In 1970, Deacon began to write his autobiography with three friends. Ernie Roberts, who also had cerebral palsy, had been in hospital since the age of ten and was able to understand Deacon’s speech. Roberts listened to Deacon’s dictation and repeated it to another patient, Michael Sangster, who wrote it down in longhand. After proof-reading by Chris Ring, a student who visited the team each week, it was typed by a fourth member of the team, Tom Blackburn, who was initially unable to read or write but taught himself to type in order to help. The forty-four page book took fourteen months to write. BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour ran a feature on Deacon and his manuscript and the resulting publicity led to the BBC TV documentary.

The four men formed an inseparable friendship in the hospital for decades, and in 1974 their relationship was the subject of a Prix Italia and BAFTA award-winning drama documentary for British television’s Horizon written by Elaine Morgan and directed by Brian Gibson, entitled Joey. This was followed by a second documentary made for Blue Peter.

Royalties from Tongue Tied and donations raised enough money for the four to move to a bungalow on the Caterham hospital grounds in 1979, where they were able to live more independently. After Deacon died two years later at 61, Blackburn and Roberts moved to a house outside the grounds, where they lived with the assistance of support workers.

In 1981, during the last year of his life, Deacon was featured on the children’s magazine programme Blue Peter for the International Year of the Disabled. He was presented as an example of a man who achieved a lot in spite of his disabilities. Despite the sensitive way in which Blue Peter covered his life, the impact on the public was not as intended. The sights and sounds of Deacon’s distinctive speech and mannerisms were picked up on by children and he quickly became a figure of ridicule in school playgrounds across the country, the term “Joey” being used as an insult for a person perceived to be stupid.

In 1982, Deacon’s story was the subject of a paper by D. Ellis in the journal Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, describing how after fifty years’ residence in an institution for the mentally disabled, a new strategy was devised by which Deacon’s intelligence could be assessed; the strategy revealed that he had normal intelligence.