I want to introduce you to my friend Ally. She’s the one in beaming away in the back of the golf cart of the above pic.

Ally is glorious. She also spends her time healing the sick and telling people they don’t need antibiotics as a GP. But in her spare time she has joined me in appearing on Bargain Hunt (which it turns out is more competitive to get into than medical school). Super time had all round. The bargain hunt team are genuinely lovely and all A-ok about us not knowing much about the antiques business. Not to give the game away but it turns out that knowledge however may have been a little helpful.

The huge upside of getting on the show is keeping the trademark Bargain Hunt fleeces. And quids in for us – we did our filming over the summer so we all got a polo shirt to keep because producers clearly thought sweaty contestant look wasn’t great for the viewers.

It’s a slightly surreal experience being on TV (when you’re used to dishing out tonsillitis advice I mean). When you’re watching TV you don’t really every think about the filming that’s going on – apart from the endings of the Blue Planet, which show you in some detail how it took 50 people 10 years to get the few second dolphin sequence that you missed because you were replying to a text at the time. The filming crew are HUGE. So many vans. So many people following you around whilst you flounder over some disasterous antique purchase. And interesting bit of knowledge from the sound crew – they have to stop filming whenever any light aircraft goes by because it screws up all the sound really badly. I don’t think I’d have the patience for that job.

I had just had my second born when we were on our first day of filming. If anyone wants to know what it’s like to express milk in the middle of a field at an antiques fair whilst you wistfully gaze at cows roaming in nearby pastures, it’s weird. But also strangely liberating.

Anyway, the point of this blog apart from introducing Ally and sharing a milking-with-cows experience, was to say that new experiences are good! Go do something you’ve never done before this week! Even if you hate it, at least you’ll know you hate it for sure. And you’ll have something else to blog about.

If you want to check out the episode that Ally and I snuck in to it’s here – only available until the 4/11/19 so get cracking! Or don’t if you’re really not interested, we totally understand.

Ally and I are starting up a youtube channel focussing on health chats accessible to all. Kind of a (hopefully) friendly GP shindig with some useful thoughts and information. You can check it out here. Hope you enjoy! Or laugh. At least laugh.