TV comic and ex-Doncaster doctor Harry Hill nearly returned to NHS to fight coronavirus

The TV Burp star has admitted that he considered returning to his old job during the COVID-19 pandemic – but then thought better of it because it was 30 years since he had been involved in medicine.

After being asked to work at London’s Nightingale Hospital, the main centre for treating coronavirus patients, he reminded himself he had only been a junior doctor back in the 1980s.

He said he then became flustered when an NHS official rang up to finalise arrangements and he had to find an excuse not to take on a role at the East London specialist care unit.

He said: “I’ve got cold sweat dripping down my back, and I said, ‘Well, to be honest, I’m in South London so it would be quite difficult for me to get to’.

“I did say to her, ‘It was 30 years ago. I was only a junior doctor and my specialisation was general medicine’.

“I’d submitted the form and then I thought, ‘Oh Christ. What the hell could I actually do?’”

Harry was just 25 and working at Doncaster Royal Infirmary when he decided to quit medicine and take up comedy.

His first post after medical training was at the hospital in Armthorpe Road back in the early 1990s – and back then he practised under the name Dr Matthew Hall.

Born in Surrey, he studied at St George's Hospital Medical School before training in neurosurgery at the University of London.

Of his time at DRI, Harry told The Times Magazine: "I delivered babies, I tried to resuscitate people who died, I met lunatics, but I never really felt like I knew what I was doing.

'I was just this bloke in a white coat looking worried. If you're a doctor, you're supposed to want really interesting cases. I spent the whole time hoping that no one was going to get ill."

However, he is still registered on the General Medical Council's list of Registered Medical Practitioners.