Stand-up appears on Desert Island Discs

Harry Hill says he was inspired to leave medicine to become a comedian by the death of his stepfather Tony.

Speaking on Desert Island Discs today, the comic said his change of career in the early 1990s ‘had been a long time coming’ – but his stepfather’s early death from cancer meant he realised time was short.

‘I thought, here's a man who's worked all his life. And they [my stepfather and mother] had always talked about what they were going to do in retirement. And how old was he? Maybe 54. And I thought, I don't want that to be me.

'The other part of it is I think if I'd said to him, "I'm giving up to be a comedian", he would have been quite disapproving.

‘So it probably kind of set me free a little bit from that. But really, I was kind of at the end of my tether with [medicine]."

Hill qualified as a doctor at St George's Medical School in London in 1988, and began his medical career working in orthopaedics. 

And he recalled the day he left to dedicate at least a year to comedy, saying: ‘I remember getting in the car, and this sounds impossible, driving out of the hospital car park, I turned on the radio, and the tune that came on was Eric Burdon and the Animals, with We Gotta Get Out of This Place.’

The comedian told presenter Lauren Laverne he was not passionate about the job, saying: 'I think it's difficult even if your heart's in it.'

He added: ‘In the first six months, I had to break the news to this bloke whose wife had died in this operation, unexpectedly, and they had young children, and I was completely out of my depth. 

‘I told him, he started crying, and then I started crying, and I thought, this isn't good. I mean, I certainly wasn't a very emotional [person]. Actually what it makes you do is bottle up your emotions.’

He said it was only when he had kids that he learned to express his emotions more, explaining: ‘ There's something about having kids that uncorks you.’

Hill also said he was ‘absolutely driven’ to succeed in comedy saying: ‘I had gone from doing 80, 100 hours a week as a doctor, getting up at the crack of dawn. Suddenly I had all this time free during the day, so I really felt like I had something to prove. So I would get up and I would write jokes.’

He said he would doggedly bug promoters for gigs as ‘it’s not the funniest people that get on, it’s the pushiest. And I was pushy.’

Hill also spoke about the stresses of making TV Burp and the failure of the X Factor musical I Can't Sing, saying: ‘You can't be heartbroken, you'd be a complete baby if you got upset about a professional failure.’

The records he chose to take to the fictional island include Hey Bulldog by the Beatles, Life During Wartime by Talking Heads, and Gay Bar by Electric Six.

For his chosen book he asked for a thick one ‘you could use to kill small mammals’ selecting Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

And he said his luxury item would be a bucket and spade, explaining: ‘Where’s the fun of a sandy beach without the ability to make sandcastles?’

• Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 at 10am today, and is then available on BBC Sounds.

Published: 3 Aug 2025