Lee Mack. DAME EMMA THOMPSON

Lee Mack

You Can Leave Your Hat On

‘Is it socially acceptable to leave your hat on when someone is sticking their finger up your bum?’ is a question all of us never ask ourselves on a daily basis. But it’s a question I once had to ask on a visit to an NHS doctor.

This story starts many years ago when I was in the ITV Christmas panto with One Foot in the Grave’s Richard Wilson. We were having drinks in the pub after rehearsal and I noticed that every time it was Richard’s turn to go to the bar he would put a baseball cap on his head. Then, when he returned, he would take it off. He explained that the wearing of a hat was extremely effective for anonymity and the difference between people shouting his catchphrase at him and not. I told him I didn’t believe it. He didn’t laugh.

Cut to many years later and I had now started appearing more on television myself, so I too had started getting recognised. Although I sometimes wonder if they were mixing me up with someone who had the catchphrase, ‘How on earth do you get away with it, you chancer?’

Now, to be clear, my attitude towards being recognised has always been, on the whole, that it’s perfectly fine. Occasionally it can be a pain in the arse (we’ll be getting to the NHS doctor bit in a moment), especially when, for the fiftieth time that week, somebody says, ‘I thought you didn’t go out,’ which is obviously a comment about my sitcom Not Going Out. In fact, if in 2006 I could have magically predicted the coronavirus lockdown fourteen years later and the following torrent of online jokes, perhaps I’d never have called my sitcom Not Going Out in the first place.

Because I don’t consider myself household famous like, say, Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell or Dennis Nilsen, being recognised is not so regular an occurrence that I have strong feelings about it either way, but there are definitely times I want my anonymity. And for some reason, a hat is the most effective way of achieving that. I think it’s something to do with changing the shape of your face. Or perhaps it’s more to do with the fact that people are saying, ‘A man wearing a fez in Tesco is very odd, so keep your distance, kids.’

And one of the times that sort of anonymity is important is when you’re having your first prostate examination with an NHS doctor.

I was going to see the doctor about an altogether different matter, although I can’t remember what that was. And I honestly can’t remember. I don’t mean I do remember but I don’t want to tell you because it’s embarrassing. Because of course, I am a stand-up comedian. And, as we all know, stand-up comedians would happily get erectile dysfunction if it meant they had something new to talk about at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Although I guess erectile dysfunction would be quite an ironic subject for stand-up.

I was about to turn fifty and I kept being told that is the age when you need to ask the doctor to stick his finger up your bum and check for anything dodgy. They are not the exact words you use, and it is usually him that asks you, so probably best you don’t walk in to the GP’s surgery and quote that verbatim. At the very least, say hello first.

So, I had decided that, while visiting the doctor for something that definitely wasn’t erectile dysfunction, I was going to bring up the subject of the prostate exam.

Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room is a perfect example of what I would class as ‘anonymity important’. The thought of other people thinking, ‘Oh, it’s that bloke from Eight Out of Ten Ways to Mock the Week. I wonder what he’s here for? I bet it’s a rash. Or erectile dysfunction.’ Have I perhaps mentioned erectile dysfunction too many times? Doth the lady protest too much? To be clear, I absolutely one hundred per cent promise I am not a lady with erectile dysfunction.

I had to wait quite a time in that waiting room. The clue’s in the name, I guess. During this time, I started having the most intense internal debate in my head about what would happen once in the room with the doctor. What if the doctor said, ‘I’ll do the prostate examination right now’? I was nervous; I’d never had one before. And I would like to pretend that I am the kind of mature person who thinks, ‘It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This is an important thing to do.’ But I’m not that person. I am a person so incredibly immature that I have actually made a living out of it. So instead I got into a right tizz about the whole thing.

And during this tizz (I have literally never used the word ‘tizz’ in my life and I have now just used it three times in two sentences. I think it might be PTSD brought on by reliving the incident), I decided that, once in the room with the doctor, it was probably best that I leave my hat on in case the prostate examination happened. It seemed to make sense to me. If Richard Wilson felt it appropriate to keep his hat on to stay anonymous when buying a drink, then surely it was fair enough to keep my anonymity when somebody I have never met has a part of his anatomy in mine.

But then the social etiquette pendulum started swinging massively. For anonymity reasons, the one time you definitely want to keep your hat on is when someone has his finger up your bum, but it can also be argued that the one time you should definitely take your hat off is when someone has his finger up your bum. If social etiquette forces you to remove your hat in a place of worship, then surely those rules apply to a prostate exam. I mean remove your hat, I don’t mean you should never have a prostate exam in a place of worship. Although you shouldn’t.

I knew in my heart of hearts it wasn’t a debate. Surely the right thing to do was ‘hat off’. Especially given it wasn’t a baseball cap, which is a bit of headwear you see people wearing all the time. Mine was more of a fedora shape. And if you don’t know your hats, then imagine a 1950s detective about to solve a case. Now imagine him with his trousers round his ankles and someone putting their finger up his bum.

Of course, there was no guarantee that the hat would work. What if he did recognise me? That is then surely ten times worse. I imagined him sitting with his family over dinner saying, ‘I had that bloke in today from Eight Out of Ten Ways to Mock the Week.’ ‘Oh yeah, what was he like?’ ‘He asked for a prostate examination and guess what? He left his bloody hat on!’ ‘Wanker. I’ve never liked him.’

So, what did I do? Well, I’m afraid this story ends rather flatly. I did decide I would keep my hat on, but the prostate examination never happened. Well, not on that day anyway. When it did happen, to avoid the same internal debate, I decided not wear a hat at all.

Which I know was the right thing to do, but also a bit of a shame. One of my comedy heroes is Stan Laurel. Part of me wanted to learn that thing that he used to be able to do, which was to make his hat rise up in the air slightly, seemingly on its own. If I could have done that at the exact moment the doctor’s finger went in, it would have been my greatest comedic achievement ever.

See, I told you I was immature.

DAME EMMA THOMPSON

This is a memory of an NHS experience that I will never forget. It was the middle of the night and suddenly the light was on and my eighty-five-year-old mother, who suffers from Parkinson’s, was standing in the doorway of our bedroom in her nightie, which was on back to front.

‘Oh God,’ I thought. ‘She’s died and has come to tell me herself.’

Which would have been typical and hard enough but no, she spoke. ‘Gaia’s in hospital,’ she said.

Gaia, our daughter, was eighteen at the time.

Greg, my husband, who has the aural capacity of an anxious bat, leapt from the bed – naked – to grab his clothes. My mother shrieked at the sight of his flailing gonads approaching at speed. I too leapt from the bed and fell over my clothes, bashing my head on the wardrobe door, which I had ill-advisedly left open. It was suddenly a scene from a Brian Rix farce but performed in an experimental style by French actors.

We put my mum, still trembling, back to bed and drove at an illegal speed to the Whittington Hospital in Archway, London. The A&E was quiet, no one was screaming and there was no blood on the floor. Our daughter was sitting in bed surrounded by five girls all laughing like drains. She informed us with great brio and apparently no pain that she had slipped over at a friend’s party and opened her head on a sharp bit of tile.

The junior doctor in charge was very young and very kind. Gaia told me that when she arrived, brought in by my friend whose son’s party was still in progress, the doctor had – very apologetically – asked if it was all right if he just quickly went to eat something as he was too hungry to concentrate. But by the time we had arrived, he was back from swallowing a sandwich – and very quick to do what was necessary.

He injected Gaia with a local anaesthetic and allowed me to hold the pieces of skin together while he stitched her up. Gaia was immensely cheerful – probably owing to the alcohol that had led to the fall in the first place. I’ll never forget that doctor – his kindness, his patient care and, most of all, his infinite fatigue. I thought, this is all wrong. People doing this kind of vital work shouldn’t have to be at it so long that they get this tired and too overworked to eat. Why do we do this to our doctors and our nurses?

In the A&E there was also a man of about fifty who too had hurt his head. He was very anxious about his mother – he was her principal carer and had no one to turn to in his hour of need. We offered to help but there was nothing we could do, he said. He just needed to get treatment and get back to her as soon as he could. There would certainly be no one but the NHS to look after him.

You’ve heard of The Untouchables. You’ve heard of The Expendables. That doctor, that hurt carer, belong to The Indispensables. Right now it is no exaggeration to say that they are the only ones standing between us and complete calamity. Who else, doing what job and in what capacity, can make that claim?

Four weeks into lockdown and I’ve listened daily to the stories of heroism and sacrifice and unimaginable loss that occur every moment of every day and every night within the NHS – and in hospices and care homes and ordinary homes. I marvel at the courage; I weep for the losses and I know that after this we will never be the same again. At least, I hope we won’t. I hope we will realise what is important: not profit but people. I hope that every priority we have had to accept as ‘normal’ changes and that we find our way towards a society that cares first and foremost about its indispensable workers.

First of all, let’s stop pretending that there’s no need to pay them generously because caring professions are ‘vocational’.

We can clap and we can whoop and holler our gratitude from the rooftops, and we should, and we do – but after this we all have to insist that whatever government is in place takes immediate action to recognise The Indispensables by raising their wages. By listening to what has been and is being learned, and what we now know is essential to have in place for the next time this happens – which, the science seems to suggest, is inevitable.

Our NHS was created after a great crisis – a world war. After this crisis must come a great and deep reckoning: who and what do we really value and how do we protect, nurture and support them.

⇐ Предыдущая 1 2 345 6 7 8 9 10 Следующая ⇒