First Broadcast:
Tuesday 24 July at 22:00
Channel 4
Open Mike Productions Ltd.
This programme, as part of The Channel 4 Goes Mad season, really intrigued me. I have always wondered what defines OCD, and I really enjoyed the fact that it was a well-known comedian, Jon Richardson, who was exploring the details. It made the programme feel much more real, as Jon feels he has experienced some level of OCD in the past. In the programme, he sets out to find out how OCD really affects people's lives, and if he has the disorder himself.
"So do I have a medical disorder, or am I just an annoying man who has to have everything exactly the way he wants?"
Around 1 million people in the UK have OCD, and as part of his investigation, Jon meets a number of people who have all been affected by it at some level. He goes on a short walk with fellow comedian, Tom Rosenthal, on which they both make comments on the rules of which parts of the pavement you are allowed to walk on. He also speaks to his flatmates, who have to try and live around Jon's minor compulsions, such as having the butter spread evenly in the tub "like a beach, just after the tide's washed out."
This is all very light-hearted, but Jon's compulsions gradually begin to come across as more problematic.
He tells of how angry he gets when people enter his bedroom: "This is the only little bit of the earth that is mine." He also meets his old flatmates, including comedian Russell Howard, and tells them of how he used to sleep in his car because he couldn't live in the untidy environment that they had created within the flat. In an attempt to justify himself, he says, "I deserve to be unhappy for wanting it a certain way."
But, no matter how serious Jon's problems are portrayed in the programme, the people he meet demonstrate lives that are on the brink of unbearable. He visits a woman called Gemma, who is obsessed with cleaning. Her compulsion is so strong that she can't even allow Jon to enter her home as she doesn't feel it is clean enough, even though she had been preparing for his visit. She spends hours creating lists of objects needing to be cleaned, but often achieves nothing. She even dusts individual sheets of paper.
Reaching higher levels of compulsion, he meets Joyce, a woman who has had OCD passed down her genetically, and whom had passed it onto her son too. Her son had so much potential, but unfortunately could not live with his extreme OCD and committed suicide. Joyce even said, "I'd have rather not been born than have my son die like that." That sentence was the horrifying crux of the programme.
It is really interesting to see the shock on Jon's face when being told this story. I enjoy seeing comedians out of their comfort zone - it adds emotional depth to the programme, because we are so used to seeing only the humorous side of these people. It was the first time in the programme, or ever, I had seen Jon Richardson without a cheeky smile on his face.
The programme was fantastically informative. In the end, Jon was "diagnosed" as a perfectionist, not as having OCD, and I like to think that the people he met while filming the programme and the tough experiences he learned of will prevent him from developing OCD in the future.
"I feel I have Obsessive Compulsive Order, so my brain works in a measured and maticulous way. I keep my forks a certain way and I smooth my margerine over, but I'm happy with that."
Are we all... just a little bit OCD?
Image from: www.channel4.com/programmes/jon-richardson-a-little-bit-ocd
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