A champion of children
OK, she would play herself. But it wasn’t going to be easy, woman-of-a-thousand-goofball-faces Tracey Ullman declared before stepping up to the podium to receive a Champion of Children Award at a benefit for the Tourette Syndrome Assn.
But within seconds, Ullman was morphing the moment the way she does her comedic persona, shifting attention to her good friend, TV producer Jeffrey Kramer (“Ally McBeal,” “The Practice”) -- father of two boys with Tourette Syndrome. “I’m honored to be here to honor you, Jeffrey,” she said from the stage at the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel. “You’re the champion of children.”
Just like her. Since two of his three sons were diagnosed with the neurological disorder, Ullman has “loaned her support to my family and me, and I’m ever grateful,” said Kramer, who founded the annual event seven years ago with ex-wife Vikki Holm Kramer.
Introduced as a “writer, actress, comedienne ... who reminds us that, even in the darkest hours, life can be funny,” Ullman said she would never use the symptoms of TS -- which, besides involuntary tics, can cause a sufferer to spout obscenities -- as a way to get laughs. “It’s unfortunate that symptoms of the syndrome have caused some to seize on it in a comedic way,” she said during the cocktail reception. “True, there’s something Monty Python-esque about it. You can’t deny that. But I would never do anything like that. I don’t want to be cruel to anybody.”
Kramer confided that of the “bunch of shows” he has in development for the season after next, some are “inspired by my children and my life.” He pointed out that a story line in “Ally McBeal” dealt with TS. “We portrayed it, and there was some funny stuff -- we sometimes insinuated that Peter MacNicol was ‘Tourettian,’ given his obsessive-compulsiveness,” he said. “But we did it in a way that was not shaming, not hurtful or making fun of the lack of control.”
At an awards dinner so efficiently scheduled that the hundreds of guests were out of the ballroom in a little over two hours, the first course was served as co-award winner Tim Howard was honored. The Manchester United soccer goalkeeper was unable to attend, so his mother addressed the crowd. “My biggest concern after Tim was diagnosed,” she said, “was that people would not look beyond the wall of Tourette’s and see what a wonderful person he is.”
Event co-chairs Ken and Julie Moelis too have a teen who was diagnosed as a young child. “The symptoms can range from a head shake to a punching of oneself to a deep breath to coughing,” said Ken Moelis, who donated $100,000 to the association at the event -- a birthday gift to his wife. “Yet he is a great athlete, very intelligent. A wonderful boy.”
A young girl with TS who was a co-emcee at the Feb. 10 fundraiser expressed a sentiment apparently shared by all TS patients and their families: “I’d love to have everyone in the world understand what Tourette Syndrome is, so that when I tic, it’s no big deal.”