I Swear – Slugger O’Toole

Well, I do swear.

But that’s not what this is about.

It’s about I Sweara film released this month based on the true story of John Davidson, who was diagnosed with Tourette’s at age fifteen in the 1980s. Tourette’s causes involuntary movements and sounds that a person cannot control. Swearing, known as coprolalia, is actually rare, though it’s the symptom most people associate with the condition.

I went to see it last Friday in a “social” cinema with a restaurant downstairs. I’d expected the pizza we had beforehand to be mediocre, but it wasn’t. It was pizzeria quality. We only realised, as our tickets were being scanned, that you could actually bring it in with you. A trip to the cinema is not complete without sweets, and once inside, my friend produced a bag of Candy Kitten sweets. Made with real fruit juice, they are sweet perfection.

Back to the film. It’s impossible to capture the tension it holds. There’s pain, humour, and a kind of redemption that never turns sentimental. I laughed, then repeatedly pressed my temple to control my impulse to cry.

The film opens with Davidson at Holyrood Palace, about to receive his MBE. The room is silent and formal, every eye watching. His Tourette’s erupts, and he involuntarily shouts “F*** the Queen.” He manages to laugh about it afterwards. The Queen, presumably briefed, remains unruffled. The stress of the moment and the darkly humorous juxtaposition set the tone for everything that follows.

Tourette’s is cruel enough now; in the 1980s, in a small Scottish town, it was barely understood. After his diagnosis, Davidson’s father left, and his mother was cold, embarrassed, and unable to hide her shame. In the film, he’s made to eat alone in front of the fireplace because of a tic that sometimes causes him to spit. At school, he’s caned for outbursts he can’t control. Football, where he was once cheered for saving goals, becomes another place he’s no longer welcome. The isolation, misunderstanding, and stigma of it all drive him to attempt suicide.

As a young adult, despair began to change to possibility when Dotty came into his life, the mother of a school friend he ran into by chance in town. What Dotty offered was an acceptance that was never patronising, a belief in better things, and an unwavering warmth. She invited him for dinner, and that chance meal became the start of something extraordinary. She accepted him completely. She told him to stop apologising when he did something he couldn’t help, at least around people who understood what was happening.

The film made me think about self-consciousness, that constant awareness of how you come across. For Davidson, it was a constant torment,  his body betrayed him in ways he couldn’t control, drawing attention he never sought. Then there was Dotty, calm and unbothered by other people’s reactions. Don’t we all want to be like that?

With Dotty’s encouragement, and against all his previous resignation to being unemployable, Davidson starts helping Tommy, the caretaker at a local community centre, putting out chairs and tidying up. During the interview, he manages to build a rapport despite his tics. While making tea, he shouts “spunk for milk,” one of those moments that is both shocking and funny, and Tommy takes it in stride. But, in a sudden tic, he strikes Tommy’s dog and excuses himself in despair.

He still got the job.

Later, after being told the good news, he is on his way home with a celebratory takeaway when he’s very badly beaten up for an involuntary insult to a stranger. Davidson lies in a hospital bed and says he can’t take it anymore. And I had to wonder how anyone could bear so much pain.

But on recovery, his job was waiting for him, and it was Tommy who told him it isn’t Tourette’s that’s the problem, it’s that the world doesn’t know enough about it. That thought stays with him, and it becomes his purpose.

The same police forces that once arrested him for behaviour he could not control later invited him to teach them about Tourette’s. For that work, educating schools, police, and the public about the condition, he was awarded his MBE.

He later takes part in a trial at the University of Nottingham for a wrist device developed to calm tics through mild nerve stimulation. In the film, he walks around wearing it and barely tics. He is even able to spend time in his most challenging place, the library. When the researcher asked him afterwards if he had any questions, he was silent for a moment, then asked the only question that mattered to him. “Can I keep it?” She tells him not yet, but allows him to take it home for a few days. It’s still under development, but that moment is full of fear and hope, relief and despair all at once, the peace of feeling ordinary for a few minutes, and the fear of how easily it could be taken away.

After the film was over and on the way out of the multi-storey car park, there was a really long, very tight hairpin bend. My friend took it so slowly in her car that it felt endless, and I started laughing, far more than the moment deserved. I think it was the release of all the pent-up emotion from watching the film.

It isn’t an easy watch. It’s funny, painful, and unflinching. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Our first instinct when confronted with Tourette’s is most likely discomfort or recoil, but wouldn’t it be amazing if we could all learn to accept it and other conditions without pity or judgement?