NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE WEEK

Undoctored

(Trapeze, £22; ebook £10.99) More cutting humour and humbling stories in the writer and comedian Adam Kay’s follow-up memoir to This Is Going To Hurt. This one looks at life since he hung up his scrubs, his nightmares and PTSD, his struggles pursuing a comedy and writing career, interspersed with flashbacks to childhood, medic moments and hugely personal events in his life. An eating disorder, the loss of an unborn child and a violent sexual assault are among his most traumatic memories. But his survival mechanism has always been humour and he creates light out of the darkness with hilarious anecdotes of a sperm bank, the passing of a painful bladder stone and how he rid himself of a social media stalker.

There’s anger too, at former health secretary Jeremy Hunt who he accuses of being supremely out of touch with NHS staff, and at Matt Hancock and the government’s inaction when Covid struck.

It feels more angry than his first book but it’s just as heartrending.