Phil Hammond: From NHS Whistleblower to Comedy Crusader

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, Screen Rats, and welcome to another edition of Television Times.

And today's episode is a great one.

It is with Dr.

Phil Hammond.

He's a comedian, he's a doctor, and he's a writer.

And you probably recognize him from being on multiple episodes of Have I Got News For You.

So, you know, this guy is prolific, and he's everywhere, and his shows in Edinburgh absolutely sell out.

I mean, he was at the same venue that I was at, and obviously my audiences were tiny, but Phil's audiences were around the block.

And I mean that every single day, you could just see it.

And I went to see both of his shows, and they were great.

Really, really fun.

And he has such a great rapport with the audience.

He was brilliant.

And because he was at my venue, I was lucky enough to be able to invite him onto this podcast, which he agreed to do upon meeting me, which was really lovely of him.

And I tell you what, though, WhatsApp, WhatsApp's a problem for me.

I always seem to send someone a message.

And then, when I put the phone back in my pocket, when I next pick it up, it rings the person who I was last texting.

And this happened with Phil.

I'll admit it here, but I didn't admit it to him.

He sent me a message saying he was downstairs.

And I went to pick up my phone to sort of go see him.

And my phone was calling him.

And I was a bit embarrassed.

I was like, Oh God, I can't tell him.

So I just pretended that that was intentional.

And I said, Oh yeah, I'm just coming towards you.

Where are you again?

And trying to see where he was on the video.

It was a bit embarrassing.

I just hate that.

It happens a lot with me.

Maybe it's me.

Tell me, what am I doing wrong?

I don't really understand because the app is not even on.

And then when I open it, it's just ringing.

I don't know what's going on.

Anyway, so I was lucky enough to record this in a room, not on my little booth areas in Edinburgh.

This was recorded in an actual sort of classroom.

It was quite sort of clinical and weird.

But Phil gave me a nice little chunk of time and we had a nice chat.

And that's what you're going to hear now.

Oh, yes, I should mention that at the beginning of this conversation, there's a lot of talk about politics.

That is just because the general election had only just happened.

And, you know, we talked about Have I Got News For You and Boris and Jacob Rees-Mogg and whatever.

So it sort of went down that path for a little while.

But soon enough, we do get around to TV.

So don't worry about that.

So without further ado, as they say, let's get into it.

This is me talking to the very funny and very talented Dr.

Phil Hammond.

I take my medicine, I pop the pill.

Now I'm going to have a chat with Dr.

Phil.

Roll up, roll up and welcome to another edition of Television Times with your host, me, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be.

But it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television Times.

I did it a couple of times with Boris, although I can't remember.

I did seven Have I Got News For Yous back in the day.

And starting off with Angus.

And then I was actually asked to do the last one that Angus did and I was on tour and I couldn't do it.

And then of course they got slay people in and Boris Johnson came in with his little entourage.

Really interesting when you reflect on it now.

So lots of people have said, you know, although you think you're mercilessly ribbing him, it probably did him a huge amount of good.

I mean, it probably helped make Boris Johnson.

He was prepared to take the chair and...

Do you believe that though?

Because that is...

I think it did.

People saw him as a jolly good bloke, bloody funny bloke, and take the piss out of him.

Yeah, yeah.

He just...

There's been a story about David Cameron in the Bullington Club, whether he'd snorted cocaine, whether he'd been in the Bullington Club at Oxford, and he'd refused to answer.

So I thought it might be interesting just to ask Boris Johnson.

And I'm sure he knew that would come up, and I'm sure he'd pre-prepared the answer.

So I said to him, have you ever snorted cocaine?

He goes, I did, I did, I did, I did.

I sneezed and I sneezed and it all came out and could have been icing sugar.

I was a very silly, billy, billy, and it was like a funnier version of Clinton saying that he once, you know, smoked a joint but didn't inhale.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So actually quite clever to say, right.

But in those, you know, people loved him.

I'm not even sure he was mayor of London.

He was maybe in the run for mayor of London.

Yes, just before, wasn't it?

Yeah.

But you sensed someone incredibly ambitious.

And of all the times I'd done, have I Got News For You, I'd never seen someone turn up with such an entourage.

There were lots of people with him and it was all rather, yeah, he'd thought it carefully through.

You think he's being a bumbling idiot, but a lot of it, I would say, was very, very deliberate.

Yeah.

In fact, oh my gosh, he was it.

Somebody whose name escapes me but may come back to me had seen him do a gig at the Grove and the House Hotel.

So he would turn up late for these gigs.

So this person was doing like the main bit and then Boris would come on and do 15 minutes or something.

Yeah.

And he'd turn up at the last minute.

And I'd do that and I'd blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he did not remember who he was doing for and he'd make the same joke about the bishop of something.

And it was incredibly chaotic and he never said this is amazing.

And he'd take his whatever, 10 grand or 20 grand or whatever.

And then he saw him about two months later and it was exactly the same shambolic routine word for word.

He'd arrived late, got caught up in the bustling, little turn around, couldn't remember who he was doing for, told exactly the same gag about the bishop or whatever.

And I thought, oh, hang on, this isn't just bumbling ad libbing.

You've actually given us some thought and you know precisely what you're doing.

So I think he was probably far more on it and manipulative than we were thinking.

Yeah, I did the opening of the Westfield Centre for the Olympics.

I worked on the Olympics and I worked on the opening of that, an opening ceremony of the Shopping Centre if you like.

And I've talked about it before, but there's this thing where it was Philip Green, Boris and the owner of Westfield basically all standing together talking about how to destroy unions rights.

And Boris turned to me and goes, these mics aren't on, are they?

And I went, no, no, no, I'm just monitoring you because I was putting mics on.

And I put his lapel mic on and he looked all really good and everything like that and he went to walk on stage and the second he walked on stage, he fluffed up his hair and he threw his tie over his shoulder and the mic went with it.

And I had to run up and go, that's not going to work.

We need to, he goes, oh no, no.

And I sort of had to flatten it down.

It was all most disturbing.

But yeah, it's all deliberate.

It's definitely all deliberate.

And then he did a very similar speech with lots of stuff about Shakespeare and Macbeth and things like that, even though he was opening a shopping center.

Which is fine.

I mean, if you're in show business, that's fine.

If you're managing a pandemic, it's less fine.

Shambolic stuff is...

So it's an act, basically.

Yes, but a very convincing one.

I mean, you know, he won.

I know he won partly because the media and the press and lots of people didn't think Jeremy Corbyn was electable.

So part of it was not voting for Corbyn, but he won.

It's quite extraordinary in political history to go from an 80 seat majority to wipe out.

I mean, because everyone said when he won his 80 seat majority, well, he's going to be in for two or three, as they're saying about Labour at the moment.

I mean, Labour have learned from tactical voting that they could easily be wiped out in the next election if they don't deliver, so it's interesting times.

Yeah, but yes, I did it a few times with him.

And I also did it with Carol Vorderman, I remember, who I really liked.

But at the time she was doing an ad on the telly, I think for something like secured housing loans or something.

And I said, well, how can you do that?

You're teaching people to be numerate and whatever, and surely they'll lose their houses.

There was a bit of spark.

And then the producer of Countdown phoned me up and said, we thought there was real chemistry between you and Carol.

Would you like to come on Countdown?

And the trouble is, as soon as I went on Countdown, I was, you know, I'm now Doctor Daytime, I wasn't asked on Have I Got News For You anymore.

But I really like Countdown, I really like Susie Dent.

And yeah, Carol Vaughan was there for a while.

We started here, did we start off with, oh.

I never did it with Richard Wightley, but I did it with Des O'Connor.

I did it with Jeff Stelling.

Don't forget Des O'Connor, did you?

Did it for a while.

Yeah, really bizarre.

Oh yes, Des Lynam.

Des Lynam looked as if he'd rather have his testicles stapled to the table.

I mean, you could just see him.

He just covered some of the most iconic moments in Spawn.

And there he is doing, and I remember doing it with Des Lynam.

And the word boner came up.

Excellent.

Because I'm really childish.

And he was trying to pretend he didn't know what a boner was.

And it was just, yeah, there's something.

I mean, and also, although it's technically in front of a studio audience, the Countdown studio audience, they're all sitting there, and they've all got cataracts.

And so the bright lights, they can't see, and they're putting their hands over there.

I think somebody died in the audience during one of the recordings, and we didn't notice, because they didn't move much either.

But the actual chemistry, I really enjoyed it.

And then I did the last one with Ann...

I say Ann Summers.

What's her name?

Ann Diamond?

No.

Robinson.

Yeah, you better edit that bit out, because she'll be after me.

No, I'm joking.

I did it with her.

And then what's his name from Radio 5?

And I haven't been asked on again.

So I think my Countdown days are over now.

To be honest, I suppose my agent, Vivian Clawell, who I've had for years and years, I mean, she could put me forward for stuff, but at the moment I'm trying to do more serious stuff.

So when I stopped working in the NHS at 60, during the pandemic, Ian Hislop pretty much trebled the size of my column in Private Eye and said, you know, you cover that.

And now I get longer things.

And at the moment I've gone down there.

Lucy let me rabbit hole.

And just on a Channel 5 documentaries talking about whether, I mean, I've no idea whether she did it or not.

It's just, I don't think the science and statistics was fully and fairly represented at the trial.

And that may possibly have led to a mistrial and loads of people writing to Private Eye and various things saying, you know, that the statistics as presented in the trial would fail an undergraduate viver.

Anyway, so I've just done that really serious documentary on Channel 5, which went out, Wildlife is Up at the Fringe.

So, you know, you're trying to do, hey ho, this is show business.

And then you've got this incredible serious stuff.

But that's sort of been the story of my life.

I've always had this turn to the serious turntable has been Private Eye, Trust Me I'm a Doctor, which I did with Michael Moseley and my medical work, where you sort of try and tell truth for trust.

You've got to try and get the stories right as you can.

And then my coping mechanism, the other turntable is Lies for Lust doing the comedy stuff.

And we've never really, I've done a little bits and bobs on TV, but most of that was on Radio 4, Struck Off and Die.

That's sort of, I guess, a precursor of Adam Kay's work.

At the time, our first thing that went out on Radio 4 got record numbers of complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Council.

Jacob Rees-Mogg's dad was the chair.

William, who declared it inappropriate material for a comedy show.

So it was really dark, but considered not quite appropriate yet for TV.

So I'd like to think we've paved the way for Adam Kay, who I know and like, and I'm not at all jealous of the little bastard accelerating on the inside and leaving me for dust.

It's another Rees-Mogg.

That's another Have I Got News For You, isn't it?

A lot of people blame, in brackets, Jacob's rise for being sort of taking the piss out of him there as well in the same way that they did Boris.

It's hard, isn't it?

It's hard with these shows.

You say you want our politicians to be human and we want to come on and do that, but yeah, when they're so clever and manipulative as that, it's dangerous.

He's doing a reality TV show.

Yeah, well, he lives next to me, neighbouring village, so he used to be my MP.

Oh, God.

This is another thing.

Did he do his job?

Did he actually do things?

Yes, and that's the interesting thing about him as a local MP because he's got the money and the reach.

If you go to him, so, you know, a mate of mine is a gardener.

His son was in a band and lost somewhere in Europe or America, even without a visa.

And JK.

Rizvog was incredibly helpful.

So we forget sometimes in the constituency stuff, stuff he can do stuff about, we campaign to stop people dumping asbestos in a shallow quarry near our house.

And when he could see which way the wind was blowing, he came and joined us and supported us and yeah.

So and I don't do hate.

I just didn't really want to miss my MP.

So in the 2019 election, I announced on countdown, as you do, that I would stand against him as an independent.

And I sort of figured myself a bit like Martin Bell.

I saw myself as in like the white suit for one term only.

If we get Labour and Lib Dems and Greens or whatever, unite around a single one term only candidate, we get rid of him.

And the local Labour Lib Dems or whatever said, yeah, that's fine.

So I announced it on countdown.

I was told initially, I was a presenter for BBC Radio Bristol, and I was told initially, all I'd have to do is stand down during Perda.

My job was safe.

But then because Susie and Rachel Riley retweeted it, it got thousands of retweets and the BBC slightly shat themselves.

And they said, actually, now you've announced it, even though the election probably won't be for 18 months, two years.

Either you retract it and stand down, or we're going to have to stand you down now.

I thought, oh, look a bit of a dick if I retract it.

So I lost a job that I really liked as presenter.

It was like an Ellen Partridge presenter.

You know what local radio is like.

It was great.

I used to love it.

So I had to stop doing Dr.

Phil Saturday surgery.

And then when it came to it, I discovered that Labour and Lib Dems absolutely hated each other during the 2019 election.

Labour hated the Lib Dems for going into coalition with the government.

And the Lib Dems hated Labour because they didn't think Corbyn was strong enough about Romain.

They thought he was a bit on the fence.

And they refused to collaborate.

And I got them both in there and I said, look, I've lost my job because of you.

I see myself as Martin Bell.

Do you want to win collectively or do you want to lose individually?

And they said, we want to lose individually.

They just wanted to come second to him.

So, yeah, I lost my job.

My daughter, who's a lawyer, said it was a classic phantom pregnancy announcement or something, you know, when you announce you're pregnant and you're not.

And that's what she thought of my political campaign.

I made this big announcement and then I didn't stand because I'd look like a dick.

Once I knew they were fighting each other, there was no point splitting the vote.

So anyway, yes, I moved constituency and not just to get away from him, but in the last election, I was my mate, Carol Vorderman from Countdown Days was doing a tactical voting site and I contacted her and we just made sure that my MP is now Lib Dem.

Labour's Dan Norris has got rid of Jacob Rees-Mogg and then we've got a green candidate in the centre of Bristol.

So it was like a rainbow coalition, which is actually how I like my politics.

I think everyone apart from, well, former suppose they got so many votes, they should have some MPs.

But yeah, yeah.

So that's my media career has been interesting, but not stellar.

It's completely unforgiving now.

So the other reason I can never be a politician, every time I come to the fringe, people come up, who I was at Tommy's with.

So Tommy's is St.

Thomas' Hospital, opposite the House of Commons.

It was a slightly public school vibe to it.

When I was there, the Dean was head boy, and it was full of bloody funny blokes.

Although I had three years at Cambridge, where I thought I behaved in a fairly decent, reasonable manner, I got to Tommy's, and I was absolutely teased.

Bleed a lot of ruggo.

But everyone comes and says, oh Phil, good to see you, I haven't seen you since Tommy's days.

We've got a photo of you buck naked standing on the marquee down at Cobham playing The Last Post.

Loads of people have got it.

But that's what I did.

That was my party piece.

Just have a few drinks maybe, and somehow when I was young and fit, I could scale the marquee with my trumpet and play The Last Post buck naked.

You can just see that on the front of the Daily Mail.

That's the end of your political career.

So I know I'm not going to go into politics, and politics has become hateful.

There's apparently a bloke in America who got shot.

I can't remember his name.

The bullet just graces his ear.

It used to be president.

But that's the trouble is once we move down that hate line, and I absolutely understand why they did it, but I don't like the divisiveness of it.

I'm a fan of proportional representation, and this time around we'd have had 90-odd reform MPs.

Well, let's stick them in the House of Commons and see what they got to say for themselves.

That to me is what democracy is rather than sniping from the sideline.

I mean, it's really funny now having Nigel Farage and the Lib Dems both campaigning for proportion of representation, but I'm about a half Australian and I'm sort of a fan of compulsory voting because I think it's a real privilege to live in a democracy, but I do this thing in my show where my version of it is there's also a none of the above option on the ballot sheet.

It's compulsory.

But if none of the above wins, then you don't have any MP at all.

You just use all the money that would have gone on an MP in the back office and the expenses on a community park in the middle of the constituency.

Then after five years you evaluate the health of the constituency and I bet you the ones that don't have an MP but have a park instead would do better.

But the problem then is if none of the above wins the whole election nationally, then the UK just becomes one anarchic community park with no politicians at all.

But that might be interesting too for five years.

See what happens.

Didn't Ireland not have a prime minister for like a while?

There was some kind of impasse.

Wasn't it Northern Ireland?

I know Stormont had a thing.

Stormont had problems but then Northern Ireland, there was something in agricultural sheds about heaters and agricultural sheds that farmers were fiddling on and the whole government fell down for reasons I didn't understand.

And during the pandemic, they had no one in charge at all.

Yeah, that, yeah.

And they did better than England, having no one in charge.

So that's an issue.

Maybe we don't need that.

But that's an unfair trial because of course, London has far more air traffic than Ireland, so we imported more Covid.

It's like comparing us to New Zealand during the pandemic, you know, it's a tiny island.

The population is not the same.

And it's not a fair comparison.

No.

I mean, why can't we just have a new government every, say, two years and we just vote on our phones?

And we vote for individual things.

Like each month you say, would you like your council budget to go to this, this, this or this?

Yes, I would rather do that.

I mean, I would, you know, I'm absolutely in favour of paying more tax.

I've done well in my life.

I would pay some form of wealth tax and money if it's proven to go on frontline services.

So I'd pay a lot more for social workers, shortstop programmes, social care, education, health.

What I won't pay for is VIP fast lanes where they give their mates billions of pounds for shit.

PPI that we then have to burn in a great big pit for, you know, and I appreciate it's not always easy getting the right amount of masks and stuff, but I'm less hard on politicians now because now I'm older and a bit wiser.

I always think what would I do if I was in, say, Matt Hancock's position?

And I don't, I mean, not the one in the-

Which position?

Not one in the room, in the whatever, at the beginning of it.

And actually, I don't think I would have been that different because by nature, I'm an optimist.

I always think the good thing is going to happen.

I hoped we'd be able to stop the pandemic.

That it would behave in a similar way as the SARS virus in 2003, where everyone had symptoms and therefore you could stop it.

The problem with this pandemic is it spread very quickly without symptoms and then went off like a dirty bomb in people who were vulnerable.

Yeah.

Almost impossible to stop as if it had come out of a lab.

But there's no evidence of that.

But it was, how it spread was extraordinary.

So yeah, so lots of that.

But yeah, this is talking about TV.

Yeah, we're talking about TV.

Well, Matt Hancock's been on TV.

This is controversial.

I don't think he's a terrible guy.

No.

He came across quite well early.

Do you remember he was the MP that launched his own app and everything.

Yes.

And again, someone who I know who worked alongside him said he was decent and He became a real hate figure.

Always came in and said hello to people and whatever.

So it's difficult, isn't it?

I've got a friend called Margaret who's a GP in Glasgow.

And I love his son to bits, but I can't understand a word he said.

He's got such a thick Glaswegian accent and he wants to do politics.

And he wrote to Jacob Rees-Mogg saying, can I have an attachment during the summer?

And he's Jacob, come on down.

I can be absolutely certain neither of them understood a word each other were saying.

He's here on Sunday, I think.

I'm sure he is, Jacob.

He'll bring Sextus and, you know, octopus.

They'll all come up and be absolutely lovely.

They'll play like, you know, cricketed in the living room and lovely people.

And don't forget Nanish, he's coming too.

That's a really good impression.

I got a ticket to Matt Ford's political party thing on Monday, and I saw it flash up yesterday.

Jacob Rees Morgan.

I was like, oh, come on, after Liz Truss, it can't be him.

And it isn't, it's the day before.

Well, well done, Matt Ford, for still being alive as well, because he's very talented and shit.

You know, that just teaches you about how shit happens every now and then.

Something comes along that's probably genetically preordained and it just hits you like a cluster bomb.

And the fact that he's still with us is lovely.

It's very good news.

So I saw this thing today, well, about five seconds before you walked in this room, I was watching something from 1993 called The Talking Show with Sandi Toxford.

Do you remember that?

She's in a bed and you and Tony Gardner come in as doctors.

Blimey, God.

1993.

I can't, yes, probably did that.

We did early stuff.

So we first went, we came to Edinburgh in 1990 when B Sky B were big.

Before Sky, there was B Sky B and they did Up Your Fringe and Up Your News or whatever.

In our first ever appearance at the Fringe, we were on the telly.

I look at the clips now and it's faintly embarrassing, but it's not excruciating, but it's faintly embarrassing.

And then we did live at the Historia, which I think was also B Sky B or whatever, Struck Off and Died.

So we did these things at the Talking Show.

We did Just Practicing, which was a BBC documentary and Bitter Medicine, which was about junior doctors' conditions.

And then I stood for parliament in 1992 against William Baldergrade, who was the Health Secretary at Bristol, for the Struck Off and Died Junior Doctors' Alliance, SOGIA.

And BBC Bristol made a TV documentary about that called Stand To Lose, because Labour got really annoyed saying, you're going to split the left-wing vote.

So we said, don't vote for us.

Just understand junior doctors' issues.

And Tony hired a nice screen van as our campaign vehicle and drove around the streets of Bristol West.

And we were shouting, what do we want?

Willie out.

When do we want it?

Now.

Willie, Willie, Willie.

Out, out, out.

87 votes we got.

But the documentary is fabulous.

And the door knocking, and that's why I can't be an MP.

The door knocking is just desperate.

What I'm hearing on the doorstep.

Yeah, yeah.

But you knock on the door and say, Hi, I'm Dr.

Phil, I'm from the Stoke-on-the-Dyde Uni, Dr.

Lawrence.

Can I count on your vote on May the 4th?

I spoke to you, no.

And Tony would always go, is that a maybe no or a definite no?

It's a definite no.

And we did about three of those and thought, fuck that, we're not doing that anymore.

I mean, that was hard work.

She's how you've got the balls to go around a stranger's houses and say, hello, can I count on your vote on May the 4th?

James Cleverley walking up to people's door and knocking on people's doors and them telling them to fuck off.

It's trust.

But they do it, don't they?

That's the funny thing here.

They actually do it.

There's something very, very peculiar about it.

I mean, when I had my Martin Bell moment in the white suit, it ended up a bit like, you know, when you're a comedian, you hire at a thousand-seat venue and only 50 people turn up.

You massively overestimate your popularity.

I thought TV's Dr.

Phil in the Chew Valley.

Everybody knows and loves me.

I'll get massive vote.

And I discovered politics a bit more serious than that.

And probably if I was going to stand again, I would have had to have aligned myself with a particular party.

That would make far more sense.

Because this is an independent.

You're just a bit of a tit, aren't you?

Hello.

I'm from the, you know, grey-rown radishes party.

It doesn't always work.

Even Eddie Izzard with Labour, it doesn't always work.

The profile doesn't guarantee you're going to win.

No, it doesn't.

But as we're not going into politics.

So yes, I did lots of silly things.

And then my biggest break, I guess, was Michael Moseley, sadly no longer with us, had discovered that I was privatised medical correspondent and asked me to be the first presenter of Trust Member Doctors.

He subsequently took over.

And I would do these really angry, we call them you bastard stories about how awful, you know, breast cancer care is.

And then Mike would do more of the self care stuff, how, you know, just one thing, stop yourself getting sick in the first place.

So it was, this is how to be a patient and stand up for yourself.

This is how to stop you being a patient in the first place.

And it was a really good magazine program.

And it's probably the best TV I've ever done.

The BMA hated it because I was slightly smug in my prison style.

They called it, trust me, I'm a wanker.

But we did some really good stuff, particularly about exposing unacceptable variations in care.

And then blessed Mike, but towards the end of the series, Mike was always into self-experimentation.

So he was really into this chap called Barry Marshall, who is an Australian, who proved that Helicobacter, a bacteria called stomach ulcers, and he proved it by drinking it and giving himself a stomach ulcer.

And he got a Nobel Prize for it.

And Mike was fascinated by that.

So he said, look, I want to move, trust me, I'm a doctor with slightly more self-experimentation thing.

I'd like you to have a colonoscopy on camera, BBC2, so people can see having something up your bum is fine.

I said, fuck off, you can do that if you want to, Mike.

I know I'm a comedian, but I'm not having something stuck up my ass on camera.

That's social occasions only with friends.

I've got a little favour to ask you.

Could you please follow us on social media?

And if you've got time, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get them.

It all helps drive traffic back to the podcast.

But for now, let's get back to the current episode of Television Science Podcast.

Most poignantly on Trust Me I'm A Doctor, one of the stories we did was how people take insane risks on holiday.

So the evidence is when you go on holiday, your risk radar goes out the window and you, you know, you dive into the shallow end of the pool.

You rent the moped in Thailand and drive around in a helmet.

You get pissed, you have sex without condoms, you walk off in the blazing heat and die from heat stroke.

And Mike knew that and sort of became a victim of his own.

It's just, but that's such a man thing to do.

I mean, I love men, but they take insane risks and that's why nearly always we die earlier than women.

It is very stereotypical, of course, we don't go to the doctor.

I was sent a kit for like, what is it, bowel cancer or something.

Do it, it's sitting there, it's been there for months.

I must do it.

I haven't got it.

Did you go to public school?

No, just normal comprehensive.

What's interesting is they looked at the bowel cancer screening and they found that people who went to public school were really keen, absolutely fine to put my shit in a bottle.

I don't mind picking up my shit.

And the people who went to state school thought, that's a bit mucky, I don't want to play with my shit.

Isn't that interesting?

So the public school was like, how much shit do you want?

I can give you more shit if you want to.

Bottoms aren't a problem.

But I would do it.

It's actually quite bowel screening.

I mean, the National Screening Service only does screening that's proven to work.

And bowel cancer is common and the earlier you pick it up, the more cure it is and they can pick it up with a little bit.

So will you please do that for me?

Yes, I will.

Otherwise, I'm not letting you put this block on set.

I will do it as soon as I get home.

I can do it for you.

And when Jacob comes up, I mean, his kid sexed us.

He's great.

He loves collecting poo and it'll be absolutely fine.

I've had the, is it called it, is that what it is?

Colonoscopy, where they clean the poo out.

Depends how high you're going up.

Colonoscopy is the whole colon.

Sigmoidoscopy is just up to your sigmoid fracture.

I think it was colon.

Yeah, I did colon once.

Yeah, it was horrible.

Was that social or was that?

No, it's not fun, is it?

But a lot of these now, they can do MRI scans as well.

They don't necessarily put the thing out, but you'd be fit enough to have it out.

Yeah, I feel, yeah.

Television, your favorite television.

Anyway, trust me, I've got to have won a few awards and that was fine.

And then it stopped because Jane Root took over BBC Two and decided she didn't want any health on BBC Two.

So I was transferred to BBC One and I was the first atheist presenter of the Heaven and Earth show.

I was going to ask about that because I saw that.

With Juliet Morris.

How are you doing?

I had no idea.

I think they thought we've spent five, you know, Dr.

Phil's done five years of Trust Me, I'm a doctor, we're going to nurture him and see if he's got sort of broad BBC One appeal.

And we did that and then I got sacked for, not sacked, I met, Tony was always taking the piss out of me because we were doing the Struckelv and I stuff and Struckelv and I never made it onto telly and he would take the piss out of me being a TV doctor.

And, you know, on Heaven and Nurses, which is live on Sunday morning, I compared one of the crystals in Greek Easter bread to looking a bit like crack cocaine.

And that turned out to be a mistake.

But then, more exciting, you know, they'd started to do this program called Who Do You Think You Are?

Yeah.

And they just started doing that.

And because I was now a BBC One presenter, this researcher, right at the very beginning of it, came up and said, Phil, we've heard you've got, like, Australian relatives and there'll be criminals and stuff.

Can we look into your background?

And I said, yeah, that'd be quite interesting.

I'm going to do that.

And they came back a few weeks later and said, sorry, we've looked into your background.

And really sorry, Phil, we can't think of anything positive to say about your family.

And the problem was that my dad had taken his life, my great-granddad had taken his life, my great-uncle had taken his life, my granddad had walked out.

I mean, so my family was all men deserting women.

They were all men either taking their lives or buggering off and women being left alone to pick up the pieces.

So yeah, but I found out a bit more about my family as I didn't know.

But yeah, so I haven't done that program.

I've done lots of countdown.

And what about this show?

Was this a Channel 5 launch time show, Tips and Fibs?

Tips and Fibs was probably the worst show ever on television.

I was watching it this morning.

It's so bad.

It's almost genius.

I mean, you know when a show is so bad.

Well, look, the concept was wrong.

The concept was wrong because Tony Gardner and I, both doctors, were team captains of a medical quiz.

Tony Slattery knows a lot about pharmacology for a number of reasons.

And I really enjoyed Tony Slats, but he was going through a bit of an interesting phase at the time.

And then we had guests on either side who knew nothing about medicine.

So, remember Craig Charles turning up with a few minders.

And he's saying, I don't want to look stupid on this.

Can you tell me what the questions are?

And one of the questions was, what's the third branch of the facial nerve or something?

I mean, how the fuck is Craig Charles going to know?

And they were, oh, I know this one.

I know this one.

Is it Book of Arangile?

It should be multiple choice.

And that used to be it, wasn't it?

Janet Street Porter, my favorite, she turned up thinking it would be a serious medical quiz and she had to stand on the desk and mime premenstrual tension, I think.

I may have got this slightly wrong.

And then Tony Slats would always have a go at me because I wore Mr.

Brylon's suit.

So I had like this big, almost like Operation U-Tree glasses and Mr.

Brylon's suit.

And he'd always have a go at me.

And Mike Mansfield, who was the producer of Name That Tune.

He did something in my earpiece saying have a go at Tony.

When Tony has a have a go at Mac and I noticed that he's sweated quite profusely under his armpits.

So I said, have you noticed you've got this sweating problem?

And he went absolutely apeshit.

He said, I do.

It's hyperhidrosis.

It's a recognized medical condition.

I sweat profusely.

I have surgery.

I hasn't sorted it out.

I think it's extremely tasteless of you to mention this during a live recording.

And of course it's that audience again, it's like a countdown, all these old people in the audience and it's suddenly kicking off.

And he said to me, take your glasses off.

I said, no, I'm not doing it.

I said, take your glasses off.

Eventually I took my glasses off and he's a big old boy Tony and he's just slapped my face.

And then it killed the show and I put my glasses and we carried on.

I got back to the studio and Mike Mansfield had put an extra bottle of champagne in for me saying sorry about that.

But I sort of understood it because I knew sort of what Tony was going through and then bless him up.

At the end of Refringe, years later, he came up to me, gave me a hug and said, I'm really sorry about that.

I was not in the best of places.

And he, you know, I think Tony Statter was really, really funny and talented.

And it didn't really bother me in the least, but gosh.

And we did maybe 32 shows or possibly 16 shows in about two weeks, three a day at least, and it paid the deposit on my house.

Oh, lovely.

So that was the reason I moved into TV.

And I carried on being a doctor.

I'm unusual as a TV doctor or a comedy doctor is that most of them give up the day job.

You're Harry Hills and Adam Kay.

They realize you can actually learn a lot more money taking the piss than working in the NHS.

But I always needed the material and I liked being a doctor.

But the money you could earn was, you know, when I trained as a doctor we would work 80 hours a week, no, 120 hours a week and for 80 of those we get £1.27 an hour.

And then I got a gig doing the hospital doctor of the year with Tony and they paid us about £1,000 for 15 minutes.

So we earned far more money taking the piss out of the NHS than working in it.

So we weren't stupid.

We carried on being doctors or Tony did for a while as well and took the money for the performing.

But as I recall from Have I Got News For You, it only ever paid about £1,500 quid.

It wasn't huge money.

It was like exposure.

But of all the stuff I've done, Countdown has got me more recognition, usually from women of a certain age in garden centres.

I love you on Countdown, Dr.

Fowler.

And then, having done the Heaven and Earth Show, I got asked to write a sitcom, which I wasn't in, but with Nigel Smith, who's quite a well-known comedy writer at the time, called Doctors and Nurses.

It was based on two orthopedic surgeons on the Isle of Wight.

It was initially going to start with Nicholas Lindhurst, and then he looked at the script and said he thought it was a bit dark.

And so, Ed Edmondson, Griffreys Jones did the read through, and then they didn't want Griff, they wanted Ed Edmondson.

And so, the first ever script I wrote for the BBC became a primetime BBC One comedy.

That's incredible.

And the reason you haven't heard of it, is it came up against Shameless on Channel 4, which was sort of reinventing the wheel on how to do stuff, and ours was a studio-based comedy.

And then my co-writer, Nigel, bless him, phoned me up.

We just got this big thing, it was so exciting, this is going to be our big break, phoned me up saying, I've lost sensation down half the side of my tongue.

What do you think that could be?

And his story, because he's written a book saying, the book's called I Should Be Dead or Why Am I Still Here or something, I said, you're fucked.

I can't remember what it is.

Losing sensation on half your tongue, that's fucking, that's your brain stem.

And he'd had a massive, I can talk about this, he's written a book about it, a massive brain stem demyelination.

So that's like multiple sclerosis, but instead of taking out little bits of your brain, he took out his brain stem.

Boom, within six hours of him phoning me, he's on intensive care being ventilated, comes out of it being tube fed, can't speak, and we've got the sitcom to write.

So if you look at Doctors and Nurses, and it was a Colton co-production for BBC, I'm really proud of it.

When you think about what the fuck we went through, and I really wanted it to continue because, you know, Nigel's livelihood was, he's got kids and all the rest of it.

So that, yeah, and when I look back on it, it's got some, you know, it's two orthopedic surgeons on the Isle of Wight, and it's not quite right, because we're trying to do a little bit of yes minister for medicine, but we're also using AIDS slapstick skills.

So it's a bit of slapstick plus a bit of that.

Yeah.

So what year was that?

Around about 2001, and it's been played on aeroplanes.

I know that because I saw it flying.

But I think it needs to be rediscovered.

Doctors and Nurses starring Aid Edmondson.

I'll check it out.

You can go to Netflix.

Near Siles was on there.

I don't know where it is.

I don't even know if you can find it, but can you?

I'll put a link.

Yeah, just see if you can find Doctors and Nurses because that's the forgotten treasure.

I was in it briefly.

I did a brief cameo appearance, but I wrote it with Nigel and I wish it had gone on further.

I think it could have done it.

It was slightly brutal in those days.

It's all about ratings.

It had just switched to that.

In the old days, you'd allow only fools and horses to bed in over three series or something.

These days, if you didn't hit it, and Shameless was so new and innovative, and it just looked a bit old school.

And they do cancel shows now even that are successful.

And we don't even know what the ratings are for things because they're streaming.

No, I wasn't bitter about that, but there you go.

I'm going to ask you a couple of format questions.

What's your favourite jingle?

Oh, God.

I think I'm going to say Steve Wright only because I really miss him, and I think he was slightly misunderstood.

Just had loads of stupid, inventive Mr.

Angry and all those stupid characters he did with his posse.

But I mean that, and Kenny Everett, I was also at his ear.

Kenny Everett, yeah, I like that.

I was watching that, like, I don't know.

The best possible taste, yeah.

All those people who put a shift in, and probably paid for it with their health, anyone, yeah.

Okay, so that links quite well to this, and let's ask you this one.

What's the funniest thing you ever saw on TV?

I think when Tony and I were doing Struggle for a Die, we really liked French and Saunders.

The silliness of French and Saunders is a double act, and they would say, all we can basically do is what we find funny.

And if you don't find it funny, well, that's it.

And obviously, because Dawn Shape at the time was funny, she would skeet around the fact.

But I just liked the unbridled silliness of them.

And obviously, Aidan Rick, I really liked as well.

Do you like the slapstick or the parody or all of it?

A bit of both.

A bit of both.

I mean, I liked a bit of politics too.

I like Yes, Minister.

I've always done a bit more comedy with a message.

So when we did Struggle for a Die, I did slightly more serious political stuff.

And Tony was a very funny and gifted comedy actor and left.

And then alas, we did the main stage at the Gilded Balloon at Edinburgh, which is the biggest thing we've ever done.

And during the run, we got a review that said, what makes this double act soar above the ordinary is the genuine comic talent of Dr.

Tony Gardner.

Tony, bless him, might be doing some fucking diatribe about how the NHS is like a supermarket.

And Tony would walk across the back and say, sorry, Phil, so interesting.

But have you read this review?

He did about five times in one show.

Tony has made me laugh on stage more than anything else.

And he was in the thick of it and stuff.

And he's playing.

He's got a funny face.

The great thing about Tony is he's been a pointless answer three times.

He's done stuff with Armstrong and Miller, and he thinks Xander's got it in for him.

But Tony's been in loads of stuff, the thick of it, Last Tango and Halifax, etc.

And you can't quite remember him.

Lead Balloon is the way out.

Lead Balloon with Jack Dee, all of that stuff.

But that's what's so exciting is that Struggle and Die are coming back.

We've got a commission.

It's only for Radio 4, but we may get on television.

We haven't worked together for 25 years.

And it's called Doctor on Hold.

And it's basically about someone trying to get to their GP.

So we figured if it's 28 minutes, we're going to have 27 minutes of ringtone.

And then we only have to write one minute of script.

Because we're quite lazy.

That would be great, wouldn't it?

People will say, that's really modern.

You should do things like the Tub of Lime and Have I Got News For You sort of thing.

I remember when Harry Hill started, and of all the medical comedians, I particularly admire Harry because he appeals to such a huge audience.

He gets blue collar workers and stuff and kids.

And I think that's genius, whereas I do slightly arsy middle class political stuff.

But I saw Harry up at Edinburgh the first time he was up here, because we were sort of contemporaries.

Some people just wouldn't get any of it at all.

He'd say, what's one of these upside down one of those?

He'd do his badger stuff.

And the more, the worse it got, the more surreal he would get, as if he was just out to punish himself.

And I always thought, you know, the fewer people laugh, the more I laugh.

That's why I was, yeah, I just, yeah, I think Harry and I love, if you haven't heard him reading out his memoir, that's a joy.

I think he probably went through a bit of a grim patch during COVID, as all comedians do.

But he told a lovely story of volunteering for the COVID frontline, even though he hadn't worked in the hospital for ages.

And this woman hadn't got a clue who Harry Hill was, or Matthew Hill.

All she said was, where's your last work?

And he said, respiratory.

She said, you're starting on Tuesday.

Well, for 30 odd years.

Is there any sort of induction?

No, no, no, you'll be fine.

I think he found a way to talk his way out of it, but I think he felt guilty as if he should.

Yeah, yeah.

And then he realized, actually, that's stupid, because medicine's probably changed a lot in the last 30 years.

Imagine going to the doctor and it's Harry Hill with his big collar.

I still think one of the funniest jokes I've ever heard is Harry Hill, and it's really short.

It's like he says something like, I had a quattroformaggio the other day.

Bit cheesy.

It's so stupid, but it's so funny.

I know.

Just stuff like that.

Well, that's going down the Tim Vyn route as well, isn't it?

But to me, that is...

Luke Longford, this is another thing.

He's a Welsh comedian, and I've stolen his joke, but I credit him.

And he told this joke that really made me laugh about, and it's a bit rude, but it's about, if a woman is performing oral sex on a man and he establishes eye contact, it's intensely erotic.

But if it's the opposite of a man trying to establish eye contact with a woman during oral sex, it looks like a little boy peeping over the hedge and asking for his football bag.

And that's the joke.

I'm still roaring with that.

It just really, really made me laugh.

So there you go.

Anyway, he's in Australia.

I've stolen his gag, but I'm crediting him with it.

Well, thank you, Phil, for coming on to Television Times.

We talked about a lot of politics and a lot of stuff today.

Thank you for coming on.

Good.

That was me talking to Dr.

Phil Hammond back in the summer up in Edinburgh.

It was good fun.

I liked talking to him.

He's full of information, and I think you'll agree he was a fantastic guest for Television Times.

Check out his website for tour dates, and look at all his stuff online.

He's just a really funny guy.

He'll probably pop up on the panel shows, and check out Private Eye as well.

Now to today's outro track.

Today's outro track is a bit of a complicated one.

It's from the album We Are Animals, which I recorded in Japan in 2006.

It's called The Third Virus.

I wrote three songs around a virus, perfectly apt for our Dr.

Phil episode.

Now, this is sort of a bit weird because it's in 2006, but it takes a kind of anti-vaxxers view of SARS and what the next disease might be in a few years and all the sort of weird online stuff around it.

So it might be a little bit ahead of the curve, being from 2006 and talking about sort of, you know, conspiratorial thoughts around vaccines.

Although I should point out these are not my views.

Yeah, you know, this was a devil's advocate sort of situation.

But hey, we won't fire off wherever you would this song.

So here we go.

This is from 2006.

This is called The Third Virus.

Well, we might not know exactly which virus causes SARS, but we're pretty sure that a virus is to blame for the outbreak.

That was the third virus from the album We Are Animals, which will be remastered at some point.

I've been talking about it for a while, haven't I?

Anyway, that was it for this week.

I hope you enjoyed my chat with Phil Hammond, and come back soon for another episode of Television Times.

Thanks for listening, and bye for now.

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