Gallows humour is a time honoured way of dealing with subjects our society might otherwise prefer to ignore; its best practitioners are often the marginalised, the dispossessed and the othered. There’s something pugilistic about it, laughing at those things that would otherwise knock you down. Alistair Baldwin’s Telethon Kid draws on his experiences with an extremely rare form of muscular dystrophy to tell a dark, provocative tale of disability, medical practice and corporate funding that is funny precisely where it is dark and provocative.
Sam (William Rees) lives with a rare degenerative disease, having endured an entire childhood being poked and prodded by the medical industry. Rather than withdrawing into solitude, however, Sam has embraced the limelight, becoming something of a minor television celebrity via the 2007 Perth Children’s hospital telethon. Parlaying this exposure into a career of sorts as an openly gay disability influencer, he comes of age ready to party.
