‘You can’t be a SUPERHERO when you’re HUMAN’
Adam Kay reminisces about his Spidey onesie and leaving medicine for comedy writing
‘Gallows humour was a coping mechanism’
Iwas very keen on my Spiderman outfit aged seven. It wasn’t the first time I’d been photographed as a superhero because, thanks to a friend of Mum’s, I’d also appeared as Batman in the children’s party section of a Jane Asher cookbook.
I was the eldest of four so I got the new toys first. I remember creating lots of Duplo and Lego spaceships and rockets, which I would throw downstairs, hoping to see them fly, but of course, they just damaged the banisters and the paintwork.
My father was a GP: subliminal messages about becoming a doctor began as a toddler when I played with specimen pots and syringes in the bath. We all thought it was completely normal to have medical journals littered all over the house, showing gangrenous genitalia, as well as antique medical equipment on the shelves. No surprise that three of us followed Dad into the medical profession.
I’ve always enjoyed writing. Early on, a teacher told me good stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end, which was excellent advice I’ve never forgotten. I was one of those annoying model children at secondary school, compliant, hardworking, excelling in all areas. Despite enjoying English, drama and music, I dropped them all at A level in favour of sciences. There was one moment when I suggested I might like music as a career. Raising her eyebrows, Mum said, ‘What are you going to be, a saxophone teacher?’ Case closed.
When I was accepted to medical school, a doctor friend of Dad’s told me, ‘I can’t wait for you to rebel. It will be enormous.’ At that time, I had no idea what he meant. I said goodbye to home, my family and the cat, and was soon in the dissection room every Friday, carving up cadavers like Christmas turkeys.
At 18, the sudden responsibility was like accidentally shifting the car into reverse when you’re doing 70mph on the M1. Like many other students, I used gallows humour as a coping mechanism. I’d learnt that from Dad who, when we cut ourselves as kids, would cheerfully say, ‘Don’t worry, there’s not much jam.’
There was so much
I loved about being a doctor, specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology, but I wasn’t equipped with the emotional armour to cope with being so close to the ‘bleeding edge’ of medicine, dealing with stillborn, premature and sick babies. There’s no emergency that calls for a stand-up comedian, but nonetheless, in 2010,
I left to become a comedy writer. It was an almost unprecedented move, and if the odds stacked against me weren’t quite as high as winning the lottery, they were certainly scratch-card level.
At first, I spent a lot of time failing to make people laugh at venues near motorways. When my first book, This Is Going to Hurt, based on the diaries I’d kept about my experiences in the NHS, became a bestseller, I was as surprised as anyone. The BBC adaptation, shown earlier this year, reached an audience of eight million people at its peak. Viewers fell in love with the character Shruti, who tragically took her own life, and many medics were amazed she wasn’t a real junior doctor, such is the brilliance of Ambika Mod’s acting.
I’ve another book out now, which pleases Mum. She’s more of a reader than a viewer, and I know she’s privately proud of me.
Thirty-five years on, I believe that boy in the Spidey onesie would be thrilled by the way his life turned out. He just needed to learn that it’s impossible to be a superhero when you’re a human and, if your costume doesn’t fit you properly, it’s up to you to change it.
✢ Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran out of Patients by Adam Kay (£22, HB, Trapeze) is out now.