Undoctored: The brand new No 1 Sunday Times bestseller from the author of 'This Is Going To Hurt’

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A lot has happened to Adam Kay since he left medicine, and even since he wrote This Is Going to Hurt; only some of it has made it into the books he's published since then ( Twas the Nightshift before Christmas and two books for children, Kay's Anatomy and Kay's Marvellous Medicine). I've read all of these and there were still things here that surprised me. I knew he is now married to a man named James, having been married to a woman he calls H in his first book; whatever, none of my business, but I presumed he was bi or his orientation had changed. Instead, he reveals that he was gay all along (had known he was since childhood, had even come out to his parents during his uni years), but still went along with a heterosexual marriage with all the best intentions. To an extent, he was doing what his parents expected of him, just as he was in following in his GP father's footsteps instead of pursuing music. 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. 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. Stand-up is both diagnosis of pain and cure: the fury and the laughter that soothes it. I’m not surprised he wanted to bring babies into the world: he is all in pieces. I now see Kay’s attempt at medicine as a great act of transference: to heal others at the expense of himself; to birth others who would be happier than himself, in a kind of thwarted renewal.

Ben Whishaw as Adam, with Ambika Mod as Shruti in the BBC drama This Is Going to Hurt. Photograph: Anika Molnar/BBC/Sister/AMC I couldn't deny that doors had been opened for me but I'd definitely put in the work once I'd walked through them. The ceaseless studying, the endless after-school classes, the timetable of extra-curricular activities that would give any Olympic athlete a nervo. I was super excited to dive into this book because This Is Going to Hurt remains one of my favourite non fiction books of all time. While I still really liked this one, it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting. I was the same way in school. I will say that a lot of it was self-imposed because I intentionally put my life on hold by saying that I'd find friends in medical school who were like-minded. I came and there wasn't much of a difference in the type of people; worse, because we weren't forced into close proximity for eight hours every single day, it was harder to make friends. I do consider myself relatively proactive and I did make friends (though I often do still feel lonely). However, when hanging out with people, I catch myself falling into the same trap of "oh my Gods, I have work to do and I can't afford to become besties with this person if they expect me to hang out with them every weekend." My first thought is always how little time I will have left to study.Adam writes about how there's a certain homogeneity among medics. He explained how one of the consultants during placement forced him to cut his hair short and wouldn't allow painted nails. You're not supposed to stand out in a hospital. There's a certain image doctors are meant to project and medical students are held to the same standard--formal clothing in GP surgeries, scrubs (but NEVER outside a hospital because god-forbid how patients would react to that...okay, also because of infection control and all that), no outrageous coloured hair, no painted nails, formal footwear, no jewellery. I do think the rules are relaxing a bit. I know one girl in my year who dyed her hair red and I don't think she's faced any disciplinary action. There are also more tattoos among doctors and nurses! Though my own tattoos have been frowned upon by some elderly patients. The thing that I thought as soon as I started watching the rushes come together, and then a bunch of doctors have said to me, is I can’t believe they’re not actually doctors, midwives and nurses, because they just embodied it so well. I think Ambika in particular, for someone who had basically done practically nothing on-screen before – she’s just such an intelligent, nuanced actor.’ 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. It always surprises me when people readily say they want children. In my head, I'm screaming, "Do you NOT understand how horrible the world is and what your theoretical children would be exposed to???" all whilst maintaining a calm and carefully neutral expression. One of my closest friends left medicine school after 3 years and it is funny how the society looked at him as if he was doing the biggest atrocity out there while everyone in the school itself were pretty sure it was the best decision -and they were all a bit envious-

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?” I had to work out what do I want the TV show to be about, and I really wanted it to be centred and focused on the mental health of healthcare professionals. The first scene I wrote of the series was the moment where Shruti, one of the junior doctors, makes the decision and turns to camera and say she’s going to take her life. And every moment in this series up to then was building up to that moment.’ 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? Despite being in the same profession, I was traumatised by your description of a young man whose penis was degloved after he slid down a lamp-post. Did you go too far? How do you manage to draw the line between comedy and tragedy in your work?

Important Notes

Comedy is Kay’s forte but, as the first memoir related, he hung up his stethoscope after a tragic event: one of his patients lost her baby because of an unforeseen complication with her pregnancy and had to go into ICU for an emergency hysterectomy – and while it was not his fault, he felt it to be his responsibility and the catastrophic nature of it affected him profoundly. On the strength of talking to him, I’d say it still does.

I read Adam’s previous two books: The first as a medical student on the verge of graduation, the second as a medical intern and now I am reading his third book as a resident and it certainly hit closest to home. I think if I hadn’t done medicine, I’d probably have been a musician. Medicine insists that you have all these extracurricular interests and for me, that was mostly music and I really loved music. I wonder if I’d be writing for the piano right now, writing dots rather than writing 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. But, if you've read anything by Kay, you know that even when the subject matter is horrific or sad, he is very, very funny. The humour is often on the raunchy side here, but there are also moments of raw honesty. He puts it this way: "I've never thought of those two theatre masks as comedy and tragedy, more as how I present myself on stage versus how I actually feel." The structure of the book makes it very easy and even addictive to read. And, like in his children's books, there are some fun running gags: his made-up metaphor "like a wolf on a panini," and faking an anglicisation "replace-all"-gone-wrong to turn participants into "particitrousers." By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and humbling, Undoctored is about what happens when a doctor hangs up his scrubs, but medicine refuses to let go of him.

Who is in the cast of Adam Kay: Undoctored - This Is Going to Hurt… More?

I remember trying to get help for loads of mental health stuff through the medical school. To be fair, they are doing a lot more than your average med school but it was excruciating when the lady who was "screening" me asked whether I was exercising and socialising and eating and sleeping well. I was so ready to blow up in her face, "No shit those things help, that's why I've been doing them and that's the reason I'm seeking help--because they're not working!" And even people close to me succumb to comments like, "Why don't you just stop counting?" Gee, I wish I had thought of that. I think there's been some improvement in the attitude towards medics having mental illnesses. That doesn't mean we don't still have a long way to go. I think the chapter about Adam's conference presentation is a great example of this. He essentially bared his soul to a room full of doctors about why training needed to change and become more supportive. He was invalidated by the president of the Royal College. I understand that medicine is a demanding job. However, is it so much to ask to have a good life? I remember in my first year when I expressed concerns about not having a work-life balance to an OBGYN, she laughed me right out of the room and told me I shouldn't have applied for medicine if I expected that, that I had made the wrong choice and it wasn't too late to switch. That was probably one of the most disheartening talks I ever received from a doctor. There is no shame in having put in your hours and your years and then going off to something else. Because medicine isn’t your defining characteristic as a as a person, it’s your job and you can’t let it destroy you.’ Write down what it is you want to do at the bottom of a piece of paper, and then see if you can work on what the steps are to getting there. Zacznijmy (a właściwie prawie skończmy) od tego, że w ogóle każdy człowiek, ale… „każdy lekarz ma jakieś dziwactwa…” 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?

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. 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. Coming out to his family (I was confused about this because I thought he had already come out and that H, his partner from This Is Going to Hurt was a man, I think I probably got the TV show mixed up) 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.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) I should say that given I'm a medic, this review will most likely be very medicine-centred. That's not to say I didn't enjoy reading all the other bits, just that I have something more tangible to say about medicine. You know us medics, it's always about medicine.