John Connor,  —

In the ‘80s, John Connor created the first regular column about the burgeoning London stand-up scene. In 1990 he wrote a book about its effect on the Edinburgh Festival: “Comics: A Decade of Comedy at the Assembly Rooms.” That year he also devised and ran a live topical stand-up team show at The London Comedy Store, The Edge (It was destroyed in 2020!). In 2009 John was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS, which cut short his main job as a TV casting director for “Black Books,” “My Family,” et al. Now, John writes “Fall Down Get Up Again,” an irreverent journey with MS.

Articles by John Connor

And the Good News Is …

Getting started on any career is fraught with difficulty, and the trail that got me to my base camp was truly meandering. It was nearly as convoluted as that sentence! At 23, without meaning to, I found myself being a putative theater critic. Within months, under the pressure of…

How I Managed to Get a Scary Halloween Haircut

“You’ve had a haircut — very smart!” was the greeting at work. Yes, but it was in no way a simple thing. The logistics involved were really that: It took the small army of my family to complete the mission. Until my last relapse six months ago, I could…

Every Day Is Like a Box of Chocolates

Each morning, I’m confronted by an adaptation of the conundrum faced by Forest Gump’s mother: “Life [is] like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get.” If I can’t get myself out of bed, it’s going to be a bad one. I may be in…

Taking a Flu Day

Going to bed late and sleeping is reportedly a marker of intelligence. In that case, I am definitely something of a genius. So, it’s always a shock when I have to get up in the morning. I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding it! I’ve lived in such a form…

A Black Mark for the Black Cab

Sorry, this story is definitely parochial and about being disabled, rather than narrowly focused on having MS. It also turns out to be somewhat celebratory — albeit starting from a criticism. Before I get to that, a bit of history. The black cab is an international symbol for London like…

Don’t Turn Anything Down!

At the start of all of this, when I was laid low in the hospital by what turned out to be sclerosis, I was visited by my mate Nigel. He is the king of sclerosis (I’ve written about our “ill” starred bromance in this column) and he offered this…

The Morning After the Night Before

Last Wednesday morning didn’t go according to plan. I’m lackluster every Wednesday morn because Tuesday nights are my regular work gig at London’s Comedy Store. I laugh too much, drink too much, and don’t get home till about 11:30 p.m. Still, I had a good sleep. My new…

A Pain in the Back, Part 2

Second in a series. Read part one. Last week, I wrote about solving my back problems by purchasing a mattress topper for my bed. It was a good thing, too, as I was going into the hospital for a lumbar puncture. It was as if I planned it; well, my…

A Pain in the Back, Part 1

First in a series. So this is what an earthquake feels like? Well, it wasn’t that dramatic, but it was the middle of the night, and I’d been abruptly awakened to find myself lying at a 45-degree angle. This took a bit of processing. The frame of our bed had broken!…

Lymphedema: A Growing Problem?

Now, I’m all for complimentary comments on my columns, and in the combative world the internet has engendered, the stroppy ones, too. But it’s when you lot start writing to each other that I know I’ve hit something. Which is a good thing, however irrelevant I then feel. A…

I’m Too Busy to Think About MS

Well, it’s not a cure, but working hard sure takes my mind off MS. In fact, I’m so rushed off my feet (irony intended!) I’m not sure I have time to write this. But if I stop and ruminate, then my bedroom turns from a frenetic office into a…

I’m Busy Doing Nothing

Everything takes so much damn time! I’m strangely working — or at least doing things I purport as work, such as this column. That’s no different than before MS; I still have the inclination to prevaricate or find something inconsequential to ruminate over, like the state of the Turkish…

Plumbing the Depths

Well, this is going to be a niche market: A picture of a toilet should grab the attention of any plumber who’s now got MS and reads Multiple Sclerosis News Today. Victories need to be celebrated no matter how small the Venn diagram is! The toilet looks OK.

Downbeat, but Upbeat

Most weeks with MS are downbeat. That’s hardly a way to capture a reader’s attention — all of us struggle. What we need is light to blow away the shade. Last night as I climbed the stairs to bed, my legs gave out with three stairs to go. Luckily,…

The Graduate

The queue to get into Canterbury Cathedral in bright sunshine seems endless. The quandary of being Dracula strikes me — I’ll either fry in the sun or fry in a church set up during the Roman occupation of Britain! Luckily my condition is MS, so we seek solace…

Phew, What a Scorcher

Phew, what a scorcher. The summer of 1976 was the last time it was this hot in the United Kingdom. My lasting memory of that summer was not lazing on a beach, but sweltering as a relief manager in an “off-licence,” which is a liquor store. I probably sold…

Steering My Own Boat and Making a Splash

The U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) turned 70 last week. In England, yes, we are mourning our semi-final defeat by Croatia in the World Cup, but to most of us, the NHS is the U.K.’s crowning glory. There are innumerable problems and proposed solutions involving the institution, yet…

Down for the Weekend: World Cup Fatigue

Hi, everyone. I’m absolutely exhausted. And it’s all the fault of the World Cup. Not from any sort of secondary exercise while watching games, but because it’s given me the week off work. England lost their last group match to Belgium on June 29. Their last 16 game…

‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’

I started out in my professional life as a journalist. This only lasted about eight years and feels like a lifetime ago — which it was. Though I was not a news hound, I learned to smell a story. Last week’s column, “A Tale of Two Halves,” juxtaposed bad MS…

A Tale of Two Halves

For those reading this in the U.S., part of what I’m going to write will likely be incomprehensible, as it involves the World Cup. That’s football, not soccer. The rest of the world is in thrall to this sporting event. Even if your country doesn’t qualify, you grumpily…

Anyone for Golf?

A family wedding in the gardens of a grand country house some 30 minutes from Oxford sounds idyllic. And indeed it was. Not, though, for anyone in a wheelchair. A deep pebble driveway at the front was impassable. It took very strong men to drag me backward a few yards. Going…

Dear Diary

I never kept a diary. I did sometimes muse about it but reckoned I’d never become famous enough for one to be useful. Well, at least in that I was right. Until the rise of the smartphone, anniversaries and birthdays were flagged by my oldest son, who has the gift…

Running (Wheeling) on Empty

Arguments over nothing and everything are, in my experience, induced by extreme stress. When my wife and I were at full bore working together, this often happened. Not at work — there wasn’t time — and we were professional. Domestically, what little downtime we had would often be spent…

Chained to My Desk

The tinkling laughter of tiny children filters through the windows of my bedroom. It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon. In years past, I would be sitting in the garden watching my grandnieces play. Undoubtedly with a large jug of Pimm’s that I would have concocted for the assembled adults. We’re…

Crawling to Deadline

It’s 3:15 p.m. U.K. time on Wednesday, May 9, 2018. My deadline for this column is actually 3 p.m. Gone are the days of blaming the dog for eating my homework; it’s only in the last few minutes that I’ve actually been able to move a bit. From 8:30…

Knowing Me, Knowing MS

The problem with writing a weekly column is I always need to come up with new ideas. Luckily, or rather, unluckily, MS always throws me a U.S. sports-shaped analogy — one of those trickily disguised curveballs. I wasn’t even going to attempt to write this week. Not because of…

Tricks of the Trade

I saw my neurologist a few weeks ago for what was effectively an emergency meeting. I’d had the customary two rounds of Lemtrada (alemtuzumab) and still had a relapse. We discussed weighty subjects and there seemed, surprisingly, to still be some hope. It depends on the outcome of an MRI;…