Helping out our heroes

CELEBRITIES ON THE NHS FRONTLINE BBC1, 9pm

FOUR celebs don scrubs and latex gloves to get first-hand experience of life on the frontline of our hugely stretched NHS service.

And it’s an eye-opening experience for both them and us.

Part of the 70th anniversary programming, ex-politician Ann Widdecombe, medical broadcaster Dr Michael Mosley, TV reporter Stacey Dooley and Paralympic gold medallist Jonnie Peacock step through the swinging doors of King’s College Hospital, one of London’s biggest and busiest, for one week.

For Jonnie, who lost his right leg as a result of meningitis aged five, it will be a chance to see what goes on inside an operating room.

“The NHS saved my life, it’s as simple as that,” he says. But working as a theatre support staffer while the doctors perform brain surgery on a little boy will be a testing experience.

Michael, who trained as a doctor in the 80s but then left for the BBC, says: “I always felt bad for leaving the NHS and wondered what my parallel life would have been.”

He is put to work in the resuscitation department in A&E, where one kindly nurse informs him: “No, there isn’t time for tea, dear.”

Stacey, who has reported on medicine around the world, becomes a healthcare assistant on the liver unit, where decisions are made about who gets a transplant.

And Ann, who used to be the Shadow Secretary for Health, gets to work with the A&E nurses.

This is a revealing insight into the dedication seen in an NHS that is on its knees.

MEDICS FOR A WEEK Jonnie and Stacey