I was diagnosed with autism at 30 — I want to save other women the same struggle

She was called ‘weirdo’ and found dating fraught. Then Sara Gibbs had a revelation. By Michael Odell

Sara Gibbs: “If I was a man and behaved as I once did then I’d probably be in jail”
Sara Gibbs: “If I was a man and behaved as I once did then I’d probably be in jail”
JACK HILL/THE TIMES
The Times

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Even before I start interviewing Sara Gibbs I know not to pose an open-ended question such as, “Tell me about yourself,” because if I do she’ll start with the night her parents had sex, then proceed to her development as an embryo. “I can be very literal and once I start talking I won’t stop,” Gibbs warns me.

Being overliteral is just one of the many ways that the 32-year-old comedy writer (you may have heard her gags on Radio 4’s Dead Ringers, The News Quiz and The Now Show) sometimes reads social cues differently from neurotypical people. Another is seeing the inanimate world in intensely emotional terms. As a child, Gibbs was frightened of looking into mirrors in case a rotten maggot-infested