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 | You and Yours - Transcript BBC Radio 4 |
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| TX: 10.05.06 - Wheelchair Access PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON The Sonys are the Oscars of radio and the award ceremony on Monday night was a triumph for the BBC and for Radio 4 in particular. Not such a great experience though for our Security Correspondent Frank Gardner. As you may know he was shot and almost killed reporting for the BBC in Saudi Arabia in June 2004. Since then he's used a wheelchair, something, he says, the Grosvenor Hotel in London didn't seem quite prepared for on Monday night. Frank Gardner is on the line. What happened? GARDNER Well I think there was a mix up over which entrance I was supposed to come to because we arrived at the Park Lane entrance, along with everybody else, where we were then basically dumped on the pavement - they had no access into the building from Park Lane at all. It turned out that we were supposed to go round the back where we would have been met but nobody on the ground seemed to know that, lots of security people walked around looking terribly important with walkie-talkies. Mean while the photographers were flashing away as one celeb after another got out and we were obviously in the way. And I have to say for the first time since coming out of hospital I've really experienced first hand how people in wheelchairs are sometimes made to feel like second class citizens - we were in the way, this hotel was quite clearly not prepared to take wheelchair people off Park Lane into the hotel. The Hilton is just down the road, I've been to the Royal Television Society Awards there, they managed it really smoothly, not so this one. ROBINSON Now what the hotel say to us is that the fault lay with the Sony organisers and the person who drove you to the event because they were both advised to take you to the Park Street entrance, as you say, where in fact hotel staff were waiting for you. The driver instead took you to Park Lane. Now they insist it only took a few minutes for someone to come around and get you. You're saying that's not what happened? GARDNER It took a few minutes for us to find somebody - we had to go in and get somebody - who then didn't actually do anything. Did lots of talking into a walkie-talkie but after over 20 minutes of waiting there we eventually suggested to them that this was ridiculous - I was missing the reception. I'd struggled to put my callipers on and brought a walking frame so I could stand up and be at the reception. So at our suggestion we then wheeled - I had to wheel all the way around the block where once we did get to other side of it somebody did look after us and they were very courteous but we had to be kind of led through all these really filthy service lifts and down back corridors and things and eventually we got there and I'd missed the reception. ROBINSON Well no one is immune to thoughtlessness of this kind are they because the BBC created a stage where the athlete Tani Grey-Thompson was unable to ascend and she was in line for a BBC sports award. Is it something most of us never even think of until we need wheelchair access ourselves? GARDNER Yes I think it is, it would never have occurred to me before. There are an estimated 40,000 people in this country with spinal cord injury who can't walk without the aid of callipers or wheelchairs but that is of course an absolutely tiny minority and there are lots of tiny minorities of people who've got various disabilities or disadvantages and I think until you have them yourself you don't realise it. I'm as guilty as anybody. I should just - I'm just getting a little nervous here, when I say really filthy service lifts they weren't absolutely filthy, they were just - they smelt pretty rank but then again probably service lifts do everywhere in the world. ROBINSON You see what the Grosvenor also point out is that they do have a huge refurbishment programme underway and that includes new ramps, new loos and guest rooms all with disabled access. It takes time. GARDNER My answer to that is why weren't they doing this 10 years ago, if other hotels have done this so long ago why are they so behind the times? I've been to balls there in the '80s and had a great time as an able bodied person, it's not a place I would go back to in a wheelchair. ROBINSON Not even when the refurbishments have been done? GARDNER Well maybe yes but I don't know - you have one bad experience in a place and you just think well London's a big city, you've got the choice of so many other places to go why go back to a place where you've had a bad experience? ROBINSON You don't take the point that the hotel are making that if there was any problem it was not with them it was with the Sony organisers and with your own driver that night? GARDNER Well that's perfectly possible, yes, I mean I think as I say right at the beginning there was a mix up here and I'm sure they weren't entirely to blame. But there was no real help on the pavement there at all when we arrived, the security staff were actually not terribly helpful - they looked very important but they didn't actually do any help until we suggested going all the way round the building. And by then we'd missed the reception, so it was a complete waste of time wearing callipers and being prepared to stand up. So it's unfortunate, it was a mix up, I'm sure there was probably blame on both sides, maybe there was tiny small print. But the point is that everybody else was able to get out of their taxis off Park Lane straight into the hotel, there was no possibility for me to do that and they seemed incapable of resolving the situation when we turned up there on the ground. ROBINSON Frank Gardner, thank you. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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