We were very grateful to have Pierre Novellie join us for the Axia Post-Diagnostic Support Group meeting on 6th March. Pierre is an award winning stand-up comedian, as well as a writer, radio host and podcaster. He discussed his own journey to an autism diagnosis, and his upcoming book on autism.
Pierre’s book has been described as an autism memoir by the British Comedy Guide, titled ‘Why Can’t I Just Enjoy Things?’, which should be published on 18th July.
During the second half, Dr Buchan referred to one of our recent posts titled “Adapting mental health assessment tools for autistic adults” research by Sarah Cassidy from the University of Nottingham, and the link for those interested in participating can be found here.
Shona Pearce from Sheffield University was also introduced after the break, describing the research she was conducting. You can find a detailed information sheet titled “The Autistic label- a help or hinderance?” here and a link to a google form here
For those of you who couldn’t attend the PDSG, the presentation was recorded and is available to view bellow.
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What a fabulous PDSG meeting! I enjoyed Pierre’s presentation so much; he speaks our language. I shall look forward to reading his books and also to watching and listening to him on YouTube /pod casts and so on.
I have already watched a 1 hour 9 minutes comedy gig on YouTube and found him very funny – a rare thing because I don’t usually “get” comedians.
Following on from Linda mentioning the research into mental health and autism, I followed the link in this email (detailing the March PDSG), and completed the questionnaire.
It’s all online and took 30 minutes to complete.
I thought it was very well set out and easy to follow’ and you can take breaks after each section if needed.
I did suggest to Shona from Sheffield that as I was 30 with 38 years experience that perhaps she might consider me for her research but she didn’t buy into that!
Thank you Linda and Team Axia for a truly excellent meeting.
I totally agree Helen, a brilliant PDSG, and I too thought Pierre “spoke our language” (very nicely put!). I must’ve watched it 5 or 6 times now with all the editing and checking, couldn’t get it perfect (despite trying with the “backup camera” to get a second camera angle), but never stopped enjoying watching it!
I remember Shona mentioning something about 18-30, but there was nothing about age in writing that I saw, but perhaps I should have mentioned it in the post.
I agree with both of you
It was great and I feel privileged to have read his book in advance of publication
We shall order several copies for the group to borrow