u/Nokware2025

I’m trying to identify UK longitudinal studies of autism and global developmental delay that began in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Jason Arday has said in a public interview that he was part of a 23-year study into autism and global developmental delay. Does anyone know which study this might have been? Were there any well-known UK longitudinal cohorts following children with autism or developmental delay over that sort of timescale? I’d be interested in the name of the study or any published papers arising from it.

Interview is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5\_TBclFeDWg

I was reading a blog post involving an interview with Jason Arday, which states that he took up snooker at 10 and “joined a professional tour”.

Looking online, I can only find a single match listed for him on CueTracker, so I’m wondering whether I’m misunderstanding what “professional tour” means in this context.

Did players in that era become members of the professional tour without necessarily competing regularly? Were there qualifying tours or membership categories that wouldn’t generate many recorded matches?

I’d be interested if anyone familiar with snooker history could explain how the system worked.

https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/vice-president-community-and-inclusion/2023/03/21/international-day-for-the-elimination-of-racial-discrimination-21-march-2023/

I was reading Jason Arday’s Greenbelt Festival speaker biography, which states:

“Jason has set up homeless drives across London to develop mobile soup kitchens and cleaning facilities for individuals experiencing homelessness.”

I’d be interested to know more about this initiative. Does anyone know what it was called, which organisations were involved, when it operated, or whether there are any contemporary reports about it? It sounds like a significant project and I’d genuinely be interested in learning more about how it worked.

I was reading Jason Arday’s Greenbelt Festival speaker biography and noticed this statement:
“He has also undertaken and completed relief work in South America and West Africa with WaterAid installing water points, which provide drinkable and clean water.”

I was under the impression that WaterAid’s model is to work through local partner organisations, rather than sending people overseas to install water points directly.

Does anyone know which WaterAid project or country this refers to? Was it a partnership with another organisation, a legacy programme, or is there any contemporary information about the work? I’d be genuinely interested to learn more, as I haven’t been able to find anything that explains the background.

I noticed that Jason Arday is due to speak at this year’s Greenbelt Festival, so I was reading his speaker biography. One part caught my attention. It says that his fundraising achievements included running 600 miles in six days, alongside 300 miles in three days and 30 marathons in 35 days.

My understanding is that 600 miles in six days would be an extraordinary ultrarunning performance. I would have expected an achievement of that scale to have been recorded in race results or reported in the ultrarunning community, but I haven’t been able to find anything.

Does anyone here know the background to this claim? Was it a recognised six-day race, a self-supported fundraising challenge, or something else? I’d genuinely be interested if there’s contemporary documentation.

I’ve been reading an interview in The Bookseller promoting an upcoming memoir and it made me wonder how much factual checking publishers undertake for autobiographies.

The interview says the author was unable to read and write until the age of 18, but also states that they had already passed GCSEs and progressed to Year 12 study two years earlier. Those claims seem difficult to reconcile given how GCSE assessment worked at the time, with lots of written coursework.

When publishers acquire memoirs, do they attempt to verify factual claims like educational timelines, or do they generally treat autobiographical accounts as the author’s recollection unless there’s an obvious legal issue?