JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: How long before our classrooms are full of children miaowing, roaring, hissing and chirping like birds?

JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: How long before our classrooms are full of children miaowing, roaring, hissing and chirping like birds? Click here to visit the Scotland home page for the latest news and sport By Jonathan Brocklebank For The Scottish Daily Mail Published: 20:57 BST, 19 September 2024 | Updated: 20:57 BST, 19 September 2024 e-mail View comments Some years before I was born, Peter Cook wrote one of the best known and funniest sketches of all time. It concerned a one-legged man, played by Dudley Moore, auditioning for the role of Tarzan. Beautifully crafted, part of its humour lay in the gentle but painstaking logic deployed by the auditioner to suggest to the candidate that he may not be ideal for the part.

It was also absurd in the extreme – therefore hilarious – to imagine that a ‘unidexter’ was sufficiently deluded to suppose the audition might work out for him. The late Cook described it as one of the most perfect sketches he had acted in. I concur, but I have lived to see things he hasn’t.

I’ve lived to see comedy such as this sourly characterised as ‘ableist’. It is now no longer impossible to imagine a casting director giving serious thought to offering the Tarzan role to a one-legged man – or even woman. Howling mad as it emerged a secondary pupil in Scotland identifies as wolf and is supported by school staff The pupil suffers from 'species dysphoria' and identifies as a wolf It would be seen as ‘brave’, ‘empowering’, ‘game-changing’.