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Re: sad news on JAM guest

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Dean BedfordDec 2, 2007
 

 
here's an interesting piece on Jim from The Daily Telegraph in 2004

Cracking sick jokes
(Filed: 29/11/2004)

Comedian Jim Sweeney is used to making people laugh, but his one-man
show, about his MS, has been making audiences cry, too, he tells Bryony
Gordon

Jim Sweeney is used to making people cry with laughter. As one sixth of
the Comedy Store Players – the improvisation group that also counts Paul
Merton as a member – the award-winning comedian has done just that for
the 19 years that they have been performing. But Sweeney is not used to
making his audience cry tears of sorrow. When he took a new one-man show
to the Edinburgh Festival this summer, that was how some of the crowd
reacted.

This is perhaps not surprising when you learn that the 49-year-old's
show, My MS and Me, is about the condition from which he has suffered
for almost 20 years. But Sweeney never intended it to be moving, only
amusing. That's why the show's opening song is Elvis Costello's I Can't
Stand up for Falling Down.

My MS and Me won rave reviews and will be broadcast on Radio 4 in the
New Year. There are even suggestions that it will be made into a book.
All of which seems to have surprised Sweeney.

"All the way through rehearsals, I kept saying to my director: 'Is this
boring you?'" he says, when we meet for lunch. "It wasn't until I saw
the reviews and the reactions of the audiences that I realised there
were bits that people found incredibly touching. There's a section of
the show that seems to really get them. It touches on a time when I fell
over one night and couldn't get up.

"I was lying on the floor for quite a long time and like anybody who is
awake at 3am, there were all these thoughts going through my head, like,
'I'm going to spend the rest of my life lying here on the floor'. Which,
of course, I wasn't, but you know."

I don't know, but this is typical of Sweeney. He plays down his multiple
sclerosis throughout our conversation. He seems to be the kind of chap
who just wants to get on with life.

"It was very strange to have people in the audience fighting back tears.
And I thought, 'Oh, it's not my fault, I was just telling you about my
thing'."

His "thing" has, in the past few years, left him almost unable to walk.
The left side of his body is the worst, but he thinks his right side is
gradually catching up.

"My balance is just non-existent. I wobble all the time. But the thing
is, when I'm sitting down, nobody knows about the MS," he laughs. "I can
give everyone a show when we get up."

He uses a walking stick, but it is obvious that he is struggling. He has
a wheelchair but is reluctant to use it.

"It is really only a matter of time before I have to start," he says. "I
was thinking this morning that I should take it out today, because I've
never been to this restaurant before. But for various stupid reasons,
I'm holding out until next year. Then, it will have been 20 years, and
also I think it's really important to keep walking until I absolutely
can't any more."

His vision has also been affected. "Your head is a black dot," he says
to me, covering his left eye with his hand. "Otherwise, it's just
blurred. Short-sighted people understand. It's like when you take your
glasses off for a moment and everything shifts into a nice, comforting
blur. Well, my vision is like that all the time."

Living with MS means that he also has to "live under a kind of
benevolent house arrest", he says. "But I don't really mind. I've done
so many things. I've stood on the Great Wall of China and walked through
Tiananmen Square." To get about, he takes taxis. "They're tax-deductable
now," he says, cheerily.

When I tell him that he seems remarkably relaxed about his condition, he
is defiant. "I could spend hours wallowing in self-pity but, absolutely
genuinely, what's the point in me doing that? I do have moments. I was
watching a programme about space travel a few nights ago, and I thought
'I'm never going to be the one they pick'. And then I thought, 'well,
nobody is!'"

He doesn't take prescribed drugs for MS. "The doctors could only offer
me steroids and I didn't want to look like an East German shot-putter,"
he says. But, like many MS sufferers, he does smoke cannabis. "It
relaxes my leg. Every night, I have a third of a pure cannabis joint."

Sweeney wishes it was legal. "It's ludicrous for a man of my age to be
sidling up to people in pubs asking for dope. After one show in
Edinburgh, a woman who was suffering from MS came up to me and the first
thing she said was: 'Where can I get grass?'

"I do resent the fact that there will never be a proper discussion about
it, because people buy into the tabloid mentality that if you smoke
dope, you'll end up injecting heroin. That's as stupid as claiming that
if you drink a half pint of bitter, you'll end up on meths. It's only a
gateway drug for the predisposed."

Does he worry that one day, he will no longer be able to perform as a
Comedy Store Player? The show, which is entirely improvised, can get
quite physical.

"I've been thinking about this a lot," he says. "Tiredness can hit me
about halfway through the second half. Three years ago, I brought it up
with the others. I told them, 'It may get to a stage when I can't stand
to perform any more, and I think I'll know when that happens, but if I
don't, please tell me.' They all looked at me with blank faces and said:
'Well, we'll get a wheelchair, obviously', and then carried on with the
conversation.

"They are typical boys in that they just do things beautifully for me
without any fuss – one of them always walks behind me on stairs to make
sure I don't stumble, and there's always someone outside the venue to
walk me to the pub. There may well be a point when I feel I can't do it
any more, but it's not now."

The only thing that bothers Sweeney is that the onset of MS coincided
with the birth of his first daughter (he has two daughters, aged 18 and
19, with his girlfriend, Carol). "I think that the wickedest and most
devious thing about MS is that it tends to hit at around 30, when people
start having kids."

Sweeney, of course, does not allow himself to become too negative. "I'm
lucky because it has only crept up properly over the last five years,
and I'm sure my daughters weren't aware of it as children. I almost
certainly wasn't. I just carried on with my life."

And with that, our lunch is over. We spend a while looking for a
waitress to ask for the bill. "Shall we just make a run for it?"
suggests Sweeney, before pausing for a moment. He looks at his walking
stick and back at me, and begins to laugh. "We wouldn't get very far,
would we?"

 
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