Your Life in Whose Hands? Restructuring Professionals

Abstract

The relationship between the medical establishment and programme makers had never been entirely respectful. Undermining arrogant surgeons, giving them a taste of their own medicine, mocking their authority, had entertained the nation through the Carry On and Doctor films. The tradition continued with Richard Wilson’s tactless and hung-over surgeon in Only When I Laugh. Such moments could be seen as a safety-valve, a carnivalesque expression of fears, which served to confirm rather than attack established relationships. However, by the beginning of the 1980s the medical professions were being subjected to more serious challenges.