MICHAEL SIMMONS: RJ Mitte didn't want handouts, just to be given a chance

There are two types of disabled people: those who let their condition define them and those who don't. RJ Mitte was a shining example of the latter.

Like him, I have cerebral palsy, and watching the show I saw a role model.

While Mitte's condition was relatively mild (he slowed his speech and used crutches to play the more disabled Walter White Jr in the show) and mine is thankfully even milder, it's still a condition that leaves you knackered and stiff at the end of the day. But that never stopped him.

While he was a vocal advocate for people with cerebral palsy, he didn't demand anything from others. He wanted opportunities for people like him, he didn't want handouts. His disability might have pushed at the door but his five auditions for Breaking Bad show it was his skill as an actor – and the hard work – that got him through it.

Even after a dodgy accountant scammed him out of his early acting earnings – and Mitte later found out she had done the same to 14 other disabled or elderly clients – he still did not claim victimhood, saying: 'At the end of the day, it was my negligence.'

But nor was he deluded. 'Without my disability I would have never gotten Breaking Bad,' he admitted. The point is that he saw his condition as a way into the industry – not as a liability.

He refused to be pigeonholed into only playing disabled characters, turning down roles he viewed as 'stereotyped'. And while he wanted more opportunities for disabled actors, he did not believe the woke Hollywood mantra that only a disabled actor can play a disabled character, thinking instead that able-bodied actors could learn from playing those parts.

Contrast him with the TikTok 'sickfluencers' who have become the face of disability in Britain through their bombardment of our social media feeds. While Mitte strived to just get on with it, we've grown a cottage industry of online influencers who not only coach but goad those with even the mildest health conditions – or, increasingly, spurious mental health conditions – to milk as much as they can from the state. 

The result – one in four Britons now claim to be disabled, a clearly nonsensical figure.

Question this statistic, though, and you're accused of cruelty and 'causing harm', as a man from Amnesty International barked at me at Labour's recent party conference in Liverpool.

But I share Mitte's view: 'People with disabilities don't want to be labelled as disabled.' Yet in Britain more and more people are keen to wear the label. We ought to ask why.

Michael Simmons is Economics Editor at The Spectator.