from http://education.independent.co.uk/careers_advice/article358680.ece

My First Job: Graeme Garden, radio and TV humorist and ex-Goodie, trained
seriously as a doctor

'I experience a better form of hypochondria'

Interview by Jonathan Sale
Published: 20 April 2006

Graeme Garden went to the bad long before the Goodies: "I fell in with the
wrong crowd: Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Bill Oddie..." It
had begun so well. "My father was a surgeon. Most of the adults I knew were
doctors or teachers - and doctors seemed a better role model. At school I
was quite good at science and did A-levels in chemistry, physics and
biology."

Then, instead of taking the fast track of pre-clinical study at medical
school, he took the slow-track university route: three years of the
Cambridge Natural Sciences course on anatomy, physiology and biochemistry.
"It was just studying the sciences, dissecting genuine animals and doing
lots of experiments. There was not much in the way of actual people, apart
from watching lab technicians taking each other's blood pressure - and
ourselves being used as guinea-pigs, breathing air depleted of oxygen: you
pass out."

Health and safety regulations were rather more lax in the Sixties. The same
is true of Seventies television series: "We wouldn't be allowed today to do
some of the Goodies stunts." There was even a risk assessment carried out
for Bromwell High, the cartoon series launched last year on Channel 4, in
which Graeme just had to speak into a microphone. Even so, one can't be too
careful: "You might trip over a cable.")

When not passing out in labs, he went along to the Cambridge Footlights club
and was auditioned by its president, a young Tim Brooke-Taylor, and fellow
Goodie. After graduating, Graeme began his clinical training at King's
College Hospital in London. It was during this period that he began
moonlighting on a radio series with Brooke-Taylor and Cleese.

Finding the time for this was difficult when he was doing his obstetrics
course in Plymouth, sewing up new mothers: "The aircraft-carrier Ark Royal
had been in Plymouth nine months before, so we were very busy."

It was only after his three years of training was over that he came to "the
fork in the road". Offered a part in a television comedy series, he accepted
on the grounds that this might not happen again, while medical jobs came up
all the time. "I took the road less travelled."

He also took himself off the official medical register. "My medical
knowledge is a blessing - or a curse. I experience a slightly better form of
hypochondria, with a wider variety of conditions to choose from, for me and
others. I did actually buy a medical textbook the other day. It's a
fascinating subject."

'The Pocket Orchestra: The Unlikely Lives of the Great Composers', by Graeme
Garden and Callum McLeod, opens at Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall, London
SW1 on Monday. The next Radio 4 series of 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'
starts on 22 May

jonty@ jonathansale.com