Interview: Dr Phil Hammond

Dr Phil Hammond is a writer, broadcaster, campaigner and comedian – and an NHS doctor in Bath. He has been Private Eye’s medical correspondent for over 20 years and has appeared on a slew of TV panel and quiz shows. Dr Phil’s latest stand-up show, Games to Play with Your Doctor, takes audiences on an incredible journey of political stupidity into the NHS ‘reforms’. “One of the most entertainingly subversive people on the planet,” praised The Guardian.

As a practising doctor you’ll have your opinions on current policy towards the NHS. Does this show get political?
Politics, like healthcare, is about the compassionate and responsible use of power. The NHS is inherently political, even more so because it is funded out of central taxation.
So yes, my show is political – but I would rather nail my testicles to the table than listen to party politicians manufacturing simplistic and adversarial debates about the NHS. We need them to grow up and collaborate to create a better health service based on compassion, openness and scientific evidence. The challenges of living longer, social isolation and dementia need the best minds working together. It should transcend party politics, but sadly it doesn’t.
Hence my very sore, punctured testicles.

“Effortlessly suave and delightfully vulgar,” said one reviewer. A fair summation of your stand-up style?
I’ve become a little less vulgar and more thoughtful over time, but I sometimes forget that what’s normal to a doctor may be a little anatomical for audiences. I’m also half Australian, and I find the British don’t always talk about what matters most. Mental health, sexual health and a gentle death aren’t talked about nearly enough in polite society – but they are in my show. The secret of health is a dog, a job and a nob. And then a lie-down afterwards.

You’ll have seen the NHS change substantially during your 30 years in the profession. What do you think of these changes?
In the 30 years since I first walked onto an NHS ward, I’ve lived through 15 major political reorganisations, all based on ideology rather than evidence, and none bedded in long enough to prove if they worked before a rival party gets in and rips them up again. I think the Health and Social Care Act 2012 is the biggest threat to the NHS yet, because it encourages the outsourcing of vital clinical services to the private sector. One thing I’ve learned in 23 years writing for Private Eye is that outsourcing is very rarely the answer to anything, and often a costly disaster (eg the PFI debts the NHS is now saddled with).
Outsourcing also fragments and splits up the service, makes it very profit focused and it diverts precious resources and power to shareholders. And if a private company can’t make a profit it can up sticks and leave a massive hole in the NHS. On the plus side, life expectancy has increased year-on-year in the last 30 years, down to improvements in lifestyle as well as the NHS. When the health service was founded in 1948, half of us died before the age of 65. Now one in three of us live to 100, and many of us live for 50 years or more with diseases that would previously have killed us. That’s why the NHS needs more money year-on-year. It’s become a victim of its own success.

Is there conflict or synergy between your various roles – doctor, journalist, comedian, campaigner…?
It’s all the same material, but the timing is different. My work for Private Eye – exposing the appalling treatment of NHS whistle-blowers – is the hardest thing I do, because you have to get your facts right or you get sued. Being a doctor relies on evidence too, but comedians can lie for laughs if the truth isn’t quite funny enough. And if an audience doesn’t laugh at a joke, I can pretend I was trying to be serious.
Oddly, though, I feel more held to account as a comedian than as a doctor. A doctor can be fairly dodgy and still have a waiting room full of patients, but a comedian who doesn’t make people laugh won’t get bums on seats.

Medicine must be a rich subject for comedy – but it’s serious stuff too. Have you ever wondered, ‘Can I really say that on stage?’
Medicine makes great comedy because all of life is there, and the best comedy unites us and makes us think. However, as a doctor you can’t tell stories about your own patients without their consent. The sharing of tips, tactics, love, laughter and support has been the biggest change in the NHS since I qualified. It’s a great source of material for me, but more importantly patients and carers are now leading a ‘bidet’ revolution in health care – from the bottom up.
Stuff the politicians – the NHS is ours and we can make it better.

Dr Phil Hammond appears at the Factory Theatre on Tuesday, May 26 (SOLD OUT) and Stand Up for Slapstick at Colston Hall on Thursday, June 11 alongside Sarah Millican, Al Murray, Harry Hill, Omid Djalili and Pippa Evans. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.colstonhall.org/shows/stand-up-4-slapstick/