Ignore the provocative title – comedian Rosie Jones’s Am I a R*tard documentary has a crucial message

The comedian’s Channel 4 documentary about the ableist abuse she experiences on a daily basis is a much needed plea for change, writes Lucy Webster

(Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for D)

There are many things that are difficult to watch in Rosie Jones’s new documentary, Am I a R*tard?. But there’s one in particular that I keep thinking about: the fact that she has to wear headphones every time she leaves the house alone. Not because she’s a music-obsessive (although she does love Steps), but because it’s the only way she can drown out the abuse that follows her around. When she appears on TV and makes her audience laugh, Jones is something of a national treasure. But out and about – and in the Wild West of social media – she is a disabled person. And that means people are nasty and cruel.

The documentary, which airs on Channel 4 on Thursday, aims to put the spotlight on ableism and the abuse it feeds. Understandable backlash around the documentary’s controversial title has, sadly, distracted from its crucial message: ableist abuse is constant, horrific, and too-often ignored. Jones’s open and frank exposing of the abuse she faces sends that message loud and clear – and forces the audience to question why it has been tolerated for so long.

That tolerance is starkly exposed when Jones reports a tweet calling her the r-word to Twitter, only to get an email saying it does not break the social media company’s guidelines. Digging deeper, she discovers that the word – a hateful slur used for disabled people, especially those with learning disabilities – is not even banned by Twitter, so its vetting algorithm does not see the tweet as a problem. It’s only when Jones turns up at Twitter’s London offices with a giant cookie (“tech guys love cookies”) with the slur written in icing that the offensive message is taken down.