John of Showboat TV: Orchestrating Inclusion and Celebrating Diversity through Music and Autism Engagement

When John from Showboat TV swapped his mobile DJ decks for the director's chair, he didn't just change his job title; he transformed lives. 
Tune in to an episode that's not only about beats and tunes but also about breaking barriers and creating a symphony of inclusivity, especially for those with autism and special needs. 
My guest, John, recounts his personal journey and how it led him to adopt a hiring philosophy that values capability over credentials, opening doors for the often underrepresented in the entertainment industry.

Feel the rhythm of inclusion as we explore the unifying power of music and its role in personal growth for individuals with autism. 
I share a moving story of how an open mic night became a sanctuary for self-expression, building confidence in those facing mental health challenges. 
John shares the spotlight with an autistic colleague whose keen attention to detail transformed our studio scheduling, illustrating the extraordinary impact of recognizing and embracing individual strengths.

Wrapping up with the joy that reverberates through Showboat TV's karaoke events, we celebrate the sense of belonging that's cultivated when everyone's invited to the stage. I reflect on the parallels between my days as a mobile DJ and the vibrant karaoke scene, where encouragement from the audience empowers performers from all walks of life. This episode is an ode to diversity, talent, and the potential that lies within every community, inviting listeners to experience the harmony of inclusion that John and Showboat TV champion every day.

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intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild
Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to why Not Me the World? Podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, usa, nashville, tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry, some will make you feel like people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to why Not Me the World. Today's guest is John from Showboat TV. He has a great story to tell. He works within the entertainment business. He also works with autistic people and the special needs and just the diversity that he works with is just outstanding. So welcome to the show, tony. Thank you so much. The pleasure is all mine. So how long have you been doing this and how did it develop into helping people with autism and special needs within your TV station?

Speaker 2: 1:26

I suppose I'm really going to go right back to the beginning, because I was a mobile DJ in the 80s and 90s and I had to stop doing that. I'll cut very long story very short, okay, but I had to stop that because I had a hernia and couldn't carry the equipment around and I've always been an entertainer generally.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:45

So the idea of giving up my hobby and selling all my equipment and sitting down and watching Saturday Night TV was just horrendous, sure. So I, with the money that was accrued in from the sale of the equipment, I bought some video equipment, video cameras, video editing stuff like that. And then everybody said, oh, you're going to go out and film weddings now. And I said, well, no, I've done 15 years worth of weddings and birthday parties and things. I want to do something different. So a drama group came to me and said let's do a film Now. We had no experience whatsoever with films so, and it was terrible Okay, I look back at the early years and they cast me, but you know, we carried on regardless. And then the idea of making content specifically for the internet, especially again in the days pre-YouTube, and that's where ShowboTV really came into being. And then I flipped my work and I gave up my job and I made my hobby my job and then became self-employed as the director of ShowboTV. So that's where ShowboTV really came into being. That's awesome.

Speaker 2: 2:54

And I was never university educated. I've always been self-taught. I hated school. I came out with very, very low grades and, as a result, when I've been applying for work, I've always been like turned down at the first fence.

Speaker 1: 3:09

Okay.

Speaker 2: 3:10

Because they say you haven't got the qualifications to match what we need. So even though I've got the experience and I've got the skills, I don't have the paper qualifications. And the thought of going back and doing those paper qualifications just scares the heck out of me. So I've always been self-taught and when I became an employer with ShowboTV then I thought, well, I don't really want to give these opportunities to people who've got so many other opportunities anyway. So I've always looked at giving a break to the people who are struggling to get work.

Speaker 1: 3:44

I think, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 3:45

So with that in mind, I approached various training courses in the local area and I've said to them if you can give me somebody on a work placement for a couple of months and they can come in and basically create their own job. So if they come in for, say, 12 weeks and at the end of the 12 weeks the profitability of Showbo has gone up to pay their wages, then they stayed.

Speaker 1: 4:06

That's a great way to look at it.

Speaker 2: 4:08

Now that can happen in many ways. I mean, it doesn't have to be in sales. Some people just came in to be the office cleaner, but what that meant was that the core team weren't cleaning the offices and they were spending their time being more profitable. So that way, people who were struggling to get work managed to come into the studios then and create work for themselves and say, in that short time when they were on work placement, we had the necessary cash flow for them to create the job that they needed to create. Naturally, then, this training course had people who had special needs they were perhaps autism or various other learning difficulties and that they naturally then came into the studio and some of them were much, much better than the university educated people that came in because they didn't have any kind of egos or didn't have anything to prove, and they came in willing to learn and their efforts were just superb. So that's a very long story cut down to a slightly longer story.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Oh, I think that's great. The beauty of what you just said is that you're allowing people to come in irregardless of what they are, whether they're autistic or have some special needs, and you're willing to give them that opportunity to try something, work at something and then hopefully work into something. That is a win-win situation for everyone involved. And then, once you did get more autistic people and special needs, when you started training them because they are known to be very focused and dedicated what was your reaction and what was their reaction to some of the things that you had them doing within the station?

Speaker 2: 5:54

Do you know this is going to sound rather I can see it's the wrong word but we didn't notice. If I'm honest, we were always kind of you always got equal opportunities and people really go out of their way to be equal opportunities etc. But we just that's how we were. Everybody came in, had their own way of learning and their own way of working and each person was an individual. So when they came in, then we would sit with them and said this is how you do your job, etc. And you could see where their skills were going to be.

Speaker 2: 6:27

And some people came in and they had no idea what they wanted to do and I'd say, well, try to do a bit of reception work and a bit of customer services. Others wanted to just do some data entry on the computer and having a big database in front of them, etc. Other people want to be more creative and get behind the cameras and it was a really kind of open playing for them to come in and try whatever they wanted to do. And I say everybody was taken on their own merits and we didn't look at what their needs were necessarily. But after a half hour conversation at the beginning of the day you could see where their skill sets were and harness it really.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Yeah, that's so true. Now, there's a lot of people that don't realize that some of the celebrities they watch and listen to are autistic. So did you have any of the people that you dealt with that were autistic, that really would have rather gotten in front of the camera than being behind in the background all the time? A couple?

Speaker 2: 7:21

Not many, to be fair. Most of them were more interested in the production side of it. We did have one girl who was a very, very good singer and she spent more time in the vocal booth than actually doing any work. But again, that was fine, because I always look at that as performance being part of a job.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 7:39

Yeah, at the end she was employed as a presenter. So again, that's another way that autistic people did get involved was sitting in front of the camera and having a smile and talking to people, because very often they're very good at chatting. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 7:55

Now I had an interesting conversation with a radio station manager. He hired a couple of autistic presenters and the interesting part about that is they kind of got into a little squabble between the two of them and one of them said well, he should understand what I'm going through. He's autistic too. The guy said well, you know, just because he's autistic doesn't mean that he's the same as you are. And the old saying goes you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. Have you run into anything similar to that in your situations with the people you've had?

Speaker 2: 8:28

Not really. No, I mean I'm sorry to cut that conversation dead. But, again, everybody was individual and it wasn't just autistic people that came in. Some people were physically disabled, others were learning difficulties. I don't want to describe us as a bunch of misfits. I don't believe anyone would think that we were people who all had different needs and different skill sets, and I don't look at the needs, I look at the skill sets.

Speaker 1: 9:00

I think that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 9:01

This one guy who was. He had a lot of physical disabilities and mentally he was quite slow in picking things up and his speech was rather slow. And again, when you taught him things he had to be taught several times, but once he got it, once he got it, he was superb. And again, because of his autism, his attention to detail was second to none. Sure, so when he was doing data entry into our database and looking after all the scheduling of the programs and things, I knew if I left it to him it was always going to be perfect.

Speaker 1: 9:35

That's just so good.

Speaker 2: 9:36

And he could do that so much better than I could. So I always just looked at what people could do and looked at their skill sets rather than their needs. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 9:47

Absolutely, and I think that's great because with so many different people that I've talked with that are autistic, on my podcast, I've had one person tell me that if you walked into a pharmaceutical laboratory and you threw a pebble at somebody, you're probably going to hit somebody that's autistic. So many people do not realize what autism is. There's a lack of understanding there, and I think the fact that you're willing to help these people so I think that's just great that you're doing that- Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 10:13

I've got to tell you a story about one young lady. Obviously, I can't mention names, etc. Ok, this young lady came in on a work placement.

Speaker 1: 10:22

OK.

Speaker 2: 10:23

And she was so nervous Her mum had to sit downstairs in the green room, ok, and on the first day she didn't even go down and talk to her mum because she didn't need to. She just felt so included. And her mum said to me, like in our coffee break several of us were downstairs and she said I was a bit worried because she's the only girl in the office. And this one guy who was one of my editors said you know, that doesn't get anybody noticed. And it wasn't that we didn't know gender, but it wasn't relevant, right?

Speaker 1: 10:56

right.

Speaker 2: 10:58

And we've always been very proud in the fact that we are kind of gender blind, color blind, and again, regardless of whatever their abilities are. And this girl, why could she draw? And she would come in with her sketch pad and she would just doodling for a lot of the day. Wow, that's nice by the foot. By lunchtime on the first day, I said we need an animation program because you just love drawing, so let's, let's come up with a program now which involves animation. And she became a really, really good animator.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Oh, that's really good. Yeah, it's unfortunate that autism is like, I think, one percent of the population in the world, and it's unfortunate that the other people that don't understand autism don't make some sort of effort to find out what's going on so that they can be more inclusive, because there's just a lot of brilliant people that are autistic and they can do so much and contribute to society. There's a lot of things that we have right now that, if it wasn't for autistic people, we may have it, but been delayed by several years.

Speaker 2: 12:01

Yeah, you're so right. Again, the people who've been very high on the autistic spectrum, who've come into the studios, they are so focused on what they do. And again, one of our schedulers he just basically sat down moving programs into the schedule to make sure they are broadcast on time, and I didn't even have to check his work, I knew I could just sit back and relax. No, it's going to happen. But again, we weren't really thinking about oh, he's autistic, he needs this and she needs this because she's autistic. Because he wasn't autistic, he was. I'm not going to use his name, but he was Bob. Yeah, and she's not autistic, she's Jane.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Right sure.

Speaker 2: 12:43

And that's everybody. Everybody's got their own traits and personalities and we just encouraged everybody to come along and be part of the family and we knew what they were good at. And, as you say, the people who were on the autistic spectrum, oh, they had so much to offer in terms of accuracy and creativity and creativity.

Speaker 1: 13:02

Yeah, now you've expanded what you're doing, I understand, to be more inclusive and do some things that actually aren't just about showbo TV anymore. It's about the community.

Speaker 2: 13:17

Yeah, well, this was. This was something I fell into by accident. Similar sort of story my son went to university and came out he was a performing arts student. Okay, came out, came home because he didn't get the breaks and because he was always kind of middle of the class and not top of the group and say, didn't get the jobs that he wanted and, as a result, the, the stuffing had been knocked out of him for what were? Better phrase.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Sure.

Speaker 2: 13:49

And he just felt that he couldn't do things. And one of your old guests on this podcast was a lady called Elise, yes, and she came down, she, she was doing some filming with showbo TV one day and she said well, I run an open night in Kamar, then why don't you come up and join in? And we went up there for a bit of fun and thinking it was going to be a karaoke night, right, it wasn't, it was so much nicer than that. It was a really friendly family atmosphere.

Speaker 2: 14:19

And as I was sitting back watching it, I was realizing that the people who were on stage weren't just karaoke singers or wannabes, but these were people who, actually a lot of them, had confidence issues, okay, and by getting up on stage and just having a bit of a song, it was their weekly fix, right, and and I thought actually this lady's doing a lot of good. And we became good friends with Elise and I supported the open night night everywhere I could, because everybody who was getting up on stage were getting so much out of it. That's great. And then a couple of years later, elise, elise retired and they're going to end it and again the DJ and me said, oh no, we're not going to leave this. So she put my name forward and I've taken over as the host. So again, it's another comedy of errors, but it's just another way that I've got involved.

Speaker 1: 15:12

So how long? I mean, is it a full night? Is it a couple hours? How long does it last, and what type of people do you have that get up there on that stage?

Speaker 2: 15:20

It's well when you start again. It's another group of misfits for one of the better phrase. But we're, we're. It's eight o'clock till 11 o'clock in a small RAF club in Camargo and and it's just kind of open to everybody. It's a real family atmosphere. Nice, everybody who comes in feels part of the gang, which is how I felt when I started going there. That's, that kind of feeling has just gone on.

Speaker 1: 15:48

That's just such a great atmosphere to be part of.

Speaker 2: 15:51

It's got a karaoke sort of feel and that people come up on stage one at a time and sing to back in tracks. Something that I've introduced in the last couple of years, though, is getting people to sing with each other.

Speaker 1: 16:02

That's nice.

Speaker 2: 16:03

So if, if two people have both sung the same song, I think, well, let's get them on stage and sing together. That's a great idea, Because friendships spark that way Absolutely. And then I like to pick a couple of group songs where lots of people can come up on stage in the in a kind of a four or five piece band.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Right.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Only for the one night and they become friends with each other and less experienced people can sing along with the more experienced people. That's a great idea, once again. People who have confidence issues, people who have autism this one guy is bipolar and schizophrenic, but oh boy can he get up and perform and have a bit of fun. That's what it's all about, and he's great, great fun to be with. And again, because it's a RAF club, the Air Force Club, there's a lot of senior people in there, right, and they don't have much to live for apart from going down and meeting friends and coming out on a Sunday. I've never, I've never, ever sing song.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:59

So they just live for those moments.

Speaker 1: 17:01

So do they get you up there at all?

Speaker 2: 17:02

I sing in a way that doesn't give any entertainment to anybody, but but yeah, I will Again. You can't ask people to do anything that you're not prepared to do yourself.

Speaker 1: 17:12

Right Out of the things that you've done. You know, because it's showbo TV and because this Sunday night thing that you do, yeah, what are some of the things that you can sit back and look at and say after a few years or a few months or whatever the timeframe may be, and say, wow, that was a real success.

Speaker 2: 17:29

Oh, hang on, what Hang on? Max is telling me something, go on, tell me. Come on, max, just speak up, speak up, come on she's. She's prompted me.

Speaker 1: 17:41

You can get her on the microphone too, if she wants.

Speaker 2: 17:45

Do you know, funnily enough, I had exactly the same thought.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Okay.

Speaker 2: 17:49

There is one young lady who when I first went there as a guest to the Open Might Night, she was I'm trying to think of the right phrase confidence right through the floor and she got up to sing. She forgot the words, she started to cry. Everybody just cheered and clapped her on. And she did finish the song and for the next couple of months I kind of overlooked her, rudely enough. And over the couple of years I've seen her grow and grow and grow through doing these Sunday nights and her confidence got better and better and better. Then I tried to get her down to come to show about TV and do some filming with us. That took several months to get her to be confident enough to come down. Then she did start coming down and now I can't stop her coming down because she just loves every second of it.

Speaker 1: 18:39

That's great.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Now I listen to her sing and she is absolutely phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Nice.

Speaker 2: 18:45

The quality of her voice is almost one of the best voices I've heard for a long, long time. I think that's just become a success story from the whole project. Just to see the way that her confidence has grown she's performed at various theatres and churches and weddings and things To see the way that she's gone from a very timid sort of person who wouldn't even get up on stage to this fantastic performer it's just superb to watch. I'm so glad to be able to stand next to her on a Sunday and introduce her, because she is an incredible singer and she's got to go a long way.

Speaker 1: 19:17

That's good. So many people will look at somebody and then because they don't have the confidence, they don't have the inclination to get up there and sing or perform to a very high standard. Just to be able to nurture that and follow it through and see it through to the end where it can be a success story, that's got to take and fill you with pride and make you feel real good about it.

Speaker 2: 19:41

Absolutely. It's great to see accomplished singers coming up on stage, but when you see the transition from beginner to accomplished singer or accomplished anything really, yes. Getting the ground roots and say, yes, you've got talent and to be part of the growth. It's a great feeling.

Speaker 1: 20:01

Now, where the good always comes to bad, unfortunately. How have you handled or have you had this pop up to where you get someone up there this autistic or special needs or has something that's not quite right? How have you overcome some of those things where maybe one or two people might throw some darts at people and try and demean them so that they can put them down and kind of compress them away from it, so that they could still move forward and still become a success?

Speaker 2: 20:31

I think a lot of the credit for that has to come from the audience. We're talking about the open night nights again. Now I'll take it.

Speaker 1: 20:40

Yes.

Speaker 2: 20:41

The audience are very encouraging. It's a real family feeling. I always say to everybody sit back, enjoy the music. We're not going to force anybody to come up and sing if you don't want to, but all I ask is that you sit down and give lots of encouragement and support to everybody who comes up on stage, because it's not easy to stand up and sing in front of 40, 50, 100 people.

Speaker 1: 21:02

Right.

Speaker 2: 21:04

So I ask the audience just to take part and whoop and cheer and clap all the time, even when people don't deserve it. But they must give that kind of encouragement and, to be fair, they always do. They don't need me to say that, they just do. And some people come up on stage and I can't say say they sing, they make some kind of noise, but they have fun. Right, and that's the important thing, they have fun.

Speaker 1: 21:27

That's right.

Speaker 2: 21:29

They put the microphone down and they take a bow, but the audience are in rapturous applause.

Speaker 1: 21:34

That's so good to hear.

Speaker 2: 21:36

We very, very rarely get any negative feedback from the audience.

Speaker 1: 21:39

That's good.

Speaker 2: 21:41

I think that's one of the reasons, I think, why I took it over, because it was such a welcoming environment. We've never really had a bad audience. To be fair Again, we get regulars coming each week, so I know every week it's going to be a safe environment to bring newcomers into it as well.

Speaker 1: 21:57

Right.

Speaker 2: 21:59

And when people come along and say, oh, I don't want to get them to sing, it doesn't matter, everybody's here, just to have a bit of fun. When people come on stage and they can be a bit, I'm drunk or a bit of a handful right Because again, some people with additional needs can be a bit troublesome.

Speaker 2: 22:20

And again I go back to my days as a mobile DJ, when you've got the best man at the wedding who could be a bit of a handful. So I learnt my trade at the grassroots. When you're out on the club circuits and you've got a bunch of rowdy drunks on a hen night, bachelor party or anything like that, and so I can, I can then steer them into a way where, come on, let's get you singing Again. The audience then start feeding in as well, and we then suppressed any kind of negativity and move on to a bit of singing. Very rarely do I have to put my foot down Very rarely.

Speaker 1: 22:58

Because it's about community. I mean it's community supporting other other people that need that support. Because there's a lot of people out there that we've been very fortunate we don't have any problems, we don't have any health issues, we don't have this or we don't have that, and it's very easy for someone that has that little chip on their shoulder to kind of be condescending to people that have issues. And so when you can get a community that can come together and support those that really need it, to see potential development and growth within those people, it's a pretty special thing.

Speaker 2: 23:32

Absolutely. And similarly, on that note, when people have additional needs and things, once they've been on stage and they've had that feedback, they feel good about themselves when they walk back to their seat. They then feel a part of the community but be supportive to the next person who's going to come up on stage. So somehow we always kind of include everybody and it just happens organically. I can't really take the credit for it. It's the whole community coming together. But when you come as joining them and they get up on the stage, they get that kind of, I gotta say, the gremlin welcome. I just dropped the name of the club then but they get the gremlin welcome and they kind of integrate them and they feel part of the family. And when the next person gets up on stage, well then they think, oh, that's the support I've got to give them.

Speaker 1: 24:27

Right. So if you had anyone that's come into those events that's ultimately maybe worked their way into coming down and working with you at the TV station most of them, I think, have come down and had a go.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Okay, Again, on a very selfish note, I think I'm always on the lookout for new people to come down and have a look at what we do down here in Show Boat. So when we first went to the open mic, obviously as well as hoping that my son was going to take part in it and shake off the the hangups that he had, I was also on the lookout for talent as well. But the way it turned out is that I wasn't asking talented people to come down and take part. I was asking people who were friendly and having fun to come down and have some fun with us.

Speaker 1: 25:13

Sure.

Speaker 2: 25:15

And as it's gone on, new people have come in and once, once those logs, they can sing up to a certain standard and it's great to welcome them down here at Show Boat. Obviously, we can't open the doors to every karaoke singer that comes into the club, but as long as they hit a certain standard. Now there's one young lady who she's been singing at the Gremlin now for about a year and I've seen her grow and grow and grow and she just came down a month ago and recorded her first music video and we're going to be releasing that very soon. Nice, that's just somebody who came in off the streets and just fancied getting up and having a go and she was okay. But I'm comparing her as an okay singer against the various professionals that I've worked with over the years. Yeah, she's a decent singer and now she's a rather good singer.

Speaker 1: 26:06

Right.

Speaker 2: 26:07

And I can't wait to see where she's going to be in another 12 months time. So yeah, I think Show Boat is always a little carrot to dangle in front of these singers and say you know, keep practicing and you'll be able to come down and shoot your music videos.

Speaker 1: 26:20

Now, do you do anything else? Far as I'm because I know you you go on the road every now and then and do some location videos and everything. Do you do any other location videos that might include special needs or autism or anything along that line?

Speaker 2: 26:35

No, I don't think so. No, not so much in the outside broadcaster. There is a group of special needs people who meet weekly in Pembrokeshire and it's called Pembrokeshire people first, and they called me up one day and said do you think we can have a tour on your studio? How can you say no? So they came around and they had a bit of fun around the studios and they made their own podcasts and shoot their shot, their own music videos, presented the weather, presented the news and got into the costume room, did a bit of dressing up and and as a result, now, when they tend to have fates and events and things stage productions, I'm always invited to go out and practice a bit of filming with them. I've been integrated into their production, which is which has been quite welcome.

Speaker 1: 27:22

OK, autistic people are known for meltdowns. A lot of people don't differentiate between somebody just having a tantrum or having a meltdown. Have you ever had situations, either at your Sunday night events or people that are working at showboat? Occasionally they might just hit that nervousness or something happens and then they have a meltdown. And if they did, how do you handle it?

Speaker 2: 27:48

Very, very rarely I've had more meltdowns with people who have been university educated and, as a result, think they know better than the rest of us. They have more meltdowns than the autistic people who are really enjoying what they do. Again, I think back to the young lady who's animating and she just wants to draw and for her to be able to spend eight hours a day drawing. She's loving like that.

Speaker 2: 28:15

So the meltdowns come very, very rarely. Again, as the manager, I have to manage tantrums and meltdowns from non-autistic people, so the meltdowns and tantrums from autistic people tend to be a lot easier to manage, because you know where it's coming from and you know they don't necessarily mean it. It's often our fault, because we've approached the situation from the wrong angle and I think, right, let's stop, let's start again, let's come at this from a different way and as a result.

Speaker 2: 28:47

Then we can always get over these little hubs, hubs. That's all it is. It's a hump.

Speaker 1: 28:52

Right? Well, you know, I've talked with people that are ADHD and autistic and they're always telling me that one is fighting the other and mentally they have to really sit down and think about what's going on so that they know how to control the ADHD, but yet they know how to take and handle it with their autism. So the fact that what you just said kind of makes sense, that they're enjoying it, so chances are they're not going to have those type of situations that would create that.

Speaker 2: 29:19

Yeah, one thing I do have to accept is that they may not be able to sit at their desk for eight hours.

Speaker 1: 29:25

Right, I have a hard time sitting at my desk for an hour.

Speaker 2: 29:29

They may have to get up and walk around a couple of times. And again, I try to be quite flexible in that, as long as we set realistic targets.

Speaker 1: 29:37

Right.

Speaker 2: 29:37

I can say right, how long is this going to take you to do this? And they'll say about three weeks, and I say oh, okay, then let's, let's shed you lats. So we're going to broadcast that in six weeks, for example.

Speaker 1: 29:48

Right.

Speaker 2: 29:49

We've got a bit of breathing space to do it.

Speaker 1: 29:51

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:51

We know that they can get up and walk around as long as. As long as we get the program out one way or another, then that's, that's the important thing, and it's not really important for them to be working from nine to five or 10 to six or whatever.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Right.

Speaker 2: 30:04

Working hours are not important. What's important is they get what they're supposed to do done in a realistic timeframe.

Speaker 1: 30:11

Sure.

Speaker 2: 30:12

And they all, they always do. I've never, we've never, missed a deadline because a it's been realistic, it's been set with them so they know what they what they can achieve and how they can achieve it, and they enjoy what they do, and that's the important thing. They come in and they've, they've fallen into a slot with, which is which is what they enjoy.

Speaker 1: 30:30

Right.

Speaker 2: 30:30

Some people don't have any creative skills, but they just like sitting down chatting to people. And who better can you put onto the reception desk and somebody like that?

Speaker 1: 30:38

Yeah, absolutely, and you're right. I mean, I've talked with several different autistic people and they say that the one thing that they do need is a little space and a little time to get up and get into their safe space, which is maybe a long time for five or 10 minutes, and then they get back to doing what they set out to do.

Speaker 2: 30:56

Yeah, exactly, I can't add anything to that. Really it's again. But if they just need to, if they feel like they're being a bit overwhelmed, they can go down, have a cup of tea, sit in the green room for a bit and if I'm, if I miss it, anybody will then I know where they are. They haven't gone far and they'll be back in a minute. What's the what's the problem?

Speaker 1: 31:14

Right? Okay, so you're standing in front of 100 people right now, or 1000 people, whatever the number may be, and you're trying to put across something that they can take home and absorb and realize what autism is about and how people deal with it. What would you like to tell them?

Speaker 2: 31:32

Oh, good question, Good question. I don't want to sound disrespectful to autism because, but at the same time, I think we just got to look at everybody as individuals. Everybody is different, right, everybody's got something to bring to the party one way or another. And as long as we listen to what that person has in terms of their skill set and their needs and what we can do for them as well as what they can do for us, that sounds like a quote, I thought.

Speaker 2: 32:02

Who first said that? But? But you know, it's a two way thing and that's that's what community is. And again, every member of staff who came in, not only was I looking to see what they can bring to showboat, but also how can we encourage their learning set so they can become a better person and better animator, editor, whatever they happen to be, so everybody grows together. And yeah, I just really sort of encourage everybody to listen to the person they're talking to and remember that everybody's different and everybody has needs of some kind. It's just that autism and autistic people may have slightly more needs than others. Again, I think that that's really important is to to grow the community by seeing what everybody needs.

Speaker 1: 32:48

Absolutely Well. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.

Speaker 2: 32:51

No, it's been a joy to I. Can I can. I can sit and talk for another hour if you want me to.

Speaker 1: 32:58

Yeah, me too, and it certainly has been great to have you on great conversation. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to TonyMantorcom Contact Then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask tell everyone everywhere about why not me, the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.