'Its a kind of hideous medical advent calendar'

Adam Kay is writing a follow-up to his bestseller This Is Going To Hurt.

The medic-turned-comedian is compiling a series of incidents faced by NHS workers in the festive period in Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas.

The anthology of 25 ‘intriguing, shocking and incredible’ stories – which the comic described as a ‘kind of hideous medical advent calendar’ –  is to be published in October 2019 by Picador.

Picador gas previously announced that Kay was to be publishing a separate title, 100 Patients Who Changed My Life, in the autumn of 2019. However, this has now been pushed back until 2020.

Speaking of the newly announced title, Kay said: ‘Having caused potentially irreparable damage to the high-end nature of the Picador brand, I see it as something of a challenge to somehow lower the tone even further. 

‘I think I've managed to achieve this with Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas, a kind of hideous medical advent calendar. An advent catheter, maybe.’

This Is Going To Hurt, Kay’s diaries from the time he was a junior doctor have sold more than 500,000 copies so far and topped the paperback non-fiction charts for six months. 

It is also being turned into a BBC Two comedy series, with Kay working on the scripts.

He is playing two This Is Going To Hurt gigs at the Hammersmith Apollo in West London on November 18, with tickets still available for the matinee.

Published: 1 Nov 2018