Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Cambridge professor and leading virus hunter who set up COGUK to sequence COVID-19 genomes.
On the island
Eight records
Well, my first disc is Tracy Chapman Fast Car. Now what she says in this is that she wants a ticket to anywhere and I had a feeling I could be somebody when I was sixteen.
This song is deeply spiritual, if you like, very moving to me and it actually helps me to pause, breathe and think and reflect.
Time Has Told MeFavourite
for my husband, Peter. It says, Time has told me you're a rare, rare find.
When I went to medical school in Southampton, my husband and I had to live apart… every weekend I would cram my work in Monday to Friday, and on the weekend I drove back to Brighton to see him.
Take a Bow is about politicians taking responsibility for the choices they made.
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge
My youngest daughter trained as a junior chorister at Saint Catherine's College in Cambridge, and I'd go and listen to her service every week… this is one of her favorites.
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
the tubular bells reminds me of the virus, the very clear note that it sounds. And then that's surrounded by phrenetic activity of the orchestra, and that's what happened during the pandemic.
It kind of holds the prospect of peace, harmony and joy.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:17Why did you want to keep your story to yourself before now?
I felt slightly awkward about it, I suppose. I also think you have to feel comfortable with yourself before you start to talk about where you came from and who you were in your earlier years. You have to develop that confidence, I think, to be able to talk about the fact that you did work in a corner shop and you did fail the 11 Plus. I've reached that level of confidence now.
Presenter asks
4:56Was that a source of regret for her?
She never talked about it, but I suspect it was, because she really wanted to be a nurse and she didn't get that opportunity.
Presenter asks
6:12What were you not supposed to do? Where were the restrictions?
Well, you would have to dress in a certain way, so you'd have to wear you wouldn't be able to wear trousers. You couldn't go to the cinema.
Presenter asks
11:07The keepsakes
The book
The Oxford Textbook of Medicine
This was a book that I would have read a lot in my junior doctor years. There's a sort of four-volume tome and I want to read that and rediscover all the things that have been developed in medicine since I qualified. The great thing is if anyone rescues me from this island, then I'll be even more qualified to be a doctor.
The luxury
a projector and a collection of family photos and videos
I had to take my life's collections of photos and videos, preferably in a kind of an immersive experience, because I'd never be alone.
So how did you move on? How did you extricate yourself from that friendship group in the end?
It was a chance meeting with my husband. So we'd been together for forty seven years and we were at a disco. It was called Cinderella's… He was in many ways my saving grace.
Presenter asks
17:23Did you ever think of giving up?
No. Never. You're right that I tried twice to apply to medical school, including through clearing, and nobody wanted to offer me a place. But my husband said to me, Why don't you just ring up the University of Your Choice, which was Southampton, because they ran a mature student programme and asked them why you can't go there. And they said, Well, okay, come along, and you can meet the admissions tutor called David Wilton. And that's what I did. I toddled along and I chatted to him. I told him I was passionate about doing medicine, and I'm still in contact with David actually, and I guess he saw something in me that meant he would take a chance on me 'cause he was definitely taking a chance.
Presenter asks
26:46How did you feel about the criticism?
When you read that about yourself, it's always going to be a shock. However, I thought it was completely unjustified. In September, we saw that there were five alpha genomes. Out of 16,000 genomes that we generated, that's 0.03%. And there were 200 other variants all circulating at the same time. By October, alpha was 0.28%, with 200 variants circling. So there's no reason why we would see something at such low prevalence in October. A variant will ring an alarm bell when it starts to behave differently, so looking at the genome is meaningless. You can only interpret a variant's genetic construction, if you like, once you see how it's behaving in people.
“I had a feeling I could be somebody when I was sixteen.”
“We were a generation of wasted talent.”
“He was in many ways my saving grace.”
“I am just so proud of everything we achieved.”
“I'm on this planet to make a difference, however small or big.”
“It has to be Time Has Told Me by Nick Drake because it reminds me of my husband, and if he's not going to be there, I might as well imagine he's there.”