everything has been intertwined in terms of your campaigning work, your academic work. ijust wonder whether you ever, for a moment, considered going into something entirely disconnected from your own personal circumstances? something like accountancy, law, geology? you know what, there are short people, restricted growth people in all of those professions. there are farmers, teachers, solicitors, everything. but i did not go that way. so as a social scientist, i've always been interested in what others experience and so obviously disability has to be top of the list. let me ask you about growing up. your family has its own history, which is important to talk about, i think. your grandfather, it seems, experienced a mutation, a genetic mutation. my father. so, he was born in 1927. william shakespeare — unfortunate name.