Back in February this year there was uproar from some narrow-minded parents about the employment of Cerrie Burnell for CBeebies. I won’t go into all the pathetic comments that were posted in various forums but basically some people believed that a TV presenter with no forearm would scare children away from TV and she was only employed to ‘make up numbers’. Utter nonsense if you ask me… Anyway, 5 months on and Mini-MaFt has finally noticed this so-called hideous-scare-machine-of-a-TV-presenter’s ‘disability’ and, contrary to the idiots speculation, he wasn’t scared, he didn’t run away screaming and I highly doubt he will have any nightmares about it either. He simply said, in a perfectly child-like way, “Eh? Where’s her hand gone?”. And that was it! It didn’t take very long to tell him that everyone is born different and that when she was growing in her mummy’s tummy her arm didn’t grow properly. Nothing else was asked about it so I really can’t see why so many parents were so scared of their precious little darling’s seeing someone ‘different’ to them… I wonder if the same people complained that there’s a black TV presenter on CBeebies too…?!
An ‘Armless Comment!
Family Life TV / Film July 31, 2009
I don’t like her. I think both she and the guy she co-presents with (Alex?) are useless. I realise that pulling exaggerated facial expressions is part of the job but there’s a fine line between that and constant crazy-eyes.
I also think the BBC have handled the situation badly. There are disabled characters in other CBeebies programmes whose disabilities are acknowledged in a sensible way when appropriate, e.g. on Me Too where they discussed “blind cricket” requiring a noise-making ball and large wicket. Compare this to Cerrie’s page on the CBeebies website where she says her favourite game is Twister and it just feels like someone’s taking the p***.
I also resent the implication (not specifically from you) that if I think she’s crap at her job then I must be prejudiced. I don’t know why she was given a job she doesn’t seem suited for, but whether or not it was because of (or even in spite of) her disability, people should be allowed to say “sorry, but I just don’t like her”.