Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Intensive care medicine professor known for pioneering genetic research into the ACE fitness gene.
On the island
Eight records
There is a particular story that goes with this in that I was looking after a patient who'd been ventilated for several years and hadn't ever got out of a hospital bed. And I was phoned up by a colleague to say that there were tickets available for Stones concert. And we smuggled him out of the hospital and took him to the Stones gig.
The Man with the Child in His Eyes
It makes me feel melancholy and sad, comfortingly sad.
It's a song about some one dying. It speaks to me because of this issue of of mortality that I've been so aware of.
I can remember listening to it in a mountaineering expedition at Pumori. And I remember both those occasions thinking, you know, life really gets no better than this.
It's an upbeat song. If I'm stuck on a desert island, I'm going to need to manipulate my emotions with music, 'cause music really is just a drug for me that I use to change the way I feel.
I've been to endless numbers of their concerts. It's fabulous music from extraordinarily talented musicians, and it's opera.
The Things We've Handed DownFavourite
it's called The Things We've Handed Down, it's about legacy, a father's view... of looking at the baby and wondering what they'll be... it makes me think of all of those things on my own children.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:11How long is an ultramarathon?
I'm not quite sure what the technical definition is, but um the first race I ran was um a hundred kilometers, and I've done a few at a hundred, which is whatever it is, fifty six, fifty eight miles.
Presenter asks
7:06What is your opinion of the NHS right now, especially A&E and ICU units?
Well the first thing I should say is that I am and remain an enormous fan of the NHS. I think it's so easy to criticise it and inside it I see the flaws too. But if you compare it to pretty much any health system in the world it is extraordinary. I think it's got to be rethought. … In my view, cutting the chase, we must maintain those services, but we're going to have to go to investing in prevention. That's public health. It's not sexy, but it's really important.
Presenter asks
10:15Tell me more about your father.
So he was raised in a poor part of Northern Ireland. His father was a ship's captain, and he and his brother both studied medicine, and he became a paediatrician. And I suppose if I was to put one word to my father, it would be integrity. He was a compassionate, hard working, absolutely honest man, but without that sort of puritanical streak that you might suspect I would apply. He was a warm man with a deep sense of commitment and really an extraordinary clinical ability.
The keepsakes
The book
it's the best book on survival that I know of, and it's a practical manual of how to do it. And as I've said before, I'm very impractical. So I'm going to need a bit of wisdom there about how to look after myself.
The luxury
I can look at the marine life, it'll open up a completely new world for me. It will give me some sport as my recreation, and if I get lucky I'll even get to eat the odd fish.
Presenter asks
13:32How young were you when you first became aware of mortality?
I can remember one instance, and I guess I must have been eight or nine. and I remember we were in a car on a family holiday in Brittany, and I remember suddenly it hitting me, and almost panicking, to think all of this will come to an end. I can remember it in exquisite detail, exactly where we were and what the view was, and there was nothing that I can think of that would provoke the thought.
Presenter asks
17:28What sort of hours were you working as a junior doctor?
Well, to answer in reverse order, I I loved my junior medical life. … At its most, one-in-one, so on duty continuously 24 hours a day, seven days a week with no days off or holiday. Some jobs like that, others which could readily be 120 or 130-hour weeks. … It sounds a bit strange to say they were glorious days, but they were. I think we forget that that generated a team spirit. … I was able to establish relationships with patients. I'd admit them, I'd look after them all the way through, and I'd see them die or leave. And that's so enriching.
Presenter asks
28:40What are the things you enjoy doing most as a family?
Well isn't it glorious? I mean I enjoy doing the things that my children enjoy doing and of course because you know because of their upbringing of the genes, strangely enough a lot of the things they like to do are things I like to do. Oh wonderful. So yes they're both very physically active. They're both passionate about wildlife. They'll walk as far as you want to walk in the worst of weathers. We holiday in a small island off the west coast of Ireland. … It's isolated. It's got a house with no water, gas or electricity. But the key thing is there's no one else there. And so from the age of eight my elder son has been spearfishing to catch the food. And building the fires to cook the fish on, and it's those things I enjoy enormously.
“We smuggled him out of the hospital and took him to the Stones gig in the days when there weren't even portable ventilators.”
“I remember he walked across the car park to pick up a crisp packet that was on the ground. And I said to him, Dad, but what do you do that for? And I remember him stopping me, and it was clearly something he wanted to learn. And he said, uh some there's nothing too small for a truly big man.”
“I went up to her and I drew the curtains and I said, You are allowed to die, and you don't have to do this for me and she stopped breathing there and then, at that moment, and I don't believe that was coincidence.”
“I did a course in particle physics a few years ago and reminded myself that I'm an absolutely useless mathematician and conceptual physician. I have no idea. I got to the end of it and really I'm not sure I knew much more than I started. But then the next year I did a course in closed magic which was much more fun.”
“We holiday in a small island off the west coast of Ireland. … It's isolated. It's got a house with no water, gas or electricity. But the key thing is there's no one else there. And so from the age of eight my elder son has been spearfishing to catch the food.”