Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds OBE, Four Fingers & Thirteen Toes - Champion & Inspiration for Disabled People Everywhere

0:01So today's guest is Rosy Moriarty-Simmonds OBE, an absolutely brilliant businesswoman, lifelong equality campaigner and passionate advocate for inclusion. Now Rosy's career and life journey are nothing short of extraordinary. She's the founder of RMS Disability Issues Consultancy, which is a prolific volunteer. She's the author of Four Fingers and 13 Toes, the only autobiography written by a thalidomide-impaired person and an accomplished artist with the world-renowned mouth-and-foot painting. Her dedication to equality and human rights has earned her national recognition, including an OB in the 2015 Queen's New Year's Honours List, honorary fellowships from both Cardiff and Swansea Universities, and most recently the role of High Sheriff of South Glamorgan in 2022 to 2023.

0:58Rosie's also a Vice President of Cardiff Business Club. She's the Chair of Cardiff University's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board and she's the patron of multiple charities including Flamingo, Chicks and Flat Spaces. Through every aspect of her work, whether it's art, media speaking or campaigning, You know, Rosie challenges perceptions. She celebrates ability and champions the rights of disabled people across the globe. Now, this conversation, it promises to be humbling, inspiring and truly empowering. Enjoy the show.

1:40Welcome to Brave Bold Brilliant Podcast. I am here today with the wonderful Rosaline Moriarty-Simmons OBE. Did I get it right, Rosie? Indeed, indeed. Well, I don't. Otherwise known as Rosie, so it is actually going to be a lot easier for me to call you Rosie. That's fine, that's fine. Well, listen, I am so delighted that we've managed to get this in the diary. Thank you so much. My pleasure. It's going to be very interesting. It is, it is. We're here in your wonderful home, which is incredibly spacious and well-adapted. So, Rosie, you have got a huge amount going on. I was reading your bio. So not only are you a fantastic businesswoman, lifetime equality campaigner, prolific volunteer, charitable worker, author, actor, media presenter, inspirational speaker, and an artist with your mouth and foot painting artist.

2:34So, my gosh, you've got a lot going on. That's probably why I'm an insomniac. Yeah. too much going on absolutely but listen Rosie honestly it's I'm so um really privileged to be able to talk to you it's um it does mean a lot to me and we met a couple of months ago at the Cardiff business club didn't we we did um and I was doing a keynote speech and you were in the audience and you asked me a fabulous question which we'll touch on um later on if that's okay but before we do can you just tell us a little bit about your background Rosie and then we'll dig in from there okay well i'll try and do it in five minutes we could probably have five days in reality um i was uh born in cardiff born and made in cardiff born in cardiff um to irish parents um they you know came over here looking for work like many many people did um obviously they did not know that they were going to have a disabled child scans and things like that weren't available back in 1960.

3:38So I had wonderful parents, they were very young, my mother was only 18 and my dad only 20 when I was born, but we also had great grandparents and I think that made the difference because most disabled people were either institutionalised and kept locked in the back parlour or as my parents were told oh well you're very young you know leave her here put her in an orphanage go in and start again luckily for me my parents didn't do that and with the extended family support they encouraged me to be as independent as possible and given my circumstance and i don't have the arms and legs that was a brave thing to do really so everything that the family did I was involved in in that as well um and then as I say in Co-East Trina my first train journey on my own for example I can remember I didn't have mobile phones either so I said for goodness sake find a phone ring me when you get when you get to your destination and then I sort of traveled in a guards van um got to my destination scrabbled for a phone and found it around her So that kind of gives you a little bit of an essence of how I've got to where I am today, I guess.

4:58But the education side was far more difficult. So I had a good, positive family. But then, although I started school as about four, four and a half, the school that I went to was more like a babysitting service rather than... I mean, there was no expectation of you. you didn't come away with qualifications or anything like that so that kind of held me back a bit plus spending quite a few years on and off between the age of well six months I had my first operation and the last one was when I was about 13 14 and so not having a good education wouldn't set you up very well for the future and that was a huge concern for my parents so they kept fighting for me to have a decent one and it wasn't until when I was about 12 13 um I'm sorry at 11 in the school that I attended almost as a mickey take I think um they did the 11 plus but it backfired on the school because six of us passed so you know that's um to be it was quite an important message I think out there to you know don't write people don't write anybody off really um and certainly out of the six two of us were electro-powered wheelchair users so the other four instantly went to the school the comprehensive school next door but two of us couldn't and then headmasters changed and he I suppose if anybody has ever done a real good deed for me it was it was him mr.

6:38Crabb and he had our parents saying and said are you pleased with the education your daughters are getting naturally our parents said no um and he basically pulled all sorts of strings and got us into a school called Florence Treloar school it's now changed to Treloar's but you have the girls end and the boys end and after one uh term there I came home speaking the Queen's English you know very very which delighted my mother and it was an absolute turning point because I was only there for about three and a half years but in that three and a half years academically I caught up to my non-disabled peers and that was really a huge important time in my life and enabled me then to go on I went to Coventry to a college at Coventry again for disabled people and did some more GCSEs and a business studies course.

7:38And then I wanted to come back to Cardiff and there was a college of further and higher education. I attended that for a couple of years and that was kind of took you to about the equivalent of three or four A levels. And then a lecturer there again put a UCAS form in front of me and said, I think you need to go to university. and I just laughed because I thought absolutely no I'm not university fodder I don't think that would be for me and he said absolutely he says but for God's sake don't do business studies not that I've done bad in it but I just it wasn't floating by boat it wasn't interesting enough and he said what you're interested in and I said people I love people I love watching people I love the way the group dynamics he said well you need to do psychology and I'm not embarrassed to say I had to go look up what the word meant you know many times people say I've said things to me and I've stored it in my brain I had to go research it at a later stage to fully understand what it means I thought well this might be interesting so I'm trying to keep it short but basically I didn't really want to go and live away again and that would have been very difficult to sort of study and live away and try and find a group of you know care support to help you so there were two universities that I applied for one it wasn't that they didn't accept me but the interviewers one lecturer sat on the corner of a table saying well the building's split level really so I don't think it's going to be any good for you to come here and then Cardiff University was totally different it was like applying for a job with NASA because there were about six of them on a panel and then they you know the the dean and the head of the student union um the head of psychology and all the rest of it quite a long interview a lot of it was about the practicality so it wasn't an interview to see if you could go there that was more subliminal but it was more okay well we'd like you to come here but how can we do this and it was a huge learning curve for them and a huge for me because again I'd done lots of firsts which is a bit bizarre but the way I look on doing something as the first disabled person to do it is if I can succeed in it then the doors should be on for other disabled people as well so for the university it was the first time that they had accepted from the outset a disabled person particularly of my level of impairment and who completed the course and came away with a degree in psychology.

10:15So then the battle to get a job. I thought I had a passport in my pocket to the world and I was mightily shocked when I kept selling off application forms and applying for jobs and most of them didn't bother replying. I only ended up with four interviews and one job that I was now way underqualified offered me the job and I was waiting for a letter on the date on which to start the job and it said it was a three-page letter which culminated basically in well you can't take yourself to the toilet so we can't give you the job. Now this had all been addressed at the interview plus it was in a hospital so if you couldn't find somewhere in a hospital to sorry you might want to take that word out.

11:06All swearing is welcome. If you can't find somewhere in a hospital somebody in the hospital to assist you to the loop but that had all been sorted out anyway so that was very frustrating very upsetting very annoying and what am I doing all these qualifications for if nobody wants to give me a job but it was all pre-legislation so oops accidentally or otherwise your application form could fall in the bin so then I tried a different tactic and I kept I wrote back to many of the other people who hadn't bothered to reply and a load of new ones um so 250 job applications later um at the later stage offering to work for them for one month for no pay and if they felt that I was good enough to uh to do the job then they needed to give me the job um so I think the civil service were the only ones who were impressed with that um and that's where I got my first paid job fantastic so we're going to come on to the second half in a bit Rosie but there's loads in here and as you're talking I'm thinking oh my gosh you know I've got so I'm just so curious to to kind of understand the world from your perspective you know so when you were getting all of those rejections and it was like no no no thanks very much and there must have been this feeling of sort of it being unfair and unjust and so frustrating as you said how did you keep your mental kind of positivity during that time because there's probably lots of people that would fall able-bodied or not able-bodied were falling to really quite a dark place with that constant sort of you know being not back but how How did you deal with it mentally?

12:48Obviously there were the tears and the tantrums and the why me and woe is me and it's not fair and all of those emotions and anger as well. But I think anger is a good thing if you turn it into a positive thing. So the anger is, well, I'm not going to let this beat me. I've always been a very determined person. I'd always been encouraged by my family to be determined and independent. and so it kind of drove me yeah there were days where I thought why am I bothering to write this letter because I know it's going to be thrown in the bin anyway but then at the same time I'm going to write this letter because I'm going to get a job you know somebody's going to have to wake up one day and realise that you know okay you might be a you know quite severely impaired person but let's give you a go, let's give you that chance.

13:42So I think it was the drive and the determination and the fact that I'd spent all the years working out really, really hard, twice as hard as anybody else. If most people write an essay, they write their notes, they may not bother, they may type their essay up or write it, or I have to type my note. So, two sticks, like drumsticks back in the day didn't have you know Siri and all the beautiful gadgets and kids knows that we've got now and I've got voice activated software on my computer if I had that then I would have come away with a first yeah but um it was it was very demoralizing but I was also you know determined that it would that somebody would give me a job and finally finally i did get one yeah and it sounds like your parents and your family were were real kind of strength of you know behind you 100 % of the way and can we talk about your about your mom and dad because you said they were very young because young parents yeah and um and you know i think a lot of people that may be listening or watching because you're watching on youtube as well and they won't not a lot of people don't understand about you know phalidomide and kind of what happened back then so are you okay to maybe just educate a little bit as well because i think it is really important that we understand that because that was the situation then but it could be a different scenario in today's world as well right with drugs and etc so could you just explain a little bit about that and then we can maybe touch on how your parents stayed so strong and your memories of their young parents as well okay so So the drug thalidomide was originated in Germany by a company called Kemi-Grunenthal, a family-run business who had been providing penicillin for the war effort for the German side of it.

15:45And then in this country, in the United Kingdom, there was distillers biochemicals limited who were given a lot of funding to open up a factory in Liverpool again to make penicillin for the UK war effort. And then in 1958, in April 1958, the same, the same business in this country was given the license by the government. There was no having to apply for it or anything like that. They were literally given the license to produce thalidomide in the United Kingdom. It was produced in lots of different names, so Valgrain and Distaval as well as thalidomide, and was supplied in at least 17 different countries, but under 11 names, like continents rather, you know, not just, you know, so sort of throughout Europe, India, America, although the Americans didn't believe that it got into America, the Food and Drug Administration did stop it, but not before some people had already been infected.

16:55And of course, you still had, from Canada and America and other countries, people based in Germany. So somebody might have conceived, then taken the drug, but the child was born in another country. But basically, the drug, if taken within the first three months of conception, at whatever stage the foetus was at the time the tablets were taken, everything stopped growing. So it's not just our arms and legs, which the majority of people would know from press cuttings and documentaries. It's all our internal organs as well. So, and some of our thalidomide impaired family, they may have their arms and legs, but their internal organs were affected, maybe even worse.

17:42So, but after the fetus had completely developed, if it was taken sort of after three or four months, it didn't seem to have an effect. So whilst everything was developing. And in this country, it wasn't, the drug wasn't taken off the market until December 1961.

18:05Yeah. Now my sister, Deborah, is only 16 months between us, so she was conceived and my mother could have been prescribed the drug again. That didn't happen to my knowledge, but we do have some sets of twins who were affected. And ever since then, scientists have tried to find another use for the drug, for the cancer treatment and all sorts. And whilst it may give some cancer patients a few extra months, it's never going to cure cancer. People were also misled in the late 80s and early 90s to believe that it cured leprosy, but it didn't because literally thalidomide is a sleeping tablet. It's just a sedative at the end of the day.

18:59And so it's not going to cure anything. It's just going to give somebody a better night's sleep. And we all know that if you have a good night's sleep, we feel better for it the next day. So that's the drug itself. as I say scientists have kept trying to find a better version of it or it's all because it's lucrative any pharmaceutical industry they're making billions and even still because thalidomide was re-licensed for multiple myeloma they could charge what they like for it but when it wasn't licensed they had to give it free to named patients and I would rather it be available to those who need it but not for anybody who have to pay for it.

19:54I mean a massive controversy at the time and this is before I was born in the early 70s so you know my partner is similar sort of age to you so he was around that time as well you know sort of born early 60s or ever but yeah it's quite horrifying looking back you know you just think my god how could this have been allowed to happen yeah and nobody knew I mean I was um my mum was in hospital uh one of her medical visits while she was having my sister Debbie um and the professor because obviously because it was such a strange thing and uh controversy well nobody knew about the controversy then but she was then under a professor and he came along with the Lancet the medical journal and said um did you you know were you prescribed uh any form of drugs when you were carrying Rosaline he would have said then um and my mum said well yeah i think so but you know i'll have to check back um and then sure enough it was uh proven that the drug were drugs were provided sorry prescribed yeah um which thankfully she hadn't needed because it was there's a myth that people think it was only given for morning sickness it wasn't it was available for coughs flu influenza in germany it was available over the counter in those forms and i believe in this country wow and then also um if people had post-operative pain it would be given to give them a good night's So sometimes it was prescribed to the husband or the male partner and like we would say, oh God, it's such a terrible headache.

21:35We've got anything in the cupboard. We go, we help ourselves to paracetamol. That would have been something similar with the lid of mine. And so they were then, you know, faced with a disabled child and the mother hadn't been prescribed it, but the father had. Gosh, I mean, I've been educated as well as you're talking, you know, because I always thought, like you said, that, you know, it was the morning sickness. it was prescribed to find their moms and what now. Yeah, a lot of people believe that it's not the case. And then in the 80s, I'd say they thought it would cure leprosy, but it wasn't.

22:09Then other companies have tried to synthesise the drug on. I'm not a scientist, but tried to make cousins of it. So tried to take the jackal out of it and leave the hide. But it's kind of a bit like mercury. It just seems to come back together. and so basically if it has to be prescribed and it's and if it has to be prescribed to somebody childbearing age then they would have to take two or three forms of contraception and perhaps only have a week's supply you know appreciate that if they do get pregnant what consequences will be because it it would happen. Yeah, yeah. And it did, sorry, in Brazil.

22:53Because for leprosy, it was prescribed a lot or given to women. And of course, if you come from the Amazon jungle and you're not literate and you look on the package, and even though they would have been allegedly verbally told, it's a silhouette of a pregnant woman with a bit like the no smoking sign circle and a line through it. well by the time that I'd been taken back to the village and shared it was oh this is a contraceptive or for those who knew what the consequences would be again because of their abject poverty something most of us and most of the listeners wouldn't be able to comprehend some of the women did it on purpose to have a disabled child so that they could go begging with that.

23:41Well you're a mum yourself now for your lovely son James who's 28 you were saying he'll be 28 this week unless you don't want to time lapse it'll be almost 28 and what was it like for you becoming a mum yourself? Again a lot of our group when we were born we were written off like most disabled people you're not going to be able to you're not going to have a life, you're not going to be able to work, you're not going to be educated you're not going to have a family you're not going to have children and our group has literally gone to prove absolutely everybody completely wrong and we have amongst us more children than they were thalidomide children so again I didn't know if I could see conceive it was brilliant that we did carrying James was quite interesting you know literally you sat in a chair you've got a big bump out there I don't think I've got rid of it yet but I mean I blossomed you know I had a huge mane of hair my skin was gorgeous and I the consultant that I was under he kept saying I think you should have a natural birth and I said seriously?

24:59I said the only two women that I know in my situation who've had children, both had caesareans, I really really would be happy if you knocked me out and hand me a nice clean pink baby, thank you very much and he said no, no, no, I'm sure anyway, I won't bore you with all of the details but my water's broke on a Wednesday morning and James was finally born the following Thursday night so it was quite a labour which then had to be induced and then finally culminated in an emergency caesarean but I remember being wheeled from somewhere in the bed and bumped on the thing and I kind of woke up a bit and said, have I had my baby?

25:41and they said, yes, you've had a little boy I went, oh, James and I sunk back out again because we'd agreed on the name but they could have told me I'd had a hippopotamus I wouldn't be equally as happy but he was a great kid and Steve and I did a good job bringing him up and physically changing nappies was entertaining, feeding. The only thing I couldn't do at all was to bath him, but I could supervise it and organise it. I avoided the nappy changes as much as I could because I didn't really enjoy being in that close proximity. No. And little boys, you know, when you... They spray everywhere. What happens?

26:19I'm about to say, you wouldn't thank me for this, James, but, yeah, you take the nappy off and you get an earful. Yeah. oh my word i mean it almost sort of went full circle you know for you from from sort of your birth to the birth of james it somehow has a sort of a symmetry around it it does i mean sadly my mother wasn't um with us we lost mum when she was only 49 she had a heart attack and that's that was heartbicking very very hard um my dad's still with us and he's 83 and he his proudest moment is telling everybody that he was the first one to give James a bottle. I had already decided in advance that I wouldn't breastfeed, that I would bottle feed for practical purposes.

27:04To sort of, you know, have to whip your breast out in public with somebody else holding the child on. You'd have had an audience before you realised it. So I'd have to stick with the bottle instead. Yeah, yeah, oh, fantastic. Well, listen, I mean, thank you for sharing those early years. Let's talk about some of the things that you've done since getting into that world of work and the impact you're making now because the podcast is called Brave or Brilliant and honestly it couldn't be a title that's more fitting than something for you Rosie. Seriously, I mean it really is. So you talked about that first role in the civil service.

27:44What was that job and then what have you done since in the world of work because you've done a huge amount of consultants they have in you to help businesses and individuals. So just talk us around about the business side of it for a while. So when I got the job and it was nothing related to psychology, I thought, well, I'll do it for two years, get a bit of work experience under my belt and then go on. The problem is when you're used to having a wage come in and with a degree I've gone in at middle management, so you fast track straight to middle management, it was the biggest shock of my life suddenly deciding that you're in this huge not to say but you're in this huge open plan office and you're a manager of people who are two maybe three times your age um and people are people they come in all um your personalities and here you are have to sort of perhaps you know give a report to somebody who is perhaps three or four years older you or a report to somebody who is in their late 50s early 60s and that was difficult and I'm good with people but that was a huge huge learning curve um so you start off uh it was in company's house um and you started off in the post room which is a great place to learn the whole dynamics of an organization if you start at the bottom and work your way up that's a good thing at whatever level you are even um because you know all that you get to learn all the different departments, I think.

29:20And then it was on... I was only there for a while because it was more or less, well, we want to give you the job. This is the only place we can put you at the moment because the vacancy for the place we have in mind hasn't become available yet. But when it did, I moved into that and it was, that was more interesting because you were dealing with the legalities of businesses and whether they were in breach of companies legislation and things like that. So, did all that and then seven years down the line, it sounds weird, but they were offering redundancies. And by now, really got interested in the disability equality training side of things.

30:03So, you know, days off, would perhaps join a couple of other disabled people to deliver workshops. And again, there was a lot of campaigning in the early 90s because there were 15 attempts to get the disability discrimination legislation through Parliament. There's a long process but one of the things is they get talked out of time and then it has to go all the way back to the beginning and start all over again. So that's what had happened quite a lot. So it was great going up to London and on marches and at that stage I was also doing a bit of interviewing for radio and the press so it was really good to be kind of involved but doing something a bit more nitty-gritty with it as well and then I say the disability quality training and I suddenly thought you know I'm really really grateful that I got the job at Pembrey's house eternally to the other people who made the decisions but I need to do something far more interesting and I need to do something that I'm passionate about.

31:11So that's when I made the decision and was granted the redundancy package which helped me to get a computer and a couple of other bits and bobs and I'd already started delivering disability quality training but now I could do it far more often. So perhaps two or three times a week doing an all-day workshop um it's it's quite um tiring but absolutely you know one day you could be um you know with government officials um the next day you could be maybe uh you know the um with a school um well not so much in school because they for school children i've always given talks for free but I could be lecturing it did a lot of visiting so lecture got visiting lecture at Cardiff University and other colleges so that could be with dentists or with lawyers with architects you know all that can be so it was really great to get in at that ground level but then at the end of the day if that was just you know one lecture at university um in a whole three-year course you really have to make an impact because you want these young people who are you know the the employers and the business people of the future to take on board what you've said so you've got to go in sharp and not shock them in an unpleasant way but shock them in into realizing that it's not as easy it is for them and the access isn't good transport isn't good and attitudes were still quite quite negative yeah and the whole gambit and and so these had to be shooting from the hips kind of workshops or lectures and I absolutely loved it did it for almost 25 years and then times are changing and the legislation, the disability discrimination legislation had come out and people wanted that added, which was okay, but, and I would do that element of it.

33:28But then in 2010, when the Equalities Act came out, and unfortunately, the disability legislation went right to the bottom of the agenda again. And we literally, you know, it's so frustrated because we've just got, you know, it's like the last of the civil rights movements. And so it was really unfortunate that we got to the bottom of the agenda and again all of a sudden people saying all right oh we can't afford an all-day workshop can you do it in an hour well it takes nearly that to introduce the day for goodness sake so i thought no i'm not going to compromise what i'm doing it's either all or nothing and so i instead changed over your business evolves anyway you know whatever you do, it evolves and changes and has to, otherwise it will get really stale.

34:17So I now give inspirational talks, which if I can shut up will only last an hour. And then, you know, obviously there's questions. I love it when you get asked the question and answer a second after. And in 2012, I was accepted to be a mouth painting artist. It's a world-renowned cooperative of artists who can only paint with our feet or our mouth. I'm a mouth painter. I'd always loved art right from school and a friend of mine who was quite high up in the mouth and foot painting artists for years had been nagging me to put a portfolio in because he was at the boys school at Treloar's College and I was at the girls school but we knew each other because we were both the lid of my bed majority of us a good significant number of us known each other since we were babies and and finally I thought do you know what now is the time I need to do something you know a bit more relaxing on the painting side but still go out and give the talks still do volunteer work and campaigning and it all comes into a nice little a nice little bowl really and yeah it's different each day is different yeah it's fantastic and actually this is one of your wonderful paintings here if anyone can see this is a beautiful cushion which you painted this and then you got it printed on.

35:41Yeah, it was a 90cm by 90cm silk painting originally and it was one of the ones that unfortunately the mouth and foot painting artists didn't publish but when you think, if you're lucky enough to get an image reproduced by them into cards or wrapping paper. If Rose's story is inspiring you, make sure you subscribe to Brave Bold Brilliant so you never miss another conversation with leaders, changemakers and those pioneers who are making the world a more inclusive and impactful place. And don't forget, check out Rosie's autobiography, Four Fingers and 13 Toes, where she shares her life journey alongside the history of thalidomide.

36:25There are thousands and thousands for them to choose from. And I've been really lucky that I've had seven images published or reproduced in 17 different countries since although I've got the acceptance letter in 2012 you don't start getting paid until 12 March 2013 because obviously you've got to put enough paintings in to justify that yeah so now you get a monthly retainer for painting which is really fantastic so what I'm hearing here Rosie is multiple streams of income lots of great things that you're You're incredibly passionate. I mean, you're very values driven on. You've got a strong purpose to wanting to make the world a better place for other people as well.

37:09As well as for you to enjoy your life along the way. That's so important. Absolutely. And you know, when you decided to write the book, so your book, Four Fingers and 13 Toes, it was published first in 2007, June 2007, then republished in 2009. So what was the catalyst for you writing the book? Okay. Again, it was my... You're sitting there, you're sitting around the table having a laugh and you recount stories. Or we were both very concerned that the story about thalidomide needed to be told. And for years and years she kept saying, oh, you really should write a book. You really should put this in writing, didn't it?

37:55Yeah, yeah, you know, I've got time. But then when I was at university, when I did it, you did your main subject, but then you had to do one added on subject, something. It could be kind of related, but needs to be different enough. So I studied sociology of law. And instead of sitting an exam for that, you could do an extended essay. So I did an essay all about thalidomide and the history of it. and it was so cathartic because I learnt things that I didn't know about. My parents could tell me what they knew and when James was little I was able to explain to him what was relevant for him at that age because quite often he would get asked by older kids why do you remember when you got two fingers in it?

38:45I don't know, because he didn't care it didn't matter to him because we were just mum and dad and kids don't see it but other kids did So obviously you had to do things, you go into school and talk to the kids about it, which was great. So I then thought, well, do you know what? Some of the parents had written books, some lawyers had written books, a number of journalists had written books. But there hadn't been a book actually written by a thalidomide impaired person at that stage, or certainly not one that hadn't been ghostwritten. so I decided to do one and it was such hard work you know on top of your business on top of everything else you're doing on top of bringing James up I thought you know at times I thought I'd gone mad um or I was mad and it took 20 years actually from the time I started with just little notes and thoughts and memories and chatting to family you know chatting to other people um and then it all finally comes together in that way you focus you know and you kind of do it by chapters but you don't really at that stage know where you're going to start so my book actually starts with james's birth okay and then i go back so one the first chapter is about my life story and then the subsequent chapter is about the history of thalidomide so it's it's not just an autobiography and it's not just a history book.

40:17And that's where the difficulty came in publishing. There's lots of publishing. You know, again, it was, I don't know, we're back to the applying for jobs syndrome. It doesn't quite fit into any little box. Exactly, yeah. It doesn't fit into a just history. It doesn't fit into just autobiography. So the publisher came back and said, it's great, but sorry, we can't publish it. So in the end, I published it through AuthorHouse, the self-publishing house. and it's still with them but the first lot sold out straight away but then an interesting thing happened and i received a letter um from a lady who turned out to be the doctor that delivered me no yeah and i couldn't believe it and i sat on that letter for a couple of months she put a telephone number in and all that and i thought i i just didn't know whether this was it's a terrible thing to say a stranger wanting to kind of be involved or whether this person was genuine and she didn't have any social media presence or anything like that so it was very difficult to find find to get to the bottom of so I've plucked up the couragess one day and just you stay in the kitchen as well so you can take over just in case you know well once we started talking it was just amazing and the things that she was able to tell me she had to have been there to know and so she was only about 18 or 20 and doing her rotations as a trainee doctor and she had me born on her night you know so yeah so that was great so because they were you know my mum's recollection of my birth lots of it was accurate but none of us had realized how poorly my mum was.

42:08She had toxemia and so she'd been in hospital for about a month before I was born anyway. But you know, thank goodness she was okay after it. But it was just to hear from somebody else who was actually there in the operating theatre, reinforced, not operating theatre but labour theatre, reinforced a lot of what mum had said but then gave me information um more information um and so that's where i republished it then um with that added into the book wow that's amazing isn't it and i suppose the thing is you never know who's watching listening who you might inspire just whether it's on social media or tv or through a book and even if you just reach one person that's incredible isn't it what a person to reach through so valerie the doctor valerie davis she um said that my mum said i'm going to give her a name that people will remember which is you know rosaline but i use rosie primarily because most people don't pronounce rosaline but you know they go rosaline rosaline rosaline oh it's rosaline you know but anyway um but most people find Rosie easy and I'm not worried about that but in my paperwork I would put Rosie in and she said I Dr.

43:32Valerie said I always remembered that name she said I followed your progress through newspaper cuttings and documentaries and things like that and she said for many years I've wanted to get in touch with you and so when she finally did that was a you know very interesting story yeah very special what a special kind of you know moment for both of you yeah really and Yeah, incredible. So what have you found the most challenging time during your life, do you think, Rosie? I know you've had loads. Any particular standouts or periods which were difficult? I think standouts are that some people, even in this day and age, their attitude can be negative towards disabled people.