A funny way to treat patients

THESE days I often seem to come late to the party. Not that I get asked to many parties. Not since, thanks to a misprint on the invitation, I turned-up at a toga party wearing a goat.

I only recently heard that since January, the NHS is requesting GPS to send selected patients on a six-week comedy course.

A pilot scheme was launched in Bristol, designed to help patients with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress to “see the funny side of their predicament”.

I had to be physically restrained from making any comment about that. The comedy courses are being held at Bristol University, which has a ‘comedian-in-residence’.

Of course it has!

You don’t need a degree to guess that a university comedian-in-residence wouldn’t be an individual who spent years fighting for laughs in noisy social clubs with beer-stained carpets and beer-filled customers.

Especially when they proclaim that “We are all natural comedians” – which I don’t think is necessarily true.

I’ve encountered many people sadly lacking a sense of humour.

Why they tend to congregate at my gigs is something I can’t explain!

The comedian-in-residence also says that after people have completed the six-week comedy writing and performance course they feel six inches taller.

Which is a bit of a stretch.

See what I did there?

I honestly think this course is a bit risky because stand-up comedy is not for anyone already feeling anxious and stressed.

Being a comedian creates its own anxieties and stresses.

If you come off stage having failed to engage with an audience, your selfesteem takes a right old battering.

That said, I sincerely hope each patient who takes the course finds it beneficial.

I’ll finish with a medical joke. A surgeon tells a patient on whom he’d operated that it went well and he can go home. The surgeon then whispers, “You see that beautiful nurse over there? She’s invited me to dinner tonight and wants me to go back to her flat afterwards for champagne and nibbles.”

The patient replies, “That’s very nice. But why are you telling me?”

And the surgeon says, “I’m telling everyone!”