No "Casualty" as BBC1 script "TICked" all the right boxes.

Although the episode entitled "Sweet little lies," is less than an hour long, preparations for it began as early as 7 months before, back in July 2014.

Casualty has its own dedicated research team based at the Roath Lock studios in Cardiff. They contacted Tourettes Action to seek advice on a preliminary script that they had written for a forthcoming episode.

From July - September the BBC and TA worked on the script, making changes where necessary to avoid any misrepresentation of TS. The research team were a pleasure to work with and used many of our printed resources and factsheets which can also be found on our website.

Genuinely interested, they really wanted to get not just the script right, but the casting too. They asked us if we knew of anyobdy who would be interested in the role. This was subsequently advertised in our newsletter and we were proud to recommend 5 young girls.

All the girls were invited to the auditions in London and each had to read a section of the script. A few days later, we were delighted to hear that the BBC had thought they were all excellent candidates. Tough decisions for the BBC, but they selected Ellen Coulton.

From there on in, it all happened very quickly. Ellen phoned TA to let them know she had secured the part and was "So happy!" As were we for her.

Ellen spent about 2 weeks on location filming the episode and team TA were invited on set to watch some scenes being put together.

During the course of the day, the director and producer spoke very highly of Ellen and the cast and crew had said they had had such fun working together. The sentiments were echoed by Ellen who said of her experience on set "It has been a brilliant experience and I have enjoyed myself immensely. Everybody was so friendly and down to earth."

We have had incredible feedback from the episode, both from BBC viewer feedback stating how good the acting was and how nice that it was somebody living with TS who took the role, to people being genuinely pleased with the portrayal and non sensationalisation of the condition.

Our thanks once again to all involved in putting together this informative episode.