Interviewing oh, gosh, God, Derek Hockaday on the 7th of March.
Um, Guthrie, I think you would have come up to the Oxford Medical School, which in a sense is what we're talking about.
You'd have come up in forty nine point fifty eight, right?
Yeah. And what did you think of the admissions procedure?
Well, from what I remember, the admission came up in late 49 to sit a second exam,
discover that you never had a medical scholarship and a scholarship exam and invading a hall in 1949 for six colleges who were doing at the same time.
And I made them a bit. Chapel sandhogs, those are wonderful chapels looking after us for the week.
So we spent the whole week, um, sitting on about ten, three hour papers or something, and I decided staying.
And you knew that there was no way I was going to get into this great university.
So we were told on a Friday night that those who were going to be interviewed would be put up, but then I would put up on the list and to launch.
So on the way to the station 71, I thought I better go and just check that your name isn't on it.
And I remember a great feeling of disappointment, actually,
that my name was on it because I'd really decided I didn't want to come to my put off by the fact
that all the chaps around in the exams would be cleverer than being a little bit of schools,
which I happen to love something. Uh, but anyway, I did stay on until Saturday and I remember being interviewed in uniform by the master tutor there,
Daniel Cunningham, who was a very young who came out to be a tutor. And much to my surprise, I was offered a scholarship.
So there's no two ways about it. So at the end, the sentencing was very simple as far as I was concerned.
Well, it made you go try for Oxford in the first. Well, no one from my school ever been to Oxford or Cambridge,
and I'd done my schools to get hospitals to school, had a chemistry master who thought I was a clever chap.
I knew I wanted to do it. And he said, you know, I aim high, go for Oxford or Cambridge.
And the headmaster said, wasted time. Anybody from this school's ever done before.
This was in the Partridge's system Worcestershire and want to share and master insisted that I did it.
So it was entirely down to him. But I actually did that.
And, you know, I think what a wonderful man he was.
Give him that opportunity. So it was it was actually much simpler than one month before.
So when you came, you know, settled in, did you regret it or were you glad?
I felt very comfortable. I can remember during the first year that I was at University College because I did feel that I had,
um, I was a bit out of my depth in terms of social media.
Yes. And when I was I came from a very, very simple, humble background.
You know, I had parents both left school at 14 and all of that.
So it was actually a great shock to me to be in such a hard part.
And did you feel in any sense you were bullied, socially bullied?
Not physically. I also have to go and say I did. I mean, I think everybody was very kind.
I have to say that.
And I got very interested in rock climbing for some reason, partly because I tried a lot of trees as a boy, and that really was my enthusiasm.
So did you find the colleges? Yes, I'm afraid so. The relative calm?
Yeah, I can't remember. Oh, yes. The camera certainly was one thing.
And I remember very well getting around the overhang with a people ended up getting hung out with lightning.
Conductor The only way you could do that, someone and many years later was killed in the Antarctic when it came off.
But yes, I'm afraid I did that. And with that night. Did you do that?
Yes, we did it at night and it was like it. So that was one of the things that was done.
And nobody thought it was powerful and it was exciting. Yeah, that's right.
I wouldn't do it today. And so then you did B.M. after two years.
Yes. And then went on for years. Who's with it? Yes, that's right.
And how did you enjoy the two different bits of it? Yeah, I think it was very exciting to have the.
To schools to test himself, and I was, I must say,
what tutor wanted me to stay home and do a see and D for I didn't want to do that because I was able to get on and get qualified.
That was my ambition. And to get somewhere nice and then you to other tutors.
So yes. One well to one particular uh uh who is a biochemist.
Uh gosh. What's his name. Pembroke Brown.
That's right. Who is a very lively, very different from from from dad.
And actually when I came back to talk to Percy, came into my surgery once,
I had one day and said, I've never had a doctor, you know, but I hate doctors.
But I've discovered you come back as a GP. And I think I'd like to register with you since I've talked to you.
Good idea. Yeah. And do you remember people lecturing and so on?
I mean, what do you remember in that those years?
Who were the good lecturers? I didn't get any lecture and we didn't get too many lectures.
I think in those those years, uh, I can't honestly remember.
There was a there was a book by a chemist or Percy O'Brien.
I've already mentioned that there was a nice chap at that meeting.
Possible. Yes. Yes. Who is a very persuasive lecturer.
Uh, and well, I thought there was a chap at your college as well.
But George, good work on a front who was, I think, very good.
It's good. And cramps people that I didn't come across at that time, but I did later.
Yeah. In retrospect, as a patient, well, through Percy Rysiek O'Brien, who said, you know,
it's down to me that I had a place in Oxford because nobody else was interested.
Therefore I didn't know that. No. And but nobody thinks he was the guy who persuaded him to come.
Well, that's what he didn't say. It provided him with some accommodation initially, apparently in his in his lap.
It was claimed that. Right. That is fascinating. And then he was that in the thirties or in the fifties.
In the fifties. Yes. And then. Right. And then why did you decide to go down to London?
Well, there was really no choice in those days, from what I can remember.
I know I was aware I think there was seventy two in my year.
And I seem to remember there are six people who stayed home in Oxford,
but they were all people who were married, had families or had reasons like that.
So it was never discussed with me whether I should stay on in Oxford.
And I it was assumed and I was told by a town that, uh, that since I wasn't a record player, uh,
the best thing to do was get to a place like, you know, and those is why I did what I was told to.
Really you were directed to use it. But that morning, I mean, I didn't know anything about it, so I was happy for him to do that.
And he said, you know, it was one of the more serious candidate schools initiated.
Some of the others were into sport. Yeah.
Then what made you eventually to come back to Oxford? Because I know that's very interesting time in between, but we meant to talk about Oxford.
Well, that was that was really rather freakish in that I think I was destined to to go on to do paediatrics because I get just initial job.
But at that age and I got did the membership and then I did a job to go to Warren Street for a short time with,
uh, with the two paediatricians from U.S. age.
I wasn't sure I wanted to be in paediatrics. And the thing that I one of the things that's when I became became a registrar back accusations of locum,
one of the things I hated was having to see the parents of children who had died on the ward.
And in those days it was quite common because of congenital heart disease or some treatable leukaemia was treatable.
Childhood cancers could not come up short on time and awards and paediatric teaching hospital.
And I thought, gosh, I don't want to spend my life interviewing parents who've lost children because I find it a very painful thing to do.
But I always had the ambition to be a GP because that was really, I think, based on the village doctor where I lived.
But I like him and his job. And so, uh, so I as a student, had gone down to spend a week with the GP in Wiltshire, in Chippenham, and he was.
U.S. chap who was willing to have occasional students and that was common in those days, and I like that idea.
Uh, but it was really the day that the talked you knew I was uncertain about what I would do and I'd done the job for him.
At your house, you said, well, there's a very good practise in Oxford looking for a new GP.
I think I know him because the chap with the U.S. age years ago is very highly regarded person.
Um, why don't you go and see him and see whether they are interested.
So I came up to Oxford to see this chap and I was very taken by him and he said, yes,
well, why don't you come for a year and we're happy to take you for a year as a trainee.
And if you like it, you can stay on and we'll feel like you. We'll keep you on, uh, if you don't want to go back to what you were doing.
And I spent a year in Oxford with him and I was convinced that that was really what I wanted to do,
particularly as I then had become quite a reasonable young paediatrician.
And I felt confident about dealing with children. And I could see that that was very important in paediatrics and, yes, in general practise.
And so that's how it happened. And was red and green the other part?
No, he wasn't. He wasn't. Then he had been in the past environment.
Green had gone back to London to be a hospital consultant some years before, and I think he kept his interest in was so disease.
Yes. And when you joined it, was it still in the road or had you moved?
No, no. It was stemmed from being from Alan Richards that he was the senior partner.
There was another part. It was not a very prominent partner, but he was a nice enough chap.
But he didn't prepare with Alan was as good quality as a GP.
He lived the practise from his house in Bavaria, and that's where I worked for him for the first few years as well.
So when did students begin to appear in the.
Well, I high school students didn't really see anything of general practise in those early days of time, as I remember.
But I used to have occasional students come into my practise because the medical students would say to the director of clinical studies,
can't we see something good? General practitioner and I was identified as a young GP, was willing to have students in its practise.
So I used to have students come into the practise from time to time. And I greatly enjoyed that.
And I think I think they enjoyed it, too.
And I you know, I learn things from students. I remember one of the things I used to say,
particularly in my early years in general practise to patients who I really didn't know what was wrong with them.
I would sort of take their histories and examine them and say, oh, I don't know what it is, what do you think it is?
And students said to me they'd never heard somebody in the hospital say that to them.
And I must say, I found that a very useful it's a very good question with so was used to say, what do you want me to do for you?
Which is another very good question. And when he was really puzzled and.
Yes, yes. Um, but I was very keen that students should learn more about their profession.
So I think I was part of a sort of small pressure group,
was trying to encourage the medical school to do something about giving students, um, uh, some sort of contact with you.
And Andrew would be doing this that time. Yes, I knew him. Of course, it was a very close friend of mine because we've been unified together.
We've been negotiated together. And I like to think that Andrew gave up his ideas of being a hospital doctor to become a GP.
Because I come back to Oxford, I survived for a year or two and he thought, well, it can't be so bad.
They've got to. So you went into general practise beforehand? Yes, I did.
Right. I came I came in here in nineteen fifty nine.
Right. Uh, and it wasn't a popular choice with students in those days and I would I think had been watching the importance of arrogance.
And had you done national service. No, I didn't do national service. And that was, that was one of the differences.
Yes. There. And then um and the group you say, can you name any of the others who were keen on this,
on the GP's who were trying to get the school to do something?
Um, yes. That's Michael. Yeah. Michael was I was interested.
He was not particularly interested in having students in his practise.
I seem to remember he found, uh, that he, uh, you know, he was very protective of his patients.
I probably was less afraid of my patients. Uh, and I think another factor that influenced me was that I started to have.
Started to become a college doctor in Oxford. And I have, you know, most known medical students in my practise are used to that.
So when did you begin that and how many colleges? I think it began that in very early on.
And at that, again, there's another freakish thing, because it happened at North Flori became the province of Queens, I think it was in 1961.
And I was really very, very much a young doctor myself.
Then, uh, I, uh, Flori was a patient of unknowledgeable downtown,
which is have a lot of interesting, significant people like C.S. Lewis and all these.
And that was one of the great things about, you know, practise in those days.
Anyway, I found myself drifting off to Florida because I was just going off on holiday for a month and I found myself
looking after four eight when he was really quite ill because he had a lot of trouble with coronary heart disease,
really at a relatively young age. I think he was in his late 50s and 60s.
And so I got along with him quite well. And when when, uh, he became provost of Queens, which I think was in about 1961,
he discovered that Queens had a very old GGP as his college doctor, who was at least in his 70s and might even have been in his 80s.
And Floyd decided this was outrageous. And he really after so I said to the college, I got to be a good GP.
I think he'd make an excellent college doctor. Of course, you can imagine what a lot of Queens said about that.
Uh, but Florey was a very determined man.
Yeah. Quite clear to me. Determine that. Uh, so I was opposed by most many of the older fellows of Queens.
I was opposed, I might say,
by the other doctors who are currently doctors who thought I was much too young and inexperienced to become a college doctor.
And there was a major confrontation which even involved the British Medical Association because the
doctors association appealed to the British Medical Association that this was really outrageous,
that Florey should be pushing his head across the board.
I didn't want to know about it. So I'm forty one.
Yeah, that pen is the only doctor at Queen's in.
I was very young. I mean, I wasn't exactly I was like, yeah, most of my doctors were in their forties so it was an interesting time.
And when did you get another college? Oh, I gradually accumulated about half a dozen colleges over the next 15 years, I suppose.
And in the 60s I because I felt college student health care was badly managed in Oxford because most times change to
say most college doctors were more interested in having Tony watching colleges than they were looking after students.
I campaigned along with a gang of students who are pressing the university to establish university health services.
And I had quite a bit of encouragement from, uh, from various people, including Chacko Ben-Gurion Studio of the University Medical Officer.
Yeah. And I travelled around to other medical schools, all the other universities,
and discovered university health care systems, which I thought were very good.
And I thought Oxford could benefit greatly from having a bit more professionalism and trust me, and supported that.
I wrote some sort of report which was dismissed by most people because it came I'd been to Manchester.
Some places like this may well snooty about about that go to Cambridge,
I knew very well that Cambridge and Banjul Hansen said you what you need to do is to go
to somewhere like Harvard and Yale and look at their university health care system,
which I know are very good because you've been there and I got a scholarship from the World Health
Organisation to go and spend three months at Harvard and Yale looking at the university health systems.
And I came back roads report, which went to the same university committee.
And Alan Bullock, was that the first time? And he got very enthusiastic about it, asked me to go and see him and tell him about it,
which I did, and said, right, we must have something like this in this university.
And he set up a committee, the Greater Good, which collected evidence over several years and came forward the recommendation
that there should be some sort of university health care system in Oxford.
Of course, it didn't didn't happen because all the colleges resisted it and said health care's got nothing to do with university.
It's college, but we'll decide what we're going to do about it, which was, I think, typical.
Yes. I'm sorry. I wasn't too surprised, but there was one area where they were couldn't be quite so dismissive.
And that was in mental health. They were worried because of student suicides and so on.
So I'm glad to say there was one small outcome of all of that, which I was proud of,
which was that the university established a counselling service and it still exists.
So that's now 50 years ago. It still is a university counselling service paid for by the university.
It's in the middle of the street.
And so, you know, it wasn't entirely fruitless.
And did you go into the colleges and health surgeries or did they come down because we were vague, centrally located in Oxford.
I didn't ever do surgery in colleges, but we had er later on we had nurses in colleges who had to do surgeries and so on college nurses,
and that was a very good, very good move to have college nurses.
Did you introduce them. I will, I will certainly encourage it and encourage it.
I think you were getting around to it and colleges were beginning to be feeling to be more responsible for, you know, health care.
And when did you persuade the medical school to have an organised attachment to general practise for the medical students?
Yeah, yeah. I know that was that really wasn't my initiative. That was Richard Doll who was responsible.
But when he became Regius, it was clear that when Richardo became religious and I met met him together with some others,
there were two things that Richardo was determined to do and his time, a religious one,
was to establish a chair, public health and, um, which didn't exist at that time.
There was someone called Alice Stewart. Yes. Who wasn't.
She lives in Canberra and she was doing some interesting work, but she did and she says she knows maybe she'll have to show the reader and her
and probably thought she'd been the successor to a man whose name I've forgotten,
who moved from Cambridge in the late 1940s from being a professor of medicine in Cambridge to,
um, um, uh, to become a Nuffield professor of public health.
I think it was in Oxford. Is he right? Right. Well, that's right.
Right. Exactly. And and that was an experiment, so to speak.
He he he, I think was in the first five years and then money went out on the University of Medical School, decided they weren't going to renew it.
And so Richard was determined to get that back, in fact, in effect.
And he did establish public health quite soon after he was, uh, became Regis and Martin Vesey, who'd worked with WWC.
H.M.S. I remember that from those days became a professor.
The other thing you determined to do is to try and get something done about public, about general practise,
because there was pressure from the General Medical Council and on many medical schools have got some general practise appointment.
Uh, and he was determined that this would happen in Oxford.
And, uh, Richardo got one or two of us, um, me and Evan Louden, uh,
from one to Wantage, uh, together and said, can't you help me put developing the case.
And was Andrew there then you. No new has been the back. I didn't get involved in that, but he was very supportive of it.
I'm trying to think of who was with Politico. And the other thing was that John has Leatherjacket has been and John had been responsible for,
uh, development of prescribe or general practise, education of young GP's.
And I had been involved in that as well. So I knew him very well and Richardo knew that I was involved in that as well.
So he has those in practise somewhere. He was in telecom. Yes.
I knew right away it was out with, by the way. So he wasn't himself interested in this, but I was strongly supportive of his uncle.
David Martin was strongly supportive of having had actually been on the Clinical Medicine Board as a GP because he was a very able I was a highly,
highly respected. And so and so we put together some sort of case to go to the General Medicine Board
in the 1970s to argue the case for some of the general practise post of some sort.
And I was given the terrible, terrifying task of presenting this case to a meeting of the medicine board.
Uh, well, I have to say, it was done in the chair.
Yes, he was in the chair, but it took a back seat, so to speak.
Uh, and, uh oh, it was a painful experience.
And I, uh, and I remember someone, I think a better remain nameless.
Uh, when I went that way, I stood up to make my speech, said the chap was said,
come on, Godfrey, we all know you're a good GP, but don't try to persuade us.
That's anything academic about general practise. Anyway, so there was caution about that, about that whole thing,
but it nevertheless was decided apparently at the commission board that there should be
some general practise posts and they would probably have a readership at some point,
but they couldn't find the money.
Money was very tight in medicine at that time, so they couldn't justify spending money on a part time readership in general practise.
So they would put it on ice for five years.
And Rosemary Ruu, who of course, was a huge supporter of all sorts of things, said to have said that the medicine.
But look, I think this is so important that I'm willing to fund this post for five years so we can get it underway and get it started.
Uh, and and that was agreed.
And so the powers that be kept together and eventually got around and retired,
the half time post readership and general practise, and I was sort of supportive of that.
And I said, well, you know, if this guy needs to have a better job in October, she needs to happen to anybody who's teaching general practise.
It has to be a GP of some sort. And then, you know, they can come into our practise and practise to agree to that.
So the post was advertised and I was aware that a lot of people had it for around the place and expressed interest.
They didn't think it was very satisfactory to try and get somebody to come outside and start doing this.
So, uh, and but things went and I was told that I had a 15 or 16 people applying for the post.
And and about the day before the closure, I had a phone call from Richard Doll saying, Godfrey, where's your application for this job?
I said, look, Richard, I don't want to do this job. I've been a GP in this practise for nearly 20 years now.
I've just become a senior partner, far too busy to do something else.
And he said, we want to see your application because you may not feel you are academically qualified for the post,
but we think the most important thing about this post is that it should have the support of local GP's.
And we know you have credibility to say, oh, gosh, I really you know, I did apply for the post, but assuming they wouldn't get it, thank God would.
Of course, I was appointed and I remember John Ledingham was that was I think chaired the, uh,
I certainly remember the interview and all all the talk was not about my qualities as an academic or my practise at school or anything like that.
It was all about support from a local GP. So I thought, well, on that basis, I better take it.
You know, my wife was very opposed to me doing it because she felt I was really busy enough and didn't want me to take on a whole new challenge.
And it was a big challenge. I had to, um, we had to have changes in practise.
Yes. I was thinking how part time was it when it was it was half time to start with.
Uh, but of course it you know, half and I am that it's I work very hard now.
We'll come back to the what you did in the Post. But The Post is one thing and clinical students being sent to practise is routine.
When did that happen? Well, that's that that's strangely enough, I started just before, um, uh, I started this job, the job, because, um,
before I even applied for a job, John, that rang me up one day and said, look, we've discovered the clinical students.
We've got to do an extra two weeks, of course, to qualify to get a full time.
They have to do 44 weeks or something. And then the GMC, GMC, I think what, uh, what am I going to do with them?
So I said, John, I'm sure we can find GP's around the country.
Yeah. We're going to have a student for a couple of weeks. And so, John, letting them set, what a good idea.
I do it. What's it going to cost us? I said, well, I don't think it can cost you very much because nobody will have to pay for doing this.
I think we'll find what it was. Seventy GP's. We needed seventy practises.
So I worked hard to recruit a lot of practises around and Oxfordshire.
All of them were delighted to have a student staying with them. So the doctors actually put the students up on the side.
You know, the main is that was the start of it. And John said, well, that'll do for this year, but by next year we would have thought about something.
But it was the students. Seth Jones is director of clinical studies.
He was yeah, that was enormously helpful that he was so supportive and that was helpful that we'd known each other for the kinds of things.
And his father had been a gentleman. And so he was an enormous influence, I think, on the medical school,
on other people who are a bit more sceptical that when you got in the leadership post.
Yes. Did you really just work on this sort of thing or were you doing a research project?
Well, first of all, I have to work very much on it, on the teaching thing.
But then it became quite clear after a year or two that we had to have some sort of research
credibility and that was enormously enhanced by the job being within that multiverses department.
We have an epidemiology department, a strong research thing.
So it was within that department I was within it was appointed within that department.
And that really helped us to to get things going.
I mean, you know, I didn't have much in the way of research interests there.
But one thing I had been interested in for quite a long time was tobacco.
And, you know, I just just seen as a GP, you know, the people I've seen 15, 20 years before smoking chimneys.
And now they're coming along with their chest infections and all the rest of it.
So I thought, look, we've got to focus on this. So I really started doing work with the first serious research we did was a
randomised controlled trial of GP advice in and helping patients to stop smoking.
And this was done by a different student, an Australian film student, sadly now dead, killed Conrad Yamanashi, who became a very good epidemiologist.
We did we did a very nice trial showing a randomised trial control group showing the
effect of minimal advice from GP's and consultations on helping people to stop smoking.
We found that we did have a significant small effect on the number of people who stopped smoking.
So you were already persuaded of those work, I mean. Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, it is terrible that we take more don't work with the College of Physicians was producing reports on it.
Now what to doing any work on seeing what was something we could do.
Yeah. So that's why I started on that. I got eventually into the nicotine replacement trial thing.
So we did some of that as well. So that was very much our focus and I was enormously helped there with all the bottom.
Who happened to meet at the meeting one day at me talking about this and he said coffee or something do to help you pick your embryo department.
Thought that was nice. And so I said, yeah, we need more money so we can employ somebody to do research.
And he did that. And so we we responded by funded by ISAF.
The research group was for several years. So when I was getting the money, really, you're persuading your boss?
Yeah. Yeah. And he was just as far as I could see, he just said, you know, I want to do this.
I seem to have a great power and influence.
And it struck me that he was the sort of chap that if you have him on your side, could get an enormous benefit if you if he didn't like you very much.
And I actually have an experience of that.
When I retired, he took the money away from the department because he didn't like the person who took over.
Well, now to go back to our two personalities, Ben, it was a remarkable man.
What are your memories of Ben? Well, actually, I you know, he was I liked him and got on with him quite well.
But not everybody did, as you well know. And and it was helped by the fact that he was Danish and my wife Norwegian.
So we had a Nordic thing that's quite helpful over the years.
But he was certainly very encouraging to me. And I never really had any serious conflicts with Ben, but it could be different now.
He was running the health service for the nurses and the medical students, is that right?
If you weren't doing that and had the university got a medical service, that now you're never going to a medical service.
It just I think it improved the quality doctor system.
And anyway, it just became something the university couldn't afford to fund it in due course, I think.
But in the sixties, particularly sixties and seventies, you know, there's no doubt about it.
But students in the university had a second class health service, but GP's were interested in their patients over a period of time,
students with people who came and went and they didn't get very much time.
And they, you know, they. Really did get from some of the GPS, you don't have any problems, I we need to pay more money than though had his moments.
That is Stewart. I think something Doe had his moments with that.
Is it because they were daggers drawn? They were very different personalities.
Yes. But when it was that, though, didn't believe her work on retaliation.
I was fine. I didn't know. That's right. And was he right? I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. I didn't know enough about her to be able to make any judgement about that.
I think she thought she was. Did you meet ever meet her? Oh, yes. Yes. Uh, so she wasn't everybody's.
And, uh, uh, you know,
I think those I think that was that that appointment of a professor of public health was difficult for her to have somebody else taking on that job.
Difficult. And she moved up to Birmingham. Yes. Now, then you became a reader.
I mean, sort of the professor. Well, I only very only at the very end.
At the very end, I was given that it was decided in the in the late 80s, I suppose, early 90s,
that they really had to publish and establish a proper Department of General practise with the chair and all the rest.
And and I may say, uh, David Weatherall was strongly supportive of that, uh, then,
uh, but the public was, as always, where to find the money for for this, uh.
And, uh, so I was given an ad hominem, I know, for the last year or two, which was very nice.
And the status of general practise in the medical school seemed to be very high at the moment.
And I'm very glad to see that. For example, the director of clinical studies for over 15 years has been a team,
Lancaster in the present Department of General Practise, or Primary Health Care Sciences, as it's now called, is blubbing.
Uh, it's got two hundred and fifty people employed in it, a large research programme, accommodation, the new active, uh.
Did you get into work on contraceptives because that was very much in the book?
Not not really to very much smart investors thing, but and so I was very aware of it.
And I must say, we work well together.
And of course, the epidemiological skills in that department are actually invaluable to us in setting up research programmes.
And how much did you see of Dole in that department that he used to come in?
Yes, he was what he was what he was working next door and Richard Peters was.
But you could miss them. Tobacco smoking.
Oh, yes. Yes, mostly on tobacco. Yes. But he went on doing that.
Yes. So, Jim, San Antonio did have the both of them.
And and Jim, I actually spoke to on the phone only a few days ago because we had telephone conversation.
He he published something in the BMJ, I think, which is about sugar and actually.
Yes, yes. Right now, I know he did that last year.
And I like Jim. Yes. Very much. And I was very sad when he he moved.
Why did he move? Well, you tell me. Uh, I felt that Jim somehow never been properly acknowledged, you know, but, uh, I thought he was a clever man.
He did very interesting work. And sadly, he never gave me full credit for that.
He seemed to me more, uh, more acknowledged than the rest of the world that that's not unique to him.
And it's certainly been the case since. And that, you know, he you know, it was so, uh, he was a very good friend to me.
And he helped me a lot. I mean, I might say and and Andrew, of course, is his successor.
And we have a lot to do with each other.
In fact, I think and we spend always regard themselves as part of the Department of General practise, the general practise of the department.
And then on the political side, we have of course, we have common ground because he did, um, diabetes studies in North Oxford.
Yes, indeed. Were you involved? Yes, we were involved with that.
And and, um, uh, you know, we did we did books together.
Uh, right. And you and I and, um, and, uh, so that was that was very nice.
So how many books have you read, the medical one?
Well, one of the other things that happened when I got the readership was I was approached by Pupi,
um, violence and Addison Langton at A.P. who said we got the Oxford textbook.
It's not because the Oxford textbook said to we're not looking for the textbook of general practise.
So I said to Alison Anderson, you must be joking. You're a long way from that.
Uh, but if you really want us to produce something on general practise aspects of general practise,
um, I'm happy to edit help to edit a series of books on general practise.
And I'm sure I can find people to write books.
And so so we did actually start in about nineteen eighty eighty one, producing something we should say up to general practise theory.
And that that went on for about twenty years. I think we published over forty books for general practise.
I got some of them on a shelf somewhere,
uh on various aspects of general practise which were quite popular in general practise to be done by a lot of books,
but they did need to buy some for the younger boys having GP training.
And so we we did that a lot of GPS contributed to.
Did you write any one yourself?
Yes, I was particularly interested in aspects of preventive medicine, so I did two or three on that, either on my own or with me or Grey.
I remember before I did a very early book with me, a great, great, great enthusiast, of course.
And I would like to know what was the one of them driven? Well, it was on preventive medicine in general practise.
I think we did a good job. So how many successes have you had people in that?
Yeah, OK, well I've tried, I think it was in ninety six and I retired and the opposite did its usual thing.
It didn't appoint someone for a year. Uh that's quite true.
But that's not quite true because there was a chuckle. Martin Lawrence, do you remember what he said.
You know. Yeah. He's a GP is uh clever chap who had been a lecturer in my department who ran the department for a year after my retirement.
And so did his usual thing of not being able to find anybody who was good enough for the post and eventually David Mamet was given the job,
he'd worked with me in the in the 80s and the department and he'd been the deputy director of my research group.
He was basically an epidemiologist. I mean, epidemiology training. Uh, and he ran the department for about ten years.
Uh, and then he retired and he retired when he was 60, I think only three or four years ago.
Now, having said it was a Panopto flourish when he said he didn't want to carry on doing it.
And the latest chap is a tackle, Richard Hump's, who's now the professor of primary health care sciences,
because they change the title, I don't like to say, but everything has to be science these days.
And he came from Birmingham, where he'd been the professor of general practise for about 20 years.
I actually was involved in this appointment way back in the 80s, 90s, and he's very good, very dynamic.
Uh, um, uh, uh, a powerful guy.
And he seems to be producing dramatic changes in this in this department.
Got vast numbers of people, lots of money. And as I say, the University of Texas,
I saw something that vice chancellor had written the other day about his department saying
this was now going to be the centre of the whole of the management had been to Canada.
As I write to where did men go between originally McCain and we, he moved off to South Hampton.
He became a professor of primary health care epidemiology that David and I have a certain amount of conflict.
When we were, uh, when we were in the department together and eventually resolved that by moving off.
But they came back and I think you did a very good job for 10 years.
And I must say, I'm delighted the department is such a powerful place as a GP in Oxford.
And with your memories of you, I carried on all this time.
I miss being a GP practise and I really struggled to do that as I got more and more busy, but I enjoyed it.
Yeah, I stopped delivering babies in the middle of the night and things like that.
But if I look back at my time, the part of my time that I enjoyed most with being a GP,
I think being a GP in the sixties and seventies was a very satisfying life.
You felt you were doing something worthwhile.
You were and you were very involved with family as the relationships were very close, lots of home visits and things like that.
And I must say, I'm sad to see what general practises become, which is a, you know, nine to five job, uh, you know, out of hours work.
And I understand it is. Yes, but it you know, I hear so I'm sure we all do.
People say, well.
Takes them 10 days to get an appointment and you have to want it, but didn't have it, and I was doing, um, and as a GP, you know, there you are.
And you remember that you said what did you think of the outfit? Hospitals.
I don't really know the hospitals that they exist now.
I don't know in those days. And I loved it in the early days because it was the relationships are so close.
Um, uh, you know, all the old GP knew all the hospital consultants.
And I think most of the consultants, most of the GP is, uh, um, and, uh, uh, we used to go in and see our patients in the hospital,
commonly in the life of somehow, I suppose, less busy, you know, and something less paperwork to do.
Uh, um, you know,
if you wanted to refer somebody to a if you wrote a letter at the end of the consultation surgery and sent it off to the doctor, you knew.
And, you know, the communication was simpler and other things are always changing.
Did you think Oxford was as good as you said, are very fond of Oxford?
In the end when I first arrived, that I felt almost alienated as a student, but I got very fond of Oxford, of course.
Uh, and it's interesting that I actually I felt alienated when I first came here, when I had the opportunity to come back to Oxford as a GP.
Uh, you know, I felt somehow at home. Yes. Um, and the way I think people do come back to Oxford,
I remember being disappointed when I first came back after having been away for five years, but not bumping into everybody in High Street.
I knew them all. I didn't know any more. But no, I think Oxford was and I think the size of the place was enormously helpful.
London, I would never forget. And that's what happened last year that I should have.
I think we covered that quite well. Tell me about perhaps national committees.
Were you going? Oh, yes. I got I got involved in a lot of a lot of that, um,
because it was extremely difficult to get GP's to get on national committees because they practise it wouldn't release them to do that and say,
well, it was going to see the patients one year of doing this.
So, uh, one of the advantages of being having some academic time is if I wanted to, I could go and spend some of that time on and on committees.
And I was for example, I was time out of the longest serving member of the British Heart Foundation Council,
which I joined in about that in nineteen eighties. I finally got off, uh, about twenty years later.
And that was not because they wanted me particularly, but they found it impossible to find anybody to replace me.
No GP was willing to spend what I was four or five days a year at the British Heart Foundation sitting on that committee,
but we didn't have the time to do that. Uh uh. So I became part of the stroke association.
The same same thing happened. So I collected a lot of that sort of thing.
MRC oh, not now. Never on the ANC, you know, liberal, Nirmal.
So, you know, I think there is now almost certainly some GP and Royal College of Practitioners.
Oh, yes, I was I was involved with them. Really quite right from.
Yeah. Tell me about the funding of that. Well, not quite at the beginning.
I mean, I was I it was founded in the early 1950s by an enthusiastic group of, uh, London doctors.
What I knew best was John Horder. Yeah. You jumped on board as well.
So they were big. And it was it undoubtedly was a good organisation.
And of course,
it eventually got heavily involved in the training of young doctors and developed training programmes and exams and all that sort of thing.
So I had a lot of involvement in that in the nineteen seventies and eighties particularly.
Uh, and now it's got the biggest membership of any Royal College, I understand, and things like that.
And this makes a lot of money and uh and and I and some, some good.
But I think it's probably become a bit detached from reality.
Afraid so.
I'm thinking of Martin Lawrence because I can remember, you know, bright young medical students, he and Theo Schofield getting into general practise.
Everybody is. Was that right, is that right? Yes, because you knew them, of course, when they are four days.
Yes, they were young students. Yes, yes.
Well, I'm glad to say that although the in the early days, I had very great difficulty in getting help in the building up with the department.
And I did get some money from I think it was something called the Health Education Council initially to fund two
GP's two days a week to come into the department of Martin Luther King telescope to be persuaded to do that.
So I was enormously large. In that regard, I couldn't have done what I did in the 80s if I hadn't had good GP's willing to give up time.
But I mean, obviously they were influenced by you and others. Oh, yes, very much influenced by them.
And I and I only heard about Sam the other day.
I was asking at the psychiatrist to talk to us about suicide.
He thought he thought he was very friendly with the air. And he said there's mounting on the south coast and in retirement.
I did that because he comes up to the extreme, I believe it is, yes, he's very good.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes, he is a great guy. And of course, he is very good on the communications given side of things.
I mean, he became an expert on teaching students communication skills.
Right. And and Martin was Martin Lawrence was a very clever chap.
I mean, he got a match at Cambridge and got a first in Mass at Cambridge, which is very clever.
Right. And did he have a lot of influence all the time and medical students would have gone out of the GOP nomination?
Yes, he did. And now in the present, are they still being put up?
Yes, I don't know. I don't think so. Now they're trying because I don't think so.
I think that probably has happened. But it was in the early days.
It was it was very exciting for students to do that. They really did enjoy it.
And how much lecturing to the clinical students from your department happened?
Well, not a lot. But what we did most of our teaching was done in small groups.
We did a lot of small group teaching. And that I think they liked and and and, uh, but they what they like most of all,
of course, was being out in the practises and seeing another side of medicine.
Yes. Yeah. I always remember there was a chap contemporary with me who went into general practise in Wales,
South Wales, and after a few weeks or so I met him and he was miserable, you know, didn't make it.
So erm a year later he's happy as Larry and he said,
I've realised I'm looking after the flock in the sense I'm not looking after the individual sheep, I'm looking after the flock.
And of course it's such an interesting contrast as there always is between the public health of a community and the health of the bedside interviews.
Yes. Yes. I never have. I mean, I'm aware of that.
But having been a very important thing for many GP's and I'm sure, for example,
a practising in Wantage, which always had the reputation of being in a very good practise,
which it was it Haggerty's in Oxford, it's not the same because that's where the population is built up.
Do you feel it was right or I mean, was it sad that you didn't get a really big health centre on the green cottage side?
You know, the back of it, 42nd Street. I am now patient in my old practise when I go there from time to time.
As it happens, I was there one day earlier this week when we were talking about that very problem when I first came to talk,
there's this sort of trainee in nineteen fifty nine. There was a medical officer of health called John Waring.
Yes, indeed. Who was very enthusiastic about health centres. Very good man.
Very good. And with George Pogba, who he knew quite well, and then the chief medical officer.
Oh yes. They decided they start to develop health centres in Oxford.
Godber, Gardiner and I was put because I was the only trainee GP I put on this committee
by Jonquiere to be a young trainee GP and helped us but the health centre thing.
And he said, I remember, John, where of course your practise in Oxford,
after all Banbury Road House in Banbury Road is not my ideal place to practise medicine, but there is a very good doctor there.
And so we have a health centre in the middle of which there still is no health at all.
And there are a number of practises BlueRock, Beaumont, Street, three different general practise,
Gordon Gamson and Cambridge Street, North Oxford has got no health centre at the centre Oxford.
And there still isn't that amazing. We very nearly got one in the 1970s when one of those organisations of the health service was going seventy four.
I think it was a reorganisation also. And the plan in the plan was to build a health centre in George Street in Oxford on
the corner of two or three to New and Wall Street where the old grammar school is.
Yes, there was a sort of old school and cycle shop and basically they were going to knock it
down and put a health centre there and the health service didn't have money for it.
That never happened. But they could have had this done round or not.
I don't I really don't know. But, you know, the practise that I worked for 40 years, which I'm sure it's in a house in Birmingham,
treat a nice old house, but it's on four or five floors without a lift.
Now it's taking us to where did the number of people in the practise, doctors in the practise rise considerably?
Yes, of course. Of course. I mean, for twenty years, for the first twenty years, it practise for Richard Sweet and Fowler.
So I was a junior of. Three doctors and we had two lists, which was pretty stable of about 8000 patients, seven or eight thousand patients between us.
Now, the practise, I understand, has about 14 or thousand, and I think there are now ten point ten.
And the fact is, I'm glad to say half of them are ladies good.
And of course, we had some remarkable people in the practise. I mean, when I was appointed to this leadership job, the most and person came out,
came and got a job, and she she came and finished her general practise training with me.
And then just after that, I found this new job.
And so we decided to take in an Macpherson's a part time partner was the best thing we ever did because she was a remarkable person.
Yes. Yes. It's been a great interview.
Anything else you want to say? I think that's. Yeah. OK, well, I mean, I'm not harmed anybody's reputation.
No, I think you've been very discreet. Thanks.