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Comedian Ray Bradshaw's show CODA explores what it was like growing up as the hearing child of two deaf parents. The award‑winning stand‑up, who learned British Sign Language before English, weaves humour and family stories into a heartfelt look at CODA life. All performances on the tour are BSL‑interpreted, reflecting Bradshaw’s long-standing commitment to accessibility. TRANSCRIPT: VIC MINETT: Ray Bradshaw. He is a comedian and he's a coda. And that's the name of his new show. A coda is a child of a deaf adult in his case, too. His mum and dad both were deaf as he was growing up. Ray and I chatted about many things, but also the thing we were really linked by was being a coder, because of course, I'm one as well. And we talked about where we'd heard the phrase for the first time. RAY: I'm going to ask you. When was the first time you learned the word coda? Because I reckon I was about 25. VIC: Oh, gosh, no, wait older than that. I didn't even know it was a thing. We just. Yeah, yeah. It was just, it was just what we were. And then some, oh, I tell you what, there's a lovely lady called Rita, who we know, and she's been on the show a few times. She's a huge fan of Strictly Come Dancing, and she introduced me to her son and she and she said to her son, Vic's a coda. And I said, a what? And she said, child of a deaf adult. And I was like, okay, now I know. And it was it was such a revelation because I, I hadn't realized that that we were a thing. What about you? RAY: Yeah, same. So I remember someone said it and I thought it was like a slur. I was like, what did you just call me? What's happening here? VIC: One of the hardest things I always found, sadly, my mum's now no longer with us, but I still have lots of deaf members in my family. Trying to explain a joke to Mum that wasn't visual was always pretty, like, man on a banana skin, she was a massive fan of Mr. Bean. But do you know what I mean? But a verbal joke is quite difficult. How does that translate for you? RAY: Yeah, it was much harder, so this would be my fourth UK too. I've done a few. I signed one myself so I became my own interpreter, I audio recorded it, I became my own interpreter on screen for a bit, and that was really hard. Now, the beautiful thing is now, I have very well respectfully highly trained interpreters that do that for me now, which makes it so much easier because before what would happen is, you know, the structure sign language in English is different, instead of what's your name, you saying your name, what? So you're constantly making the joke worse in English and same language sometimes because you need to get the two languages to meet it roughly the same time. Whereas now I use regional interpreters. So when I'm down in Warwick we'll be using Rachel Tippin, who's done a few of my shows and.. VIC: I know Rachel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's great. RAY: She's absolutely brilliant. But the best thing about these kind of tours for me is seeing people in the audience that look like my family. So deaf parents, deaf grandparents, hearing kids. I remember I did Bradford, the studio in Bradford and a deaf grandparents waited for me after. They were with their hearing kids and hearing grandchildren were like 16, 17, 18 and they said it's the first time they'd ever been to a theatre together. And it's stuff like that, which are like, that's really cool because growing up, we didn't really go to theatre. My grandma, who was hearing might take us, but I don't I think my dad said the first time he ever went to theatre was to come see one of my shows. VIC: The show takes a look at you being a coda. There are lots of bits of culture that we absolutely understand. Things like the closing your eyes in an argument which is the most maddening thing ever in the world. And I was relieved to see this is something that your dad does. My mum was an absolute beggar for it. RAY: Yeah, my mum used to wear hearing aids. She used to take hers out when we were arguing. My dad used to shut his eyes. like, what is happening in this house? It's yeah, the thing is, the show for me is quite an easy thing to write about because my dad is 73 years old. He has lived as a deaf person in a hearing world his whole life. So he very much uses comedy as his arsenal. He's a large and light. He's very, very funny. VIC: What you've got is a platform to raise awareness and help people understand, a really misunderstood condition, which is ridiculous that it is so misunderstood because so many people are affected. If you don't know anybody that's deaf now, you may well do as you get older, because, look, you know, your hearing gets affected. RAY: One in six in six in the UK will lose theirs in a lifetime. It used to be one in seven because my mum and dad used to get the RNID booklet that was called One in Seven, the magazine, and then so many people were going deaf, it is now one in six.