Aimee Richardson is an extraordinary young woman: a musician, a Special Olympian and now TV star with RTÉjr's Punky. Donal O’Donoghue meets her
“Punky is six years old, she has Down syndrome and she’s a lot of fun. How else would I describe her?” Aimee Richardson briefly searches for the right word or the appropriate image. She smiles at some distant thought. “Well she’s quirky and exciting and sometimes she reminds me of myself when I was her age. She loves dancing and singing which I do a lot of. So she’s a great little character and I love her.”
Punky is RTÉjr’s groundbreaking new TV series (Tuesday). It charts the everyday adventures of a little girl, voiced by Richardson (28), and it is the world’s first ever animated series in which the lead character has Down syndrome. Like Punky, Aimee too has Down syndrome. “I think that it is important because it will bring my voice to many people with intellectual disabilities”, she says. “It shows what it’s like living with Down syndrome, both from my personal experience, and what it’s like for Punky at her age. So Punky is like an ambassador for people with disabilities.”
She might dismiss the suggestion, but Aimee is an ambassador too. Articulate, opinionated and with a sharp sense of humour, she lives in the leafy Dublin suburb of Killiney. Inside her cottage home, the rooms stretch back, Tardis-like, through two extensions to a room with a panoramic view of Bray Head and the shimmering sea. Her mother, Valerie, a retired schoolteacher, takes us through bohemian rooms that tumble with pieces of art (Aimee’s eldest sister is the award-winning artist, Rachel Joynt and the second eldest, Claire, designs jewellery). A harp stands near the back door. It’s Aimee’s and she later plays an air on it for us.
Aimee got the part in Punky after the film-makers, Monster Animation, approached Down Syndrome Ireland, looking for candidates. Aimee was one of two who went to the audition. To get into the mind of Punky, Richardson wrote a journal that was part Punky’s back-story and part diary. “At one point I asked the producer, ‘how come Punky doesn’t have a dad?’” she says. “That got me thinking. So in my work journal I would write my own personal opinions about Punky and her family and also about my own family. I sometimes put myself in her shoes to try to see what life is like being six years old again.”
There is a bit of the fearless Punky in Aimee (or maybe that’s the other way round). She tells the story how, when she was six or seven, she decided to visit her grandparents in England. So early in the morning, before anyone had stirred from slumber, she got dressed, packed her bags and left a note for her parents. Sporting a sun-hat, sunglasses and a big coat, she slipped out into the morning. However, she wasn’t gone far when had second thoughts. Her parents might be sad to wake to an empty house. So she returned home to her surprised dad who had not noticed the note. Her parents got the underlying message and a few years later Aimee did travel to England by herself.
These days, Aimee travels into Dublin to work on an Irish language version of Punky for transmission on TG4. “I needed to brush up on my Irish anyway”, she says with a laugh, but there’s no disguising her achievements. Apart from participating in the Special Olympics (swimming and dressage), Richardson plays a number of musical instruments, including the tin whistle, the flute (her favourite), the harp and the bodhrán. She is also the first person with an intellectual disability to serve on the youth committee of the European Disability Forum and recently contributed to a paper investigating why there are not more people with disabilities involved in the running of disability organisations. “Oh, and on Saturdays I play table-tennis”, she says. “I nearly forgot to mention that.”
At one point her phone rings – the ring-tone is her playing the flute. “The very first instrument I ever had was a xylophone that my mum and dad ordered from London for me”, she says. “Although my mum is not an expert at speech therapy she was able to use the xylophone to help me with my speech. I loved music from then on and I listen to it all the time.” Significantly, her mother also kept her in mainstream education, and following Cabinteely Community College, Aimee completed a course in childcare as well as a course in art and crafts. “I think what I do gets the message across that you should live your life to the full”, she says. “That’s true for everybody, but especially for people with intellectual disabilities. You should appreciate who you are, enjoy your family as well as the company of the people you meet every day.”
