Joey Deacon will have his revenge
Should we allow a vile playground slur to die a natural death, or can we weaponise it against a callous generation?
This post is part of an occasional series of posts on the death and revival of particular terms and idioms. At some point each post might become a chapter in an as-yet unwritten book called Last Chance To Say. This post explains more about the concept:
Two words: Joey, Deacon.
Put them together and what do you get? That depends on when and where you were born.
If you were born between the mid-1960s and late 1970s and grew up in the UK, Joey Deacon signified something notorious. If you are older or younger than that, or grew up outside the UK, Joey Deacon likely signifies nothing. Hopefully.
I was born in 1971. For me, and others like me, Joey Deacon exploded like a bomb in our lives in 1981, adding something toxic to our language; something that, try as we might, cannot be erased from it.
So who was Joey Deacon?
Joey Deacon was born in 1920 and lived until 1981. He lived with severe cerebral palsy which, amongst other things, made his speech very difficult to understand. As often happened at the time, he was institutionalised for much of his life and written off as 'mentally subnormal'. However, in later life he managed to dictate his autobiography to a group of friends, which was published in 1974. This led to a degree of fame as his story was covered in a BBC documentary and then, in 1981, by the children's TV programme Blue Peter.
[I am not going to link to clips, for reasons that I hope will become clear]
Blue Peter's coverage of the Joey Deacon story was exemplary in its sensitivity. The intentions behind it, were impeccable, even noble: Here was an opportunity to teach the young not to judge people by their appearance, to raise a new generation that would not write off people with disabilities.
What Blue Peter ended up bringing about though, was nothing less than a disaster for the perception of disabled people in the UK, and a particular catastrophe for people with cerebral palsy and other conditions that effect speech. Instead of being treated as a hero whose speech difficulties masked an intelligent mind, Joey Deacon became, amongst a generation of British schoolkids, a symbol of idiocy.
In classrooms, playgrounds and playing fields across the land, if someone said or did something stupid or was slow on the uptake, the cry would go out: 'Joey Deacon!', 'You Joey!' or similar. Actually it was worse than that. Because the cry would be accompanied by a parody of the palsied, barely comprehensible voice. I'm not going to share them, but you can find plentiful descriptions and recordings of the faux-Joey Deacon voice online. It was a brutal and horrible thing.
I hated the Joey Deacon thing at the time (as well as related insults like 'spastic') and refused to take part in it. That wasn't exactly a route to popularity amongst my peers and, if anything, encouraged people to do it to wind me up. Weirdly though, my attitude has softened a bit in adulthood. Not that I think that the insult itself was anything but vile, but the sheer magnitude of Blue Peter's failure, the way that their good intentions achieved the opposite of what they intended, is so extreme that it almost became funny. Almost.
Still, looking back I am torn between scorn for well-intentioned adults who failed to consider how their work might backfire, and a sense of deep sadness that that kind of cynical due diligence should have even been necessary in the first place. Most of all though, as a parent myself, I am filled with anger for the kids with cerebral palsy who must have been tormented for years by Blue Peter blowback. I also hope Joey Deacon never found out about what his name came to signify.
It should be clear that I have no desire for a Joey Deacon revival. This poisonous piece of 80s kids slang needs to die. Joey Deacon needs to be remembered as Blue Peter intended and, if that isn't possible, he needs to be swallowed back into history. I recognise that, by writing this, I may be causing some who had forgotten to remember. On the other hand there is no way of avoiding the fact that the entire story has important implications. What I am particular interested in, is how and whether the words continue to signify today and what answering such questions might tell us about both language and changing social mores.
One thing is clear: People of my generation do remember Joey Deacon and what he meant. A quick internet search will tell you that some people find the memory shaming, some find it naughtily funny and some seem entirely blase about the implications of parodying the disabled voice. None of that is a surprise. Online culture often revels in abuse and sordid insults. So the tradition of calling someone a Joey Deacon appears to be alive and well, on social media at least. Here are a couple of examples (I thought of blanking out the account names, but then I thought 'fuck these scum'):
What I don't know is how old these Deaconist diehards are. Are they just middle aged people who forgot to grow up and still delight in playground slang? Or has Deaconism been passed down to younger generations? I suspect the former but cannot rule out the latter. For what it's worth, my kids (16 and 20 at the time of writing) had never heard of Joey Deacon or didn't seem aware that using the palsied voice as a way of signifying stupidity is even a thing. But it would be unwise to extrapolate too far from this limited data though.
There are certainly precedents for a form of words to continue to signify even when the original circumstances in which it was coined are long forgotten. The word 'dunce' was originally a reference to the medieval scholastic philosopher Duns Scotus and he hasn't been a household name for centuries (if he ever was). So it's not impossible that there may still be corners of the UK where kids call a stupid person a 'Joey', without knowing why. While I hope otherwise, speech defects and slurred speech may still be treated as signs of stupidity and parodied accordingly.
A search for a new generation of Deaconists would be a challenging, if fascinating, project. I would also like keen to investigate what Joey Deacon's wider legacy has been in how disability is viewed in the UK, as well as in disability activism. I know that the Spastics Society changed their name to Scope in 1994 , and that seems to be an acknowledgement that the term spastic had become irretrievably tarnished. As I said, I suspect that the Joey Deacon disaster set back at least some forms of disability activism for many years, but pinpointing the scale of the damage would be an interesting challenge. The same is true for the consequences of Blue Peter's coverage of the Joey Deacon for the media and children's TV in particular. Did the production team at the time realise what was happening? Have guidelines and forms of best practice in children's television been developed as a direct or indirect consequence of what happened?
One thing I have discovered is that, not only is there an organisation dedicated to Joey Deacon's memory, it tackles his unfortunate legacy head-on. The Deacon Centre, located in Surrey, was 'set up to provide 'creative spaces' where Service Users with Physical, Learning and Communication Disabilities (and their carers/support workers!) can participate in creative activities including Creative Writing, Art, Music and Drama'. Their website's 'Who was Joey Deacon?' tackles Deaconism head-on:
We're not going to pretend that this didn't happen: An unfortunate part of the Joey Deacon story was that despite his achievements he became, for many, the subject of ridicule, particularly by children.
Maybe somebody called you a 'Joey' in the school playground? Maybe you were guilty of similar name calling? Maybe you still feel a little unhappy or uncomfortable about it now?
We all do things we regret when we're young and it's never too late to change things for the better, so consider donating to the work of the centre, in memory of Joey Deacon.
When I read this, my gut reaction was 'fuck yeah!' Instead of either letting Joey Deacon be forgotten or doubling down on the sanctimonious piety that led to the disaster in the first place, the Deacon Centre are leveraging the abuse for a good cause. Shame and penance are potent things. And an entire generation of Deaconists owe a heavy debt.
The Deacon Centre's approach made me wonder whether there is a way of approaching Deaconism and other forms of hate speech other than simply hoping that it eventually dies out. After all, the example of 'dunce' shows that we can never guarantee that a seemingly ephemeral, context-specific insult won't put down deep linguistic-cultural roots. Might it be possible to make Joey Deacon a different kind of household name amongst young and old alike? Might it be possible to make him a synonym for something heroic without the unintended consequences of the Blue Peter story?
Two words: Generational. Revenge.
It's perfectly appropriate for millennials and younger generations to be angry with my generation. We are bequeathing to them a heating world, a poorer UK, incompetent government ; a country of insecure employment and unaffordable housing. What we, as a generation, did to Joey Deacon is of a piece with the smug insouciance with which we squandered the legacy of post-war reconstruction. It wasn't because we hated the disabled that we parodied Joey Deacon, it was worse than that; we simply did it for the lulz.
The story of what we did to Joey Deacon could be a way of telling the younger generation that you are better than we were and that you didn't deserve us. Joey Deacon could become a symbol not of the idiocy of the disabled but of the idiocy of the generation who mocked him.
The Joey Deacon impression doesn't need to die, it can be redirected....
If you are a 20-something, coming back to your parents house after a day's fruitless search for an affordable flat - scream at them that they are a couple of Joeys.
If you are a 20-something and you see a middle aged person collapsing on the street from heatsroke on a 40 degree-plus day, snarl at them they are such a Joey Deacon.
If you are a teenager, permanently disabled from Covid, feel free to call anyone who voted for Tory incompetence in the pandemic a fucking Joey Deacon.
Raise aloft the flaming banner of Deaconism against your elders who abused the man's heroic name!
****
A sad coda:
I asked Chat GPT who Joey Deacon was and received this response:
Joey Deacon was a British man born with severe physical disabilities that left him with limited mobility, speech impediment and cognitive delays. In the 1980s, he became a public figure after appearing on a British TV program called "Blue Peter". Following his appearance on the show, the popularity of Joey Deacon increased and he was widely regarded as a symbol of overcoming adversity. While he himself did not seek fame, the positive reaction from the public helped to raise awareness for people with disabilities and promoted a more inclusive society.
Oh for this to have been true....
A perfect example of the incompetence of ChatGPT.