In short
Dr. Adam Kay (BAFTA winner) talks about parenthood and reproductive technology, arguing he can’t be his kids’ doctor because he has to be their dad; he also shares NHS-labor-ward stories that became his comedy writing.
Guests
Adam Kay is the sole guest. Background: former UK doctor (Labour Ward; senior registrar), comedian and writer; author of This Is Going to Hurt; later turned diaries into stage/show work and podcasts; dad of two.
Key claims
- He can’t treat his children: “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” and he won’t answer medical questions with certainty—he pushes them to the GP.
- He missed his daughter Ruby’s birth due to travel logistics after waters broke prematurely in the US.
- IVF/surrogacy is normalized now, but gay couples still face limited NHS IVF access.
Notable examples
- IVF sperm sample room: a broken remote and a gay porn video playing during his “20 minutes.”
- “Kinder surprise” proposal story ends with a hospital retrieval in a cubicle.
- Parenting fails: kids repeat “manners, safety and kindness” but one swaps it to “money, safety and kindness,” and Ziggy sings “rum… bum.”
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOSurprising Thoughts on Family and Identity
0:45 to 2:15
Adam shares his realization about family and discusses his personal journey.
“This episode is brought to you by Redfin.”
Weekend Reflections and Parenting Fails
6:10 to 8:45
Hosts discuss their weekends, parenting challenges, and humorous anecdotes.
“I did yell at, I wound down the window and kind of yelled at a parking warden.”
Driving and Road Rage Tales
8:45 to 11:40
A discussion on road rage experiences and the dynamics of driving.
“Please welcome the one and only Adam Kay.”
Adam Kay's Surrogacy Experience
11:40 to 14:01
Adam shares insights about his children's births through surrogacy.
“You sort of get a bit, I mean, you get a bit, you learn how feeding works and nappies work and sleeping works on one.”
Missing a Birth
15:46 to 17:19
Listen to a humorous story about missing a child's birth.
“Number one, obviously we weren't going to find out what happened at the end of Tammy Faye.”
Reproductive Technology Insights
17:21 to 17:40
Explore the challenges and experiences of IVF from a father's perspective.
“And then he had a totally uncomplicated delivery on pretty much the due date.”
The IVF Experience
17:41 to 19:06
An in-depth look into the IVF process and its emotional aspects.
“And there's no reason to think that it won't be.”
Navigating IVF Clinics
19:07 to 20:30
Insights on the IVF clinic experience and unexpected questions.
“And like, there was this, one of the things was, what do you want to happen to your frozen sperm in the event of your death?”
Awkward Moments in IVF
20:31 to 24:51
Listen to a funny and awkward encounter during an IVF procedure.
“So I turn it on and there's some gay d***y playing on the screen.”
Reflections on Being a Doctor and Parent
24:52 to 28:03
Discuss the challenges of being a doctor and a parent simultaneously.
“He's into this weird little and large fetish board and he's got terrible aim.”
Show all 20 chapters
The Decision to Leave Medicine
28:03 to 29:24
Adam Kay discusses his experiences in the labor wards and the moment that led him to step away from medicine.
“And I wasted on the wards and let me, let me, you know, write some books or whatever.”
From Doctor to Writer: A Journey
29:24 to 30:54
Adam reflects on his transition from a doctor to a writer and the unexpected success of his book.
“writing, you know, random episodes of random scripts of random shows.”
The Story Behind a Kinder Surprise Proposal
30:54 to 32:22
Adam shares a humorous and shocking story from his medical career involving a unique proposal gone wrong.
Unexpected Surprises in Medicine
32:22 to 33:32
The awkward yet hilarious moments surrounding a proposal involving a Kinder Surprise egg are detailed.
“which is something about a kinder surprise.”
Parenting Fails and Lessons
33:32 to 35:21
Adam discusses his parenting fails, including humorous anecdotes about his children's behavior.
“I don't know, but I should have been invited.”
Challenges of Parenting as a Doctor
35:21 to 39:56
The conversation shifts to the difficulties of being a parent, especially when balancing a medical career.
“Yeah, we have them in the house reasonably often.”
Navigating Medical Emergencies with Kids
39:56 to 42:07
Adam shares his perspective on handling medical emergencies with his children and the complexities involved.
“I mean, they're sort of like sick sick, like worrying sick.”
Navigating Childhood Illnesses: A Parent's Perspective
42:07 to 43:38
Learn about the challenges of parenting during childhood illnesses and the importance of vaccination.
Adam's Journey in Children's Literature
43:38 to 46:55
Discover Adam Kay's transition from medicine to writing engaging children's books.
“It could be something that never happens, never again.”
The Joy of Storytelling and Parenting
46:55 to 47:55
Explore the funny and heartfelt moments in parenting that inspire children's stories.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Coming up, Dr. Adam Kay. Hello, you wrote the phenomenal book, This Is Going To Hurt. You knocked off Michelle Obama's book from the Sunday Times bestseller, didn't you? You know Michelle Obama? Yeah. It's not that book. She's got nothing. Check this out, yeah. Realising that I was gay, I thought the option of having a family was something that was closed off. I find myself in this, like, on a wipe-clean, pleather couch in a room the size of a lift. Just me, moat control, and a tank. You can tell me if this is getting too disgusting. No, no, no. I want to hear. We want to hear about the Tommy tanks and how long you have.
0:38Like, this is fun.
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1:56New habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus rated PG. Right now you can get Disney Plus and Hulu for just$4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th. After three months plan auto-renews and$12.99 a month terms apply. Good morning. Good morning. How you doing, darling? I'm so good. I'm so positive today. Good. I feel like we've both got positive vibes. And it's Monday. I know. I know. Who would have thought? Now, I feel quite positive too. Why is this? Well, we both said that we had a chaotic but nice weekend.
2:32I had a lovely weekend. Yes, I do have a couple of fails that did happen, but generally a really lovely weekend. I took them to go and see Peppa Pig at the theatre. Oh, did you? Lovely. And Bradley and Logan were like, we're not going. I was like, sorry, you're seven and nine. You are. But it was lovely. But that's why I'm in such a great mood. Good. Nice weekend. Any fails? Well, I don't actually swear in front of my kids. so I actively will try really hard not to swear um because I don't I don't I hate to have that slip up where they go what does that word mean and I was I was driving the other day and a man uh cut in front of me oh yes and um I do that thing where it's like especially when I'm at I don't know if anyone else at the school gates or at the school car park I will drive in and smile and I was like go on then off you go that's it go on then you wanted that space anyway didn't you oh look at you and your nice car and then it's driving and I'll have some like 90s r &b classics on and think I'm an absolute I'm a gangster yeah and uh yeah this this guy just pulled out in front of me and I was just like oh do you know what I was like what yeah and as I said it Bradley and Logan were like what and it's like they heard every word they don't hear me when I say can you brush your teeth or put your shoes on oh no wait a second I say a little naughty word they heard it yeah and uh yeah I I said like four swear words in one sentence yes expose them to naughty words I mean we've honestly not alone a friend of mine was running recently and I didn't realize it was her and I was like oh here we go look she's not even gonna stop silly go on then and then I went to turn and did like an exaggerated stop of the car and I was like oh Amy and she like looked at me as if like our road where our school is they've actually blocked off that road you can't go down anymore there's cameras on it because there were so many cars and horns beeping it's crazy because there's a lot of like now a lot of streets where I live in Loughborough where they are they're designed for two cars and all of a sudden a nursery's built on that road and there's a school built at the end of the road and you've got people that now want to buy all those houses so you've got cars that are just permanently parked there and it's like should be a one-way street and um the amount of times when i've dropped the kids off at nursery i'm exhausted i haven't slept i'm late for work because the kids have been like kicking off or whatever and then there'll be somebody that won't let me go down the road and you're like just pull in and let me go past and it's it's i always find that my level of anger is heightened a thousand times when I'm in a car I wouldn't do that if I was walking no but you put me behind a wheel oh yeah I'm like my patience levels have dissolved they've just yeah and it's like don't come at me Steve yeah like reverse your car yeah or I'm gonna get cross like have you ever like got out of the car to have an argument with someone no I've never never gone that far but there was once a guy that made a comment to me um he was looking at me going come on just come down the road and I was like I can't fit my car down there it was like I didn't have a mini I had a slightly bigger car and he was like come on then come on then and I just stood there like I didn't stand there I was just in the car and I was really tempted just to put my hand and hold it on the horn so people around could see and I was in my head I was like should I just get out this car and I was like what is wrong with me and then as I as a guy reversed his car he was so angry with me and he goes you shouldn't be driving a big car if you can't drive so i gesticulated at him oh yeah and had the he did the old like like that and then drove off i've done i do lots of uh i kind of get like the uh i get really i feel like i i like to swear at people like the finger and then i need to drive it very fast away from them just in case they kept up with me do you do it like a ventriloquist so you're like go on like at the I'm so too late.
6:32I did yell at, I wound down the window and kind of yelled at a parking warden. And to be fair, they were only doing their job. But I got a ticket when I was parked outside the nursery and I was heavily pregnant. I was a bit like, oh, come on, man. Like I'm here for like three minutes. I'm heavily pregnant. And they gave me a parking ticket. And as I was driving off and I wound down the window, I was like, I don't know how you sleep at night. I was like, yes, yes. That made me feel better. There is like a battle of the sexes, I think, still when it comes to people on the road. I think whenever there's a female driver and like a man's driving, female drivers.
7:13And it's actually, well, you know, you kind of think, well, statistically, female drivers are the safest drivers. We even have our own insurance companies just for women because we are safer. Yeah. Like that is actually a known fact. You know, like someone does something annoying in a car and you like you have to look at that person when you drive past. Yeah. You stupid. I did it to the driver. And then I realized very quickly that it's a really good friend of mine at the nursery. And I had to like kind of undo it and kind of like turn my anger into like a. Never mind. You can take my parking space.
7:57so east is coming up yeah um what do you do with easter eggs do you do your kids get like an easter egg from every single member of the family yeah yeah like i used to get one easter egg that my mum would peel the foil off she'd take the pack of buttons out reseal it i would never know so i was 14 till i found out you got chocolate within an egg i just thought wow that buttons and like any brand of chocolate just put a picture of their chocolate on it yeah not realizing you've got it inside the box or she just take it out how did you find out i was 14 years old and i went to my friend's house and she opened a buttons easter egg and i was like oh my god i was like you've got buttons inside your egg and she was like yeah and i was like yeah but how come you've got them inside i've never seen is this limited edition and she was like no you always get a pack of buttons inside your eggs and i was like did you confront your mom were you just like how but you don't and i was like when i opened mine i've never had anything inside an egg and they were like oh is your mummy in them and i was like oh my god so i marched home and i was like mum have you been eating the jogger upside easter eggs and my mum absolutely howled she was laughing for about 10 minutes on the floor mid coronation street which she couldn't pause because it was like years ago yeah and uh she was howling she was like hannah i've been doing that for years and i was like you absolute cow bad oh my god yeah i know are you going to carry on the the tradition with your kids so i i sometimes i've been known to heat the kettle and then if you like heat the not be careful not to melt the chocolate but then you heat and you can take the the lid off really the the cardboard and then you can take the egg out and then if you really carefully open it then you slowly break the egg in half and then if you've got like little bits in put it into a little bowl do that with three or four easter eggs and you've got yourself a couple of treats I mean I'm not being funny but you know you could just buy an extra bag of sweets
9:59From the walls of the NHS to the pages of best selling books he spent the last decade telling the chaos of medicine into laugh out loud stories he's a doctor, a comedian and a proud dad of two who's turned his late night hospital shifts into hit shows, podcast episodes and unforgettable tales of parenthood. Please welcome the one and only Adam Kay. Hello, Adam, welcome. Welcome to our interview. Did you like that intro? You were a bit like, oh, this is good. I sound great. You sound bloody brilliant. And you are brilliant. We're going to go straight in because you are a dad of two. I am. And they are, we've just learned that they are, they're both three years old, but they're not twins.
10:39Yes. What was it? Four months apart. Four months apart. Right, can you just explain to people listening that again, the postpartum mum's going, what? Yes, that was that one. So they're born through surrogacy in the States, two separate surrogates. Right. So they are siblings genetically. Yes. But in theory, there's a lot of good in theory about having children, obviously. Obviously, yeah. And so surrogacy involves IVF. obviously at the start of the process and some IVF happens first time, some doesn't. And one did and one was a bit delayed. And then Ruby was born a bit prematurely and Ziggy was born at term.
11:27And so these things sort of stretch. So even though we started the process at the same time, they ended up four months apart. But actually, I was quite pleased about that. Yeah, that sounds quite cool actually. You sort of get a bit, I mean, you get a bit, you learn how feeding works and nappies work and sleeping works on one. Yeah. And you don't forget. Because I forget. Did you not think though, after four months, go, oh, f*** so, we've got to start again. Oh yeah, there is that, there is that. But, I mean, what's your gap between your number one and number two? Like three years. So by the time the second one came, I completely forgot about everything.
12:08Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're like, how have I forgotten? You've got a toddler. And you've got to do it all over again. And tell us the story about how you missed your daughter's birth. And I'm so sorry that that happened because that must have been awful. But what happened? I guess we just said she was premature. So I guess that. So, yeah, that was a combination of premature and in America. Right. Yes. So we had this all really well planned out. And five weeks before Ruby was going to be born, we had the accommodation sorted in the state. We had a good month of settling down. And it had been a totally uncomplicated pregnancy.
12:49There was no reason that anything should happen early and yet. So we were having our final hurrah of a childless life. which what did that consist of? It consisted of going to theatre I can't tell you if it was good or not I can tell you that the first half an hour or so was good and then James' phone went off we were those people and we're not normally those people but anyway and he dashed out he looked at it and dashed out and then I followed assuming that this was important and it was and it was our wonderful friend in Zorogut who was phoning to say her waters had broken. Eczema is unpredictable but you can flare less with EpGlis a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema.
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15:31And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth spurt budget secured. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. So there were a few problems there. Number one, obviously we weren't going to find out what happened at the end of Tammy Faye. I love that was your first problem. First problem. And, you know, we needed to get to America. And it was like a film where we're like, Heathrow Airport. Oh my god. And then we're like, actually, our house first to get our passports.
16:08It never appears in the film. Oh, it's in my park here. I was ready. So go there. So James goes in, gets the water. I'm on the phone trying to book, you know, flights to the, you know, the right coast of America. And I'm like, there's only one flight. There's only basically one seat that can do. So flip a coin. No. He goes out. I get the next flight in the morning. He, so he got to get a flight to New York and the hospital's in Washington, D.C. so got a cab from New York to DC and made it with like 15 minutes to spare and I was watching on FaceTimes this is all happening and then I go out the next day I mean in fairness she's not going to remember it she won't remember it and I'd like to think we made best efforts but with all those excuses I still did miss her birth and as parenting fails go whoops that's kind of up there I think that's probably the best parenting fail we've had I was hoping you were going to say listen, I booked a flight.
17:14Exactly. If I'm going to miss the birth, I might as well see what happened at the end. That's what I thought you were going to say. But Ziggy's birth, you were there. Oh, yeah. We were there months early for Ziggy. This is not happening again. Not missing this one. And then he had a totally uncomplicated delivery on pretty much the due date. Oh, nice. One out of two, that's not bad. Yeah, that's fine. It's fine. Let's talk about reproductive technology. you've been through it twice how easy difficult what are the things that you didn't expect tell us everything um so yeah i'm in the slightly interesting position of having been through you know ivf as a as a as a dad you know i say been through my role and it's fairly fairly quick and painless um enjoyable and uh although stressful in its own way sure you've got 20 minutes and they're like oh you get timed well i'm like so i went to the um you know go to this you know clinic yeah and you know and and you're sort of filling out all these um all these forms um at the start you know and checking in um you can tell me if this is getting too disgusting no no no i want to hear we want to hear about the tommy tanks and how long you had like this So go to this clinic, you know, and part one, actually before even the IVF aspect in sort of injecting sperm into egg and stuff, is actually working out if the sperm is any good, if you've got the sperm there.
18:53And there's no reason to think that it won't be. It's not like we were struggling to conceive. Well, we were struggling to conceive, but it wasn't a huge surprise James wasn't getting pregnant. but I mean that is the first step and that obviously involves leaving a deposit so go to this place and then after they've done that they freeze it and then they can use that sample again for the air so they rate it first they rate it first and assume so filling out all this paperwork and I just thought it was going to be a sort of yes yes yes but actually the number of questions they ask raised some sort of almost philosophical questions.
19:33And like, there was this, one of the things was, what do you want to happen to your frozen sperm in the event of your death? Oh, wow. Oh, gosh. I thought I was just coming here for a while.
19:48So, you know, they give you these clipboards and the pen and you're sort of filling out this pages and pages of stuff. And James said that he wanted his to be stored in the freezer and kept with his consent in the event that I wanted to have his children after his death. I said I wanted mine to be poured down Chris Hemsworth's throat and nurse wasn't happy with that answer. Sorry, just copy James's. So anyway, so and then so fill out all the paper, they're happy with all of this and then they say, right there's your there's your room you've got um you've got you've got 20 minutes oh god 20 minutes should be it should be um and i was i was sort of saying for my slightly interesting situation is that i've previously worked in ivf uh settings yeah as the as the doctor this is obviously now sort of decades and a half ago technology has moved on so when i worked in them and this was in the in the nhs it was a quite uh in terms of encouragement materials it was quite analog it was all it was some like magazines from the you know 1840s or something and uh so go in go in now and this is this is done on a on a private basis because there's basically no nhs ivf left anymore and there is absolutely none for for gay couples wanting to to start this journey so yeah it's a whole other discussion about the state of ivf um in this country but anyway so going in and technology has moved on and there's now a uh and there's now a video and um so it's quite rare to find me in a doctor's office because doctors make really bad patients um so it's embarrassing to be a doctor seeing another doctor you sort of in your head you've got i should have been able to fix this my myself it's like it's your air of expertise is you don't um and then so i've had that my ever since starting medical school i've had that but then in the last you know however many years i've got this added thing that i've got you know i'm not famous famous famous famous you know i'm not beyonce but the thought of getting recognized in a waiting room makes me want to cringe myself inside out so i sort of yeah there's lots of but anyway but i had no option here so i find myself in this like on the wipe clean pleather couch in a room the size of a lift um just me remote control and and a telly so so turn the telly on and it's linked to hub uh which is you know yeah yeah it means i can hopefully find something to my taste and get get this over with before the 20 minutes.
22:39So I turn it on and there's some gay d***y playing on the screen. And my first thought is there was something heartwarming about it. So, you know, as a much younger guy, realising that I was gay, I thought that that, you know, the option of having a family was something that was closed off to me. And now we've moved on so much through technology and society that not only is it possible for me, it's sufficiently normalized that the person in this room before me was another gay guy going through the same process. Or a straight guy who's got some major questions to address at some point down the line.
23:27Anyway, so I'll tell you what was playing on the screen because you're dying to know. There's this much older, hairy wardrobe of a man called Gonzalo, like the thing at the bottom, jackhammering this much younger sort of twink called Alejandro. And because they're about as likely to do the job for business episode of Bargain Hunt, I get the remote control and start pressing buttons. Nothing. and quite clearly the remote control has been gunked up by thousands of poorly aimed emissions, quadrillions, probably invalidating Panasonic's normally excellent warranty. And so turn the TV off, get out my phone, no reception, 12 minutes left or something, you know, me, Alejandro and Gonzalo are going to have to...
24:30Be in this together. Yeah, we're in it together, you know. Where there's a willy, there's a way. On we go and I'm sort of putting my hand over parts of it so I'm not put off by his hairy back, mute to the volume so I'm not put off by the strange low wheezing sounds. But we get there eventually just shy of my deadline. Oh, you did it. I did it, I did it. And then there's this thing, so it goes in this little container like the pot for your urine sample or whatever and you put it in a little cupboard and the cupboard's got another door on the back which goes into the lab and so they take that and it goes off right it's exciting journey that will eventually become children hooray so anyway so um so i'm feeling i'm feeling good about so i leave um i leave the the room and there's a guy waiting outside and obviously protocol is um you should avoid any eye contact whatsoever and march you know straight ahead uh towards the stairs this guy hasn't read the protocol and he goes all right i loved your book by the way oh no and it's only on the drive back home i realize i should have said uh oh by the way that that wasn't my video oh my gosh also the remote control was already broke but instead you know anytime my name's to come up if this guy you know you know hears me on this podcast he'll turn to the person next to him and say, oh, I followed him into a f***ing room once.
25:56He's into this weird little and large fetish board and he's got terrible aim. But all this is to say that 40-ish years ago, if a couple couldn't conceive, let alone if a same-sex couple wanted to, you know, go down this route, the answer was like, I'm sorry, there's only so much we can do. Because you have the history of being a doctor and delivered babies yourself, like when you're doing it yourself as a parent, is it like a whole different experience? Or like, do you almost like know too much? Or is it like, you know enough to, I don't know, what is it like? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
26:38Right. It's one thing. And I guess the other aspect is I can't be my kid's doctor. I have to be their dad. Right. So if something happens and James says, is this rash all right? Does that cough sound all right? My answer to an infuriating extent, he hates this, is let's go and see the GP. And I guess people think that you know everything. I've got this mole on my back. I've got this. Well, I did that to you when you arrived. It's like, my wrist hurts. You're like, well, you should go and get a splint or something. I was like, okay, I will do that. Thank you. Louise is like, make me one now. Fix it.
27:17Because I worked on Labour Ward. So, you know, I obviously was involved in, you know, in the delivery of a lot of babies, probably a couple of thousand babies by the end. Wow. Yeah. But, and everyone's like, oh, you'll know about babies then. Yeah. I hang out with babies every delivery for around two to three seconds before they get passed to a midwife who does all the clever stuff. That's me. That's my bit done. So I'm really good first two or three seconds of birth. Beyond that, I'm out. And what was the turning point in your career where you just thought, I don't want to do this anymore. And I want to, I'm actually want to write and I'm funny and want to do other things.
27:56It's interesting. I didn't, it wasn't so much that I had like a plan B and this is what I want to pivot to. And I wasted on the wards and let me, let me, you know, write some books or whatever. It was more that I was, you know, I was working well in labour wards. I was a senior registrar, which is like one down from consultants. I was nearing the sort of final destination where I would settle down in a hospital and do my own thing. And I just had a really bad day at work. And, you know, I'm not going to bring the mood down too much, but, you know, all you want as a doctor on a labor board is healthy mum, healthy baby.
28:35That's your bare minimum. and it was one of these one of these cases where we had neither of those two things and I really really struggled and I got back on the horse because that's the sort of you know doctor mentality but I was quite you know I was quite damaged by it it really affected the way I practiced medicine and I sort of realized that I couldn't face that kind of thing ever happening to me ever again I love the good days which are some of the most magical moments of my life but the bad days were too bad and so I ended up stepping away and I thought I was just stepping away for a few months and then I ended up um writing uh not for books uh initially it took about seven eight years before books happened but I was uh I was a jobbing writer for for telly writing, you know, random episodes of random scripts of random shows.
29:34And then I'm still on my six months off 14, 15 years later. But you wrote the phenomenal book, This Is Going To Hurt. I mean, and it became like this, I mean, you knocked off Michelle Obama's book from the Sunday Times bestseller, didn't you? Like, yeah, I mean, God, I mean, incredible. I mean, did you ever think in your labour ward, I'm going to, you know, I could be this person. I could be this bestseller. Yeah. You know, Michelle Obama. Yeah. It's not that book. She's got nothing. Check this out. Yeah. So I was, I was keeping diaries all the time. Yeah. I was working. I keep diaries all the time, by the way.
30:12Excellent. I love them. It's a really good, I don't quite know why I thought I was keeping the diaries. I think in retrospect, that was my form of therapy. Oh, absolutely. I wasn't taught you anyway. It is a form of therapy, isn't it? It is. Yeah. because you're sort of journaling about situations that have been a bit challenging and how you dealt with them and yeah and ideally you talk to someone about this stuff but if the second or third best i think is at least getting it out of your head onto paper formalizing your thoughts and also i think as well as that uh looking for the light among the dark was very handy for me um and so you know that all that went down i had no designs at the time that anyone would see it other than me I'd you know these are the stories I've just upset people with at dinner parties or this sort of disgusting stuff to put people off the buster um and then I love it I love it and I ended up um going many years later up to the Edinburgh festival yes and I didn't really have an idea about what my show would be and James my husband said um why didn't you read out from some of your diaries and so I did and then um randomly in the audience one day you go and see each other shows if you're a comedian yeah at Edinburgh it's like it's the only you know time you see other comedians often if you're not if you're not on the circuit then you're just sort of touring on your own or whatever you don't see other comedians so my lovely friend Mark Watson is a brilliant comedian I saw his excellent show He Came to See Me and his plus one worked for a publishing house as an editor at Picador and afterwards she was like do you think you've got any more of these diaries?
31:52Oh my god No way I've got a filing cabinet drawer full of them Oh my gosh I bet she was at that cha-ching Yeah Absolutely Well she was right she saw something that I didn't and actually she could see the sort of combination of love for the NHS that we all have and rightly so So with revolting stories, she could see it was sort of something that might appeal to the public. And, yeah, she was right. I mean, I do love stories like that. And I know there's a couple in your book that maybe we can touch on, which is something about a kinder surprise. And it was a surprise. It was a real surprise. And I'm glad you've chosen this one because I think it's one of my favourite stories.
32:37please tell us the story as an author you're not meant to have favourite bits but then again you're not meant to have favourite children we've got one of those so this story of a woman who decides to propose to her boyfriend and she did so by buying a kinder surprise taking off the foil and the chocolate getting rid of the little plastic toy, replacing it with an engagement ring and then inserting this vaginally. We can say vaginally. Can we? Yeah, we can. This isn't breakfast telling. She put the ring inside the plastic and shoved it in a flower. And the idea was clearly that the boyfriend would, you know, discover it, retrieve it and then she would go down on one knee.
33:29Oh, gosh. You know, something to sell the grandchildren or that, isn't it? But unfortunately, it had I don't know what had happened it had got it had moved sideways or got stuck on a ledge who knows what had happened yeah the abyss it had gone into the abyss she couldn't get it out nor could he and eventually decided it was a hospital matter so we all met in cubicle 3 or whatever it was and so she hadn't told him because she wanted to maintain the surprise brilliantly she hadn't told me either so I don't know ask no questions that's not my job middle of the night just get on with it see this patient see the next patient so I'm down at any very easy delivery with a little pair of called sponge holding forceps so sort of take it out I'm about to throw it away she's like no no no no he needs to open it so so hang on you're in cubicle three and she's still wanting to propose yep and you're holding it wow so I've got this I've got this I've got this egg and the goop from a flower is on it I mean I don't have that level of of recall but I've removed I've removed the thing so and then she says oh he needs to open it and so me and the boyfriend are like looking at each other like this of course so anyway I pass him a pair of latex gloves you know who am I to argue and at this point removing the last you know trace of romance from the situation so you know he opens the egg she proposes he says yes presumably out of fear as to what a woman who does that with a kinder surprise might do to him if spurned.
35:05Oh my gosh. Do you know if they got married? I don't know, but I should have been invited. You should have been best man. You should have been bearing the rings. The ring bearer. Yeah. I'll tell you what though, Kinder Eggs are never going to be the same again. No. Easter's on the way. I don't know if I can buy those to the kids anymore. Yeah, we have them in the house reasonably often. It's our very high value bribe. Yeah. You've got a list here, Adam, of your parenting fails. would you like to tell us some of your fails i mean it's difficult to know where to start i mean you missed the birth of your daughter i mean that's yeah that's yeah that's yeah that's i started as i meant to to go on um there's a um we've bought i would say 20 to 30 books about parenting we've read zero books about parenting but um so uh we mostly rely on people telling us like handy hints and tips so please fill me in anything for three-year-olds extremely gladly um received um but there was there was a really beautiful thing that um one of our neighbors um back home told us um we were with their beautifully behaved kids rather like setting via the curtains or whatever and um and she she speaks to one of the kids and remember and reminds him that the three important things in life are manners safety and kindness and i'm like oh that's quite good because like if i can get that my kids remembering those three things so we started we nicked that and we started saying manners safety kindness yeah and then um and then uh a couple of weeks later i'm out uh with my sister who's got a couple of uh lovely kids and uh we're at this restaurant and um and one of my kids is being appalling and throwing dough balls or whatever and i say um what are the three important things in life and ruby very confidently says to my sister money safety and kindness
37:16so we've reversed over three buggies our own buggy is empty but i mean it's one of our it's one of the major sort of lines on what turns out to be the child care budget is uh the frequency with which we you know we've only put one buggy back in the car and the other one gets crushed He's going, right, what are the three things? Buggy, buggy. So James really disapproves of this. And I think probably everyone does, but it's funny, you know, to do the rude version of the song, changing the odd words. Yeah. So our kid's favourite song, I don't even know if this is widely known, is the pirate song.
37:56Like, when I was two, I buckled my shoe the day I went today. Yeah, yeah. I climbed aboard. And so it's obviously funny to teach your kids. When I was two, I did a poo the day I went to see. Yes. And now, wonderfully, they're starting to improvise their own ones. And I'm like, this is good. That's cool. They're creative. They've got a career ahead of them in comedy or whatever it is. Nice. But the end of that song goes, a bottle of rum to fill my tum and that's the life for me. Ziggy, our son, has started now singing a bottle of rum to fill my bum and that's the life. I'm like, oh no, hang on, no, that's too far.
38:43No, that's... So he's not very... Because I'm now awaiting the phone call from nursery. Is everything all right at home? What's his enema song? he's saying it so trying to so it might be that James was right all along and it's probably better to teach the actual version of the yeah maybe what would you say is the hardest part of parenting I mean this is going to feel so sort of basic yeah but it's the fact that if you're a doctor for instance or you've got any kind of job however tough your shift is your shift ends you know this is this is tough but i've only got an hour and a half left and whatever the world throws at me after that i go home and i have a sleep it's uh i think it's the fact that after the the hard day you can have the hard night followed by the hard day so i think it's you can get over anything but it just keeps it just keeps coming and so i I think that's it.
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39:53And obviously, any time a kid is sick. Yeah. I mean, they're sort of like sick sick, like worrying sick. My lovely friend of mine told me years ago, before I had kids, that she was coming over with hers. And one of them was a bit under the weather. And I said, oh, I'm sorry. Do you want to? She was like, no, it's great when they're a bit ill. because they're sort of, that's when they behave the best and they're a bit subdued. And I was like, so I do agree with that. And sedated on medication. Yeah. It's sort of a bit of cowpole level. Yes. That's often when my kids are at their best, but you know.
40:32Oh, totally. But the worst part of parenting is when the worry comes. And Ruby, as I say, was born premature and she was born very, you know, she was born very small, to be honest. And she's still, pretty much anything knocks her over and, you know, that you know ziggy gets a bit of a cold and shrugs it off you know and she'll end up you know in a and e and oxygen and steroids and that sort of thing but you know but you know luckily as the as the as the months and years go on she's you know she's getting a bit a bit stronger so because you are a doctor do you feel a sense of calm because you can almost like do you feel like you can help in a way i can't help but i'm good in an emergency yeah i'm sure that's one of the things I've been I've been bequeathed by my by my career it's one of the things they teach in medicine is the first pulse you check is your own in an emergency yeah because you can't be useful if you're flapping and it takes a bit of time to get to that stage yeah I didn't know that that's you sort of have to you know you you walk to the emergency rather than running and assume it's not the other side of hospital because you want to arrive prepared so you walk to it and in your head you're thinking these are the first five things i'm going to do and so i'm quite you know slow and measured and you know and try and do that that's what i bring to the emergency unfortunately um due to uh i don't know sort of bad luck slash magic um i've got an almost 100 hit rate of um being away when uh when one of the kids gets that level of um of ill you know and james will phone me up and be like can you listen to ruby's breathing and tell me if it's all right i was like if you're asking me to listen to breathing over the phone i think at that stage you go to yeah yeah so when when i'm around it's not like i'm away particularly often it's just that you know almost certainly yeah when i get take airplane mode off after this just because I'm in London and he's back home there'll be some you know something from nursery or something he'll be at A &E for some reason oh gosh so I've spoken in the past about chicken pox parties so a lot of my NCT group if one child had chicken pox parties or if one child had chicken pox we'd all go to the house have some Prosecco and we'd be like right kids lick each other do what you do best and just spread your germs together so then they'd all catch the chicken pox and then it was done and out the way when they're quite young what's um what's your thoughts on that uh my thoughts on all childhood illnesses is whilst they are for most you know kids fine for some kids they're very not fine yeah you know and there are rare rare instances of sort of of major complications and so um i i am very very pro vaccine um and you know you know when it when they're when they're proven to work and we now have a chicken pox vaccine um yeah and so hopefully in a few years time uh in a generation's time when the archivists are listening back to you know uh 10 years ago in the podcast and say, oh, what is, you know, what was chicken pox?
43:58It could be something that never happens, never again. Yeah, hopefully. I got my daughter vaccinated for chicken pox because my middle child never caught them at the chicken pox party. Not enough licking. Not enough licking. He's my child that licks everything and just puts everything in his mouth. Or like, I joke about this, handrails at airports. He will, because it's metal. He will lick, used to when he was a bit younger, would lick the handrail at an airport on the way to our destination. And then two days in, we'd all be ill. And it's like, it's because Logan licks the handrail at the airport.
44:36I mean, his immune system must be 10 out of 10 if you're dead. Well, he got, when we're on holiday, they had this tiny little kid's pool. Yeah. And he was in the pool all day, lift his head up out of the water, wouldn't wear goggles. He needed to have like, the whites of his eyes would just be red. And then the last day of the holiday, he obviously had chicken pox, but they were so bad. The doctor said to us, they're the worst chicken pox I've ever seen. They were infected. He was admitted to hospital. It was terrible. They were so bad. So I was really, he's got scars all over his face and stuff and his body.
45:08So I was like, right for my daughter as a girl as well. With Logan, he's got them on his face. I think when he gets facial hair, you probably won't see as much. But it's really panicked me because I know how bad they can look. So I got her vaccinated. So I'm hoping, you know, fingers crossed. You know, vaccines have saved something like 200 million lives. So it's one of my biggest, you know, it's more than an annoyance. It really makes me actively cross, you know, this sort of, you know, movement against vaccines, which is like simply one of those and antibiotics have saved more lives than anything.
45:48thing it's sort of there are greatest advances in technology full stop and i want to talk about your new book yeah tell us everything because it's very exciting big fan of your books and i'm sure a lot of our listeners are so tell us about the next one so um i've been writing kids books for a few years now and i started with non-fiction books and the first one was k's anatomy uh a pun that absolutely none of the kids reading it will get. But teaching them all about the body and I've done various other things about the history of medicine and inventions. And then a couple of years ago, I wrote my first novel for kids, which was called Dexter Proctor, the 10-year-old doctor.
46:32And it does what it says on the tin. It's about this super mega genius who became a doctor based on, you know, semi-autobiographical, obviously. Obviously. But he was, you know, he came out the womb, you know speaking 10 languages he cut his own umbilical cord and you know went straight off to medical school became a doctor and you know and so it's big silly you know fun book and um we were lucky to um make that into a special which was on uh which is on the bbc over christmas to hang out on iplayer um with you know brilliant cast sue johnston and peter serafinaris and mike wasn't yak and jemma wheel and um jamila jamil and connie huck and this sort of amazing a list of brilliant people in it so and then i wrote a second book called dexter proctor and the case of the disappearing doctor and it is out now and uh it's you don't need to read the the first one but you can have read the first one and uh there's a huge mystery in the town of lilydale where dexter space and him and his mates have to solve it and it's got some medicine in there and it's got lots of disgustingness in there oh brilliant i think it's i think it's dead fun um adam thank you so much for being here absolute joy so much you're so funny and i can't wait to read your next book on my kids to read it thank you thank you so much for being a lovely time exposing uh quite what an awful parent i am no no you're not alone i just i'll never look at somebody with a hairy back the same again myself.
48:03Thank you for that. Or a kinder egg. Oh God, yeah. A kinder egg. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode. If you've enjoyed the chat, do us a massive favour, hit that subscribe button and ring that notification bell so you never miss an upload. We're dropping new episodes every Monday and Wednesday.
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From the publisher
Adam Kay, the former NHS doctor and author of the global bestseller This Is Going To Hurt, joins Hannah and Louise to discuss his journey through fatherhood and surrogacy. This episode dives into the chaos of life after the medical profession, from the emotional reality of missing his daughter’s birth to his hilarious refusal to be the "family doctor" when his kids have a cough. If you are interested in parenting stories, surrogacy experiences, or the transition from the NHS to authorship, this interview is a must-watch.
Episode Highlights
Hannah and Louise share recent parenting fails including road rage and dance recital mishaps.
The great Easter sugar debate and why Andy East refuses to buy Hannah an egg.
Adam Kay’s personal story of starting a family through surrogacy and the beauty of the process.
Why Adam stays away from medical roles at home and his fierce stance on vaccines.
A shocking story involving a Kinder Egg, an engagement ring, and an emergency room visit.
Adam’s cringe-worthy encounter at a fertility clinic involving a broken remote.
Details on Adam’s brand-new book Dexter Procter and the Case of the Disappearing Doctor.
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