Please welcome your host for tonight, sofie hagen. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello and welcome to bbc ouch storytelling live. The stories were going to be hearing tonight are about love and relationships, and i do have a very long lasting relationship with my psychologist. Am i right, bbc ouch people . High five, high five ive been seeing my psychologist for ten years, now. Shes always trying to get me out all of me, you know, Mental Health issues. And theres quite a few. Ah, we have depression, we have, uh, anxiety, and Binge Eating Disorder which is the cool one. Dont know if you know about that. Its where you eat so you cant feel anything. Right . Because it there is a lot of pain inside, because, you know, you can feel the bones, and you want to swallow them, and so theres a lot of pain right in my throat after a good bit of chicken. My psychologist is amazing. Shes a very, very good psychologist. For those of you who cant see me, im fat. And thats not a bad thing. Its not a bad thing. I like being fat. I love my body. I think everybody should love my body, because. Cheering. Yeah why wouldnt you 7 and, uh, so but that means that sometimes people give me advice on how to los weight. People will be like, oh, you should stop eating sugar, and im like, i cant stop eating sugar, because then ill feel. Illfeel and thats the reason that they eat, is to not feel all the feelings. Ive got depression and anxiety, i dont want to feel my feelings. My psychologist once tried to fix it. She went we were trying to deal with some of the feelings that i dont know how to show, for example, anger. Im very bad with anger. I dont know how to express anger. So when i do express anger, it kind of explodes, right . She tried to fix that. So she she said to me you know, next time you feel angry, just try and express it. I said oh, no. No, i dont think thats theres not enough food in the world for me to feel angry. Im sorry, thats not going to happen. She said, listen, this is what you do next time you feel anger, say the words i am angry. I said ok, this is on you. I went from that session i was very, you know, pleased with what i was about to do. I was like, i am going to go out and try and feel my anger, and im gonna try and express it. I was practising the sentence i am angry. I am angry. So the next time it happened, i can say it out loud. And i met with friend, my best friend, her name is ina, inas beautiful, inas a very optimistic and happy person. Like shes always smiling. Like, she believes in things like love. What an idiot, right . And she met me the station, and i hugged her. And she said oh my god, im so happy to see you. I said im so happy to see you she said, do you want to go for dinner . I said, id love to go to dinner she said lets go for dinner what you feel like eating . I said oh, i dont know. I feel like having pasta. She said oh, ifeel like having greek food. And then i punched her in the face. I punched her in the face. I saw this happen in slow motion. I wasjust like oh, no and i could just see, and my fist was like, were expressing feelings, and my heart was like, dont do it like, this is what we were afraid of and i saw my fist, like, just hit her, like, stupid smiling face, and she never once stopped smiling. She was just like, 0k, well have pasta. I think youre too passionate about this ifelt so bad. And i didnt know what to do. I hit my friend. I dont want to be the kind of person who hits a friend. And i felt bad and she was looking at me with her big blue eyes. I didnt know what to say. So ijust went i am angry. Then i stopped feeling feelings for the rest of my life. Thats, uh, somewhat of a fairytale. I would love to introduce you to the first person in the stage. Are you up for being very, very nice . Crowd yeah of course you are. Give it up for your first guest of the night everybodys taken all the good disabilities, so i got left with dyspraxia. Its a Developmental Co ordination disorder. It is a sort of less sexy cousin of dyslexia, which youll have heard about. It largely affects motor control and speech and memory and information processing. So what generally happens is i fall over a lot and cock everything up. So this is a warning. Watch this space. I love living alone, because people. So my favourite activity is sitting on the sofa in my pants, watching the telly. All about that. So i cant actually keep pets or houseplants alive, so i certainly cant keep love and affection alive. Its far too much commitment generally. I did a bit of online dating. And it then it plays on your insecurities. It is terrifying thing to do. Because youre waiting there to meet this date, and you have written your profile, and youre thinking, well, maybe taking ten years off my age was too much. And the i did use flattering photos, and i did pretend that i was not actually mental. So i was a bit worried about what theyre going to think. So youre waiting to see him, and you are thinking hell be all right. Because people are better than that. And the Mainstream Media would have us believe that that everybodys shallow, and obsessed with how you look, but i find in my experience that real people, real people will be able to see behind the mess that you really are, and realise youre a beautiful person, youre a real person, and i like that. So i was feeling buoyed up about it. So i see him come out of the station. I clock him and i thought, oh, you minger. So i thought and with dyspraxia, i was very loud and sweary and scary. If i dont know people especially, i get a bit overpowering and overwhelming. And people get nervous around me. This is what theyve said. Obviously, it is nonsense, and i will fight anyone that says otherwise. But so and this is just a classic dyspraxia symptom. I didnt realise. I used to think i was this fascinating personality with all these quirks, and im so interesting, and i discover that im nothing but a list of symptoms. And i was very upset that im nothing below it. Im entirely 2 dimensional. Im just a condition. So this date looks nervous already. And that is before it all comes out. Just the presentation alone is scaring the guy. So i thought, well, well go to the nearest pub. Traipsing along. As some girls usually do, stumbling over, talking loudly with my arms out, hitting lampposts. And then we try to get into the pub, and the bouncer bars me. He said, no, youre not coming in. And i said what . And the guy says no, no, youre obviously too drunk, you cant come in. No, i do get this a lot. Not always when im drunk, obviously. But so so i turn to the guy and i though, you know, ill argue with him. Because, as we all know, arguing with the bouncer, obviously you obviously always win. You never. Youre never going to lose that argument, talking to bouncers. So i say to him, mate, come on, this is because im scottish, isnt it . You assume ive been drinking all morning. So i got im not being gracious in defeat. Im just wearing and stomping off, having a go at him under my breath, and generally vindicating him. You, just, i shouldnt be allowed in. But i was thinking im looking quite good because im in my heels. Id put my high heels on especially. So i cant walk in high heels. Cannot. Cant barely stand in high heels. But this doesnt stop me. Im in complete denial. I imagine that makes it look like some girly delicate little flower, all sanguine and sexy. When not like the angry tractor that i usually look like. Inevitably, right, were going along and i fall. And i dont fall in the way i would think i would fall in my head. Like, oh, oh, ifell, oh. Thats how i thats how id like to fall. No, no, no, no, no. I come along, i stack it on the pavement. It is just this terrible mess of everything. Everybody is aware of it. And my top tip for this because ive ive got an m0, because ive fallen over so many times is dont style it out. Just stay on the ground. Because otherwise, everybody just mocks everybodys like im filming it for youtube, because its hilarious. You stay down, they start to worry. They think, oh, hang on. Might might actually be seriously hurt, and then how bad will i look for laughing . Stay on the floor, listen to whats going on around you. Youve got your pride, stay on the ground. So i get my date picks me up off the ground. I am quite galled he didnt prevent it from happening in the first place. So i am already resentful. Fortunately, this has taken place outside a pub, so obvious course of action. So, inside the pub so i go in, and the landlady sees me coming in, bleeding everywhere, and she comes over with rolls of toilet paper to try and stem the bleeding and save the furniture. I am sitting there with blood and tissues, because that adds to the ambience of a sexy date. The smell of tcp. So at this point, i am covered in blood, drinking and crying. And i am just asking why it is happening to me . This part of the day, youre meant to chat, smalltalk conversation, i cant do. I dont understand. I had written cues up my arm, and tried to pass it off as a tribal tattoo. So i am chatting away what do you do . Where do you live . Pause for response. I think, no. Every bit as scintillating as you might imagine. So we decided to leave, i think we left of our own volition, which is always a win, not being asked to leave. Top time, cant get better than that. So just get back home and try and forget all about it, watch cartoons, sit on the sofa in my pants, watching television. Equilibrium is restored. Then a few days later, the date texts me and wants to see me again. Why . Why would you put yourself through that . What sort of person would want to experience is that all again . What sort of Self Esteem Problems do have, lad . Thats absolutely ridiculous. I thought i dont know anyone who wants to go out with me again, what a loser and that will be one of the many, many reasons i have been single for ten years. And thank you for laughing at my misfortune. I am very glad you did. Applause. Oh my god, that was herfirst time ever on stage. I have slept with worse comedians than that. That was amazing. We are about to have another storyteller on the stage. Are you ready for that . Crowd yes yay, please give a warm round of applause for the Amazing Mick Scarlett now, when i first discussed with the bbc ouch team what id be talking about today, i said, can i talk about how i met my wonderful wife, whos sitting just there. Hello, wonderful wife. About the romantic story of seeing her across a crowded dancefloor, and how i immediately knew that she was the one for me. No, they said, no, thats really boring. What we want is something edgy something thats going to push boundaries. And i thought, i know, im going to talk about my willy, and sex. Because that is edgy, isnt it . I woke up one day before my german o level. And i found that my legs hurt, and my back really hurt. And every time i try to stand up, ifell over. And so, of course, an ambulance was called. I was rushed to hospital. And it transpired that my spine had collapsed. Yes, it is true, folks. You can break your back in your sleep. Ijust thought i would tell all you bipeds that, just to make your day. So, eventually came out of hospital, and, as you can tell, i had lost the ability to walk. There was no more standing for me. And there was also no more standing to attention down there. I had lost what my doctors call Erectile Function. I knew that would happen complete silence. I thought, thats it. Game over, man, game over. I thought that was it. I got really down and depressed. I thought, i would become the best male friend. And all my girlfriends would come around and id do their hair and do their make up, and id dress them all up, and then i would send them out on dates. Normally, with blokes wearing leatherjackets, which is why i now wear one, all the while, owned mopeds, and if they were worse, they owned a ford capri. When i was young, that was a giveaway sign that it was going to be bad. And then what would happen is, that night, shed come back round the house and cry on my shoulder. She would say he had sex with me, and then he dumped me. Why cant they be like you . I, of course, did not see this as what i would i, of course, did not see this as what i would now obviously recognise as a blatant come on. What i thought was that they would never want to be with me, because i cant do it. So i would be like, oh, yes, dont worry, youll be fine. One of my best female friends came to me and said, look, ive met this girl, and i think she is great. Will you come to a party and meet her and all of the her friends . And i said of course. And i arrived, and of course, i was the one wearing the most make up in the room. We are all getting along all famously, and then, as was the fashion, back then, we played a game. Truth or dare. We played it at every party. I dont know why, because it always ended with a row. Normally because we were always truthful or too daring, normally too truthful, but i thought this could be it. This could be my chance. I could tell my secret. Up til then, i had kept it quiet. My brother did not know, my parents did not know, even my doctor didnt. I was going to admit to mr floppy. It was going to be great. Were they sympathetic . Were they caring . Not at first. You know, when people laugh a bit too much, and then it is hang on a minute, it is not funny any im actually really hurt. It was that. But eventually, my friend wiped away her tears, got her breath back, wiped her tears away, and likely across the head. She said were girls, we dont have willies. We make love to girls and do it well. Yay, they all cried of course they did. I obviously had not worked that out. Which kind of shows how innocent i was as a teenager. So, at the time, lesbianism and feminism were very, very closely associated, and very radical, these girls were. And they truly believe what was wrong with the planet was men and their Erectile Function and penetration. All penetration was bad. So suddenly, i was this new type of man, a man who. The next revolutionary leap, according to these girls they thought it was great i really liked these girls. Cool and they took me under their wing. And they even made me an honorary lesbian. And i used to go on lesbian marches. There was me and a load of girls and just this bloke wearing lots of make up and looking like boy george on wheels. Down with men, men are bad right . And they also taught me how to make love to a woman like a woman. Now, i wonder how many people out here are imagining a weird pornographic thing. No, im still a guy. They still wouldnt go near me, but they just taught me, told me, with words, not actions. Sadly, but there you go. And when i was telling the bbc about this, they said are you going to tell anyone . Are you going to tell us what they said . Please tell us well i wont. No. Im afraid i will not let you know, because that would be betraying the sisterhood. So girls, if you want to know it is like, you will have to make love to a woman. Thank you very much, and goodnight. Give it up for mick scarlett that was amazing. I think everybody could learn from that story. Everybody. Everybody if anybody wants to buy me a pint i will be at the bar. Ready for another storyteller . Put your hands together and give it up for the amazing sean lucafetta. Hello. So, i grew up with hearing loss. It means that essentially i cannot function in Society Without my hearing aids. The funny thing is that i didnt wear them until i was about 20 years old. Lets so for the first 20 years of my life i didnt hear much. So how did i get by . I essentially hung out with a lot of loud people. I grew up in italy, so, i mean. You have heard some of those people over there. I come from a family, we are 11 people. Everybody is really loud. You cant understand how loud they are. Every time i go back for christmas i have to take my hearing aids off. It is just crazy. So, i had a girlfriend. Her name is a lease. Elyse. She is british, from newcastle, but she does not have a Geordie Accent otherwise i would not understand what she is saying. She speaks very badly and moves her hands a lot. As an italian i find this very attractive. The only thing is, she can speak quite fast. When we moved in together, communication was a little bit complicated. Because she is not used to speaking to somebody who has hearing loss. So she speaks to me like have perfect hearing. Even if i have my hearing aids, i cannot hear ioo . If i am in the kitchen, cooking, and you walk into the room and Start Talking to me right away when i am not seeing you. I cannot hear, very likely, that the year of what you just said. Even worse, if you speak to me from a different room. So i had to tell elyce, when you speak to me, dont cover your mouth, dont mumble, and dont speak to me from another room. But elyce will forget. So i had to come up with a new strategy. So my strategy was, a sickly, i was going to train elyce as if she was a dog. Basically. So every time i could not hear her i would interrupt her and tell her what she did wrong. Elyce, you didnt speak while facing me. Elyce, you are mumbling. And im annoying myself now, so imagine how annoying i was to her. So obviously i thought this was a great idea and i kept going. I took it one step further and introduced the marks on the wall. We had a chalkboard at home and i said, elyce, every time you make a mistake, we are going to make a mark on the wall. Which didnt work out, because believe it or not, i realised one day that she wasnt a dog. What really work, we decided on a couple of ground rules. The first rule was that we would always speak in the same room, no exceptions. The second rule was the attention rule. Elyce would always try to get my attention first and i would always give my attention to her, so i would stop doing something and tune in. This worked because we were both relaxed and we were open to accepting criticism. It wasnt like i was trying to interrupt her all the time. Elyce came up with ways of getting my attention instead of calling my name all the time. What she did was start using filler words. So before starting to speak to me she would start seeing, by the way, all, you know what . This was great, because it gave me the time to tune in. I miss much less now, but i still miss things, but a beautiful thing is that i dont get frustrated any more because i know that she cares. Thank you. Amazing. Thats so good. We have one more storyteller this evening. Are you up for that . You have been great, everybody has been great so far. This storyteller is somebody i am very proud to know. You will love him. Please start cheering and applauding for the amazing harriet dyer. Youre welcome. Thats my thing. Ive got bipolar and it has caused some mayhem in my relationships. Ive got a boyfriend at the moment and he is proper, it is absolutely lovely. Before this understanding boyfriend, that guy i was seeing before had a problem with me doing stand up comedy, beakers, i think, he thought it attacked his masculinity. He kept telling me that his job was more important and all of that. One day we were in bed and he was telling me how good he would be at comedy. So he was pretending there was a front row of women, they were women in the front row, and he was seen, if you do not laugh at myjokes, you are obviously lesbians. That is who i was dating. And then he has seen my medication, by my bed, and he asked what it was. I am an open book so i said what it was and he goes, does that mean you are going to kill me in the night . It didnt mean that, but if you carry on talking. The first time i thought i was in love i was at university and this guy, ijust couldnt leave that somebody like him would be interested in me. Believe. He was so good looking. There were signs that maybe it was not to be. This was a sign. Once in the bad i woke up in the middle of the night with a very wet back. And i thought, why is my back wet. He said, sorry, babe. I dreamt you were arrayed urinal. He dreamt that i was a urinal, and he three weed on my back in the middle of the night. That is not a keeper. At university there was this girl, i worshipped the ground she walked on. I thought she was wonderful, really strong and independent and funny, i really liked. So she became my best friend. After a while, going out with this guy, i said to my friend, something doesnt sit right with me. I dont trust him. She is my best friend, so i opened up about stuff and all of that. She said, no, this isjust your Mental Health telling you this, it is all in your head. So i thought, all right. When i spoke to him about it he said the same thing. So i said, ok, that is what has happened. They were together, right . They were getting together. And when i properly caught them, they were doing the whole, yes, this is because of your childhood, harriet, dissentabout. It was not even what they had done, it was the fact they using that against me. I was livid. They started lying to me, and i punched them vote in the face, but, because i am not a fighter, i have punched them both in the forehead, and i have broken both my hands. Honestly. And then, because they were such horrible people, that was not enough, i have gone home and then she has rang the police. So the next morning i am in my residence, and i get woken up why the police and they arrest me. So i have then been carted to a prison cell, theyjust put me on the cell with this guy, and he had one tooth, and he was just chatting nonsense to me. He told me he invented toothpaste, right . I said, what are you on about . It made me laugh, after all this nonsense. I have gone, mate, i dont think you did invent toothpaste. And hes gone, no, if you think about it. If somebody with lots of teeth invented toothpaste, it would be called teethpaste. And i thought, you cant really argue with that, really. And that is, honest to god, that is on my record forever. I used to do teaching, and that is just so sad that is on my record. Thank you ever so much. Cheers. Harriet dyer give it up for all the stories you have heard tonight. You have all been lovely. Have a good night hello. There will be some chilly nights this weekend. There will be frost for some of us as the weekend begins, but by day, this weekend, it is sun, sun, sun. What a glorious weekend if youre a fan of blue skies. High pressure right across the uk. The Weather Ingredients this weekend, because of high pressure, as you might imagine, its going to be settled. There will be some warm spring sunshine around, people have sunshine from dawn until dusk. Quite a breeze in east anglia in southern england. You will need to be out of that reason take advantage of the warmth and the sunshine, 15 i6 celsius. Not as chile on saturday night. Not as many fog patches. Still quite breezy in the south, maybe a bit of cloud in Eastern Parts of the uk in the day. The vast majority will end the weekend as it begins, with plenty of sunshine. A more detailed forecasts, all you have to do is go online. Welcome to bbc news broadcasting at home and around the globe. Im lebo diseko. Our top stories a humiliating defeat for President Trump as he withdraws his healthcare bill. I have been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let obamacare explode. It is exploding right now. A lone wolf or did he have help . British Police Investigate what motivated the westminster attacker. Marine goes to moscow frances far right president ial hopeful Marine Le Pen meets Vladimir Putin in the kremlin. And find out who was the sharemarket landed on the taxiway