Despite my superhero status, I’m not really the ‘lone vigilante’ type. Many of my friends and family will be cropping up throughout the blog. Today I’m going to introduce three of them who you should know about from the start:

Leftwing Idiot:
Leftwing Idiot is my neighbour and a close friend. We’ve known each other for 10 long years. “Leftwing Idiot” is something I used to say as a tic that seemed to be triggered by him. Although he’s not usually an idiot, he is prone to the odd left wing rant. Generally though he’s incredibly supportive and understanding of my Tourettes. Occasionally he finds it irritating and frustrating, but most of the time he just finds it very funny. He used to try and programme me to say stuff by repeating it over and over again. Annoyingly, it often worked. He doesn’t do that so much anymore.

Fat Sister:
Fat Sister is my actual sister, but she’s not actually fat. Leftwing Idiot tried to programme me to say “Fat Sister” as a tic when she was on a diet a while ago, and eventually it stuck. Fat Sister’s younger than me and doesn’t have Tourettes. Nothing fazes Fat Sister – she’s always matter-of-fact about my Tourettes and pretty unshakable in general. She works for the NHS and we live together along with her boyfriend King Russell. When we were children Fat Sister used to be on the receiving end of lots of my tics some of which were quite intrusive, like me biting her arm at breakfast. She barely seemed to notice most of the time, despite how odd and sometimes painful it was.

King Russell
King Russell’s been going out with Fat Sister since they were both teenagers. He lives with us in the Touretteshero lair. “King Russell” is one of many Russell-related tics. He’s done everything from breaking the shower to falling out of a wormhole. King Russell works in IT and is the technical mastermind behind Touretteshero. King Russell fully embraces his tic-name and encourages its use at every opportunity.

You can find out more about my friends, enemies and the full Touretteshero team in the Hall of Fame.