CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED film The King's Speechis an "authentic depiction" of the challenges faced by a person with a stammer and can help others understand these problems, according to an expert working on a programme for recovering stammerers.
In the film, tipped to win several Academy Awards, Geoffrey Rush plays the part of Lionel Logue, whose speech-work helps King George VI, played by Colin Firth, deal with a severe stammer.
Philip Reilly, a recovering stammerer now working with the Irish McGuire Programme, says the film is important because of the way it portrays the issue.
"It's the most authentic depiction of a stammer I've seen," Mr Reilly said at an open day held in Kilkenny by the McGuire programme for stammerers. "Beforehand, in films like A Fish Called Wanda, stammerers would have been used for comic relief only."
Using the analogy of an iceberg alluded to in the film, Mr Reilly said the struggles seen by other people when a person was dealing with a stammer was only 10 per cent of what’s happening to them.
“What they don’t see is the bit underneath, and I think what the film successfully does is depict the 80 or 90 per cent, which is stress and fear.”
It is estimated that as many as one in 100 people have a stammer of some kind but, according to Mr Reilly, perceptions have changed. “I think people’s understanding of any form of disability has improved.”
Retired garda Ray Croke told the open day in Kilkenny of his struggles for years with a stammer which, he felt, hindered his career until he completed the McGuire programme in 2005. After completing a BA in French, he went on to spend five years in Paris with his wife Eva, as a French liaison officer for the Garda Síochána.“I’m convinced that if I hadn’t gone on the McGuire programme, I would have been incapable of it,” he said.