Interview: Adam Kay

In the run-up to Christmas, award-winning comedian, best-selling author and erstwhile junior doctor Adam Kay presents an evening of seasonal smut coupled with hilarious diary entries from his time in the NHS.

Adam achieved success as frontman of Amateur Transplants, with 20 million YouTube hits (including the iconic London Underground Song), while his recent book This Is Going to Hurt – a collection of his diaries as a junior doctor – became an instant Sunday Times bestseller. Adam’s other projects include rewriting hit Broadway musicals for transfer to West End, writing for UK and US TV ads and speech/gag writing for high-profile comedians.

Join Adam for an evening of festive filth and hilarious insights into the daily lives of doctors.

Tell us about This is Going to Hurt. What made you want to write it, and what impact do you hope it has on readers?
This is Going to Hurt is a collection of diaries that I kept whilst I was working as a junior doctor. It’s mostly a record of the funny stuff that happened to me, but – by the nature of the job – there’s a fair bit of sad stuff too. These diaries just sat in my filing cabinet for years after I left the job (though I would occasionally dip in for a reminder of horrific tales of objects in orifices to upset friends with) until the junior doctors came under fire from the government a couple of years ago.
The government suggested that doctors were striking because they were greedy, because they were in it for the money – but the truth of it was that they were striking because of working conditions, which means patient safety, which means the best interests of the patients – which is in fact the only thing that doctors actually care about.
The doctors failed to get their side of the story across (probably because they were working 97-hour weeks) and I realised that most people have no idea what it actually means to be a hospital doctor. I tricked a publisher into releasing my diaries and here we are.

Is it a political book? An impassioned defence of the NHS?
It’s not a political book and I’m not trying to score points. I just want to present the facts as they are, so people can make up their own minds the next time the government attacks the profession. I want people to get a sense of the toll the job takes on your life: the horrific hours, the daily traumas and, of course, the objects people insist on inserting into their recta. I’ve been very lucky – the book spent two months in the bestsellers list, so I’ve managed to spread the word to a large number of people. And I defy any of them to still believe that doctors are in it for the money.

What made you leave behind your career as a doctor?
I left the job after I had a particularly bad day at work – I worked on labour wards where all you aim for is a healthy mum and a healthy baby. One day I was the most senior doctor on duty and we ended up with neither, and in the most horrific way imaginable. Ultimately I didn’t have the emotional exoskeleton to deal with something like that ever happening again, which unfortunately it does every few years, and I ended up leaving the profession.

Which parts of the job do you miss / not miss?
I certainly didn’t miss the bad stuff and the sad stuff that happens at work, and I don’t miss the hours or the impact on home life. I do miss the non-specific feeling that you’ve done something good, the reason you go into the job in the first place. You’re driving home from a shift three hours late and the dinner’s in the cat, you’re exhausted and splattered with blood, the radio’s blaring and the window’s wound right down just so you can stay away… but you’re smiling, because you know it was all worth it.

Why Adam Kay’s Smutty Songs?
There’s a very long history of medical students putting on Christmas comedy revues, and that’s where I started ruining popular songs on stage. Back when I was a student it led to some writing for Radio 4 and a bafflingly popular viral hit about the London Underground. When I left medicine comedy was the only Plan B I could really think of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0wWdxpfuxM

“Rewriting hit Broadway musicals for transfer to West End” sounds an interesting gig. What does that entail?
Most of my work these days is writing scripted comedy for television. But last year I worked with a certain mouse-based company on a musical. My job was to ensure that jokes survived the flight across the Atlantic, that references made sense. There was a lot of FIND: sidewalk, REPLACE: pavement. It was huge fun (apart from the week when I watched the show ten times. That was less fun.)

Adam Kay brings his Smutty Songs to the Comedy Box at the Hen & Chicken on Friday, December 15. For more info, visit www.thecomedybox.co.uk

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