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

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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) 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.’ 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.

When I was writing her dialogue, I had Harriet Walter in my head. I didn’t actually think that Harriet would say yes, because she’s Dame Harriet Walter!’ 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. 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 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. 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?

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’ In This Is Going To Hurt you refer to obs & gynae as “brats and twats”. Isn’t that misogynistic and dismissive? 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.

As I said before, I liked Kay’s previous books but in my opinion this was the most well written one because it showed how he improved as a writer and a comedian and the way it was edited was so well done and the flow was immaculate which made me appreciate it even 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. 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.’Ben did the most spectacular job, he’s a national treasure. He can dance between comedy and drama and brings huge warmth to a character who is deliberately written as not always behaving the best under the circumstances he is in. If you were casting yourself, why wouldn’t you choose someone as handsome as Ben Whishaw? But if it wasn’t Ben, I suspect the answer I’m supposed to give is … Jonathan Ross.