hundreds of whom sent him copies of
This Is Going to Hurt, Hunt eventually
met Kay. That meeting was fruitless, but
Hunt’s successor, Matt Hancock, was
more receptive. Their meeting resulted
in increased funding for the Practitioner
Health programme and more focus on
mental health training, so more staff can
avoid the crippling PTSD Kay experienced
in his final year. “Medicine is about ten years
behind the rest of society,” he reflects,
noting that it is growing less sexist, racist
and homophobic as its old-school
management and consultants are retiring.
Change, then, but slowly. And there
hasn’t been a lot of time for reflection over
the past two years. I ask them both how
they have coped with the pandemic. Kay
is dealing with long Covid — “emotional
tiredness” is his main symptom, and he’s
struggling to get his work stamina back
to where it was. “Still, it’s a talking point,”
he says, with a doubtful laugh.
Just before the pandemic he relocated
to Oxfordshire with his husband, James
Farrell, a producer on Kay’s show. What’s it
been like working with a partner? “It’s good
we moved to a larger house,” Kay says with
a smile. “Things could have turned
murderous.” He knows they got off lightly.
“I’ve got a garden and a dog. My friends are
working triple shifts and creating intensive
care units out of dust.”Whishaw had a less solid footing. “I
thought I’d cope with it better, but I was
an absolute child. I was a monster,” he says of
his pandemic experience. “I still find social
things quite weird. I feel a lot of anxiety.”
He lives in London with his civil partner,
Mark Bradshaw, an Australian composer he
met in 2008 while filming the John Keats
biopic Bright Star. Unable to work for a whole
year of the pandemic, he found himself stuck
at home and completely devoid of purpose.
“I considered retraining as a psychiatrist or
therapist,” he says. “Then I looked up what
you need to do. I can’t do that.”
The release date for No Time to Die — his
third outing as Q — was moved three times.
Did this at least give him a chance to rest?
“No, I did not find it restful at all.”W
hishaw is a sort of
anti-Paddington,
possessed of a griping
pessimism that is
confoundingly hilarious.
On what he’d be doing if not acting, he says:
“I’ve got no skills, I’m useless. I do often
think I’m a useless human being.”
Kay and Whishaw both celebrated their
40th birthdays during the pandemic but
there are no midlife platitudes about
becoming, finding or reinventing oneself
from either of them. “Advice for my
younger self? Buy shares in Apple,” Kayquips. Whishaw turns a tortured face to the
sky. “I just ... don’t feel any wiser,” he says
eventually. “I don’t like getting older. I don’t
like looking at my ...” He stops talking and
looks, momentarily, like a bear who has lost
his marmalade sandwich.
Kay says he “would still go into medicine,
knowing what I know now”, but choose a
different branch, one that was less life-and-
death every day. He’d prioritise his mental
health and, if it didn’t work out, that’s fine
too. Junior doctors should try lots of things;
perhaps everyone should. There’s no shame
in zigzagging through life, as he believes is
apparent to the coming generation. “It’s an
old-fashioned idea that you do one job for
40 years and get a carriage clock at the end.
The graph of my career is bananas.”
Kay has spoken self-deprecatingly about
returning to medicine once writing work
dries up. That seems unlikely. He’s a literary
force with more books coming, and now
a successful columnist and screenwriter.
He still keeps a diary every day. “It’s my way
of processing life. Most people can do that
in their heads.”
Today he says that if he were to return
to the field he left so painfully, it would be
because he is still passionate about the
NHS. He already works with advocacy
groups, with teaching positions open to
him. “One of the things that gives me most
joy is talking to junior doctors about what
happened to me, what we’re doing right and
wrong,” he says. “I think I will go back.” nThis Is Going to Hurt continues on BBC1 on
Tuesday at 9pm and on iPlayerWithout support doctors find
disastrous coping mechanisms,
“like being rude to people or not
talking to loved ones at home”
On set: “I was shocked that a baby
could be that tiny and live”BBC
The Sunday Times Magazine • 17