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As Holby City's new trainee doctor and the star of comedy I'm With Stupid, Paul Henshall is single-handedly helping the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ meet its disability targets.

A little piece of television history will be quietly made on Tuesday 3 May, as a new trainee doctor wheels onto the ward at Holby City.

It may come as a surprise, but this event will be the first time a disabled character has permanently featured in a returning series on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ ONE - and will finally see the Beeb meet one of the major targets set out in its disability strategy, launched last year, to improve representation of disabled people on TV.

The actor in question, Paul Henshall, who viewers might recognise from ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ ONE's A Thing Called Love, which starred heartthrob Paul Nicholls, is simultaneously fulfilling another one of the corporation's disability targets, as the green-light is given for a series based on the one-off disability comedy I'm With Stupid. The quirky story stars Henshall as a miserable and slightly twisted care home resident, who befriends a hopeless homeless guy.

So how does the 26-year-old cp-er feel about becoming Mr Quota, the face of disability on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, bravely going where no crip has gone before? "It is something I'm aware of, and I know disabled people will be my harshest critics, because with so few of us on TV there's an immense pressure to 'get it right'. But I never intended to be a political ambassador, and I don't want to be - at the end of the day all I can do is play the roles truthfully and believably and if that helps other people to get on TV in the future, that's great."

Henshall has already received criticism from some quarters for being "too nasty" in I'm With Stupid. "Some people thought the character was too much on the mean side and that he should have been shown as a nicer person because there are so few disabled role models," laughs Henshall. "Well, my answer is if we're going to have equality we need to be shown as nice, nasty, whatever. To show disabled people as only one thing for fear of the idea that able bodied people will think we're all like that is ridiculous."

The eagle eyes of the disability world will be equally intent on 3 May, as Henshall appears as Dean - the wise-cracking, cocky half of a new trainee doctor double act - alongside Mat, played by Adam Best. Mat has all the medical know-how but is sorely lacking in bedside manner, while Dean has the charm at his fingertips, but his hand seizes up under the pressure of performing his first operation. There will inevitably be some viewers who take offence to the fact that Dean's disability comes up as an 'issue' in his very first episode, but Henshall doesn't see it as a problem.

"It's obviously something that's going to be tackled and which is bound to rear its head. I didn't find it easy, but I think it was realistic. Dean happens to have a problem and we can't deny that it's there. It doesn't come up in all of the episodes anyway, just the first couple. If you're going to have a disabled actor, then you might as well bring to the role whatever they have at their disposal. The writers phone me and ask about things they're struggling with - for instance, when they wanted Dean to have a day off they rang me up and said they needed a reason why his disability might make him need time off and asked what kind of things I go through. And I was asked what would happen in a situation like that in the operating theatre, so they portrayed it as I described it."

Henshall also says he did not take offence at a scene in which the consultant supervising Dean shouts: "When my patient's bleeding out, I haven't got time for you to try and conquer your personal goals." It is, he reckons, fair enough that a spasming doctor should not be allowed to potentially put someone's life at risk. Henshall applies the same attitude to his own career, constantly aware while filming of the need not to "hold people up". "I suppose it's quite controversial to say, but as my job as an actor I need to make sure I don't slow things down too much. I haven't been told that by anyone, but it's something I feel."

With the fast pace of filming on a long-running drama like Holby City, having problems getting to the right spot for the camera on time can be a "bit of an issue" when you're a wheelchair user and your spatial awareness isn't great because of your cerebral palsy. But Henshall has had enough people ask him whether he's physically and emotionally able to deal with the demands of acting - and he always gives the same response: "I survived three years of drama school, so I can survive anything".

At Manchester Metropolitan Drama School, Henshall was the first wheelchair-using student to be admitted, and there was, he says, a certain amount of nervousness about his arrival. His place had to be deferred for a year while the school moved to a more accessible building; it was, however, the only establishment that would give the disabled wannabe actor an audition.

His experiences shed some light on the claim from producers who cast non-disabled people in disabled roles, that there is a shortage of trained disabled talent out there. But having made it past the first hurdle, this fact has worked somewhat in Henshall's favour - scoring him a part in the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Playing the Field because rhe programme makers couldn't find anyone else. "They said they'd looked everywhere and it was only through an agent who'd seen me at drama school who said 'there's this lad that's just left Manchester' that they found me."

The show gave him the confidence boost necessary to apply for the talent spotting scheme ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Talent, which led to a small part in Casualty, and then to Henshall being picked up for A Thing Called Love. Yet again, the producers told Henshall they had been at their wits end and were even considering cutting the part, because they couldn't find a decent disabled actor.

Now, Henshall is the face of the Talent Fund for disabled actors - a joint initiative with Channel 4 and the actors centre which aims to plug the gap by getting more disabled people professional acting training and real opportunities in television. "I think they've realised they need to represent that part of the community more and in order to do that, they need to be able to find people," says Henshall. "I think schemes like this are the only way at the moment, because it's so much harder for disabled actors to get seen."

And he's hoping that his parts in Holby and I'm With Stupid will provide the kind of role models for aspiring disabled actors which were missing when he was younger. "There were no role models. I remember Francesca Martinez in Grange Hill, Nessa in Eldorado and Nabil Shaban in various things, and that was a boost, but even by the time I was starting drama school there didn't seem to be many people about, which was a worry."

Since then, TV makers seem at least to have discovered the potential for comedy in disability, with disabled characters in series such as Little Britain and Phoenix Nights - and a new comedy show, I'm Spazticus, featuring disabled people playing tricks on the general public. So will Henshall be casting a vote for them in our online poll to find the nation's favourite disabled TV character? "Those programmes make me feel slightly uncomfortable, to be honest - my partner finds it offensive because she only uses a wheelchair for part of the time. Ever since Little Britain, people stare at her when she stands up, wondering if she's faking it. I guess you can use comedy to point out people's prejudices, but it can be an excuse sometimes just to take the piss out of us."

While there's plenty of comedy in the relationship between Henshall's Dean and his sidekick Mat, ultimately Henshall is hoping that it won't be centred around his disability. Despite making history, he is in fact hoping audiences will forget he's disabled at all after a while. "I know it's what people are bound to notice, initially, but in the end that depends on whether I can create a likeable character that takes people's attention away from the chair."