Adam Kay

Speaker 30:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the writer Adam Kaye. In 2017, his memoir This Is Going to Hurt, Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, became a literary sensation. It was a Sunday Times' number one bestseller for over a year, won the Book of the Year Prize at the National Book Awards and has sold over 3 million copies. The story of his life on the wards was hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, often in the space of a single page. It was adapted for television as a BBC series that won four BAFTAs earlier this year, including his award for Best Drama Writer, which he dedicated to junior doctors.

Presenter1:21

He was born in Brighton, where his father was a GP who encouraged him to study medicine. After several years as a hospital doctor, everything changed when a catastrophic incident in surgery led to him leaving his vocation. To help him make sense of what had happened, he turned to the diaries he'd been keeping since he became a medic. He says, It was going up to my hospital on call room and writing down the silly things, the disgusting things, the funny things. I didn't really know this was why I was doing it, but in retrospect it's totally clear. I was looking for the shards of light among the dark. Adam Kay, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Adam Kay1:57

Thanks for having me.

Presenter1:59

So tell me about the the adrenaline rush of performing live, because you have done many sold out shows and tours. I mean, a live appearance going on in one kind of theatre. Is there a comparison to the kind of adrenaline rush that you would get scrubbing up to go into surgical theater? Obviously, lives aren't at stake.

Adam Kay2:16

Well, that's the thing. That's the thing. Being a doctor totally ruins your barometer for what you get excited, or scared, or anything about. I never get scared going on stage because what's the worst that can happen? Everyone asks for a refund, or they throw things at me, or boo constantly for an hour. Ultimately, none of that matters. It's like people say at work, you know, no one's gonna die. But they're not. But in my old job, they would, and it would be my fault if they did.

Presenter2:49

You're also sharing your music with us today, of course, and music has a quite important place in your life. I think you're a talented musician yourself. You play the piano, saxophone, trombone and harpsichord, presumably not all at once. What does music bring to your life?

Adam Kay3:03

It uses up a hundred percent of my processing power. So I'm not good enough that I can just play it and at the same time be thinking of what we need to get from Sainsbury's. As long as I'm murdering Chopin, then I can't think of I can't think of anything else.

Presenter3:18

Well, on that note, I think we'd better get stuck into your desert island discs, Adam. Tell us about your first.

Adam Kay3:24

This is Chopsticks by Liberace.

Adam Kay3:28

I was forced to play the piano. If you want to be a doctor, you have to have all these things, none of which seem to relate to whether you'll be a good doctor, but one of them is all these extra curricular interests.

Presenter3:42

So this is your parents forcing you to learn piano so that it'll look good when you're applying to go to medical school.

Adam Kay3:47

Yes, it's one of the, you know, so good, tick, he played the piano. Tick, it's just part of the... The checklist. It's part of the checklist. And so I learnt the piano and I loved the piano and I discovered Liberace. In retrospect, I associated with him more than I realised at the time, but I loved the idea that you could be sort of virtuoso and it wasn't just serious stuff.

Presenter5:13

Chopsticks, performed by Libberarchie. So, Adam Kaye, let's go back to your growing up then. Your father, Stuart, was a GP and I think it was a given, wasn't it, that you'd end up in the family business?

Adam Kay5:25

I think so. Parents want the best for their kids and for him, who adored his job and was good at his job and didn't have a bad word to say about his job, that was the best that could happen for me, was to be a doctor. And for all of you, right? Because there you're one of four. One of four. And our degrees were medicine, medicine, law, medicine.

Presenter5:41

And for all of you.

Presenter5:48

Right.

Adam Kay5:48

And also Jewish immigrant family, you know, even though a couple of generations down, that mentality of the inverted commas acceptable career. You know, you're a doctor, a lawyer, an architect. So unless I came up

Adam Kay6:05

With an objective plan B, that was my default setting.

Presenter6:10

Did you ever start to think about a plan B? Did you ever float other possibilities for yourself?

Adam Kay6:14

Yeah, it occurred to me that I might rather do this stuff that I was only doing to get into medical school than do medicine itself. And I floated this at one point to my mum and I said that maybe I wanted to do music instead and be a pianist. And she said with no malice whatsoever and it wasn't loaded, it was just she was just being practical. And she said, and be what, a music teacher. And I thought, yes. But what she was saying was, I might be the best at the piano in my year at school, but I'm definitely never going to be in Carnegie Hall giving Liberace a run for his money. Again, wanting the best for your children is the best that they can theoretically achieve.

Adam Kay7:02

Yeah.

Presenter7:02

The pictures that I've seen of you, you look quite pensive.

Adam Kay7:05

Yeah, yeah. You don't look like a happy kid often.

Adam Kay7:10

I think I had a lot going on. I was happy in lots and lots of ways, but at the same time I was ma I was living in the wrong household.

Presenter7:21

I think we'd better have some more music, Adam. Tell me about your next choice.

Adam Kay7:25

So this is Misshapes by Pulp. Jarvis's lyrics. He's the poet laureate of Outsiders. Even though in lots of ways

Adam Kay7:36

I wasn't who he was talking about. I was the girl in common people rather than the boy in lots of ways. But it really, really spoke to me. It was the sound of my GCSEs. Here's the only autograph I've got from a celebrity. At university, I was in the Tate Modern and I bumped into him and I was like, can you sign my...

Adam Kay7:59

Oyster card and he did.

Adam Kay8:04

Raised and out of broken viscous hell Oh we don't look the same as you

Adam Kay8:11

A week.

Speaker 18:11

Don't do the things you do, but we live round here too, oh really Miss Shapes, mistakes Suits fair.

Speaker 18:20

We'd like to go to town, but we can't risk it all Cause they just wanna keep us out

Speaker 18:27

Could end them with a slack in the mouth.

Presenter8:31

Pulp and Miss Shapes. Adam Kaye, you've written over the years about coming to terms with your sexuality. When did you first think you might be gay?

Adam Kay8:39

It hadn't occurred to me, but it occurred to someone else.

Adam Kay8:44

There was a guy when I was in the the third year, so as was then called to when I was thirteen, who ran a lending library of printed pornography.

Adam Kay8:58

No one had the internet, but his dad's computer had the internet and he printed off all these mucky stories. And he said, um, you're gay, right? And I sort of like blustered and didn't quite say anything. But there was no judgment. He just wanted to make sure that I was going to be a good repeat customer and I'd be given the the the the niche of printed material that that I wanted.

Speaker 19:15

Uh

Presenter9:15

The charge's going to be

Presenter9:21

You said that it hadn't occurred to you until he said it. Uh

Adam Kay9:24

I mean I was aware that when other people were saying about how this person was hot or whatever, were they? Could I see it? Maybe it's just something like whiskey that you have to learn to like over time. I didn't know.

Presenter9:40

But was it a bit of a light bulb moment then? It was a light. It was a lulbula. He saw you. He got you. He just said it. It was.

Adam Kay9:42

It was a lot.

Adam Kay9:45

It was a light bulb. I don't know exactly what I said, but I ended up with a story about an Australian trucker. So.

Presenter9:53

I know the value of what I said. Sure, got it.

Adam Kay9:54

I know the vibe of what they said, yeah.

Adam Kay9:56

But he didn't care, he was running a business. Did you come out to your parents? A couple of times. In fact, one time, someone came out on my behalf by accident. I did these medical school reviews, and once a year, there was this competition, and I was performing a skit at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London. It was packed out, and I'd mentioned it to my parents. I didn't know that they were coming. And I was introduced on stage by my friend then and now, Mike Wozniak, in a loving way, as everyone's favourite gay Jew, Adam Kaye.

Adam Kay10:38

He didn't know my parents were there. He didn't know I wasn't out to my parents at the time. But they found out at that point. But then I was in a relationship with a a woman. And so I don't know what they were meant to think. Did they talk you about it? Not particularly. We're not a very talky family.

Presenter10:56

Let's make some time for the music. It's your third choice today. What have you gone for?

Adam Kay11:01

I've gone for Chopin's waltz in E minor performed by Vladimir Ashkenazi. I relearnt the piano over lockdown, and this was a piece I played for my music scholarship to school, which was when I was like twelve, thirteen.

Adam Kay11:21

And I found the same book that I had of my Chopin waltzes and I turned to it and I couldn't play it. And it's so depressing to be worse at something now than when you're a teenager. I still can't play it as well as I used to, but it's an amazing piece of music.

Presenter12:43

Chopin's Waltz No. fourteen in E minor, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazi. Adam Kaye, in nineteen ninety eight you started studying medicine at Imperial College in London. How did you take to student life?

Adam Kay12:57

I didn't have lots of mates and so I sat on my own. I did a lot of sitting on my own. And I lied to my parents about how much fun I was having because everything had led up to this moment and I would be a disappointment if I wasn't having a a great time. But certainly initially I wasn't. And things changed and now some of my very closest friends are people I trained with at uh a medical school.

Presenter13:25

So how did you start to find your feet? What happened?

Adam Kay13:28

Someone scooped me up. It was a man called Mike Schachter, who was a lecturer, I think, in clinical pharmacology. And he plomped down next to me when I was sitting on my own, having a limp sandwich of some description and asked me if I was alright. And then talked to me about the fact that the medical school put on some shows.

Adam Kay13:54

four nights of a production of a musical and then on the final night they put on a medical school review.

Adam Kay14:04

It meant that I met some like minded people and some other people who were a bit subversive or looked at life in a way that I thought only I did, but turns out other people in these thousand plus people in this medical school thought.

Adam Kay14:23

And I belonged.

Presenter14:26

And Mike had helped you find that. Did you keep in touch with him after you graduated?

Adam Kay14:31

On and off.

Adam Kay14:32

And then increasingly off.

Adam Kay14:36

He rocked up at a a big show I performed at. I go on tour and do book signings. So this was just this was just pre-COVID. What did you say to him? Did you talk? We talked until someone down further down the book signing queue said someone, there's a queue here. And then the talk stopped and then

Speaker 114:57

No, so I sorry.

Adam Kay15:00

I promised I'd keep in touch and then we did email, but I'm a very bad correspondent and I work in the media. We say let's do lunch the whole time and that doesn't mean the lunch ever happens. And I'm very sad that that was the last time I saw him because I found out that Mike had died on his 70th birthday. If you look at the strange graph of my career trajectory, he was probably one of the most important corners of that graph. And it would seem that for the person, the only person who was looking out for me, and I know from after his death, he was doing the same for dozens, hundreds of other people who talk about him scooping them up. No one was looking after him. And I know what I didn't say to him at that time, which was thank you, because I don't think at that point I'd perhaps processed the role he played in my life.

Presenter16:09

I think we'd better have some more music, Adam.

Adam Kay16:11

Is

Presenter16:12

What's disc number four?

Adam Kay16:14

Sit down your rock in the boat. Guys and Dolls was one of the musicals that I was musical director of as a medical student. Sit down, your rock in the boat could in a way be medicine's slogan. You're not meant to put your head up too high. I was once told that the way to succeed in medicine is to be quiet and mediocre. Sit down, your rock in the boat.

Adam Kay16:41

I dreamed last night I got on the boat to heaven, and by some chance I had brought my dice along, and there I stood, and I hollered, someone fade me, but the passengers they knew right from wrong for the people said, sit down.

Speaker 317:01

Sit down here rocking a boat.

Speaker 117:04

People are sexy now

Speaker 317:04

People have said, sit down, sit down, you rocket of bull.

Speaker 117:05

Sit down!

Speaker 317:07

And the devil will drag you under by the sharp lapel of your checkered coat. Sit down, sit down.

Presenter17:12

Sit Down Your Rock in the Boat from the musical Guys and Dolls, composed by Frank Lesser and performed by Stubby Kay and the original Broadway cast. Adam Kaye, by your third year at medical school you developed an eating disorder. I think it started after you'd spent the night with someone. What was the trigger exactly?

Adam Kay17:30

The next morning he told me that I wasn't bad for a big lad. It had never occurred to me that I was a big lad. I was just

Adam Kay17:44

I basically didn't take in any calories for the best part of a year. Basically chewing food and spitting it out. That involved an awful lot of lying, why I wouldn't be going out for dinner, because that's obviously something I can only do in my my bedroom. I was spitting food into a into a big black bin.

Adam Kay18:10

After a year I got rumbled because someone did come into my room and then found this, you know, litres and litres and litres of chewed up crisps and whatever and I mean

Adam Kay18:26

And made me promise that I would get help. Did you?

Adam Kay18:32

No, because I thought that if I got help I mean I've had help since, but at the time I didn't. I thought that if I spoke to someone about it, then by the time the door had closed behind me afterwards someone would have told the head of the medical school, the secretary of state for health, the chief executive of the hospital, that whoever I would never get.

Speaker 118:51

Get a job.

Adam Kay18:54

I think a lot of doctors, not that I was a doctor then, but a lot of doctors don't get help because they're afraid that

Adam Kay19:01

It will somehow end their careers.

Presenter19:05

Adam, in your twenties you also married a woman you call H. What were your hopes for your future life together?

Adam Kay19:12

I think I got married for the right reasons. I wanted it to last forever and um for potentially more reasons than many people who get married and it doesn't work, it it didn't work.

Presenter19:28

You'd qualified as a junior doctor by then. Why did you decide to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology?

Adam Kay19:35

Labour ward is magical. The privilege of playing that role in a mum's life, in a family's life, never goes away.

Presenter19:43

Never.

Presenter19:45

You and your wife experienced a pregnancy loss during that time an awful tragedy to go through for both of you, but your grief must have been compounded by working on a labor ward. I just

Adam Kay19:56

Did you keep going?

Adam Kay19:57

I don't think I asked for help. I just wondered if I might step away from being around pregnant people for so much. You know, I also worked on in gynecology theatres and infertility clinics and things like that. And

Adam Kay20:12

The answer I got I think was worse than being told no. So I said, you know, do you think we could reconfigure the the rotor a bit? And this boss said, really? Which was like just compounded my fears that I shouldn't be thinking in those terms. I'm like, oh no no no no, I mean not not for me, I mean I think I'll be fine and then and then stiff upper lip, stiff drink off you march.

Presenter20:39

And that was it.

Adam Kay20:39

That was it.

Presenter20:41

Adam, it's time to go to the music. Your next choice will be your fifth. What are you taking with you to the island next?

Adam Kay20:47

Can I take M and M and Doctor Dre singing Forgot About Dre peace?

Presenter20:51

Sure can. Why?

Adam Kay20:53

Coming back from these shifts, which they might have been 12 hours on the rotor, but they were very rarely 12 hours on the clock, and you'd be exhausted and you wouldn't have necessarily had time to sit down for, you know, to go to the bathroom, let alone sit down for a bite to eat. And you're exhausted and you're covered in blood. And this was one of the songs on the Keeping Me Awake playlist. Put the window down, put this up loud and sing along with every single word to stay awake long enough to still be alive when I got back home.

Speaker 121:27

Y'all better listen up closely. All you said that I turn pop on the firm flop. Y'all are the reason that Dre ain't been getting no sleep. So f y'all, all of y'all. If y'all don't like me, y'all are gonna keep around with me and turn me back to the old me. Nowadays, everybody wanna talk like they got something to say. But nothing comes out when they move their lips. Just a bunch of gibberish em. That's like they forgot about Dre. Nowadays, everybody wanna talk like they got something to say. But nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish em. That like they forgot about Dre. So what are you saying to somebody you hate?

Presenter21:58

Forgot about Dre, M and Doctor Dre. Adam Kaye, by 2010 you'd become a senior registrar and you were called in to carry out an emergency cesarean.

Presenter22:08

This turned out to be a huge turning point for you. What happened that day?

Adam Kay22:13

I was the most senior doctor.

Adam Kay22:15

Working on the ward. It was me and someone who was more junior to me.

Adam Kay22:22

And

Adam Kay22:25

She started the operation, I was assisting and there was a condition called placenta previa, which means the placenta is too low, and it should have been picked up on scans and for whatever reason hadn't been. And I took over the operation and delivered the baby, and the baby was clearly dead. And then the uterus wouldn't stop bleeding.

Adam Kay22:54

And um I was doing my best and called in my consultant. She called in another consultant um who uh made the decision to perform a hysterectomy. Twelve litres of blood or something had been lost.

Speaker 323:10

Uh

Adam Kay23:11

Points and

Adam Kay23:13

All you ever want is a healthy mum and a healthy baby and this patient went off to intensive care and I'd ended up with neither.

Adam Kay23:23

And my friends who had known what had happened.

Adam Kay23:27

Would

Adam Kay23:28

Reminds me that in order to make me feel better, they'd remind me I hadn't done anything wrong.

Adam Kay23:33

And anyone in that situation would have done the same thing and had the same outcome. I couldn't have known, and this and that.

Adam Kay23:41

And they would tell me that every five or six years, if you're the most senior obstetrician on the ward, you will have some kind of big disaster. And it's not about how good you are or how much training you've got. It's just the horrible nature of the beast.

Adam Kay23:57

That made me feel worse, not better, because it made me realize that I couldn't face that kind of thing ever happening to me ever again, let alone twice a decade. And so I

Speaker 124:04

Yeah.

Presenter24:04

Netlo

Adam Kay24:08

Stepped away.

Adam Kay24:10

From Madison.

Presenter24:12

You weren't negligent. There was nothing you you could have done differently.

Presenter24:16

What was your state of mind during that time?

Adam Kay24:18

I was profoundly affected by that moment, to the extent that I would wake up.

Adam Kay24:24

in the middle of the night back in that operating theatre, and I'd be in a cold sweat with my heart going however many hundred beats a minute, and it stopped happening when I um started talking about it. And then incrementally the nightmare stopped.

Presenter24:44

It's time for your sixth piece of music, Adam Kaye. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it to the island with you?

Adam Kay24:50

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park by Tom Lehrer.

Adam Kay24:54

I'd been working for about five years on a modern reimagining of the Tom Lehrer song book.

Adam Kay25:04

As it happened, I took this up to Edinburgh and I think almost every single person who came to the show was over 70. It sold out, but we lost money because of all concessions. But my producer had found two venues and said, actually, have you got a second show in you? Because then you might lose slightly less money and then these are two great rooms at great times. And around the time of the previous junior doctor strike, talking to James, my then boyfriend, now husband, he was like, why don't you talk about medicine?

Adam Kay25:40

And so for two reasons. One, because he is the greatest comedy songwriter of all time, and secondly, because I owe him a huge, a huge vote of thanks for his role in the success I've had, Tom Lara.

Adam Kay25:56

All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon when we're poisoning pigeons in the park. Every Sunday you'll see my sweetheart and me as we poison the pigeons in the park. When they see us coming, the birdies all try and hide. But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide. The sun's shining bright, everything seems alright, when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

Presenter26:28

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, Tom Lehrer. Adam Kaye, when you first started working on the book,

Presenter26:35

Did you have any qualms about revealing too much and about revealing too much about what was happening behind the scenes in the hospital?

Adam Kay26:43

There are a couple of things. There's the legal side of things. Obviously, you can't identify...

Adam Kay26:49

The legal read on the first draft of the book was about the same length as the actual book. Second side of things was the worry about will this put people off medicine. I've had, you know, since the book came out, various angry messages from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles saying my son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandchild used to want to be a doctor and then they read your book and now they don't. What have you got to say about that? And the answer, I'm afraid, is good because if that book is going to put you off medicine, then medicine is really going to put you off medicine.

Presenter27:31

Can I ask about one further question to that? I mean, what about putting people off medics? Because there have been people, Adam, who've criticized you for not having enough sympathy for your patients. I wonder how you respond to that.

Adam Kay27:47

I think I was a a caring doctor. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that what the diaries I present are are the funny edit, which is often when the funny, weird, strange thing happens, because that's where the interesting story is. I hope I haven't put people off seeing their doctors. I hope I've made people think differently about their doctors and the stuff that those people are going through.

Presenter28:26

Adam, it's time for your next disc. What are we going to hear?

Adam Kay28:30

A Lady of a Certain Age by The Wonderful Divine Comedy.

Adam Kay28:36

The thing with Neil Hannan's writing is so much of it is poetry. And the other thing about this song, which is similar to Tom Lehrer, I guess, and similar to Jarvis Cocker, a lot of this writing is tragic comic, which is I guess what I write myself and I guess a lot of what life actually is.

Adam Kay29:02

Back in the day you had been part of the smart set

Speaker 129:08

Good holiday with kings, dined out with starlits, from London to New York

Adam Kay29:14

York Capfetta to Caprice In perfume by Chanel and clothes by Givenchy You Sipped camparis with David and Peter Adoles parties by Lake Geneva

Presenter29:34

The Divine Comedy and A Lady of a Certain Age. Adam Kay, in 2018, you married your husband James. Tell me about your family life today.

Adam Kay29:43

We have a very boring life. Well we did until six months ago.

Adam Kay29:49

Now, and this isn't something that I've spoken about before, there is no calm whatsoever because we've got two very young babies, Ruby, who's six months, and Ziggy, who's two months. I don't need to explain the way that having kids changes your life, but it's absolutely transformed it for the better and also ruined it.

Presenter30:20

Spoken like a true father. Congratulations. I'm delighted for you. So they're just a few months apart.

Adam Kay30:24

Yeah.

Adam Kay30:27

A few months apart, born through surrogacy in the States. Ruby's pregnancy was a difficult pregnancy and we were going to be out in the States a month before the due date. And then we were at the theatre watching Tammy Faye, the first half of which was great and I can't comment about the second half because we had the phone call which said I'm on my way to hospital, I think you need to

Adam Kay30:56

Get here. James got there on the only seat of the only possible flight and made it in time for Ruby's birth. And I didn't. And I think, you know, so many of my thoughts are about how to be a good father and how to get it right and how to be there. And I've I started off very, very, very badly by missing it. And I... So I was obviously on a flight shortly afterwards. I'd gone via a toy shop just so I had a Teddy to say, I'm sorry, here's your Teddy. I'm sorry, I missed the first bit. Obviously, she can't remember it. But I was holding it together and I put my earphones on to take me out of it and I put Tom Waits on shuffle.

Adam Kay31:49

And I burst into tears at the first track that played and I didn't stop crying until the plane landed in Washington DC and I think there was so much going on in my head and all of this life of medicine and life of obstetrics leading up to this moment that I missed and then I I met her and you know.

Adam Kay32:15

And I fell in love with her obviously as as we're programmed to do and um she had a tricky start and she's she's doing well now.

Presenter32:24

She's doing well.

Adam Kay32:24

As is her brother, who we were there, so we were not going to let that happen again.

Adam Kay32:33

There was not a chance we were going to miss that.

Presenter32:36

And what are your hopes, I wonder, for these two little people who've come into your life?

Adam Kay32:42

I'm obviously going to mess it up, but I think if I can somehow not project onto them, if I can let them describe their own route through life, and if they're as happy as they can be and as healthy as they can be, then hopefully they will forgive me all the other mistakes I make on the way.

Presenter33:06

Adam Kaye, would you mind introducing your final piece of music? I think we've heard about it, so we really want to be able to do it.

Adam Kay33:11

I think it's it's a very easy one to introduce.

Adam Kay33:14

This is Tom Waits and San Diego Serenade.

Adam Kay33:18

The first track that played on Shuffle when I asked Tom Waits to calm me down on the flight and he he badly let me down with this one. It's a beautiful, beautiful uh song and again, it's a piece of poetry.

Speaker 333:34

Never saw the morning till I stayed up all night.

Speaker 333:43

Never saw the sun shine Till you turned out the light

Speaker 333:52

Never saw my hometown

Speaker 333:55

Till I stayed away too long

Speaker 334:02

Never heard the melody

Presenter34:04

San Diego Serenade by Tom Waits. So, Adam Kay, I'm about to send you to the island. What are your expectations about life there? How do you think you'll get on?

Adam Kay34:15

I mean I've got a two-month-old child. I'm going to get some sleep. Let's look for the positives here.

Presenter34:19

Let's look for the positives here.

Presenter34:21

And I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other book. What will it be?

Adam Kay34:26

I'm going to take the York notes for the complete works of Shakespeare because this makes me very uncultured, but I never quite know what's going on in Shakespeare. Any time I've gone to a new one, I'm having to look up the synopsis on Wikipedia halfway through. So I dare say he's very good at his job and knows what he's doing. This is a great book for me to have, but I'd love to know what's going on. Got it, you can have it. What about a luxury item?

Adam Kay34:55

Can I take a diary, please? I write in my diary every day, and first degree relatives aside, I think that would be the thing that I miss the most if I didn't have.

Presenter35:05

I love that you call them first degree relatives. It's so medical. Just in a second. Yes, of course you can. The diary is yours. And finally, which one track of the eight would you rush to save if you had to?

Adam Kay35:16

Just because of how it found its way into my life, it has to be Tom Waits and San Diego Serenade.

Presenter35:23

Adam Kaye, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Adam Kay35:26

Thank you.

Presenter35:41

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Adam. I'm sure we'll get some sleep on the island at last. We've cast away many medics, including David Knott, Henry Marsh, Waheed Arion and Dame Sally Davis.

Presenter35:54

Pulp's own Jarvis Cocker is in our back catalogue too. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the writer, Kate Moss. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 336:25

Along with COVID-19 came the rise of the conspiracy theory movement in the UK.

Adam Kay36:30

The system's rotten at the core. It should be deleted.

Speaker 336:33

I'm Marianna Spring. In my new series I'll be exposing how radical some people in the movement have become and how alternative media is fueling them.

Adam Kay36:42

So many crazy stories have been spread so far and wide that it's hard to see this ending well.

Speaker 336:48

Marianna in Conspiracy Land on BBC Radio 4, available now on BBC Sounds.