Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on.
Speaker 2: I had messages from doctors all around the world saying
Speaker 2: until I read that in your book, I thought that
Speaker 2: I was the first doctor who'd ever cried in the
Speaker 2: locker room. But the truth of it is that every
Speaker 2: single doctor pretty much ends up crying in a locker room.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm kateline Brook. Welcome to No Filter. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't always think of doctors as people, and it's
Speaker 1: not just because so many of them have a God complex.
Speaker 1: It's that we don't often think that they have emotions
Speaker 1: or hard days and the weight of life altering moments
Speaker 1: pressing down on them. And it's probably because when we
Speaker 1: see doctors it's because we're in a time of need ourselves.
Speaker 1: But doctors absorbed situations that would stop most of us
Speaker 1: in our tracks, yet they are expected to keep going
Speaker 1: shift after shift to cope with the intensity of his work.
Speaker 1: My guest today, Adam Kay, started keeping a diary during
Speaker 1: his years as a junior doctor in the NHS in
Speaker 1: the UK, which has a similar healthcare setup to our
Speaker 1: public system here. In it, Adam Kay documented everything the absurd,
Speaker 1: like the elaborate excuses people give for why certain objects
Speaker 1: end up in their bot bots, their heartwarming, like the
Speaker 1: thousands of babies he delivered, and the devastating, the moments
Speaker 1: when outcomes were not what they should have been. But
Speaker 1: after years of exhaustion, relentless double shifts, and a system
Speaker 1: that offered little or no support, Adam reached his breaking point.
Speaker 1: He left medicine completely burned. The diary where he once
Speaker 1: scribbled his unfiltered thoughts became This Is Going to Hurt,
Speaker 1: a book that not only became an unexpected best seller
Speaker 1: but also inspired a TV series starring Ben Wishaw. His
Speaker 1: writing is brutally honest, darkly funny, deeply human, capturing the
Speaker 1: sleepless desperation of someone trying to do right by his
Speaker 1: patients while barely holding his personal life together or barely
Speaker 1: able to keep his eyes open. There's no anesthetic to
Speaker 1: soften the raw truths he lays bare. In my conversation
Speaker 1: with Adam, we talk about why telling the truth about
Speaker 1: the public health system matters, how he turned his career
Speaker 1: as a doctor into one as a best selling writer
Speaker 1: and stand up comedian and what he's learnt along the way.
Speaker 1: Hello doctor, thank you doctor.
Speaker 2: No another could I only use doctor from fans to
Speaker 2: get an upgrade on a plane, and that never works,
Speaker 2: so I can just add on.
Speaker 1: And also that would come with its attendant dangers because
Speaker 1: if you've got an upgrade on the basis that they
Speaker 1: know you're a doctor, oh yeah, when they say send
Speaker 1: out that is there a doctor on board?
Speaker 3: I was having that discussion with my family not long ago.
Speaker 3: What do you do?
Speaker 2: So my route is I just get absolutely hammered the
Speaker 2: second I sit on the plane, so that if anyone
Speaker 2: says is they're a doctor, and I am the only
Speaker 2: person who's done that degree, I can say I'm.
Speaker 3: Technically a doctor.
Speaker 2: I've not worked for fourteen years and I'm nine bloody
Speaker 2: Mary's deep.
Speaker 3: So it's a real role of to die. So I
Speaker 3: leave it up to them at that stage.
Speaker 2: My dad said he was on a an advertise in
Speaker 2: airlines here, so he was on he was on British
Speaker 2: Airways and they were like, is there a doctor.
Speaker 3: He's retired doctor. No one else was like oh no.
Speaker 2: So they said, okay, there's someone that they had like
Speaker 2: a tiny rash or something and who's like, oh, if
Speaker 2: he got like some antihistamines and pyrotal or something.
Speaker 3: They were like, yeah, let's have a look in the box.
Speaker 2: So here's and so he gave them these said okay, Pope,
Speaker 2: your ash goes away, sat back down. They got being
Speaker 2: back in touch with him and gave him like two
Speaker 2: business class flights.
Speaker 3: To anywhere in the world as a thank you.
Speaker 2: And then one of my brothers said that he was
Speaker 2: on a flight on a on a less I won't
Speaker 2: name them because they don't come out on the best leline,
Speaker 2: a budget airline, and there was some absolute, you know, catastrophe,
Speaker 2: and he was doing CPR on a on a patient.
Speaker 2: He was alternating with another adopt who they're doing CPR
Speaker 2: and a patient for like two hours until they could
Speaker 2: found and then at the at the end, they didn't
Speaker 2: even give him a like a free pack of pretzels
Speaker 2: or something, Thanks very much, see you later.
Speaker 1: You know, that is where you are reminded that medicine
Speaker 1: is a calling.
Speaker 2: It's a calling. You're not doing it. You're not doing
Speaker 2: it for the pretzels.
Speaker 1: No, you're not doing it for the pretzels, not even
Speaker 1: for the chocolate covered ones or the peanut butter filled ones.
Speaker 1: But the reason that you have joined us today it
Speaker 1: is because your body of work is so unusual. This
Speaker 1: is going to hurt, not this conversation, but this book
Speaker 1: that you have written about you being a doctor and
Speaker 1: not just being a doctor but part of a familial
Speaker 1: legacy and work at the NHS, which is I gather
Speaker 1: some kind of it's a battle ground, yes, where all
Speaker 1: of Britain comes together.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's a that's a good description.
Speaker 1: Can you just talk us through how you decided to
Speaker 1: become a doctor. Now you said your dad was a doctor,
Speaker 1: your brother's a doctor.
Speaker 2: Oh like everywhere I look those doctors and that's probably
Speaker 2: the answer. So in the UK, your medicine's almost exclusively
Speaker 2: an undergraduate degree.
Speaker 3: So you're going into medical school as an eighteen year.
Speaker 2: Old, which means means they want various exams for you
Speaker 2: to sit first, and you choose them when you're sixteen
Speaker 2: and sixteens are very bad age to decide to do anything.
Speaker 2: Everyone's an idiot at sixteen, and so you're making a
Speaker 2: decision at an age where you can't really make a
Speaker 2: disc There's a thing in medicine, you know, informed consent,
Speaker 2: So you need an operation, whatever it is. You sign
Speaker 2: a consent form which says, here's why would you want
Speaker 2: to do it. These are the benefits. Here are the risks,
Speaker 2: bleeding infection, having an anesthetic, damaging other structure of blah
Speaker 2: blah blah, And then you weigh it all up and
Speaker 2: you go, yeah, fine, I still do it. Sign my
Speaker 2: name off we go. When you're applying to medicine, no
Speaker 2: one at any point mentions the other side of the coin,
Speaker 2: particularly to a teenager. So you're going in pretty pretty blind.
Speaker 2: And so you know the fact that I had adoctors
Speaker 2: in my family. It's a very bad reason to be adopted.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's probably much worse. And then like enjoying
Speaker 2: er or something, and so went in not knowing what
Speaker 2: I was expecting. I think most of the rest of
Speaker 2: the world. Medicine's a postgraduate degree. So you're going in
Speaker 2: like age twenty one or something, right, and then you're
Speaker 2: still an idiot when you're twenty one. Obviously no offense
Speaker 2: to your twenty one year old listeners, but at least
Speaker 2: you've probably had to leave your parents' house and earn
Speaker 2: a bit of money and maybe had a relationship and
Speaker 2: all these things that slightly broad enight your horizon on
Speaker 2: the world. But I went in with very narrow horizons,
Speaker 2: no idea what the job was going to be, and
Speaker 2: it probably unexpected that the story didn't have a happy ending.
Speaker 1: Well, it kind of had a happy ending for you,
Speaker 1: because it's you've actually I gather through your book and
Speaker 1: your subsequent work changed certain aspects of how doctors are
Speaker 1: regarding how they treated, particularly the innhase in the front
Speaker 1: lines like some sort of cannon fodder. Found it staggering
Speaker 1: just the status of how many hours you were working
Speaker 1: as a trainee doctor, and in fact it every even
Speaker 1: supposedly rising through the ranks, how many hours were you working, and.
Speaker 2: I think it topped out about like ninety four ninety
Speaker 2: five hours a week, which it's seen as I think
Speaker 2: things are slightly better now, but it was seen as
Speaker 2: a rite of passage that you know, I had to
Speaker 2: do it, so you have to do it, which is
Speaker 2: a terrible you know, it's a terrible reason to do anything,
Speaker 2: and it's not safe basically, And I remember there was
Speaker 2: one moment where I was working on a label ward,
Speaker 2: which is where I spent the vast petority of my
Speaker 2: career and they had, for some reason taken away like
Speaker 2: the the on call room where you could sleep like
Speaker 2: it never got particular guy, but you'd like be able
Speaker 2: to grab the odds twenty minutes, and they took.
Speaker 3: It away, and we were like, why have you taken
Speaker 3: this away?
Speaker 2: They were like, well, you're being paid to be at work,
Speaker 2: so you should be at work, not napping.
Speaker 3: Wanted to say to these.
Speaker 2: People, if it was you or your partner or wife,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, having the cesarean section, would you rather
Speaker 2: that doctor had been able to grab twenty minutes sleep
Speaker 2: beforehand or just being forced to work for, you know,
Speaker 2: twelve hours straight for the fifth day in the row.
Speaker 2: But you know, the NHS, I think is the most
Speaker 2: amazing system and concept. It's based on the fact that
Speaker 2: healthcare is delivered based on a clinical need, never based
Speaker 2: on your bank balance. But at the same time, they're
Speaker 2: not a good employer, so they don't treat their staff
Speaker 2: very well historically.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, I find it.
Speaker 2: I find it the slight paradox that this organization that
Speaker 2: are all about looking after people and helping people forget
Speaker 2: that a bit when it comes to their own.
Speaker 1: When you decided to become a doctor. Then what did
Speaker 1: your family say?
Speaker 2: My family were in charge of this decision, right, So
Speaker 2: I was I think everyone wants the best for their children. Yes,
Speaker 2: I've got two young children, myself very young, and so
Speaker 2: I'm now of suddenly realizing that it sort of totally
Speaker 2: recalibates your life. Then it's all about what's best for
Speaker 2: your kids. What was seen as best for me was
Speaker 2: a safe, sensible profession. So my parents are you know,
Speaker 2: they're from an immigrants population, Polish immigrant population, and it's
Speaker 2: about making you know the best for you know, of
Speaker 2: your life, improving yourself and making a difference. And doctor, lawyer,
Speaker 2: architect accounted like this sort of fairly small list of professions.
Speaker 2: I'm the eldest of four siblings, and the degrees we
Speaker 2: did were medicine, medicine, law, medicine, And that was my
Speaker 2: parents trying to make sure that we had sensible traits.
Speaker 2: My partner is also the eldest of four, and his
Speaker 2: dad worked in the advertising trade, sort of creative world,
Speaker 2: which my parents just had no idea of. I mean
Speaker 2: there's none of them mates, you know, did anything like that.
Speaker 2: And so the best for their children were slightly different.
Speaker 2: So there now, producer, producer, musician, producer.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: I don't begrudge them pushing me or strong arming me
Speaker 2: into that world, but ultimately, I think left to my
Speaker 2: own devices, I probably wouldn't have found al over the.
Speaker 1: World that you find yourself entering in you that you recount,
Speaker 1: and how brilliant was this Even though you came from
Speaker 1: this very traad medical family. Obviously, the creative in you
Speaker 1: was very strong, because you journaled even at your most exhausted.
Speaker 1: You kept a record of what had happened every day,
Speaker 1: and you write down funny stories and some of them
Speaker 1: heartbreaking stories. Do you think even then that there was
Speaker 1: something in you that knew that you weren't you just
Speaker 1: weren't that standard cut out of a doctor.
Speaker 2: I think I thought I was just someone who had
Speaker 2: a lot of hobbies, whereas what I actually had was
Speaker 2: something creative trying to burst out and take over.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting that you know why I was writing
Speaker 3: this stuff down.
Speaker 2: I think in retrospect it was probably my form of therapy,
Speaker 2: looking for the light amongst the dark, because going back
Speaker 2: through my diaries at the start, there were mostly the funny, silly,
Speaker 2: disgusting stories, and it actually took a few years before
Speaker 2: they became more reflective or I started talking about more
Speaker 2: of the tough stuff that had happened in my in
Speaker 2: my life. Medical school, for whatever reason, when I was there,
Speaker 2: an afternoon a week for six years was spent teaching
Speaker 2: us communication skills, which is good and right, because that's
Speaker 2: the cornerstone of what you do. It's about speaking to patients.
Speaker 2: But not once in all of that time was there
Speaker 2: a single minute spent telling us, Oh, and by the way,
Speaker 2: at some point, you're going to have some really bad days,
Speaker 2: and this is how you're going to have to cope.
Speaker 2: Here are some strategies for that. And in the absence
Speaker 2: of being taught any way of coping, you land in
Speaker 2: the deep end and have to improvise with your own
Speaker 2: And I guess what I did then is exactly the
Speaker 2: same as what I do now, which is writing this
Speaker 2: stuff down and drinking white wine.
Speaker 3: And both of those work.
Speaker 2: Neither of them are the gold standard, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's a way of dealing with stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the self medicating thing that also, and possibly
Speaker 1: for the reason that you that you've just referred to,
Speaker 1: is a trap that ensnares a lot of doctors is
Speaker 1: the self medicating.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, And I think doctors have terrible what's called
Speaker 2: health seeking behavior. Like I've had so many occasions in
Speaker 2: my in my life where I've just not seen a
Speaker 2: doctor when I when I should, I've just been I've
Speaker 2: made myself ill, both physically and mentally because of I
Speaker 2: think it's suddenly you get taught at medical school. You're
Speaker 2: a bloody doctor. Your bloody get on with it, and
Speaker 2: that extends to your own health. You sort of think
Speaker 2: it's embarrassing being the doctor who speaks to another doctor.
Speaker 2: It'd be like a car mechanic taking the car to
Speaker 2: different mechanics and say, I don't know what's wrong with it.
Speaker 2: And so you've got a bit of that in you.
Speaker 3: You just plow one and that's never the right thing
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: The ideology I find very interesting because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: people who have come to you because they're in need,
Speaker 1: and you're on the one hand the person that has
Speaker 1: to present as the person who can help. But then
Speaker 1: on the other side of that, when that door closes,
Speaker 1: no matter how traumatic that experience and that exchange may
Speaker 1: have been, which in some cases does result in death,
Speaker 1: there's no one on the other side of that, looking
Speaker 1: after you in your hour of need.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean you put it like that very eloquently,
Speaker 2: and it makes no sense at all. I don't think
Speaker 2: there's any way of framing it where it makes sense.
Speaker 2: The onner where I can rationalize it is that we
Speaker 2: don't like to think of our doctors as being human
Speaker 2: because humans make mistakes, and so you sort of, as
Speaker 2: the doctors, start to believe that that myth that you're
Speaker 2: somehow other and you don't make mistakes. But humans do
Speaker 2: make mistakes, and they get sick and they get sad.
Speaker 3: And here's an example, and this.
Speaker 2: Is patients not thinking of their doctors as humans, which
Speaker 2: is the same phenomenon as the bosses. So I did
Speaker 2: this prenatal clinic once a week, and it always ran late,
Speaker 2: so there was just this mismatch of number of doctor,
Speaker 2: number of patients.
Speaker 3: Should have ended at five, it ended at seven or eight,
Speaker 3: which is you know, this was rough.
Speaker 2: And so I did this for a year, and every
Speaker 2: single week when it came to six or seven o'clock,
Speaker 2: patients will be true. My year off quite rightly saying
Speaker 2: I have been waiting this long. I've seen their childcares
Speaker 2: all the cars on the meter, and I've apologized not
Speaker 2: once in a year of doing that, clinicted a single
Speaker 2: patient saying, you probably don't want to be here either,
Speaker 2: and I didn't. No one wants to be at work
Speaker 2: three hours late. But you don't think of your doctor
Speaker 2: as a person who's also got a life back home.
Speaker 2: They're just part of this organization. And the other illustration
Speaker 2: I think of that is I wrote in this book,
Speaker 2: I think fairly openly and honestly about struggles I'd had,
Speaker 2: which is something that doctors traditionally don't talk a whole
Speaker 2: load about, And as soon as it came out, I
Speaker 2: had messages from doctors all around the world saying, until
Speaker 2: I read that in your book, I thought that I
Speaker 2: was the first doctor who'd ever cried in the toilet,
Speaker 2: who ever cried in the locker room. But the truth
Speaker 2: of it is that every single doctor pretty much ends
Speaker 2: up crying in a locker room.
Speaker 3: But the fact that nobody talks about it.
Speaker 2: Means that, on top of whatever bad day just had
Speaker 2: that's led you to that position, you now.
Speaker 3: Also feel, I don't know that you're unique in struggling.
Speaker 2: That's really that's very othering and it makes a bad
Speaker 2: day even worse. But ultimately, what you know, the book,
Speaker 2: the show, Everything I Do is you know, it sells
Speaker 2: itself on being funny, and I guess it is, yes,
Speaker 2: But ultimately, underneath it, it's hopefully just a reminder that
Speaker 2: this is just a bunch of flawed human beings muddling
Speaker 2: along and doing their best and sometimes you know, not
Speaker 2: managing to get through their day.
Speaker 1: Right, but mostly managing to get through the day and
Speaker 1: managing to get other people through, managing to do the
Speaker 1: work of the doctor, which is healing. And that's quite remarkable.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I reflect on that sometimes that but it
Speaker 2: ultimately comes down to the fact that so I'd leave
Speaker 2: a labor ward three hours later or whatever.
Speaker 3: I'd be still half covered in blood.
Speaker 4: Because I had time to wash it off, and the
Speaker 4: dinner's in the dog and I have to wind the
Speaker 4: window down and have the radio blow and just so
Speaker 4: I can stay awake on the drive home.
Speaker 2: But you still have a smile on your face because
Speaker 2: you know, working on a labor ward, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: having that unique role helping families, you know, bringing babies
Speaker 2: into the world. You know, potentially you know, resolving some
Speaker 2: difficult situation for a mum or a baby. I mean,
Speaker 2: that is amazing, and that's the reason if you didn't
Speaker 2: have those highs, there's no reason to come back to
Speaker 2: work the next day, given the number of blows there are.
Speaker 1: And also, I think humor is a great connector. And
Speaker 1: I do know. I've got girlfriends who own nurses, and
Speaker 1: I have to say they have a very dark sense
Speaker 1: of humor. Something about exposure to body bodily fluids makes
Speaker 1: people's sense of humors kind of going to the normal
Speaker 1: culder sex.
Speaker 2: Oh, totally, And the humor is one of the things
Speaker 2: that's fairly universal. And ultimately I suspect it comes down
Speaker 2: to this coping mechanism idea. In the absence of someone
Speaker 2: you know giving you the sensible ABCD, this is what
Speaker 2: you need to do. You need to have a debef
Speaker 2: you need to take some time that needs to speak
Speaker 2: to a counsel and all that. People are just like, well,
Speaker 2: let's just have a joke about it, because that's a
Speaker 2: lot better than nothing. And so that's what I was
Speaker 2: focusing on when I was writing writing my writing these
Speaker 2: stories down in Madari's.
Speaker 1: Humor is just such a great decompressor.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it's it's absolutely, it's absolutely vital. And yeah,
Speaker 2: and I'm very glad that I leant into it because
Speaker 2: you know, as well as giving me this this new
Speaker 2: career I now have, I suspect it was one of
Speaker 2: the the main reasons I was able to keep plowing on.
Speaker 1: There is so much more to my conversation with Adam Kay.
Speaker 1: After this short break, we go into why he left
Speaker 1: the medical industry and how his family of medical professionals responded. Hint,
Speaker 1: they weren't happy. You know what. I'm very glad about
Speaker 1: that people put things up their bottoms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they absolutely do.
Speaker 1: That's got to be one of the top three questions. Surely,
Speaker 1: it's an.
Speaker 2: Interesting one, this one, because I've been I've written up
Speaker 2: all of my exciting objects in orifice stories and there's
Speaker 2: there's no shortage of those in my show whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Sometimes when i'm you know, i'm speaking to interviewed or whatever,
Speaker 2: someone will say, oh, this one where someone could have
Speaker 2: a toilet blush, kinder.
Speaker 3: Egg or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: And when I'm speaking to doctors, like if i'm you know,
Speaker 2: if I do a show and I'm signing books afterwards
Speaker 2: or whatever, someone will come up to me and what
Speaker 2: they said, that's nothing. Here's my top five things I've
Speaker 2: removed from inside a face. I think it's a very
Speaker 2: competitive part of medicine.
Speaker 1: And what do they what do they trump your toilet
Speaker 1: brush with? I mean, that's hard to try.
Speaker 2: I don't think I don't think anyone has beaten the
Speaker 2: kinderreg story, to be honest, an Australian phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Little toy in the little toy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so's so slippery, I imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little plastic egg thing. So this is
Speaker 2: a story from February to twenty ninth, two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: So this sort of leap you where in the UK surpi.
Speaker 2: There's this very old fashioned tradition that is sort of
Speaker 2: I'm sure not observed in what we used to be
Speaker 2: a thing where that was the day of the year,
Speaker 2: it was considered traditional for the woman to propose to
Speaker 2: the man rather than vice versa. So this is this,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of slightly Victorian whatever idea. Anyway, this
Speaker 2: particular patient of mine decided that she was going to
Speaker 2: take this opportunity to to propose and put an engagement
Speaker 2: ring inside the plastic bit from inside the kinderreggs and
Speaker 2: inserted the egg vaginally, and the plan would be that
Speaker 2: her boyfriend would locate it, remove it, and then she
Speaker 2: would get down on one knee.
Speaker 1: All right, right, there'd be an element of surprise, obviously.
Speaker 3: Imagine there'd be a huge element of surprise. So she
Speaker 3: does this.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately it sort of manages to wedge itself like sideways,
Speaker 2: and it gets you know, he can't remove it, and
Speaker 2: then she has again. She can't remember it. She's not
Speaker 2: told him what's going on at this point, and then
Speaker 2: eventually decides she needs to pop to the hospital, the
Speaker 2: emergency department where she meets me and we you know,
Speaker 2: hang out in cubable three and there's a fairly easy delivery.
Speaker 2: We've got a pair of spongeholding forceps remove it and
Speaker 2: then sorry, how.
Speaker 1: Did she tell you? Did she tell you the whole story?
Speaker 2: She said there's something up there, no further details. She
Speaker 2: didn't want to run the surprise for any of us.
Speaker 2: You've got a poker face, you don't ask too many questions.
Speaker 2: I've got another thirty eight patients to see. Let's just
Speaker 2: remove whatever it is. Checks, she's all right, get her
Speaker 2: home on we go, So remove this this thing and
Speaker 2: about to chuck it in the bin. She says, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 2: atnd of that, he needs to open it. Oh god,
Speaker 2: So so I passed him a pair of Latex gloves,
Speaker 2: you know, sand last in the last remnant of romance
Speaker 2: from this situation. He puts them on, opens it up,
Speaker 2: engagement ring, he said, yes, presumably out of fear at
Speaker 2: this stage.
Speaker 3: Uh what's what's what's she likely to do? As interest
Speaker 3: as no?
Speaker 2: So, but yeah, there's I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of the Christmas was very good for this
Speaker 2: sort of stuff happening. Maybe it's like a special special
Speaker 2: occasion thing. But the worst I had was someone who
Speaker 2: put a string of Christmas lights inside and then switch
Speaker 2: them on, causing like all these little burns. Oh, bringing
Speaker 2: new mean to the phrase I put the Christmas lights
Speaker 2: up myself. And what else we had we've had.
Speaker 1: The remote control. I love that you say people would
Speaker 1: always come to you with stories about it's always you.
Speaker 1: I think you refer to it as Eiffel Eiffel tower syndrome.
Speaker 1: I feel I fail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And the.
Speaker 1: Remote control one sounded quite plausible.
Speaker 2: Until until because I mean, I mean basically one, don't
Speaker 2: lie to your dot it's never helpful. They're trying to
Speaker 2: they're on your team. And also they're not going to
Speaker 2: I mean i'd say they're not going to remember it.
Speaker 2: They might be me and just write it down a little.
Speaker 3: Bit of books.
Speaker 2: I mean, but I always anonymous level anyway, But it's
Speaker 2: just unhelpful, just makes being slower and patients decide they
Speaker 2: have to spare our blushes or like we've seen worse.
Speaker 3: We have one hundred per cent to well. But there
Speaker 3: was one story when I could sort of believe it
Speaker 3: because it wasn't a big remote control and it was
Speaker 3: wedged between sofa cushions.
Speaker 5: This I was like, I mean, that could have happened,
Speaker 5: and you know, you try and get it out and
Speaker 5: when you do it push it's further anyway, So they
Speaker 5: told me there's big preamble.
Speaker 2: They sort of removed it, and when I removed it,
Speaker 2: it did have a condom on it.
Speaker 3: So that that maybe maybe went against anyway.
Speaker 2: I mean, we could literally talk for ten hours just
Speaker 2: on this topic. But maybe that's why so many people
Speaker 2: bought the books. They just like to hear these stories.
Speaker 1: It's much like I think how people watch reality TV
Speaker 1: because you can kind of feel a bit superior in
Speaker 1: some way to someone.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've not invented the medical biography, not by
Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of years, but I think what I
Speaker 2: leant into more is sort of the other side of
Speaker 2: life when you're not at work, that you don't sometimes
Speaker 2: see what happens when the doctor and the nurse and
Speaker 2: a paramedic gets home and like what their actual life
Speaker 2: looks like. So I think people have been quite interested
Speaker 2: in sort of peering behind the blue curtain and learning
Speaker 2: more about, you know, the staff room and the home.
Speaker 1: Life, also the home life that you barely got to enjoy.
Speaker 2: That's the thing for all sorts of reasons. Being a
Speaker 2: doctor is all consuming. So in the UK you have
Speaker 2: to move hospital every six or twelve months, which is
Speaker 2: a good idea in theory took at some big hospital
Speaker 2: or some small ones I'm experts in and that's so
Speaker 2: that by the time you're a consultant the senior doctor,
Speaker 2: you're the best possible version of yourself in terms of
Speaker 2: your training. But they move you around a huge area.
Speaker 2: You could be randomly allocated around Scotland, which is you know,
Speaker 2: it's hard to find an apartment's.
Speaker 3: Candy for all of Scotland.
Speaker 2: It's like the equivalent to being told, oh, you're just
Speaker 2: going to be working somewhere randomly New South Wales and
Speaker 2: good luck finding a place that's handy for all that.
Speaker 2: And so every six or twelve months you end up
Speaker 2: moving sixty or seventy miles away, and which is okay
Speaker 2: if you exist in a vacuum. But if you've got
Speaker 2: a partner, they might say yes once to moving the
Speaker 2: uproots in their lives, and they're going to say yes,
Speaker 2: you know, six times in a row. And also there's
Speaker 2: this thing where you become I don't know, so like
Speaker 2: you're working a labor wordshift on paper. Your contract says
Speaker 2: that you know you'll finish at five o'clock, but it's
Speaker 2: never really five o'clock. There's some emergency and I guess
Speaker 2: technically have a choice at five o'clock if there's someone
Speaker 2: you know bleeding out, you could, but I mean, it'd
Speaker 2: never really applied to medical school in the first place
Speaker 2: if that was a real decision. So you end up
Speaker 2: and there's not enough people to mop up and you know,
Speaker 2: and to you know, to take your place.
Speaker 3: There's no slack in the system.
Speaker 2: So you keep helping this this patient and then suddenly
Speaker 2: at seven point thirty and you're texting someone, I'm really
Speaker 2: really sorry, I'm gonna have to bail on drinks this
Speaker 2: evening because you know this happened the world and they
Speaker 2: understand because you're a doctor and you know you're not
Speaker 2: lying as you know some stuff that happened. Once you've
Speaker 2: texted the same friend two or three times in a
Speaker 2: row to counsel, you've become the flaky friend and they
Speaker 2: just stop inviting you out. And so you see real time,
Speaker 2: in your first year or two as a doctor, your
Speaker 2: social circle just just shrinking to almost nothing. And when
Speaker 2: you do get home, you're just you're just knackered. You
Speaker 2: just want to have a nap. And so it does
Speaker 2: does have this big impact.
Speaker 1: Well, it goes back to the point that you were
Speaker 1: saying that people don't necessarily think of their doctors as
Speaker 1: being human. But what you're describing is a system that
Speaker 1: also doesn't see its doctors as being human. And in Australia,
Speaker 1: I understand why people see parallels with your book because
Speaker 1: we also have praise be socialized medicine, so anybody can
Speaker 1: get the treatment that they need, regardless of their ability
Speaker 1: to pay. But what you need for that to work
Speaker 1: is the best doctors in the world to be working
Speaker 1: in the best conditions. If you are dehumanized, what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Who am I coming in to see?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 2: And ultimately they leave and I know for a fact
Speaker 2: like I did, and I know for a fact that
Speaker 2: Australia treats their doctor is better than the UK because
Speaker 2: of the exodus of staff from the UK to Australia.
Speaker 2: In two News even the number one and two places
Speaker 2: that British doctors go to. Last year in the UK,
Speaker 2: seventy seven zero doctors quit their jobs every single week.
Speaker 2: That was three times as many doctors quit their jobs
Speaker 2: as retired. Wow, it's a crisis in the retention of staff.
Speaker 2: And there was a big thing about pay in the
Speaker 2: UK and doctors end up going on strike and that
Speaker 2: got resolved with the government and that was sorted out.
Speaker 2: And doctors do get paid more on Australia than in
Speaker 2: the UK. I think it's fair to say, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't just about that. It's about how you're treated, how
Speaker 2: you're looked after.
Speaker 3: You know, I speak quite a lot.
Speaker 2: About this, and you know I talk about it on
Speaker 2: social media and people you know, tell me their own
Speaker 2: stories of what had happened to them. So like someone
Speaker 2: telling me that on the day of their own wedding,
Speaker 2: which understandably they'd given, you know, I don't know how
Speaker 2: whether it's six not three years noticed that they were
Speaker 2: getting married. On this stage, they couldn't get the full
Speaker 2: day off and they were only given the afternoon and
Speaker 2: evening off, so they had to do a clinic in
Speaker 2: the morning wearing their wedding care and makeup.
Speaker 3: That is not looking after your style.
Speaker 2: Someone who I know, who's I think fiance at the time,
Speaker 2: became very ill and was admitted to an intensive K unit.
Speaker 2: It's fine now, but I was admitted to intensive K
Speaker 2: you obviously a very stressful time and said to her hospital, sorry,
Speaker 2: I need to go and be supportive, and they said,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, but that you do not get compassionate leave
Speaker 2: unless it's a first degree relative or a spouse and
Speaker 2: you're not married, so technically that wasn't given compassion at leave,
Speaker 2: and so that is not looking after your staff properly.
Speaker 2: It's about making sure that if something bad happens on
Speaker 2: the ward, there is a debrief afterwards that it's all
Speaker 2: sorts of things. It's about making sure you've got a
Speaker 2: staff room, just a place, you know, even a knacked
Speaker 2: old sofa in a sort of a thirty year old
Speaker 2: kettle to make yourself a cup of coffee with some
Speaker 2: horrable granules. It's just the very bare basics which places
Speaker 2: don't have, like they close down the staff room.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious about how there was never any sense
Speaker 1: of mutiny.
Speaker 2: I think the mutiny doesn't happen because it's ultimately about patients,
Speaker 2: and patients suffer. If the doctors say that's it, I'm off,
Speaker 2: and is still have a huge amount of guilt about
Speaker 2: leaving the profe. Most people don't leave leave, they go
Speaker 2: somewhere else, And I don't think there's any need to
Speaker 2: have guilt about that, because you're helping human beings, you know,
Speaker 2: wherever they are in the world or all one big family.
Speaker 2: I have a huge amount of guilt because I'm not helping.
Speaker 2: I mean, the arts obviously have the most enormous value,
Speaker 2: but I'd have to have quite the ego as an
Speaker 2: author or a comedian to say that what I do
Speaker 2: on a day to day basis is in any way
Speaker 2: comparable to saving a mum's life on a labor ward.
Speaker 2: And it was that feeling that kept me in medicine,
Speaker 2: probably longer than.
Speaker 3: I might have otherwise done.
Speaker 2: I had to wait until I had a big, you know,
Speaker 2: acute thing happened. You know, the thousand cuts I was
Speaker 2: having on a weekly basis. I was, I was just
Speaker 2: I was just wearing those. It wasn't still a big
Speaker 2: thing happened that I actually left. And I think it's
Speaker 2: that guilt that means that I still, you know, do
Speaker 2: what I can to support my former colleague who are
Speaker 2: still working on the front line.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know that period between when you left the NHS,
Speaker 1: which as it happens, I mean at the end of
Speaker 1: the book, it's just it's such a devastating thing. It's
Speaker 1: the most devastating thing that I can imagine would happen
Speaker 1: to the woman involved and also to the doctor who's
Speaker 1: involved in a labor ward. Yeah, when that happened, and I,
Speaker 1: like you said, prior to that, it had been the
Speaker 1: death of a thousand cuts. Prior to that, you'd had
Speaker 1: you know, your best friends saying I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any point in us being friends anymore, because You've missed
Speaker 1: so many of the significant things in my life, but
Speaker 1: this and that was very moving. But this at the
Speaker 1: end is just so hard to read, almost impossible for
Speaker 1: you to come back from as a doctor. Is that
Speaker 1: how it proved to be?
Speaker 3: It is?
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to go into huge details, but
Speaker 2: essentially I was the most senior label doctor on a
Speaker 2: particular shift at a weekend, and all you want from
Speaker 2: every case as a barman and as a healthy mom
Speaker 2: and a healthy baby, and this is one of these
Speaker 2: terrible situations where we had neither of those two things.
Speaker 2: And essentially I realized at that point that I didn't
Speaker 2: have the emotional I don't know buffer to deal with
Speaker 2: this stuff.
Speaker 3: I could deal with a.
Speaker 2: Certain level a bad day at work, but there was
Speaker 2: a point at which it just absolutely knocked me over.
Speaker 3: And it was obvious I wasn't coping.
Speaker 2: I wasn't speaking to anyone about this, but my friends,
Speaker 2: you know, people on the boards knew what had happened,
Speaker 2: because you know, were travels quite quickly, and I wasn't
Speaker 2: doing very well. I was I was being very overcautious
Speaker 2: as a doctor because I never wanted this to ever happen.
Speaker 3: Ever, again.
Speaker 2: So I was thinking, I have to prevent this, but
Speaker 2: everyone gets this is there in section as soon as
Speaker 2: our baby's heart rate drops by one beat.
Speaker 3: Permante was But being.
Speaker 2: Overcautious is just as bad as being under cautious. And
Speaker 2: I'd lost my confidence in myself and I'd stop being
Speaker 2: if I have always a good doctor, I'd stop being
Speaker 2: a good doctor in terms of my clinical judgment. And
Speaker 2: people would want me to feel better about what has happened,
Speaker 2: and they'd remind me that it doesn't matter how good
Speaker 2: you are, how experienced you are, how many courses you take,
Speaker 2: how many babies you've delivered, it's just a horrible fact
Speaker 2: of the job that, through sheer awful luck, if you're
Speaker 2: in that role, you will have some kind of big
Speaker 2: disaster to every five or six years. And that's just
Speaker 2: part of the job. And so it wasn't your fault,
Speaker 2: just one of those things. But hearing that made me
Speaker 2: realize that I couldn't face that kind of thing ever
Speaker 2: happened as to me. Ever again, I've just you know,
Speaker 2: I don't have the armor, the exoskeleton that whatever it is,
Speaker 2: the coping mechanism to deal with it. And so I
Speaker 2: stepped away what I thought would be six months while
Speaker 2: I while I regrouped and and you know, got my
Speaker 2: life back together, and I'm essentially still in those six
Speaker 2: months off fourteen years later.
Speaker 1: So how is that? Because well, you know, we've spoke
Speaker 1: about the family dynasty, the doctor dynasty or the dynasty
Speaker 1: for our non American listeners, how was that when you had, to,
Speaker 1: for instance, tell your family that you were not returning
Speaker 1: to medicine.
Speaker 2: It went very badly, and again out of concern because
Speaker 2: you know, what on earth am I doing?
Speaker 3: Why would you give up this job?
Speaker 2: And I suspect that if I were to announce to
Speaker 2: you and I was going back to medicine, I would
Speaker 2: hear the cheers my mother all the way. She'd hear
Speaker 2: from Australia and we'd hear the cheer from England.
Speaker 1: She must have thought you were a beautiful doctor.
Speaker 2: Actually, she was very proud of my achievements in medicine.
Speaker 2: Found it slightly harder to recognize what an achievement was
Speaker 2: in a world that she wasn't part.
Speaker 3: Of, like writing TV shows or writing books. But now
Speaker 3: she sort of now she gets it. I mean, there
Speaker 3: was a very long period of time where I was
Speaker 3: a jobbing TV writer, so I'd write on episode four
Speaker 3: of series six of someone else's sitcom or be a
Speaker 3: script editor. And I was so fortunate as a writer
Speaker 3: because the vast majority of writers don't get to write
Speaker 3: full time.
Speaker 2: So I was, of course, even though you know, no
Speaker 2: one knew who I was, and I was just sort
Speaker 2: of getting on with her. I was having a lovely time.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Adam tells me whose decision it was to
Speaker 1: casp beIN wi Shaw as himself spoiler, It was him.
Speaker 1: Do I go anywhere? How did you transition into writing me?
Speaker 5: That's an interesting question. So when I left medicine, everyone
Speaker 5: was like, oh, you'll be fine. You'll be fine, Adam.
Speaker 5: You've got loads of transferable skills. And then I thought about, like,
Speaker 5: I don't know what these transferable skills are.
Speaker 2: I could do cesarean sections, and who else wants that
Speaker 2: other than hospitals.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: And so the only other thing that I'd done, you know,
Speaker 2: I said, So I went straight from school to medical school,
Speaker 2: and they's straight into medicine there, straight into obstetrics, and
Speaker 2: I hadn't taken a breath. The only thing that I
Speaker 2: could identify that i'd done was at medical school doing
Speaker 2: these like comedy shows, and so I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: going to give comedy ago. I've done it a bit
Speaker 2: before I enjoyed it. Some other people have pretended to
Speaker 2: enjoy it, and so if not, now when? And so
Speaker 2: I started doing stand up comedy. And it's not a
Speaker 2: full time job doing comedy because most of the gigs
Speaker 2: are Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights.
Speaker 3: Most of those gigs are a five hour drive away.
Speaker 2: And then I get to do like ten minutes on
Speaker 2: a stage to twenty people, and then I'm driving back
Speaker 2: and then they're doing nothing for four days and then
Speaker 2: it starts again. And then I just started started writing,
Speaker 2: thinking of comedy ideas, starting to meet TV producers, and
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful to a couple of TV producers who
Speaker 2: gave me my initial break, you know, helping out at
Speaker 2: a very junior level writing on some TV shows. And
Speaker 2: then I clearly didn't destroy those shows because I got
Speaker 2: invited back to another one. And then that built over
Speaker 2: over a couple of years until I was I was
Speaker 2: in this lucky position of being able to earn across
Speaker 2: that was only a fortune. But I think I suspect
Speaker 2: I was earning less than I ever was as a doctor.
Speaker 2: But I was doing something with zero stakes. A bad
Speaker 2: day at work meant someone on a stage, you know,
Speaker 2: through a can of to marches on my head or whatever,
Speaker 2: or someone a producer said, this is the worst script
Speaker 2: I've ever read, Please never darken my door.
Speaker 3: But no one.
Speaker 1: Died unless you killed on stage.
Speaker 3: Unless I killed on stage.
Speaker 2: And so far I've had a lot of collapses, but
Speaker 2: no one has died in one. And in fact, if
Speaker 2: you're particularly infirmly considering a comedy show, mine are a
Speaker 2: great audience to be in because the number of doctors
Speaker 2: and nurses and paramedics who come along to these shows,
Speaker 2: it's probably the safest place in any city. So I
Speaker 2: was doing this predominantly writing bit of stand up, and
Speaker 2: I went up to the Edinburgh Fringe, where I performed
Speaker 2: a number of times for but haven't been for maybe
Speaker 2: five or six years.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's tough.
Speaker 3: It's tough, but.
Speaker 2: I've done it before and by this stage I'm fairly
Speaker 2: battle hardened, and I decided I wanted a full month
Speaker 2: at the Edam Fringe to remind myself back to basics
Speaker 2: of comedy. And I didn't write the show until very
Speaker 2: very late, I didn't quite know what it's going to be.
Speaker 2: And James, my partner, said, why don't you read out
Speaker 2: from some of your diaries, which he knew that I'd
Speaker 2: kept and they'd come with us on you know team,
Speaker 2: you know, moved from apartment to apartments and wherever to
Speaker 2: whoever in my filing cabinet.
Speaker 3: And I thought about it.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, I'll give it a go, and so
Speaker 2: I went on stage and I literally read that from
Speaker 2: scraps of paper and it was by far the best
Speaker 2: received thing I'd ever done on stage.
Speaker 3: And suddenly stories that I.
Speaker 2: Suspected they were interesting because I knew they had liked,
Speaker 2: you know, funny moments of them and interesting moments and
Speaker 2: sad moments, but I hadn't quite appreciated that, outside of
Speaker 2: the medical bubble that I lived in, how much people
Speaker 2: would would be into this these first And I think
Speaker 2: it probably applies to Melbourne as well. It's often the
Speaker 2: only chance you get to see your old mates who
Speaker 2: do comedy because if you're like you know, if you're
Speaker 2: a touring comedian, you're sort of or a TV comedian
Speaker 2: or whatever that's fairly solitary. You don't hang out with
Speaker 2: huge numbers of other comedians, but this is the AGM,
Speaker 2: and you will hang out in one place. And so
Speaker 2: you go and see your mate shows, they see your shows.
Speaker 2: There's a friend of mine, brilliant comedian called Mark Watson
Speaker 2: who I know, who know tours in Australia, brilliant and
Speaker 2: I went to see his show here my show. His
Speaker 2: plus one at my show was his editor for the
Speaker 2: books you write. He's a brilliant author. And Francesca, his editor,
Speaker 2: said to me, after, how many more of these diaries
Speaker 2: have you got, because I'm pretty sure there's a book
Speaker 2: in there. And she was right there and there was
Speaker 2: and that was there, and that was a pivotal moment
Speaker 2: in my in my life, totally changed my life.
Speaker 3: And so I.
Speaker 2: Still write and perform full time, but now I get
Speaker 2: to choose the projects that I write, which is the
Speaker 2: single hugest privilege as a as a writer.
Speaker 1: Well, because you brought a world to people that I
Speaker 1: that appeals to everybody universally really, because either it's people
Speaker 1: who have got your experience, like you said, the doctors,
Speaker 1: the nurses, or it's people like us who have walked
Speaker 1: in to see a doctor who have had our babies delivered.
Speaker 1: Whatever it may be, there's no one that's untouched by
Speaker 1: the experience that you brought to people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think everyone's got everyone's got an inn and
Speaker 2: hospitals can be quite miserable, scary, difficult places that aren't
Speaker 2: laced with great memories, and so I think there is
Speaker 2: something about then the like a side of it. Plus
Speaker 2: obviously hearing lots of discussing stories, objects and orifices.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, of course there's always there's there's always dessert
Speaker 1: after the mara course. But you know you were saying
Speaker 1: when you first started writing, and you weren't you were
Speaker 1: earning even less than you were in medicine. Now a
Speaker 1: lot of us have got this idea about doctors that
Speaker 1: they're incredibly well paid and they've got a holiday house
Speaker 1: and a Lala and they're driving European cars whatever. I
Speaker 1: was so shocked to read. I think you worked it
Speaker 1: out that you were earning like six quid to something
Speaker 1: an hour as a doctor.
Speaker 2: I was never paid badly, but you just had to
Speaker 2: work a huge number of hours in order to guess that.
Speaker 2: And I remember doing the sun and working out at
Speaker 2: one hospital that I was earning less per hour for
Speaker 2: my shifts than the parking meter I could see outside
Speaker 2: the window was earning for Beata chuck In to come
Speaker 2: and come and see us. You'd be hard pushed to
Speaker 2: think that it's a job that people would do for
Speaker 2: them money. There are a lot more efficient ways of
Speaker 2: turning your straight a's and your exams into cold hard
Speaker 2: cash than going via six years of medical school then
Speaker 2: teen years on the wards.
Speaker 3: To make your way up to the top.
Speaker 2: Because it's only when you hit the top of the
Speaker 2: tree and you know you're a consultant that you.
Speaker 3: Have the opportunity.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are lots of doctors who earn a
Speaker 2: very very very good wage, but I don't think any
Speaker 2: of them are people who don't have to work hard.
Speaker 2: I don't know certainly in the UK, if you want
Speaker 2: the doctors who earn the big money, who have the
Speaker 2: second homes and have the fancy cars, are people who
Speaker 2: do their NHS job and then spend their evenings and
Speaker 2: weekends doing private medicine. For some reason, over the last
Speaker 2: few years, there's been a lot of anti doctor sentiment
Speaker 2: in the UK media, like you have to wait two
Speaker 2: months to see your GP ther appointments only eight minutes.
Speaker 3: We're being told these mean gps.
Speaker 2: Who are They've all got five helicopters each and in
Speaker 2: a house in Hawaii. They're not the people who are
Speaker 2: to blame that you have to wait this length of time.
Speaker 2: The people to blame are the people who aren't employing
Speaker 2: enough gps. Because these gps work as hard as they can,
Speaker 2: and I know loads of my friends are GPS, as
Speaker 2: my family GPS. It's heartbreaking for them how long these
Speaker 2: waiting lists are. But the problem is there aren't enough
Speaker 2: of them, and the governments should be should be investing
Speaker 2: the resources to give people the you know what they need,
Speaker 2: rather than you know what are essentially client media of
Speaker 2: the government blaming the doctors. And a very easy thing
Speaker 2: for them to say is look at this doctor who's
Speaker 2: got a ferrari.
Speaker 1: When they decided or they or you decided to make
Speaker 1: a series of your book, which is on STAN, the
Speaker 1: streaming service STAN in Australia here and a Canadian might
Speaker 1: of mind said it's one of the best series he's
Speaker 1: ever seen. Oh wow, how much say did you have
Speaker 1: in the casting of yourself?
Speaker 3: I had a lot of say.
Speaker 2: I was very and basically everyone was agreed that there
Speaker 2: was sort of only one person who could play it,
Speaker 2: and we've been talking about Ben Wishaw from the very
Speaker 2: It's so weird having this discussion. It's like one of
Speaker 2: these standard dinner party questions who would play you in
Speaker 2: a thing of your life?
Speaker 3: And then we're sitting.
Speaker 2: Around the table and was like, well, it's got to
Speaker 2: be by and so all our eggs were in that
Speaker 2: basket and we were like, well, this is a bit
Speaker 2: stressful because I hadn't finished the script yet. I hadn't
Speaker 2: finished I wasn't ready to take it to him yet.
Speaker 2: But so we brought on this an amazing casting director
Speaker 2: because there's obviously we needed one for all the other
Speaker 2: tons of parts. Brought on the amazing Nina Gold whose
Speaker 2: loads of Bafter winning shows in the past, and and
Speaker 2: we're like, okay, so first question, who's the short.
Speaker 3: List for this part? And she was like, well, it's
Speaker 3: got to be Ben wish or doesn't it.
Speaker 2: So anyway, that was a lot of pressure, but luckily
Speaker 2: he loved the script, he agreed, he agreed, and we
Speaker 2: sat down for a nice lunch and by the end
Speaker 2: of it, he was on board. And I'm so glad
Speaker 2: he was because he is the most fantastic actor. The
Speaker 2: way he can do the comedy and the drama.
Speaker 1: It's a bit like you.
Speaker 2: Well, no portrayal of a health service can be just
Speaker 2: comedy or just drama.
Speaker 3: That won't be a fair reflection of what it is.
Speaker 2: It has to have a bit of both, and he
Speaker 2: can do them both so well.
Speaker 3: And also he's such a sympathetic character.
Speaker 2: I wrote the tele version of me very different to
Speaker 2: real me because if I'd have just written some sort
Speaker 2: of like superhero, you know, brilliant, lovely doctor, that's not
Speaker 2: a drama that's not enjoyable to what I wanted to
Speaker 2: show someone who's a bit of an asshole.
Speaker 3: Who was you know, you could see why he was
Speaker 3: like that because.
Speaker 2: The pressures on him, but ultimately wasn't very well behaved,
Speaker 2: and he played that with such I don't know, with
Speaker 2: such charm that I don't think he sort of ended
Speaker 2: up being haterable and in the wrong hands he could
Speaker 2: have been. And the other thing to say about Ben
Speaker 2: is I know an awful lot of actors, and I've
Speaker 2: worked with a lot of them. You normally have to
Speaker 2: choose between having a good actor or a nice actor,
Speaker 2: and Ben is one of the relatively shortness who is
Speaker 2: both very good and very nice.
Speaker 1: Good on you, Ben, I wanted to ask if you
Speaker 1: could tell the story as a result of the series,
Speaker 1: you know how we were saying that that things have
Speaker 1: kind of changed, or you've brought a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: to public attention, if you could share the story of
Speaker 1: the tree that was planted.
Speaker 3: Oh of course.
Speaker 2: So as well as the character being different in this series,
Speaker 2: to real me, the storyline of the series couldn't.
Speaker 3: Just be, you know, directly of my what's in the
Speaker 3: in the book.
Speaker 2: And I decided, when trying to turn this into it
Speaker 2: like an arc over a full series, that I wanted
Speaker 2: to focus on the mental health of.
Speaker 3: Doctors. And it's you know, a bit of a.
Speaker 2: Spoiler to say that it's it's a storyline that it's
Speaker 2: around suicide of healthcare professionals, which is a very big problem,
Speaker 2: not just the UK, but but worldwide. And at the
Speaker 2: end of the series, there's a memorial scene where a
Speaker 2: tree is planted outside the hospital and a plaque goes
Speaker 2: in the ground. And we shot the exteriors of the
Speaker 2: of the series. The interiors were in a studio, but
Speaker 2: the extraors were in a real hospital in West London,
Speaker 2: ealing Hospital, and I had a whole load of messages
Speaker 2: on social media afterwards and people getting in touch with
Speaker 2: the production company or the TV station or whatever to
Speaker 2: say that they'd looked round the grounds, they'd recognized the
Speaker 2: HOFB and looked for the for the tree, and then
Speaker 2: they realized that it was just a just a proper
Speaker 2: and I felt silly, and I got in touch with
Speaker 2: the charity, UK based charity called Doctors in Distress. I'm
Speaker 2: proud to be a patron of who exists to decrease
Speaker 2: suicides amongst healthcare professionals.
Speaker 1: Which is it an epidemic? It's an epidemic, isn't it.
Speaker 2: The numbers are unthinkable, so UK numbers. But in the UK,
Speaker 2: every three weeks one doctor takes their own life. In
Speaker 2: the UK, every single week, one nurse takes their own life.
Speaker 2: And that's just two of the huge jigsaw of professions.
Speaker 2: And I know, you know, having toured in Australia previously,
Speaker 2: coming coming back again shortly, and I've talked to you know,
Speaker 2: if your numbers are equally shocking, you know, it's one
Speaker 2: of the single biggest risks you can have for a
Speaker 2: suicide rate is working one of these professions in Australia.
Speaker 2: And so anyway, this charity Doctors in Distress, said that
Speaker 2: there was no more memorial in the UK to healthcare
Speaker 2: staff we've lost their life to suicide because of stigma
Speaker 2: and shame and taboo. This thing that I think should
Speaker 2: be like a it's a national scandal, it should be
Speaker 2: a headline every time that happens. Every time just gets
Speaker 2: brushed under the carpet. So I got back in touch
Speaker 2: with ealing hospital and said can we come back and
Speaker 2: can we plant a tree that will stay there? And
Speaker 2: they said yes very kindly, and that became the first
Speaker 2: ever memorial in the UK to healthcare staff we've lost
Speaker 2: their lives in this way. And since then we've been
Speaker 2: around another couple of dozen hospitals, plants a couple of
Speaker 2: dozen trees, and I mean, it's not going to do
Speaker 2: anything in and of itself, it's just a tree. But
Speaker 2: I think it potentially does two things. So it's a
Speaker 2: memorial to people who must never be forgotten. That's a
Speaker 2: very important thing. But secondly, surely the first step in
Speaker 2: resolving a problem, whatever it is, has to be admitting
Speaker 2: that the problem even exists in the in the first place,
Speaker 2: and I think hopefully this goes some way towards achieving
Speaker 2: that because this is a this is an issue that
Speaker 2: isn't talked about by the profession.
Speaker 3: And it needs to be.
Speaker 1: Adam Kay, thank you for sharing yourself with us on
Speaker 1: no filter.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Is laughter the best medicine or medicine.
Speaker 2: Medicine is the best medicine. But laughter is very important.
Speaker 2: And I love writing books and I love hearing the
Speaker 2: people who've enjoyed it. But I also love getting back
Speaker 2: to my to my roots and getting on stage because
Speaker 2: then the laughter comes immediately. I'm dead excited about coming
Speaker 2: back to Australia with this is going to hurt, which
Speaker 2: is happening shortly. And I'll tell you the best thing
Speaker 2: about it for me, it's not actually I lied then.
Speaker 2: It's not actually the bit on stage. It's the bit
Speaker 2: afterwards where I sit in that sit at a desk
Speaker 2: and people have brought their books along and or buy
Speaker 2: books or whatever, and I sign I signed copies and
Speaker 2: actually get to speak to people who've got their own
Speaker 2: stories from working in these environments or being a patient,
Speaker 2: and a very weird thing that's happened in the last
Speaker 2: year or so, and that this won't happen on tour
Speaker 2: in Australia. But it's happened. It's happened quite a few
Speaker 2: times in the UK, and three times now that i've
Speaker 2: I've say, who can I sign this to it? And
Speaker 2: they tell me, and they said, and point to their
Speaker 2: sort of teenager with them and say, you're not going
Speaker 2: to remember this person, but you delivered them seventeen years ago.
Speaker 2: So I've now I'm now in the amazing situation. It's
Speaker 2: a great business model. Actually, is it delivering your own.
Speaker 1: Your own audience, you're an audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so definitely Penicillin et cetera best medicine. But laughter
Speaker 2: is a very important way to decompress. And I suspect
Speaker 2: if it wasn't for laughter, that be a lot fewer
Speaker 2: people working on their wards.
Speaker 1: Thanks Adam, kay, we look forward to seeing you in Australia.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Oh. I love how honest Adam is. His willingness to
Speaker 1: lay everything there has not only sparked important conversations, but
Speaker 1: has even led to meaningful changes in how we and
Speaker 1: in the UK they think about the healthcare system. If
Speaker 1: you want to hear more from Adam, he's currently touring
Speaker 1: Australia with his stand up show, a performance that, much
Speaker 1: like his book, balances comedy and tragedy in equal measure.
Speaker 1: It's raw, it's hilarious, it's really moving. It's a glimpse
Speaker 1: into the realities of medicine, told with his signature wit
Speaker 1: with included links in the show notes so you can
Speaker 1: grab tickets and experience it for yourself. The executiveget user
Speaker 1: of No Filter is Nama Brown. Senior producer is Grace Ruvre.
Speaker 1: Sound design is by Jacob Brown and I am your
Speaker 1: host Kate lane Brook. Back with you next week.