One of Ed Patrick’s biggest fears as a doctor is doing a rectal exam on a patient. It’s not just the process that fills him with dread – he gets anxious when he reads medical notes and there are signs, like if someone is passing blood, that the invasive procedure needs to be done. “It’s almost as if you’re about to ask someone on a date – you don’t know how they’re going to react. That’s part of the fear. It’s difficult to make eye contact. You try as much as possible but then you flit your eyes away at the last minute,” he says. As for the procedure itself, he adds: “It’s one of the most invasive things you can do. It’s funny that, in this day and age, we still do it.”
It’s this kind of “fish-out-of-water” situation that lends itself to comedy – a hobby that Patrick, 34, has devoted more time to since last August, when he decided to take a year out from pursuing a medical career after finishing his initial two-year training as a junior doctor. Alongside performing standup routines, he teaches medical students at Buckingham University and still practises medicine – he is signed up to two hospitals to fill in on shifts in A&E as a locum house doctor.
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This month, Patrick’s routines are set to reach a wider audience as he performs a nightly show at the Edinburgh fringe festival. His routine is packed with funny anecdotes about his professional life: the emergency department, Patrick has discovered, can be a box of comedic gifts. He remembers introducing himself to an older patient in a bay in A&E. The man didn’t hear him, so he said his name again, and again. On the sixth repetition, he said, very loudly and clearly: “Hello. My. Name. Is. Dr. Patrick”. The patient sat back and said: “Do I want a taxi? No thanks.” It set the whole department laughing.
He also pokes fun at Jeremy Hunt’s mishandling of the junior doctors’ contract. He draws on the time the health secretary was reprimanded by the speaker of the House of Commons for fiddling with his phone. “He’s unable to negotiate with one of the most caring professions in society. These people are meant to be leading our country, they’re meant to be the best communicators. What is going on?”, he says.
Patrick also jokes about how his career choice has affected him, taught him things he didn’t know about himself and uncovered his neuroses. He talks about his first job as a junior doctor on the “high-stakes” paediatrics ward. “It’s a really terrifying experience. I was the new guy on the block and you’ve got all these highly trained, specialist nurses with lots of experience. Yet one week into the job you are technically top of the pecking order and have to make these decisions.” He compares starting out as a doctor to working in a supermarket where you don’t know where anything is and no one has told you. “You’ll have these situations where people will say, ‘Will you get this for me?’ You say, ‘Yeah!’. You come out of the room and you don’t know where it is so you have to ask someone to tell you. It’s this mini baptism of fire. That’s what led to comedy working for me. I’m able to explore those challenges and moments I’ve found difficult. Sometimes they are hilarious in their own right.”
Patrick has always had a love for comedy, but didn’t realise how funny he was until he did a speech at his brother’s wedding in 2002 and managed to make his sister-in-law’s German family laugh. A few years later he did a comedy course and then started to write. But being a doctor and a comedian means that he leads “the social life of a vampire, essentially”. His mother has started dropping hints about hoping she’s still young enough to look after grandchildren into conversation and so he includes funny dating stories in his routine.
Patrick has been reluctant to tell colleagues about his success on the comedy circuit, even though he was a finalist for this year’s Leicester Mercury comedian of the year award and consequently signed with talent agency Roar Global. And before his first show last August in Glasgow, he was nervous about whether people would warm to his routine, but it was a success. The “real test” came when he had a slot at London’s Comedy Store in December. “I was sat outside thinking, ‘have I made a massive mistake?’ I got up, did it and it was really good, to the point that they asked me back to do another slot,” he says. Since then, he hasn’t looked back.
So what does the future hold? Patrick’s thinking about carrying on with his medical training part time. People still ask him when he’s going to stop medicine or comedy and focus on one thing. For now, Patrick’s enjoying keeping up both. He says, “Why do we have to pigeonhole one? If you can make things work, why do you have to give one up?”
Ed Patrick will be performing from 4-28 August (not 15) at Just The Tonic: Community Project at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Advance tickets are £5
Ed Patrick is a junior doctor who’s finding the funny side | Sarah Johnson
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