Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Surgeon and pioneer in organ transplants; president of the Royal College of Surgeons.
On the island
Eight records
When the Saints Go Marching In
Graeme Bell and His Australian Jazz Band
Well the first one takes me back to university days and it's Graham Bell and his ragtime band, which was an Australian Dixieland band which we thought was the greatest in the world, but I'm sure it was a fairly parochial band, but we used to love this and listen time and time again dancing. It was a almost a university hymn.
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467Favourite
Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic
Well, I'd like uh Mozart's piano concerto in C major. That uh reminds me of my mother, who was a good pianist and used to play this a lot. It would r remind me of her, because uh she had to handle me also when she came out of hospital and uh get me back into shape, which she did.
Yes, during the war my brother and I spent a large part of the war in my family farm run by my maiden aunts because the men were off at the war and there was a large prisoner of war camp with Italian prisoners of war and they were all working on farms in the area and we had three Italian prisoners of war on our farm. Of course they all sang Lilli Malane, and they taught us to sing Lilli Malane in Italian. And in fact I could sing it in Italian as a child, and that's why I'd like to hear it again in Italian.
Here I'd like to hear Joan Bays sing We Shall Overcome because in the Stay I was in Boston for over three years at in the s late sixties, mid sixties when uh civil rights activity was big and Joan Bays was everybody's heroine.
Che gelida manina (from La bohème)
Well, I'd like to hear Rodolpho singing the little tiny hand is frozen from the first act of La Bohaime. It's one of my favourite operas, one I've seen it a lot, but also I saw it on one magical night at the Sydney Opera House. We had dinner looking out over the Sydney Harbour Bridge beforehand and then had La Bohaim after and the whole evening was one very special occasion.
Serenade No. 13 in G major, K. 525 "Eine kleine Nachtmusik"
New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein
Well, I'd like to hear Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which is a lovely melody.
Well, I'd uh like to hear uh Radimus singing Celeste Aida and if possible Jose Carreras sing this as I had the pleasure of hearing him sing this in Barcelona accompanied by a piano where he gave a concert at a transplant congress about four or five years ago.
When I'd like to hear Schubert's Ave Maria, preferably sung by a boys soprano
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:27Do you remember your first transplant operation at Oxford?
Well, I do indeed. It was january the twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five, and Two kidneys became available from a donor who had died in the Oxford region and the family very graciously gave permission for the kidneys to be retrieved. And the first patient was Geoffrey Slade and we transplanted him, I think it was about 10 o'clock on that night, and then went on to do the second patient, Ella Newey, after midnight … And they were both successful, yes. In fact, Alan Newy is still alive and well today with that same kidney transplant.
Presenter asks
6:25What caused you to suddenly switch from studying engineering to medicine?
A friend of my mother's, who I was very close to, died. She'd had an intracerebral hemorrhage, and I then started reading a little bit about neurosurgery and Suddenly decided I want to change to medicine. Well you won't believe it now, or at least the young people today wouldn't, but I went up to the university with my mother to see the registrar. And I can remember we were sitting down in the office and my mother said, my son wants to change to medicine. Cut a long story short, we walked out half an hour later and I was enrolled for medicine.
Presenter asks
7:30How did [your father's death] happen?
I think the exam results from school had just come out and I'd topped the class and so he was taking us all out to a movie as a celebration and then he got chest pain during the show and went outside and just said he had indigestion. Then he didn't come back so we went out and he was lying on the floor and an ambulance was called and of course in those days he was just taken home in the ambulance and the local doctor came and administered morphine. That was all they could do. Of course today he would have been rushed into a cardiac centre and probably survived, I would imagine, because he was only forty nine at that stage.
The keepsakes
The book
Patrick O'Brian
The reason I'd like to take them is you can read them over and over again. [Aubrey]'s the sea captain, [Maturin] is the physician-surgeon, and the portrayal of medicine and surgery in the Napoleonic Wars is extremely accurate and absolutely fascinating. I keep learning things, and I might even learn how to build a ship and sail off the desert island.
The luxury
I've decided I'd select a set of golf clubs, as long as you allow me to take some golf balls, because if it's an island I could construct a golf course round the island, and I could certainly keep myself pretty active and probably become the world's greatest sand player.
Presenter asks
9:31How did you cope with [the deaths of your father and brother in one short year]?
Very well, in fact, and I was put into boarding school at Xavier College, a Jesuit college, and they were just marvellous to me because I was very rebellious. I rejected everything, I rejected God, I just must have been the most difficult child, and yet they coped with all this in a marvellous way, and I came through it.
Presenter asks
27:26How much have things changed since you filed your 1999 report on the shortage of transplant surgeons?
Well, I think Quite a bit not as much as we would have liked. One of the major problems is the lack of transplant surgeons. You're working more often than not out of hours rather than in hours and This is no longer attractive to the young surgeon who … [is] not financially recompensed for enough for that … And there's going to have to be some rationalisation in provision of transplant services.
“I think the trust between a patient and their surgeon and vice versa is a very important part of practice.”
“One thing it did when I recovered from it or made me [was] much more compassionate about people and their problems. I think it stood me in good stead as a practising doctor.”
“I think we do have to be far more transparent with the public. I mean, as has existed in the States for quite a few years now.”