‘We need to come out from the shadows’: Meet Britain’s first film director with Down syndrome

Otto Baxter is the 35-year-old film director behind a potty-mouthed horror film about a demonic baby pursued by a Victorian sadist – it’s also a stunning, personal allegory about Britain’s treatment of people with learning disabilities. Kate Solomon meets Baxter and his family and collaborators

‘He’s a classic bloke – doesn’t like to talk about his emotions’: Otto Baxter (centre) with his friends and collaborators Bruce Fletcher (left) and Peter Beard (right) (Sky)

A demonic baby wails into being. A terrified mother recoils in horror. A sadistic Victorian gentleman puts the monster baby into a freakshow. Someone gets hit in the face with a decomposing human heart. This is The Puppet Asylum, a potty-mouthed horror musical from the mind of Otto Baxter: it is gruesome, hilarious and absolutely wild. It’s also autobiographical, to a point.

Baxter is the dapper 35-year-old man who wrote, directed and starred in the film – he also happens to be the first British film director who has Down syndrome. It’s just the latest development in a life spent breaking barriers and subverting expectations: Baxter once performed as a character named Horrora Shebang in a drag troupe known as Drag Syndrome and he was the subject of a BBC documentary (2009’s Otto: Love, Lust and Las Vegas) about his quest to lose his virginity. He is also a working actor, with a number of film and stage credits under his belt, including a critically acclaimed turn in Waiting for Godot as well as a Bafta-nominated short.

We first meet in the cafe of a London hotel on a grizzly September morning, and Baxter isn’t feeling too good. It’s been a busy few days – the previous night he was on stage with Mark Kermode, then out to dinner afterward, and all the rich foods and sparkling drinks have left him under the weather. Though he looks increasingly grey under his devilish beard, flashes of the Baxter I have recently seen on breakfast TV shine through. He swears delightedly, and loves to be outrageous with his family and friends. At one point, he jokingly pretends to strangle his mum Lucy, who adopted him when he was four; at another, he flicks a v-sign at his close artistic collaborators Bruce Fletcher and Peter Beard. When I ask why he loves to swear, Baxter looks me in the eye and says, “F*** you!” with a hearty laugh. Fair enough. Swearing is just really f***ing fun.