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It’s a major roll of the dice asking for medical advice, I’ve been out of the game a long time. All you would get are half-remembered semi-facts. And people are always disappointed when they ask about Ben Whishaw because he’s such a lovely man I can’t offer anything approaching a juicy anecdote.
In This Is Going To Hurt you refer to obs & gynae as “brats and twats”. Isn’t that misogynistic and dismissive? On a more serious note, he reveals that the point where Whishaw as Adam goes infront of the General Medical Council and quotes the statistic that one doctor every three weeks in the UK takes their life, he is using Kay’s exact words. Something that gave me hope through the pandemic – and continues to – is the public love for the NHS. I feel strongly that, were the NHS to come under any major existential threat, people would get to their feet and fight for it. I’m fortunate to get to meet medical students, nursing students and midwifery students, and get enormous hope from their energy. The NHS is in the safest hands – if it gets over the current bump in the road. When I ask whether there remain any closed doors within his narrative, he talks about how his comic gift serves him: “I still hide behind humour. It’s my coping mechanism.” At school, he was the class clown: “It was a way of being popular when I wasn’t the most friend-forming child.” In medicine, it became his “shield – effective but not healthy and not enough to deal with the bad stuff that happens”. In “real life”, he uses humour as “an excuse not to answer questions. When you were asking me emotional questions earlier, it was taking everything I could not just to think: what’s the glib line that will make you laugh and shut it down, move it on?” He didn’t want to be a doctor, but he became one. He didn’t want to be a straight married man, but he became one: he married a woman. He plotted adultery – he took a comedy gig in New Zealand so he could go to a gay sauna – and was raped there. He developed bulimia after a fellow doctor – a psychiatrist no less – called him “a big lad” when they slept together.It opens with a nightmare: his recurring nightmare of a baby he cannot save. But that is only the first of his agonies. His prat falling is vast in its scope, the self-destruction of an artist. Kay is known for being active on social media and remains a big supporter of the NHS and its staff. The mood music isn’t that there’s going to be a huge amount of extra money going into the NHS anytime soon, what with everything going on. So God bless everyone who’s working in the NHS at the moment. I really don’t know how they’re doing it.’
I just started work in foundation year 1 and didn’t realise it would be this brutal. I’ve been a doctor for about a week-and-a-half and have already worked 120 hours, told someone’s family that their relative is going to die soon, verified two deaths and cried on the way home more times than not. I know you eventually left medicine, but does this next bit get any easier? Also, any tips for getting out of medicine?I wrote This is Going to Hurt with a beginning, middle and end. I wanted it to be about the mental health of healthcare staff. I did what I set out to do and made a taboo subject an unmissable conversation. I have no plans for a second series, I’d hate to do one for the sake of it. But I am in the early stages of a new project which will hopefully become something, and, if it does, will be very different but, hopefully, people will watch it. That’s what Kay does: bodies exploding. But Undoctored is also – and I do not know how conscious this is – an exploration of the comic personality type. Comics explode too: with words; with rage. With the NHS brought to its knees during the Covid pandemic, could we look to other health systems around the world for inspiration? The writer was flattered by the interest in a second potential series of This Is Going To Hurt, starring Ben Whishaw, but said it was written as ‘a one and done’ (Picture: BBC/Sister/Anika Molnar)
Speaking of Whishaw, Kay is of course a fan of the actor cast to play the fictionalised version of Adam (who the author reminds us isn’t really him). You have been criticised for misogyny, particularly in the descriptions of women’s bodies, at the vulnerable time that is pregnancy and childbirth. What are your thoughts on this? It took Covid: I offered and it turned out they didn’t want a gynaecologist who hadn’t worked for a decade. I will doubtless return when I reach my expiry date as an author, as all authors do. I suspect I’ve done my last shift on a labour ward but I think I potentially have something to give in education or policy within the service. Do you feel any guilt about leaving the NHS and finding fame by monetising the experiences that all NHS doctors live through and still experience on a daily basis, despite not working as an NHS doctor for more than a decade? You excellently highlighted the toll taken on the mental health of staff given the job pressures. What changes would you want to see that will have an impact on improving staff mental health and make them feel safe to report problems?
Who is in the cast of Adam Kay: Undoctored - This Is Going to Hurt… More?
It wasn’t censored. More than one channel wanted to show it, and the BBC said to me, if you work with us – who I really wanted to work with anyway because there’s a lot of similarities between the NHS and the BBC, these big, wonderful, but imperfect institutions – we will never once tell you don’t do that. And true enough, no-one never said that. But it is quite a different thing to the book, and that was quite deliberate because it’s quite a difficult book to adapt. I knew in advance that Adam Kay might seem shy. In the new book, he writes: “Elton John was wrong about sorry being the hardest word – for me, it was ‘hello’. “How are you doing?” he asks hastily, as if wishing to skip the introduction altogether. He is 42 with an intelligent face and toffee-brown eyes with a dogged, anxious expression – he looks like a rather stressed cherub. He is immediately funny but it is not clear to what extent he amuses himself. He wears a T-shirt the colour of raspberry sorbet upon which is flirtatiously written, Not from Paris, Madame. He is from Brighton, born into a Polish Jewish family of medics (original name Strykowski) and grew up in London. And although he returned home on a delayed flight from Edinburgh at 3am (he has been trying out material there for a new touring show to be called: This is Going to Hurt … More), he shows no sign of fatigue. An old hand at sleeplessness, he denies himself coffee (explaining he has just given up caffeine). There are plenty of obvious adjectives one might apply to Adam Kay – clever, entertaining, articulate – but, as I listen, the one that keeps resurfacing is vulnerable. MORE : Simon Callow reflects on the enduring popularity of Four Weddings and a Funeral: ‘The cast knew it would be our fault if it wasn’t a success’ Behind Kay’s intensely critical voice – the one I objected to in This Is Going to Hurt, when it faced his female patients – the voice that whirrs on, presumably full time in his head, is his mother’s. Perhaps it is artistic licence, perhaps exaggeration, but he presents his mother as intensely critical, oblivious to his pain. Though medicine broke him, she yearned for him to return to it, as if she could not hear. He needed a microphone. He’s a proper national treasure. There are millions of people who now presumably think that I look like Ben Whishaw too, and I’m absolutely happy with that!’ he laughs.
However, Kay’s career transition was anything but smooth, as he reveals in Undoctored, which gives an unflinching account of some of the most private and vulnerable moments of his life. Which do you prefer: people asking you for medical advice at parties, or people recognising you and asking you about Ben Whishaw? I’ve had a bunch of messages from people who said, “I’ve read that book and now I feel empowered to press the ‘f**k it’ button”, to do the thing to blow up their life and leave the thing in their world that isn’t working for them,’ he told Metro.co.uk. If offered, would you accept the position of secretary of state for health in the new prime minister’s cabinet? There is an emphasis on wellbeing in hospitals but when you dig into it, it often just amounts to a Zumba class. A recent report published by the GMC intended to improve support for the mental health of doctors but its recommendations were not taken on board by the government. People have a huge problem with seeking help. There is always the feeling that if you speak to someone, word will get out. There needs to be a culture, in medicine, that is less militaristic where people can talk openly. Juniors should be able to tell their bosses when they’re struggling, bosses should actively look out for their juniors. All staff should know where they can turn and trust they can get help that will not compromise their careers (at the moment, you are almost taught that doctors should not struggle).
Important Notes
It’s a very big question, and it’s a bigger question than ever. When I left medicine, I was the first or second person in my cohort of hundreds to leave. And these days, I can’t think of the last time I spoke to a doctor who wasn’t talking about their plan B, whether that was going part-time or moving to another country or working in a different industry entirely. But all I’ll say is, being a doctor is an amazing, brilliant, precious career. But if you’re struggling, and if you’re not enjoying it, you can’t do the best for your patients. And there are lots of people who say, “Oh, you must stay in the job no matter what”, and that’s unhealthy and unhelpful. Just work out what it is you want to do. Yes – I was drawn by the obvious highs of the labour ward, never thinking about the lows that come alongside it. I loved the highs and couldn’t cope with the lows. Perhaps something more outpatient- or primary care-based. Most of my close relatives are GPs and although general practice has never been harder, my personality would have been better suited to it. You’re made health secretary tomorrow. Truss won’t give you any more money. What’s the very first thing you will do? And things are now better – they are not better enough, there’s still a long way to go – but it’s a big ship to steer.’
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