In 2014 the Patients’ Participation Group spearheaded by Ian Gillard put my name forward for the ‘Health Hero Award’. To our surprise I was selected to be one of the four finalists.
This involved going down to London for the day and being treated to a visit to 10 Downing Street. The nearest I’d got to it before was standing outside the front door to present a petition. Even that required fairly extensive security check to ensure we weren’t carrying any lethal weapons! This time, however, the door was thrown open and we were welcomed inside. There followed a tour of the building.
The highlight was the Cabinet Room and sitting in Churchill’s chair from whence he conducted ‘business’ during the war years. I hoped that some of his finer qualities would find their way from his backside into mine – but, alas, that didn’t happen. Some parts of ‘No 10’ were a bit tatty – for example some of the carpets had the corners taped down to stop people tripping over them . This was reassuring in a way as it showed that taxpayer’s money was being used frugally.
We were met by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, who despite squeezing us in between two fairly major engagements (both of which made it onto the day’s news broadcasts), gave us the impression he had all the time in the world to concentrate on what, to him, must have seemed quite a trivial matter. Then there were photographs taken with the PM and on the steps of 10 Downing St as a souvenir of the day.
The four finalists were booked into a posh hotel. I had been pretty busy at the practice prior to setting out for this shindig and so it was only when I reached the hotel that I had time to read through the bumph I’d been given. To my horror I discovered that the evening ceremony required evening dress. Fortunately, I had a dark suit which I thought I’d just about get away with so that afternoon I popped out to Oxford Street to hastily buy a dress shirt and bow tie. On arriving back in the hotel I found that the shirt was ‘slim fitting’ (i.e. much too small) so I had to slit it up the back in order get into it.
Sue joined me later and we set off to the venue for a meal followed by the presentation. The high spot for me was to discover that Barry Cryer, one of my ‘comedy heroes’ was there and we had a chat about Barry Took, a mutual friend (and co-writer of one of my two all time favorite radio comedy shows – Round the Horne.) For this, the avuncular Kenneth Horne was joined by a strong cast including Kenneth Williams in a very naughty show which netted a regular audience of more than 15million listeners and incurred the wrath of Mary Whitehouse. I had considered Kenneth Horne to be a quasi straight man until B.T. told me to “Count the laughs!” … which put me in my place. By the way, my other favourite show was (of course) the Goon Show.
The official high spot of the evening was the presentation of the award and, much to my surprise, I won. I was called up on stage by the presenters (husband and wife duo, Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford) and we had a bit of a chat. They had let it be known that it was their wedding anniversary so, strangely, the conversation was mostly about that. I explained that on my anniversary I give Sue a ‘With sympathy’ card and, on one occasion (when I’d asked her what she would like as an anniversary present and she replied “I think I deserve a bloody medal!”) I went to a sports shop and had one engraved with: “For services above and beyond the call of duty”. Fortunately they found this amusing so, all in all, it went off reasonably well.
After the award I was approached by Esther Rantzen who was responsible for the very successful ‘Childline’ and had recently followed it up with ‘Silver Line’ – which, as the name suggests, was intended for lonely or troubled older people. Unfortunately the practice was so busy that I wasn’t really able to spare any time for it – so I lost touch with her until I worked with Andrew Penman on an article for the Mirror on a ‘gummies’ scam – in which she was made to appear to promote cannabidiol/CBD, sold in sweet form as CBD Gummies. These supposedly ‘cured’ a wide range of conditions – and, as we all know, the more ailments a remedy claims to be able to cure, the less likely it is to cure any of them. The crooks behind it used her name and image without her knowledge or consent. She and I subsequently appeared on the late, great Dave Monk’s BBC Essex programme to further warn the public.
I digress. Getting back to the point … the following morning we were trundled off to the TV Studio to be interviewed by Eamonn and Ruth. Having failed to read up on the schedule this came as a surprise to both of us so Sue had to be kitted out with a jacket etc from the studio wardrobe. Despite being a bit hungover we just about managed to get through the interview. Thereafter we came back to reality with a bump. We made a beeline for the tube train, hurrying back to the practice for a full day’s work.
The prize for being ‘Health Hero’ was a ‘luxury holiday’ which we couldn’t take for a couple of reasons. Sue’s mum was well into her 90s at that stage and she was living on her own (being fiercely independent) and her health was failing … so Sue had to stay within close range in case there was a problem. The other difficulty was that the cost of employing locums to look after the practice while I went away for ‘a luxury holiday’ was such that it would dwarf the value of the prize and take the practice way over its overdraft limit. For these reasons we instead settled for the cash equivalent – most of which eventually ended up back in the practice coffers – but it was still well worth the small amount of effort we had put in to get some form of recognition of the work we’d put in over the years.
Dr John Cormack