Would you watch this is the 24th, I think, of, uh, May 13 and you've been involved because with the medical school at Oxford in many levels.
So let's start at the beginning. Um, presumably you came up from school to take an entrance exam?
Uh, yes and no.
I came from a school in the north of Romesco New Castle, which had a closed scholarship to or by chance by headmaster, and he told me about it.
So I was the one candidate and I sat in a little room behind the organ at school doing the exam, the most concise one I've ever done,
because I dislocated my thumb playing rugby three days before and then came up to Oxford for an interview, which is about an hour now and a half.
And I got time to wait. I've got a message 20 minutes later saying I have a scholarship.
That's great. It was the interview with one man or whatever it was with the panel.
The lead interview was a delightful man called Sandy Augustan, who is a biochemist and just a lovely guy.
And I can remember having the temerity at the time to say, yeah, I want to do medicine, but I wanted to do different biochemistry as well, please.
Well, that would have suited him. So that was great. And then in those days, was it still the two years to spare him?
And the one year just goes? Yes. I mean, I had to take notes, right.
And biology, which I failed the first time I had and which I took from school.
And then I did. I left school.
I worked as a laboratory technician and during that did a correspondence course in biology and took prelims just before the first time.
Had you been doing science in school and we were, yes. Mean chemistry was something I was best that had in the sixth form.
I regularly came twenty fifth out of twenty six and the preceding four years, but we had a very good chemistry mostro and that sort of clicked.
Great. And then what did you think of the first two years in Oxford?
I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I mean I could say that about all nine years I had, um, thought it was an eye opener,
all sorts of ways I can remember we had to do organic chemistry in the first term.
And I can remember when we had our first session with a guy, I think it was called Pop.
Yes, he was. And he was known for its intensity.
Mind if I didn't come in the afternoons because I wanted to play sport?
And that got me off on a very good foot with him.
Um, embryology I remember not doing because there was nine o'clock in the morning, so I just missed it.
Um, I didn't go to many lectures. I put one effort I put in I put into a well anatomy, which was quite fun.
And I had actually one term where I dislocated my neck playing rugby.
So I missed the first half of the term and then did eight head and neck five very appropriate for what I was called.
Yes. And I quite enjoyed that, but thoroughly enjoyed the particularly the satirising.
And were you doing that for a variety of tutors, always with pretty well all sandbagging, in fact, and that was largely physiology and biochemistry.
We didn't bother with anatomy tutorials. I mean, we had the virus system.
Um, that was it. And we send it when he get you to read your essay or had you submitted it, I thought I would submit it, um, generally on the day.
And then we would talk around it and then he would, um, uh, he he would market and return it with comments.
Um, I think I mean, I wrote very long essays generally because I didn't have time to write short funds.
Um, and they were almost all done during the night before the tutorial.
And it was that one to one. Just you as well. Yes. But then you go to first beer and went on to schools.
Yes. And you did send it chemistry again.
Yes. And I think I did physiology with Sandy as well.
But I don't recall neurology. I mean neurophysiology.
Yeah, no. Great. Well, he was a remarkable maths.
I did it all with him, and, um, I remember that was funny all sorts of ways because I got about halfway through the fan.
I got a scholarship to go for the summer to the United States.
I had a system funded by a man called Coolidge of the Coolidge family.
And he'd been an old man. And he and I were off to the war and decided that undergraduates were having a miserable time.
So he thought they needed a little luxury. So he put it and he paid for eight to come over every year.
Uh, you are provided with a car and a thousand dollars, which in 1959 was quite a lot of money.
And if you ran out, you ran out for anything to do was keep a diary.
Right. And there were a whole host of our very own people in the States who volunteered to look after the visiting undergraduates,
or you could go off and do other things. Um, and he came out of about four weeks before schools,
and that was one endless party with a little bit of examining and wasn't fundamentally deceived by chemists, etc.
Or was it just really a fun a fun visit?
Uh, I mean, I took the opportunity to go and see how I performed at the Rockefeller and, uh, mainly because I was like, oh, man, New York.
I wanted to go to this event. Um, but the rest of it for us was mainly fun.
I went and looked at the St. Lawrence Seaway, which was fairly recently.
I went on a dude ranch in Montana, but then I got glandular fever and we knew I couldn't I can't remember.
And I ended up with a colleague who also got it, uh, in a hospital in Winslow, Arizona,
from where, uh, Mr. Coolidge's physician, they were treating us for tonsillitis.
Uh, Mr. Cruz's physician from Boston rang off, made the diagnosis and then were flown back to Boston.
I spent six weeks living in Coolidge's estate and I was allowed one glass of wine a night to remember.
And he had a marvellous collection of wines, which I learnt a great deal about, not just basically.
Yeah, terrific. Now, in the schools, were you already biochemically fixated, as I had been from the beginning and I read German schools?
Yeah. I'd like to send you a fixed up for me to do a defo with Walter Bartley and crêpes those lab and which required some sort of resourcing.
My father was very keen on this, but my brother was talked about and persuaded them that this was worthwhile.
And I got from them all see one of the a lot of them to see training fellowships.
So they called them that studentship. Great.
And, um, do you remember taking school's did you think I mean,
you probably didn't think because when did you think it was a good exam for the work you've done or did you think it was out of kilter?
Oh, I thought was entirely reasonable in that I'm not sure I told in any exam.
No, it's a good idea. And I remember I, uh, doing extremely well on the neurophysiology and rather badly on the biochemistry.
That's my name. It was only for papers. And then that was afterwards.
So then you went to the bad chemistry department and about late Labour Krebs jumped up
and I was actually cruxes lab and crevices to Ph.D. students started the next lectures.
And were you well supervised? Heavily supervised? I was, yes, uh, extremely well supervised.
And Walter was in, uh, at the bench every day. It was not I travel up and I mean, I used to get in and killed six rats, um, and make like a hundred.
And, uh, I was he was always around.
And there are two or three others like, uh, Turkoglu Watson, who was in the lab.
And, uh, one of my fellow students was Jane Mulumba, who stuck around for a while,
was like the young lady had called back, was there at the time, uh, Lenny Eccleston.
And it was just a very nice. A group of people. Did you feel you were working on your ideas or about these ideas of crabs?
That is, um. I kicked off working on Bartley's ideas.
I mean, like every job I've ever done. After about three months, you said you better start working on it.
So I started working, um, and I did things like with Chaplain John Ashworth, who went on to be head of the LSC.
Um, and, um, uh, we built an amino acid analyser all of our own.
And this was just before they were starting to be marketing. Morganstein Yeah.
Which had one one sample in a week and one we took turns spending the night with a fraction collector over the years.
So a lot of things I did slip a disk at rugby during that,
so I took six months out to do pathology and pharmacology, which I comprehensively failed to perform.
So I had to do that again.
I must say I learnt pathology like I never learnt anything before or since as a result of that and spent and then three Calanda.
It's not commonly a three academic year during my defo, including the six months pathology,
but then I got two pages in the biochemical journal and I didn't write it up for a little while.
So the harmony minus is twenty five or just more.
Yes. I mean what I was looking at was the profile of cells in mitochondria.
You know, do they break down proteins and someone forgot them again with someone about ten years later pointed out how significant this was.
Is completely Euromonitor working hard or not pre-empted.
Another question I was going to ask looking back, when do you think he started working?
It was intermittent. Um, I mean, I worked quite hard now and again during the first three years.
Um, not nothing like as hard as many of my colleagues were working because I do a lot of other things like sports and boozing.
And we were mentioning the various clubs, um, I joined in and things I started work properly.
I think it would have been through six months after starting my default.
And I saw that the tree fell a couple of months late because of the glandular fever.
And it took a while to get into the work habits when you were in Degassing with when Richards and Bill Wardell Wooddale.
Yeah, that's right. And Julian and Jack. Right. Preceded the war.
So where were these families? This this was in Northern Golf and this is about ten houses down from, um, the regional centres.
And they all came to you sort of doing these films, whatever.
Yeah. Researching and in and reregulate. I mean, Graham has been fantastically successful.
Um, and actually you wouldn't think so throughout the career.
Yeah. I'm feeling in an entrepreneurial is is it's um.
And Gillian. Jack again did very well.
Yes indeed. And then as you say, you got the papers, you got your, uh, degree, but you say you had to write it up during your clinical years.
So, yes, not the first man.
And what happened was I went to the Radcliffe, to the erm I had a place at the Middlesex but just decided for a variety of reasons I like,
uh, and that I needed to stick around to write my thesis. So I stayed at the at the Radcliffe and um, I think I work reasonably hard.
I was doing I did some more biochemistry on the biochemistry of Bull's is with Ruth and Hank and Steve.
I forgot that. Right. Um, and that was on the strength that he'd been my for my dear fellow and liked it and said come and do some work.
So I did that, um, towards the end of my research defo period.
Sandy Augustan broke his leg in Australia and I got a telegram, this one happened last night from saying, please take care of a teacher.
So I did a lot of tutorial teaching and then I somehow ended up as an audio tutor.
So all the way through my clinical years and well, as a husband, actually, I did physiology and biochemistry tutorials and that was enormous fun.
And then during and I, I remember the first surgical of my first medical phone, George Picaridin.
And I was with a mature lady who was a psychoanalyst and then two African gentlemen want to improvements that the light from the.
As I walk around with Pickering and Ros Russell and Tony Mitchell, well, that was you last.
Well, what what year is this? June. This was 1962, right?
You I'd just come to America. Yes. And when you think you got interested in the beaches, that was I feel my, um, I spent very early on.
The first thing I gave a tutorial on was doing endocrinology and insulin.
And I got entranced by the story which Bertie Fisher was having arguments with people about I didn't like and get into the cell and work.
Or was it purely an effect on the cell phone? Right. But and it just seemed interesting.
Yeah. My second medical was out of control.
And during that I did a research project on Dextrous six, which got published in The Lancet.
I was very happy and was my first ever public presentation at a PTA meeting in Leeds backwards towards the end of my student time.
So it was it was bad. And I then made a deliberate policy choice that I did not wish to have one of the two professorial medical jobs,
mainly because Frank boards wanted one of them desperately.
But Chris wanted the other one. And I see no point fighting over it.
And so I applied for and got the job.
But during very early on, my first sceptical firm was Sam Corie.
And I remember one thing. He insisted that his senior registrar did an audit of this hernias.
And when he saw the results, he told them to stop the houseman on that one of the two,
the husband disappeared about a week after we had started the students.
And I then did the student locum for the rest of the phone and learnt a lot very quickly.
But when it came the second surgical, I just had a letter from the university saying, even if you didn't submit your you feel blah, blah, blah.
So I trotted along to the medical school to turn to Italy and who's supposed to be doing the second film and said,
you know, could I have the five of them come and do it as an elective act?
So I wrote it rather quickly than six weeks flat and got that out of the way.
And then when I went to arrange my elective say, you know, do I have to do surgery,
I discovered to give me a B for the firm without once having been there.
And I then did his house job later on. We'll come back to that.
But do you remember don't play don't play now from Columbia Presbyterian because that's your name,
you name it in the up end because we don't mean giving you a tutorial.
Yeah. The group of you, you know about diabetes. And he did.
He is an endocrinologist. But to be fair, the radiologist there.
Yeah. Yeah. And then you took finals. What did you think of.
I thought it's an appalling experience. And my last bit of finals was an oral and obstetrics and all about twin pregnancies.
And I thought they were horrible for people inside and I can't remember it well.
And what's interesting about it might have been I may be beastly.
And I came out of that and I went to have to wait six hours for the result.
I went along to the Scala and saw Buster Keaton film, didn't laugh once.
And I came out of that and determined something would have stuck to other things that I was never going to take another life.
And so I haven't. But I mean, people do have the odds of failing exams and they have to work for them.
How did you feel pathology, do you think? Oh, I just had what I was it the Viterbo.
You just need to survive.
And that's for an early Oliver, because I was going off with this American guy who thought I that fruit is now.
And I went off as his driver to the south of France and we followed the Albert Jenson trial, um, outside Bali five.
And at the beginning of the they said.
No, I must answer a few questions, they said, are you busy in September?
And I said, I suspect I will. So what did you think of Pickering Pickering?
He was a good teacher and I liked his slightly abrasive style.
Um, and he had a sense of humour, um, and he just had a presence.
I mean, I was the youngest at the time, but we didn't respond on war grounds.
Right. And I know that. And that was, you know, the classical teaching by humiliation.
Right. Which he was very good at.
Not half as good at that, though, as Mitchell, who was brutal and, um, Russell Russell was fun is and that's all of our lives around the soil.
And he was just a lovely guy. Yes. Murphy, who was here late and and then Tim Taylor's job is.
You did that with Frank Woods. Yes. Now, how did you two enjoy that?
Because it's a legend, too. That's another legend that the patient's surgical patients have never been so.
Well, we had a lovely time. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. And I did. I did.
Marlboro Man and Frank did with them down the far end of their lives here about they did and at half time in three months was about to switch over.
But the system all refused to have Frank.
Oh Bob was a guy who was there wasn't an easy no.
And it was so I just I mean, yeah, I had had a lovely time doing something.
What about once? And Tim enjoyed it. Yeah. I think James Hatfield was the senior.
Right. And, uh, Preston was the registrar.
But I mean, James was incredible because. Focussed, very determined.
Yes, and, you know, we'll get there. Yes, yes, he did.
And I mean, it was determined fairly early on that it would be best if I didn't operate on people.
But I mean, I kept getting infected wound sites afterwards and Tim wanted to do a nose job on the problem.
And that was the case when Frank and I did a pair of twins circumcising them on each end of a trolley.
And Frank, being very cautious, just took on my news to my hand off so far to the left while I was a bit more Catholic.
And the mother afterwards was a little irritated by this.
And I remember my comment had to be so sorted.
Never mind, that will be able to tell them apart. And we just had a lot of fun.
Frank kept knocking them off. I mean, he, he, he got an I knock on wood.
Yes, he did. And that's because he was one of two things fun.
Whenever we got a weekend long type, that was a likelihood he would be ill.
And this was all the time he was getting mixed up with Hillary, his subsequent wife.
And so he would go tell it on Monday to comment about having been on the block for the week.
And I think it worked very well. And because he knocked them off.
Yes. So when were you setting up to America?
Um, that was, um, I suppose I started just the beginning of the house.
Yeah. I mean, it very rapidly, um, struck me about, uh, being an essay.
Cho was not a good quality of life and not a nice thing to do.
Um, and the thought of going off to the Hammersmith,
like all the bright young man and I was very unhappy and I thought would be much more fun to get the stage I had actually been offered.
This was all about the Christmas of my house. Yeah.
Uh, I've just been offered a post lecture lecture in biochemistry in Sheffield with the one about me and I sort of said yes.
And erm before that I'd written to Harvard and Yale,
I'd met the professor of medicine at Harvard and I suppose he lived on the property of Miss Coolidge when I met
him while I was in Boston with George Foreman and Frank Epstein from Yale had been working in private lab.
So I a from that kind of like I'm going to be a fellow. And Epstein said not for two years.
And Thorne said yes. Was that a pure research fellowship or was it a clinical research?
And who is paying for that? Well, I didn't have to apply a bit of money for it, and I applied for an MLC travelling fellowship.
I was one day over a lower age limit, um, and went to have an interview and everything and didn't get it.
And I met Bill, you know, who was on the panel in the street.
And he said, well, we all thought you ought to go and do your membership first and then you come back to us,
by which stage I'd actually arranged for Boston to pay for me.
You know, they paid my publisher out of NIH money.
Who did you work with in Boston? I well, I worked with, um, I'm not very good.
Kind of like all day people at the Peter and Brigham.
I wanted to get the job, but they were full. Right. So I went to the Peter Pan Brigham and Criminology, uh, spent a year, uh,
unsuccessfully disproving the cons hypothesis that all hypertension was due to Aldosterone,
which meant getting in at 7:00 every morning and injecting people with radioactive.
And but, uh, immediately from the beginning, I'd been able to see George Kago Jocelin said, you know, can I come to a couple of things with you?
And worked with a lovely guy called Stu. So I learnt the insulin assay, which he had just set up.
So that's life. And, um, and did some studies.
Um, and I also did some studies with I'm not quite sure why.
Um, it was. Does some hypotheses regarding arginine displacing potassium from cells and
we did a series of studies showing if you infused arginine into toxic dogs,
you reverse that its toxicity. Um, so I did a bit of that on my side.
Um, and but after, uh, I met a guy called Jeff Sharp,
who was assistant professor at the Mass General and Yorkshireman, and he said, come and work with us.
So I went for my second and third year of the mass general did my one month in six clinical fellow clinical side at the Peter Bent by both.
And I said over and I had a lovely, lovely time at the Mass General, but that was all working on steroids receptor Al.
And was that I mean, I know his job, but was it. And that. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, Alex, you'd be there on a Saturday afternoon and this again was more catching drips from bloody column,
which you had to do in the control room. And Alex would come in on a Saturday afternoon and take his turn.
And the camera just said, would you be doing this audio tape and Simpson analysis about it here?
And, uh, yeah. Yeah, that that had you imagine Bush in Oxford?
No, but I met him. We went out periodically to Worcester, Massachusetts, and met the group.
So what did you think of him then? Um, I didn't talk to show.
So how did you find your clinical weeks, months and matched.
And they were they were fine. I mean, I did a clinic every week and General Metz, which was just me on my arm and it was a computer clinic,
said they put me on my team for life fighting because they all filled in a history of your computer.
You then had to undo it and start again.
And that was quite. The clinical period was, you know, you or the professor's sidekick, um, and you would see all these patients.
And these were all mostly adrenal patients, accidents and so on.
And who was famous for that stage for, uh, taking I've one treatment for a little bit.
Of course, I also did some diabetes round me up and stuff.
And he will get to do who again was I had type one diabetes and who was a very, very nice man.
Um, and I spent a lot of time actually, and I used to get the children at six thirty in the morning.
So I was going to do my day job and then go back in the evening on my way home.
So you had four years and three. Three. And when did you get the idea of coming back to England?
I always knew I was coming. Yeah, I went for one year in fact, but was fun.
So we stayed for three and during my third year I thought I better find a job to come back to.
So I did a round of various. I remember going to see Philip Randolph for advice and I probably spoke to you too.
And Tony Mitchell offered me and I said Joe Post in Nottingham so I could get by.
Everyone said, you got your membership.
But then after that, I was on the point of accepting that it was Christmas when Hans Krebs, who was on the board of the Mass General,
a message came down, would I go to see him and went up to this enormous office, must be out of office.
I was Henslow and I was totally on cos he smiled and was friendly, unusual and said, Would you like to come back to Oxford?
Would you would you please.
Um, Paul Gleason's got some money for two people and if you could perhaps raise a four page synopsis of what you want to do by next week,
because I mean that was based on a great idea to my mind, did not sit down and that everybody didn't have to do all the membership.
And how justifiable do you think the idea was? It's worked out well for me, yes.
Do you think at large it's a good idea not doing the membership or.
No, not because often I think the way some people might do the membership in the end.
Yes, the whole idea was that if you're going to do clinical research,
you didn't have to know about the whole of medicine at membership level, but you just had to go into a special.
That's fine. Yeah, I don't think I can get people early.
Yeah, you know,
if you wait till someone's done that membership and you have the classical back end of registrar period or the first two years of SPRO,
then you start quite difficult getting into it. I mean, I like the way I did it.
I thought it was risky, but it worked. Now, has that model spread in England?
Yeah, I know it's remarkable in that it has.
I mean, some a little bit in the sense that the wolpaw post now the academic F y teams or whatever they call them, there's some money for that.
Um, and, uh, we're picking up some good young people.
Um, the I mean, people doing these fellows in the middle of a medical course and these sort of programme is still a very rare phenomenon.
Um, and people then get sucked into what is now much, much more rigid training programme.
I mean, you couldn't have ended up as an acute type physician doing what I did these days.
You know, I wouldn't have been allowed on the wards and did this.
And what did he think of the scheme in the end?
I mean, why did you leave England happy? I think he was happy. I mean, it was the two of us.
It was a lot like I do. And but he became a professor in Birmingham of immunology.
And, um, and I mean, we had a ball of three or four years because so many things I'm about ideas and, you know, people like working with yourself.
And, um, it was just an enormous amount of fun.
Now, clinically, I know it's difficult to judge, but, you know, different phases.
How would you think of the RADCLYFFE and the American hospitals clinic thing?
I thought we were much better. It's the most. And also, what about Oxford vs Southampton?
Renuka So they get in different phases. Yeah, um.
I mean, Oxford. I would probably right Oxford, actually, because it was I mean,
it was it was the majority were thinking academically oriented, but thinking was a nation.
And the overall impression was, uh, you know, people cared for patients.
Um, but Panopto, you know, and a very interesting and intelligent way like that.
I mean, there are people I think much know and I'm sure.
And do you think that your time as an undergraduate was a good preparation for your career?
There are two questions. Is your career with a career in medicine?
Yeah, the for my career, I was well at the time in many ways to time of my career, although that was I mean, I went into it at the beginning, uh,
knowing somewhere in here that I wanted to do, I did feel like I want to do research in biochemistry and I anticipate a career in biochemistry.
And, you know, that was within a hair's breadth of happening.
If I had not pulled out of a job, I mean, everyone thought I was pulling out of a tenured lecturer post in Sheffield.
Yes. In retrospect, the best move I have on my, uh. And, uh, so you have for me was, um.
Well, it both was the right start and the tub and what I did later, um, I think for people in general,
I still like the idea of having a, uh, of a minimum of a year where you actually think,
um, and having watched the undergraduates at King's College, um, I mean,
I just don't think, uh, I mean, I think they expect more and more to be poured into them.
Yeah, it's a shame. Let's get back to the crimes here.
Yes. Those crabs and of course, Derek Williamson. Yes. And your, uh, John M. Davis is still there.
Yes. Um, tell me about that set up and how I thought you were on a different floor.
Strictly. We were in a hut. Right. And the other side and in the hut was this group of people.
There were various other people in the main building,
but we were in one of the Nisim and which was hot as [INAUDIBLE] in the summer and rather chilly food.
And it was just a very good sort of conglomeration of people that much of people and the rest of the department.
You weren't in any formal sense working for crabs. You know yourself, because I remember.
Yeah, I guess he would. I mean, he came in every morning and help us out.
Um, and his first call that is Richard Richard with Richard Haass, who was one of these two different Steve.
And then Richard never came to mind. I would always be like, I'd like to kill my rats early and not here yet.
And then he would come back and forth to say to Richard, what are your results?
Yeah. And I mean, I was always around.
So he knew and I was quite often, uh, behaving in a slightly frivolous fashion.
And he tended to walk into people. But, um, but he put up with all that.
But you talk to him quite a bit about your work, gets a little bit about just how you get it out of it.
And very well. And Derek, I talk to about. Yes. And I mean, it was Derek and Jane.
I learnt the metabolite assets from which of some good steps, um, and I mean probes I spoke to much, much more.
Once he had got me back to the Radcliffe as, all right, I'm getting this wrong.
So you started where the putting the back and. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Oh right. That was lesson.
Not during my but I no I realised that when I came back from America, when I came back from America, when I was on the second floor.
Yeah. They uh and he was on the hill, he was all of us and I mean he then did to me he wanted me to be Paul because you know,
day three, what results have you today? And this is.
Do you mind working with him? No, no, that's right.
And after about a month, I said and I figure just had this I've still haven't got a lab, et cetera, et cetera.
But he almost always went down for coffee with them.
Um, and I did them on my essays, actually worked with two or three people who are within Neil Ruderman.
And I'm. This from Australia and I did I wrote a review with Frank Woods,
who was working with Crêpes at the time and Krabs, and that was a very interesting experience.
Was that line by line on Lactococcus subject matter? Yeah, I know.
Very interesting thing and interesting. And everybody says he was a great help to everybody.
He was able to just talk things out. It was generally a fairly frivolous conversation knowing Derek, but there was a lot a lot in there.
And he was just basically helpful.
I mean, he kept everything running on a day to day basis.
And I said recently to Sandy that I thought one of the best things he'd ever done was to train unhandcuffed really good people.
Yeah, no, it wasn't. You were there.
I did a lot of that and they were marvellous bunch.
And yes, I mean, those to work right from the day.
And so NASA is one of my top loads, um and looked after.
But he followed suit and who then came through one or two of whom were interesting.
Then what led you to leave Oxford.
There was a good offer or you know, it was I mean, uh, b some 40 Darmody or the welcome that all the welcome thought they'd done.
It would be some that Oxford University would take us over on a permanent basis.
That was the basis on which they gave the initial money, which was for six years.
And B, some, uh, ran into trouble with the university and they wouldn't play ball.
Well, I don't how it happened all over the country. Right?
No, I understand it. I personally, it was then I just.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so I had money for six years, but in the fourth year I thought perhaps I ought to start vaguely looking for a job.
And um, then some marks and Mikael's were two chums from the B and I remember walking on the beach in Brighton saying,
you know, what the [INAUDIBLE] am I going to do next? And they said, do chemical pathology, um, which both of them were doing.
Um, you don't need any qualifications and you can have a fun time.
So what they'll, uh. And, uh, so I rapidly submitted published works to get the MRC path, which you could at the time.
I got a session a week with Bill in Bike, really working with Bill and Clinical Biochemistry, um and O'Brien as a honorary senior registrar.
I already was an honorary registrar, Betts. And then Ralph Wright got in touch with me when the Southampton job came up and said, why didn't I apply?
This was, uh, my wife from some time, John us.
That's the last thing you should do. Um, for some reason I'm not quite sure about.
And so I did. And, um, three people were interviewed and it was a funny joke because they did not want to, uh,
it was to run the routine laboratory because that was on the ordinary on an ordinary chemical pathologist.
I didn't want that. And that suited me. Of course, that turned that into a pure research.
And one person during the interview walked out, um, and he wanted to be in charge of everything.
Yeah. Um, and I was offered the job.
What was in Australia, clinical biochemistry at the multiple analyser, you know, that would suddenly do ten measurements.
And the Flash, did that affect the whole subject? Oh, yes, it must of it's going to be just to them around that time.
Yeah, yeah, yes. I remember going off saying that regional scientific officer say, you know, we need these really big new analyses.
There'd be the smaller one. Yes.
Um, and one of the best things that happened to me was I took on board as a senior chief technician in clinical in my research lab,
someone who'd been in a routine lab, and she set up all the metabolites on an daughter analyser.
So no more publishing Cuba, et cetera, and being on this Bill.
Penfold Yes. Yes. Um, and did you work purely on diabetes, would you say, in South Hampton?
No. Um, no. Quite long term liver disease, because I started doing that with Ralph.
In fact, a lot on the disease and, um, a lot on your endocrine.
Metabolism, kids and diabetes started with growth in Oxford.
Yes, yes. Right. And they were doing a leg of liver disease patients.
I'm single, so I'm looking at lactate on the Outer Banks and so forth.
And it was interesting. Not since you've left Oxford, obviously, you had the chance from time to think about the Oxford Medical School.
How do you think it's progressed? But as I said, I think it's I think it's done well ish.
Um, I think that, um, I mean, there's been a phenomenal development and focus on the postgraduate side and on the research end of things.
Uh, I'm not sure how well the undergraduates have done out of that.
And I think for a long time in Oxford remained rooted in its origins, um, and didn't change.
Um, they've had one or two, I think, pretty good people leading the undergraduate medical school in the last few years.
And I think it probably is better again. Um, but I do have the thesis.
If you are in a good place, it doesn't matter what the curriculum is.
Um, if you've got the brightest people in the country, you can't actually screw it up to the point that, um.
So, uh, it's it's interesting because it is so, you know, so focussed on the genetics.
There's some that the other, um, but the I mean,
I continue to have feelings of Bayville and I've had some very, very good tutors for the undergraduates.
So I don't think undergraduates so far on the, uh, on the clinical side have had no experience of fixing or teaching at all.
And I should have asked you that. I have what else do you want to say?
And I'm just trying to think I did think about this.
A lot has come back, but I didn't know it was that, um.
I think I one of the one of most fortunate thing in sports helped me enormously was ending up doing a lot of tutorial teaching, right?
Yes, because this would be preclinical. These are pretty careful.
And I don't know, I ever came across James Morris, who was medical director at the Radcliffe for a long time.
I know who you mean. Yeah, I did hear pathologist. Yeah.
Yeah. He and I mean, I used to do the teaching and the fact we had above a garage in the back of a chemist and two flat and
they used to come up and that was just an enormous fun and great stimulation and really kept you know,
he was a student when he was here. Yeah. The same.
Yeah. And two of them got first. Good, very bad.
It was the icon then Simon James, who was very dogged and really Westerway.
Yes. But was they were just insane.
Charles Fox was one of the boys. Lovely, lovely.
Yes. So I think that was a fairly tough finding, but a lot of this was accidental daring.
You know, things happen. Yes. And I think any message for anyone would be, you know, don't forget to look sideways.
Um, I haven't I've never I've been criticised all my life for being on a, uh, unfocussed path of being too broad.
I mean, I can remember the BDA visits to look at my group. And you also have two or three times like, uh oh, yeah, he's he's pretty good,
but much too involved and too diverse a range of business, which that tends to be the way.
Yeah. You don't win Nobel prises that way, but no point yet.
Pickering was faced with that. Yes. Having a breath. Yes.
I think I finished. Yes. Yeah. Thank you very much, George. I have a super.