DIARY
NICHOLAS OWEN Iremember seeing him only once, early on. He was some sort of youngish senior charge nurse, or whatever the modish description is now. (If matrons are coming back to the NHS, what will the male version be called?) Anyway, he settled the second most important question of my week in hospital for a big op. Did I want to be called 'Mr Owen'? Or 'Nick'? No doubt for me. Mr Owen, please. The young man wrote it in large letters across one of my files, and almost every staff member respected the wish. Mind you, we are talking about a superbly run private hospital. But my old-fashioned preference did seem vindicated in the depths of one restless night. A charming nurse looked round the door as I flailed about. 'Can't you sleep, Mr Owen? Anything I can get you?' It was so much more genuinely friendly than the mock companionship of hearing one's first name from someone one had barely met before. And the most important question of the week? I was in to have a cancerous kidney whipped out. The eight-hand one. A notorious recent incident in South Wales left a poor old man dead after surgeons ploughed on and took out the wrong kidney. In my case, everyone including me repeated 'right side . . . right side' a lot before the knife was wielded.
You don't get asked to count to ten these days as the anaesthetic-laden needle is slipped into your hand. I wasn't, at any rate. We all fear being put to sleep, and the loss of control. My anaesthetist, promising to join the ranks of those watching out that surgery would be on the 'right side, the right side', discussed a major national issue. The state of the trains. I am a railway enthusiast, but even I avoid the trains whenever I can now. I was just explaining how grotty the local service has become when .. . the lights went out. An instant later I was looking into the smiling faces of my wife and my elder daughter. Three hours had disappeared in a twinkle. You looked like something that had just been dug up,' my wife disclosed encouragingly a few days later. I could not have cared. I just wanted to stop feeling sick.
Television presenters should be the most minor of celebrities at all times. Even in hospital, though, curiosity and recognition of a familiar face can distort the usual banter between patient and carer. One night, a nurse aged about 40, I'd say, told me she recalled that I had dished out the annual prizes at a local preparatory school. 'It is sad my children didn't know who you were,' she went on. 'They only watch Sky, the cartoons, those sort of channels.' I bore this with manly stoicism. Worse was to come. 'Now, my husband and I, we are from the generation who remember your Ah, yes. And there
was me thinking I had only been off the box for a couple of weeks. Fickle, fickle public.
The present and future of the NHS inevitably cropped up as the patient began to feel human again. Almost all the staff told me that under no circumstances would they want their offspring to go into the health business. My surgeon was of the same general view, except that his three sons are already well grown up and have followed the family tradition. My surgeon's father, born in 1900, had been a GP. Of the surgeon's sons, one has followed him into urology. The others, I gathered, had opted for orthopaedics. 'Carpentry, I call it,' Dad declared.
Arother story of fatherly life. A chance encounter in the hospital was very beneficial. Across the way was a fellow patient who is a figure from the great days of Fleet Street. Patient confidentiality forbids me to pass on his identity. He was reading Penny Junor's book about her father, that legendary bully Sir John Junor of the Sunday Express. The Fleet Street man went home before me, handing on the book. It turned out to he this invalid's perfect read. At first its tales of family strife made me uneasy. Should we be encouraged to peer into other people's torments? However, the Fleet Street sagas are numerous, and any hack should love them. The expenses fiddles, the backstabbing, rows with proprietors, drunken scenes in and out of the office — all national newspaper life as it used to be is there. And there was the very odd matter of J.J.'s infatuation with the television presenter Selina Scott. Penny has deduced that there was no romance, but her father did claim that his written appreciation in his column of Selina's talents got her noticed enough to land a plum job on ITN's News at Ten. I guess what I need is one of today's female columnists to announce that I am the best thing in TV news since sliced bread. .
The aftermath of surgery is punctuated with golden moments. The first cup of tea that I was allowed I likened to the thirstbusting lagers that John Mills and others drank at the end of that great war movie Ice Cold in Alex. My younger daughter, sharpeared, bought me the video so that I could enjoy that scene over and over again and remind myself of an epic cuppa. And for my first hospital-bed breakfast I ordered scrambled egg. It was divine. Scrambled egg is often flabby and drab, even in the best of restaurants. The catering lady who cooked it for me came round specially to ask if I had enjoyed it. I must get the recipe. And she should be doing the breakfast honours at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, or the Ritz, or any of those posh joints.
Being in the trade. I tend not to watch a lot of television. Or at least I cannot bear to have the set on endlessly, as so many seem to find quite natural. But in the early listless days after the operation, I strayed towards the TV. Like my own at home, it featured only the two main BBC channels, plus ITV and Channel 4. There was the usual mixture of good, fair and repulsive. The one that let me down more often than not was Channel 4. There are so many good things on it, aren't there? Whenever I zapped to Four, the offering was either a glimpse of a dire programme that Spectator readers probably may just have heard of, called Big Brother, or a commercial break. So how come Channel 4 talks about having a horrid time financially?
Nicholas Owen is an ITV news presenter and correspondent.
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