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Heard the one about the disabled Britain's Got Talent Star? From Mail writer Helen Carroll, a life-affirming tribute to her 14-year-old nephew


Cheeky chappie: Jack Carroll on last Saturday's Britain's Got Talent
Cheeky chappie: Jack Carroll on last Saturday's Britain's Got Talent
As the sweet-faced young man took to the Britain’s Got Talent stage last Saturday, creeping on with the aid of a walking frame, you could feel the audience hold its collective breath.
What was he doing there? And how would Simon Cowell and the rest of the judges treat him?
They had no need to be uneasy. The moment 14-year-old Jack Carroll — who suffers from cerebral palsy — opened his mouth, he had the judges, audience and nine million viewers at home in stitches with his self-deprecating stand-up routine.
Dark-haired and bespectacled, his opening gambit was: ‘I know what you’re all thinking: Harry Potter has had a nasty quidditch accident.’
The audience guffawed. And suddenly, Jack was on a roll.
Later in the set, he asked: ‘You know what I can’t stand?’, before adding, ‘Sorry, let me  re-emphasise. You know what? I can’t stand.’
While the crowd were deciding whether to laugh or shed a tear, he added: ‘But look on the bright side, I’ve never had to queue at Disneyland’, which led to even more hysteria and a standing ovation from the rapt audience.
Judge David Walliams heralded him as a ‘comedy genius’.
Meanwhile, Simon Cowell simply called him ‘incredible’.
They may have been surprised by Jack’s joyously un-PC jokes — but I wasn’t, because Jack is my nephew. 
And he entertained the BGT judges just as he’s entertained our whole family for many years.
Along with the rest of the nation, I laughed along to his routine from my sofa.
Family snaps: Cerebral palsy sufferer Jack on a ski trip to Austria aged 11
Family snaps: Cerebral palsy sufferer Jack on a ski trip to Austria aged 11
But I couldn’t help shedding a tear, too. For Jack has overcome so many obstacles in his young life already — a life which began with tragedy.
I found myself travelling back in time to the dark days following his birth more than 14 years ago.
In particular, the day my brother Matt carried a tiny white coffin which bore the body of his baby son, Ben — Jack’s twin — who sadly died within a day of being born 11 weeks prematurely.
Our big Catholic family and lots of friends were there to mark Ben’s short life and to support Matt and his wife, Sue.
After the funeral, a huge group of us headed for the Special Care Baby Unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary where Jack was fighting for his own life.
A little scrap, weighing just 3lb 4oz at birth, Jack spent his first two months in an incubator in special care, where he was fed Sue’s milk through a tube and pumped with antibiotics to rid him of any traces of the infection, Group B streptococcus, which had killed his twin.
It was terrifying. The whole family spent tense weeks of heart-stopping highs and lows, waiting and hoping.
Jack’s little body was scanned in an attempt to discover the extent of a bleed suffered on his brain during his birth. Weighing so little, and being born so soon, had left him terribly vulnerable.
But he proved then that he was a fighter. And, after two months, to everyone’s joy, he was finally allowed home. Jack had won his first battle — the one for life.
But it would prove to be just one of many in a very long war.
Comedian: Jack, pictured on his first day of school aged five, had the Britain's Got Talent audience in stitches last Saturday night
Comedian: Jack, pictured on his first day of school aged five, had the Britain's Got Talent audience in stitches last Saturday night
Back at the family home in Halifax, West Yorkshire, thanks to round-the-clock feeds and lots of tender loving care, Jack steadily gained weight.
Not content to merely thrive, he astonished us all by speaking in sentences before he had even turned one. His first word, rather fittingly, was ‘cheeky’.
However, Jack didn’t reach the usual developmental milestones for walking and crawling, a fact we initially put down to his prematurity.
Then, when he was 16 months old, Matt and Sue were dealt another blow. Jack was diagnosed with cerebral palsy — the result of brain damage that happened some time during or soon after his birth. No one has ever been sure.
The doctor explained that Jack had spastic diplegia — both of his legs are affected by the damage to his brain — meaning he was unlikely ever to walk.
‘The doctor dropped this bombshell totally out of the blue,’ recalls Sue. ‘She told us bluntly: “Jack has cerebral palsy, he probably won’t be able to walk.
He probably will be able to go to mainstream school and here’s a leaflet from the Spastics Society.”
‘The leaflet turned out to be eight years out of date — the Spastics Society had changed its name to Scope years before.
‘I didn’t want to get upset in front of Jack, but I pleaded with her to tell us if there was anything we could do to help him. We would have travelled the world for a cure.
But she gave us no hope at all, simply saying: “Your son will have cerebral palsy for life and that’s it I’m afraid.” ’
How little that doctor understood about the huge personality and unerring determination of the little boy sitting on his mother’s lap.
At first, Sue went into denial, believing doctors had misdiagnosed Jack, whose language skills were way ahead of his peers.
‘The only people I’d ever come across with cerebral palsy were very disabled, in wheelchairs, barely able to speak,’ says Sue.
Adversity: Jack, aged three with sister Meghan, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of 16 months
Adversity: Jack, aged three with sister Meghan, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of 16 months
‘But Jack was a cute little baby who, granted, couldn’t sit up very well and couldn’t yet walk but I thought those things would happen in time.
‘As he got older though, his disability became more obvious. By then it was easier to handle because we’d had time to get used to the idea.’
But while the rest of us worried about how his disability might hold him back, Jack was busy laying the foundations for a career in comedy.
His lack of mobility meant that, instead of racing around with other children, Jack took centre stage among the adults at family gatherings.

'While the rest of us worried about how his disability might hold him back, Jack was busy laying the foundations for a career in comedy.'
When asked, at the age of two, to ‘do his old man’s face’ he would gurn and we’d all laugh raucously, which encouraged him to pull ever-more hilarious faces.
His blue, heavy-lashed eyes would twinkle as he looked for the joke in everything.
‘From a young age, I sensed Jack was pretty special,’ says Sue.
‘He took a keen interest in the world around him, especially people, and absorbed new information like a sponge. After saying his first words, he barely paused for breath.
‘People ask me why he chose comedy? Well, we’ve got a lot of big personalities in the family and humour seems to be in the genes.
‘Matt and I got together in our teens and his sense of humour was definitely what attracted me to him — I remember crying with laughter on our first date.’
Jack’s first brush with fame came three years ago when his uncle Steve posted a clip on YouTube of a comedy routine he had performed at his parents’ silver wedding. By word of mouth, news of his comedy talent spread.
Impressed: Jack wowed BGT judges Alesha Dixon, Simon Cowell, David Walliams and Amanda Holden
Impressed: Jack wowed BGT judges Alesha Dixon, Simon Cowell, David Walliams and Amanda Holden
He has since supported comedian Jason Manford at a gig at St George’s Hall in Bradford and starred alongside Vic Reeves in two comedy series on children’s channel CBBC.
And this week, Jack took to the stage alongside comedy heavyweights Jo Brand, Stewart Lee and Seann Walsh at a charity fundraising event in London.
It would be easy to imagine that Jack is the product of pushy parents. But Matt and Sue, both 49, who run a financial advisory business in Bradford, prefer to shun the limelight. They now wait in the wings while Jack, who loves an audience, makes one TV appearance after another.

IT'S THE WAY HE TELLS 'EM

Simon Cowell: What do you do? 
Jack: Professional gymnast
 
If I get too energetic do please stop me because I want to keep my benefits. I mean, how else am I going to heat the Jacuzzi? Just kidding, it’s a pool.
 
I’ve got a dog for the disabled. I did have a wheelchair but there were cutbacks.
 
I was taking my dog for a walk the other day — I say walk, he was more pulling me along. We went through a graveyard and a guy coming the other way said: ‘Morning.’ I said: ‘No sir, just walking my dog.’
 
People ask if I get nervous going on stage and having everyone looking at me. I say of course not, people stare at me wherever I go.
What a turn of events. One they could never have foreseen 14 years ago as they mourned the death of Jack’s twin brother and hoped for nothing more than their tiny baby’s survival.
In the years following Jack’s diagnosis, Sue’s extensive research uncovered a number of treatments that Jack has since benefited from, including, from the age of two to seven, twice-yearly Botox injections into his leg muscles, which made him scream in agony but brought relief from his stiff muscles.
Aged seven, he underwent an eight-hour operation, known as a selective dorsal rhizotomy, in which the vertebrae in his spine were opened up and the nerves causing the tension in his legs were partially cut.
Jack spent eight weeks in the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry, Shropshire — the only place in the country where the surgery was performed — while recovering from the operation and undergoing intensive physiotherapy.
Six months later, he took his first steps, a party trick greeted with whoops and cheers from us all during a family holiday to the Greek island of Rhodes a couple of weeks afterwards.
While he now regards physiotherapy as a form of torture, Jack visits an osteopath for treatment every week and manages around the house without his frame.
‘It’s hard for Jack because it’s impossible for him to walk anywhere without some kind of aid, whether it’s a wheelchair or a walking frame,’ says Matt.
‘But that seems to be the least of his worries — what concerns him most is whether his jokes make people laugh or not.’
And there’s no doubt that his parents’ positive outlook has helped Jack on his journey, as well as the support of his older brother, Tom, 22, who works in the pensions industry and his sister, Meghan, 12, who he fondly made the butt of one of his jokes in Saturday’s audition.
‘I’m an optimist and, after the initial shock of his diagnosis had subsided, I didn’t worry that cerebral palsy would hold Jack back,’ reflects Sue.
Jason Manford
Vic Reeves
Talent: Jack once supported comedian Jason Manford, left, on stage and has appeared on children's television alongside Vic Reeves, right
‘He’s such a bright spark that I’ve genuinely always believed, irrespective of his disability, that he is capable of doing whatever he wants to do. We’re so very proud of him.’
Indeed, Jack refuses to be pigeon-holed as a disabled comedian but insists instead that he is simply a comedian who just happens to have a disability.
He describes his inability to walk as being like ‘the elephant in the room’ when he meets new people, and so gives everyone permission to relax by lightening the mood with jokes about his disability.
But not all Jack’s gags refer to his disability. Among my personal favourites are: ‘I saw a flask on the dinner table at school the other day with Big John written on it. I thought: “That’s not my cup of tea.” ’
 
'He describes his inability to walk as being like ‘the elephant in the room’ when he meets new people, and so gives everyone permission to relax by lightening the mood with jokes about his disability.'
And ‘Knock-knock. Who’s there? The bailiffs — now let us in!’ Although he doesn’t mind drawing on it in his act, in everyday life Jack certainly doesn’t dwell on his condition.
‘If I’d been fully able-bodied and suddenly lost the use of my legs, I’m sure it would be hard,’ he says. ‘But I don’t see it as a negative because I’ve never known anything else.
‘I use cerebral palsy in my act because, in comedy, weaknesses can be your strength and when I mention it the audience can then breathe out and enjoy my jokes.
‘My reason for wanting to be a comedian is not to help people in need. However, if other people with disabilities do find some comfort or inspiration in what I’m doing, then brilliant. That’s a bonus.’
All four of the BGT judges said a huge ‘Yes’ to Jack going through last Saturday, but he has to survive another round of culling to make it through to the semi-finals next month, when the public will begin to vote.
If he’s lucky enough to compete, I ask Jack what we can look forward to from his next performance.
Quick as a flash — and with that familiar mischievous twinkle in his eye — he replies: ‘Back flips.’

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