Meet the 80-year-old with a learning disability who wants others to live to their ‘golden age’

Geoffrey Leer is looking smart, dressed up in his navy suit jacket, a handkerchief tucked neatly into his pocket and a dark green knitted jumper tucked into his trousers. He has a twinkle in his eye and a gummy smile as he comes through with his walker and is helped into a chair by one of the nurses at his care home. 

One thing is clear from the moment he comes into the room: Leer is a star ready for the camera. Fresh off the back of an appearance on Channel 4 News, the 80-year-old seems like a media-savvy seasoned professional. We are here in Sidcup, south-east London, with charity Mencap, which also turned 80 this year, to interview the pensioner. 

Leer is a rarity. He is one of few people with a learning disability to reach their ninth decade. 

Mencap research shows just one in 10 people with a learning disability lives to 80, and Leer knows how uncommon it is. “You don’t hear much about people with learning disabilities going on to 80 years old,” he tells Big Issue. And what a shame that is because, as Leer says, “It’s the golden age, innit?” 

He now has dementia and has lost much of his sight, but that hasn’t stopped him having a positive attitude to life. He speaks glowingly about everything he has experienced and done. After leaving school at 17 to support his family, Leer worked for many years in different jobs and went on to leadership roles, including as co-chair of the Learning Disability Partnership Board and trustee of Bexley Mencap.  

He spent more than three decades advocating for people with a learning disability, working with local schools, speaking to stakeholders in the local council, and promoting campaigns that generated awareness about living with a learning disability. 

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“I enjoyed all the career,” he says. He’s still doing his bit for Mencap now, with interviews like this one, and recently attended the charity’s 80th birthday celebration at the Financial Times offices in London.  

A lot has changed in the 80 years since Mencap was founded and Leer was born. He reminisces about a time where “everybody liked everybody else” and there was more community, where you could “leave your door open and have your little neighbour come in and say hello to you and have a cup of tea with you.

“Nowadays you don’t know if you can do that and it will be OK,” he says. 

But it was also an era when people with a learning disability were excluded from society and denied opportunities others took for granted, and there was real misunderstanding about learning disabilities. 

People like Geoffrey Leer and organisations like Mencap have worked to change that over the decades. But there is still work to be done to improve the life chances of people with learning disabilities, so that more can live a life as full and long as Leer has. 

Jon Sparkes, chief executive at Mencap, says: “Too many people with a learning disability are still dying far too young, facing poorer health outcomes, unequal access to healthcare, a lack of support and fewer opportunities in education, employment and community life. People with a learning disability deserve better and reaching the same milestone as Geoffrey shouldn’t be the exception. 

“We will never stop working to remove the barriers that shorten lives and limit opportunities.” 

When Leer was 75, he remembers thinking: “Don’t forget boy, you’re not far away from 80! I thought: ‘Don’t worry about 80. You’re only 75.’ So, I enjoyed 75. 

“It got slowly to nearly 80. It got to about 77 and I thought: ‘Blimey, three years to go. Don’t worry about it, boy.’ When I did get to 80, I was over the moon!” 

Leer has had trying moments in the last few years with losing his sight, and the dementia is impacting him too, but he is filled with positivity about his life. 

“I enjoyed it so much, I wish it was going again!” he says with a grin and a wink. 

Find out more about the work of Mencap

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