My dad always told me that ‘laughter was the best medicine’ which is why, when I was six, I nearly died of diphtheria.
Me: Dad, I can’t breathe!
Him: OK son, knock knock…’
Me: Er, who’s there?
Him: Dunnup.
Me: Dad, please can I have some antibiotics?
If that didn’t work, my mum would say, ‘Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!’
Me: I’ve already got something to cry about! I’ve fallen off the shed and my head hurts.
Her: I’ll kiss it better.
Me: I’ve got a fractured skull and there’s blood coming out of my ears. Take me to hospital!
Back then though hospitals made you better, they were clean and efficient with motivated staff. Now many are dirty, and dogged by incompetence. When I left the NHS, I was a chief biomedical scientist so I wonder who’s doing that work now? Hopefully, not the lab aide who until two months earlier had been a greengrocer. The lab aide who, when asked to weigh out 23.8g of sodium metabisulphate, later shouted from the balance room, ‘It’s slightly over, will that do?’ No it won’t, and take it out of the fucking punnet!

I read recently that the £50bn invested in the NHS a year ago has resulted in no improvement in patient care. And do you know how the government proposes to address the obesity issue? Apart from sending the parents of fat kids a letter telling them that their kid is fat (Genius! Like they’ve not noticed!), they’re going to provide dancing lessons on the NHS. They’re going to teach fat people how to dance! Teach them how to fucking walk first. I’m sick of getting run over by a female Jabba the Hutt on a shopmobility racing between Greggs and Poundland. (I say ‘female’ because it had a scrunchie, leggings, feet like a griffin and a T-shirt with ‘Guess’ on it. Dunno love. Thyroid problem? Greedy cow?) But face facts – the only way you’re going to get a fat dobber on the dancefloor is by announcing: ‘The buffet is open’.

This hopeless government’s strategy of spin and gimmickry seems to be based around TV programmes. I’m surprised that Bill Oddie’s not been appointed Bird Flu Tsar or they haven’t got Barry Scott in the hospitals to sort out the MRSA crisis: ‘BANG and the germs have gone!’

The government announced that waiting lists in A&E are getting shorter but I reckon it’s because people turn up, take a look at the queues and say, ‘Fuck this! I’ll go round to my mum’s and get her to kiss it better.’