Kwame Asante: Juggling comedy and being a doctor interview

Stand-up comedian Kwame Asante won the Chortle Student Award in 2012, then immediately went off to train in medicine. Now, having worked for two years as a junior doctor, Kwame is putting his profession to one side for a bit, in favour of returning to a focus on comedy. He's heading up to the Fringe to debut his first hour-long show.

Open Arms chronicles Kwame's experiences over the past two years and it all starts with him following a job offer that meant finding himself having to move to Birmingham. Kwame's show provides a unique perspective on life as a recently-qualified doctor and is packed with outlandish and funny anecdotes.

Let's find out more from him about what it's like to work in the NHS...

Tell us the weirdest thing that's happened to you since becoming a doctor...

I did a four month placement in a GP surgery in a suburb south of Birmingham. My responsibilities during the placement included going out to see patients on home visits.

One of the most memorable home visits I did: I was greeted at the door by a shady looking gentleman in his mid-to-late 60s. His house was dimly lit, and upon entering the living room I was hit by a stiff wave of stale cigarette smoke. He gestured me towards what looked like his sofa / bed / ashtray; I sat down reluctantly. Before I'd put my bag down and introduced myself, he launched into an eerily personal interrogation of me.

'Are you married, Doctor?'
'Oh, errr, no, I'm not married.'
'Oooo. Are you single, Doctor?'
'Well, no, I'm not single either.'
He cracked a smile.
'You're a crafty c**t, aren't ya, Doctor?'
I was like 'EXCUSE ME?!?' - a proper spit-take moment. 'What did you just say?'

He'd thrown me off completely. In my head, I knew that it was important for me to stay professional. But once the patient dropped the C-bomb, the professionalism-bar is so low that even openly googling his symptoms on a laptop while streaming Match of the Day on the other half of screen would have been socially passable.

'Oi, pass me a cigarette, Doctor.'
Still flustered, but in an attempt to stay polite, I passed him a cigarette from the table next to me.
'Last week...', I stuttered, having just about collected myself at this point. 'Last week, in clinic you said that you'd quit smoking'
He laughed openly. 'Oh yeah! I was just joking.'

He'd touched a nerve and I suddenly found myself becoming stern.

'You take this seriously. The time I'm spending with you is time I could be spending with other sick patients'
He replied 'SICK?! I'm not sick, I'm doing alright, doc'

My stomach sank deeply as it dawned on me: I think this guy literally made me drive all the way out to his house to pass him a cigarette. AND, I now completely stank of cigarette smoke. I had no idea how I was going to explain this to my boss when I got back to the office...

Wow. Have you used your comedic skills when doctoring?

I never tell patients that I do stand-up comedy. I try not to tell too many of my colleagues either, when I can avoid it. I like to keep it separate from my professional life. I do struggle with turning the comedy side of my brain off though. Not so much in the way of telling jokes, but more interpreting when other people are or aren't joking.

During one of my placements, I was given the task of performing an abbreviated mental test, on Mrs D, an 89-year old patient on the ward. For those of you who don't know, an abbreviated mental test is a series of questions we ask elderly patients, including their age, the date, and the current location; in an attempt to assess how orientated the patient is to time and place, as a marker of how unwell they are.

You learn a lot from carrying out tasks like this on ward, but perhaps one of the biggest lessons I've ever learned during my medical career is when carrying out the abbreviated mental test on an elderly FEMALE patient, never start by asking the patient's age.

'So, Mrs D, can you start by telling me how old you are?'
'37', Mrs D replied.
And I laughed. I laughed openly.
'HAHAHAHA, 37! Oh Mrs D, 'never ask a woman her age', AM I RIGHT?!

... I was not right.

For as Mrs D went on to score a grand total of 2/10 on the abbreviated mental test, I quickly realised that she was not 'pulling my leg', but was in fact very unwell, and in a state of 'severe delirium', and I had just laughed in a poorly old lady's face....

As we've touched upon, you've been juggling a medical career and performing comedy - when do you find the time to sleep/date/have friends?

Easy! I work with my friends and sleep during my dates!

In all seriousness though, I do owe a lot to my friends for being patient and flexible with me, squeezing coffee and pub dates in and around my busy work schedule. And big recognition to my girlfriend who's had to train herself in the tricky arts of consoling a sad comic AND a sad doctor. Both require the opening of a bottle of wine. The only difference between the two is how much of that wine she actually gets herself...

'Kwame Asante: Open Arms' is at the Pleasance Courtyard at 6:45pm from the 2nd August. Listing