweat rate is a really simple and really non-invasive way of measuring adaptation. So, we see it every day and if we’re seeing sweat rate go up, which it typically does, it’s a good sign that adaptation is happening, even without necessarily testing it. 

PAUL- It certainly sounds like it needs towelling off afterwards, that’s for sure. 

BEN- Yeah. The sweat hoover that we’ve got is very useful, I must admit. 

PAUL- A sweat hoover? 

BEN- Yeah. It’s a liquid hoover and it gets a lot of use in that chamber. 

PAUL- [Laughingly] I don’t want to ask really what that smells like. 

BEN- Not good. 

PAUL- So, Claire this is going to be your sixth Paralympics. In general how’s your prep going? The heat training aside, how are you feeling? Are you feeling good?

CLAIRE- Yeah, really good actually. I think I’m in a really good place. I struggled a bit last year with knee niggles and stuff like that; whereas this year has been much smoother and much more consistent. So, I’m feeling really confident and yeah, I think I’m in probably really good shape. So, I’ve just got to keep that confidence. I’m in the triathlon so I’ll be competing on the 1st September. 

PAUL- Well, everyone here on Access All wishes you the very best of luck, and we’ll all be watching and wishing you on to do your very best. 

CLAIRE- Thank you very much. 

[Clip]

OLIVIA 1- So, have you modelled much before? 

KYLA- Oh, just some life drawing stuff in Canada, not really. 

OLIVIA 1- Oh, comfortable with nudity, okay, tick. 

OLIVIA 2- Okay, if I may?

OLIVIA 1- Yes.

OLIVIA 2- I think what Olivia and I are most excited about…

KYLA- Oh sorry, just a second, I thought, aren’t you Olivia? 

OLIVIA 1- We’re both Olivia. 

OLIVIA 2- …is your raw talent. 

KYLA- Yeah, I don’t really know if I’m a model, so. 

OLIVIA 1- Okay, can I just stop you there? you’re the most f—g [beeps] stunning woman I’ve ever seen in my life. And in terms of saleability right now, I mean, as a proud white disabled woman…

KYLA- I’m not, uh, white. Who is?

[End of clip]

EMMA- Saleability. I love it. And that raw talent that the Olivias from that clip were talking about is the Canadian filmmaker and disability activist Kyla Harris. Now, Kyla has co-written and stars in a new 91¸£ÀûÉç TV series called We Might Regret This. It’s about navigating life, romance with a silver fox lawyer, and an intense friendship between Kyla’s character and her personal assistant. It’s gritty, it’s realistic, and as you heard from that clip at the start there it is very, very funny. I’ve got Kyla Harris with me on the line. Hi Kyla, thank you for joining me on Access All. 

KYLA- Hello Emma; thanks so much for having me here. 

EMMA- I mean, I did give a bit of a rundown at the beginning, but what essentially is We Might Regret This about? 

KYLA- So, it’s really about a female friendship with a wheelchair user and her best friend who she asks to be her personal assistant. But Freya, my character, has just moved to London from Canada and moved in with her older boyfriend, and so with the 24-hour care that Freya receives it’s quite the concoction. 

EMMA- Yeah, it’s kind of crowded in there. 

KYLA- You could say that, yes.

EMMA- It is quite autobiographical, isn’t it? I mean, you did move as well from Canada to the UK; you did have to sort out a PA or care. How did that go? What was that like? 

KYLA- Well, I had some really, really lovely PAs and friends that came over to help me get settled. And we have a really different system from the NHS in Canada in terms of care, so none of my care was paid for when I was in Canada, neither were any catheters, any medication. So, when I first arrived and heard that everything, you know, my care would be paid for through the NHS and social services I was just, like, this is heaven [laughs]. I have landed in heaven. 

EMMA- Was it heaven, Kyla?

KYLA- [Laughs] Turns out nothing’s perfect. So, yes, I’ve had a long journey with understanding English culture and how England really treats disabled people. 

EMMA- And what’s your takeaway? 

KYLA- I think there’s room for improvement. 

EMMA- You’re so diplomatic. One of the big elements of the show is the transition from friend to PA. Describe what it’s like when a friend becomes your PA. 

KYLA- I think there are fewer boundaries when you have a friend that’s turned PA. And I think that in the series Freya and Jo are both really wrangling with that reality and what that means. 

EMMA- In the series we see some of the people around Freya react in frustration and in different ways around her disability, maybe when they’re out and about. What were you trying to achieve by showing some of the ableism that happens? 

KYLA- We really wanted to show that, you know, really the social model of disability and how it’s really the environment that disables you, which is also to do with people’s attitudes towards you. And ableism is so pervasive and it’s such a kind of slippery beast. Being disabled I feel like you have to be a problem solver all the time; you’re constantly problem solving. And a lot of that is because of ableism, and a lot of that can lead to hilarity. 

[Clip]

FREYA- I know, slowly. I’m a gentle lover. 

JO- Didn’t doubt that. 

FREYA- Oh! 

JO- It’s in. See, I told you I can do it. I’m like the Pied Piper of piss [laughs]. Oh [beeps]!

FREYA- What?

JO- You’ve…

FREYA- No.

JO- It’s just a little…

FREYA- No, it’s not. You’re closing your right eye. 

JO- Oh, it really stings. 

FREYA- Don’t lick your lips.

JO- Oh, and it’s salty. 

FREYA- [Laughs] god, I’ve missed you. 

JO- Yeah, who wouldn’t miss this? 

FREYA- Jo, you’re wiping piss on a model. 

JO- Shut up! They signed you? [Laughter] now you’re finally just a pretty face!

FREYA- All I’ve ever wanted to be. 

JO- For when the disabled loo’s ready. 

RECEPTION- Thank you. 

[End of clip]

EMMA- Oh, such a funny clip. I don’t know if you got that there, but basically Kyla and her friend are in an alley, her friend’s helping her wee through a catheter, and because the disabled toilet at the party they’re at isn’t working they then arrive back in reception and give the catheter of wee to the receptionist to put in the disabled loo when it is open, which I think is fantastic. So, the other really interesting element is the connection between having a 24-hour live-in PA and having a relationship and living with a person and sex, you deal with that straightaway. Tell me a few of the things that you wanted to get across. 

KYLA- Yeah, I think that when we were coming up with the series we had a lot of conversations with a lot of disabled people, you know, friends, and we’d talk about relationships all the time and what that means. I think it’s really important to see it on screen because disabled people are often just so desexualised or not seen as kind of viable romantic partners, or people will think that they won’t want to be with someone because they’d have to do their, you know, a disabled person’s care, and all of these assumptions. Whereas so much of that is worked out between the disabled person and if they’re with someone who’s not disabled then the non-disabled person. This is just like the tip of the iceberg; there’s just so much to explore that’s never really been explored before in terms of intimacy in this set-up. 

EMMA- There is, as there often are nowadays, an intimacy coordinator. You had one for the filming of the series. But not just for the sex and relationship scenes but also for the depictions of care. Why was that important? And who was this special person, because someone who knows both is rare? 

KYLA- Well, Jenefer Odell was our intimacy coordinator, and she’s just an absolute dream. But Lee, who was the co-creator, co-writer really helped with showing Elena and Aasiya Shah, who plays Ty, how to do a lot of the physical care. And Jenefer would be there to just kind of ensure that everyone felt comfortable with the situation, and she’d had conversations all individually before and after. So, it was a really collaborative process. Jen was just so fabulous in so many ways. She was taping up my vulva at times for the intimacy scenes, not just in general.

EMMA- Taping up the vulva? Is that what happens in sex scenes?

KYLA- Yeah. I called it my beige landscape because it was kind of 30 different shades of beige that would hold my bits in and cover them up and make sure that whenever my legs were spread the beige landscape was there and not the real thing. 

EMMA- So, you sort of got a mini waxing eery time when the tape was coming off?

KYLA- Yes, oh yeah [laughter]. 

EMMA- You even got the whole mobility aids chat into the series as well, your powerchair eventually named Edna. But what’s really nice is you’ve got quite a rollercoaster of emotions around that, or Freya does, your character. So, even though Freya’s really comfortable in general with being disabled and all the stuff around that when new things come it’s still a bit tricky.

KYLA- Since production Edna has sadly died. 

EMMA- Oh no! I’m so sorry! Is there a new girl in town? 

KYLA- There is. Her name is Triella. She is my trial chair [laughs]. I’m waiting for possibly Edna the Second is a name we’ve been workshopping. Also Barry. We’ll see what personality comes out when I find them. 

EMMA- Well, I cannot wait to hear the name of your new chair, Kyla. And I cannot wait for everybody to see We Might Regret This because honestly it’s just brilliant. And it just moves on the idea of disability drama, if that’s what you want to call it or if that’s what anybody wants to call it. Thank you so much, Kyla Harris, for joining me. And We Might Regret This is on 91¸£ÀûÉç iPlayer right now. 

KYLA- Thank you so much, Emma. It’s been a pleasure. 

EMMA- That is it for this episode. Remember get in touch with me, I love to hear from you. You can send me a WhatsApp voice or text message, just remember to put Access at the start, and that’s to 0330 123 9480. You can email accessall@bbc.co.uk, and we are on X and Instagram @91¸£ÀûÉçAccessall. Subscribe to us on 91¸£ÀûÉç Sounds. And let me tell you that next week I will be in Paris bringing you a taste of the Paralympic Games. I’m very, very excited. And watch out on the Access All feed because you might even get a little extra episode from there next week. See you then. Bye. 

[Trailer for Ukrainecast]

LYSE- Hello, this is Lyse Doucet. Guess what I’ve been doing? Presenting the latest episode of Ukrainecast, a special episode. 

VITALY- Together with me, Vitaly Shevchenko.

LYSE- And we have just finished recording a conversation with someone you may know, the actor, writer, broadcaster, none other than Stephen Fry. 

STEPHEN- It became so apparent that what was being fought for was much more than territory, or if it was a territory it was a territory of the mind and the spirit of a freedom and an openness and a desire to be able to talk openly. And talking about mental health is a very, very healthy [laughs] ironically sign of that openness. 

VITALY- Stephen is a prominent campaigner for mental health awareness. Last year he visited Ukraine where he co-hosted a conference on Mental Health at a Time of War. He’s also published a documentary about mental health and his visit to Ukraine. 

LYSE- I think we can say both Vitaly and I were really moved by what he said about this topic. 

VITALY- I certainly was. 

LYSE- And if you’d like to hear more about our conversation you can find this episode of Ukrainecast, it’s available on 91¸£ÀûÉç Sounds or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Goodbye.

VITALY- Bye.