I delivered thousands of babies when I was doctor – now I’m changing kids’ lives with books, says Adam Kay
IT was clear from an early age that Dexter was different. He started speaking after four seconds.
At three, he had 87 A levels, in subjects ranging from Afrikaans to zoology.
And by the time he was ten, the lad was working as a paediatrician at Lilydale General Hospital.
Meet Dexter, the brilliant new brainchild of Adam Kay, who was behind the hit comedy drama TV series This Is Going to Hurt based on his memoirs of life as a junior doctor.
Adam, 44, whose book became a Sunday Times bestseller, also has screenwriting credits for Mrs Brown’s Boys and has published a hugely successful series of non-fiction.
But now comes his first children’s book, Dexter Procter, The 10-Year-Old Doctor.
It makes sense, as Adam trained for six years at medical school and did another six on hospital wards, before hanging up his stethoscope in 2010 to try his luck as a TV comedy writer.
During that time, he delivered a couple of thousand babies.
And last year, Adam announced that he and his husband James had become parents to daughter Ruby and son Ziggy, through surrogacy.
‘Funny and silly’
Come World Book Day, kids all over the country send him pictures of themselves dressed in scrubs thanks to his Kay’s Anatomy non-fiction series — a word play on the US drama Grey’s Anatomy. Sales have just topped a million.
“It’s my favourite day of the year on Twitter,” he said.
“The rest of the time it’s just abhorrent, but we get so many pictures sent to us of the kids dressed up as either me, or my dog Pippin, or a robot butler from the Kay’s Anatomy series.
“Of course, Kay’s Anatomy is a joke that not a single one of the readership will get, obviously. That’s one just for the parents.
“It was such a pleasure to write, but we’ve been thinking about doing fiction for a while.”
His new book comes at a time when children’s reading is facing a crisis.
Reading for pleasure is at its lowest level since 2005, with fewer than one in two children and young people aged nine to 18 saying they enjoyed reading.
This is despite figures showing reading for pleasure is the biggest indicator of a child’s future success, more than family circumstances and their parents’ education background or income.
Plus, authors are facing stiff competition from something called the internet.
Adam said: “They’ve got the entirety of human existence at their fingertips.
“And they’ve got minecraft. We didn’t have minecraft.”
His three previous non-fiction books strive to answer all the questions children might have about their bodies.
He said: “The idea behind that was getting kids to know about the body and how it works, and how it doesn’t work.
“Also, the history of medicine and stuff like that. But in a silly, funny, disgusting way because that’s hopefully the way they’ll remember it.”
But this is his first foray into children’s fiction.
For readers of a certain age, the idea of a very young doctor roaming the wards might bring back fond memories of Doogie Howser MD, a popular US Nineties TV show about a boy-genius doctor starring Neil Patrick Harris.
“Doogie Howser’s got nothing on Dexter” Adam said.
For one, the book’s got a lot more poo jokes than Doogie ever had.
“And Dexter came out speaking. He even cut his own umbilical cord for goodness sake. Very different to Doogie.
“But Dexter Procter is also about being out of place and feeling different, which I certainly felt as a kid. And I think most kids probably do. I wanted to write about that but in a funny and silly way.
“And I wanted to chuck in some stealth science. So throughout the book, serious medical stuff is happening.
“Dexter’s solving his issues and seeing his patients, and through that, I can still slip in that this is about diabetes and this is about how your ear works.
“The other thing I wanted to do is to demystify hospitals, which I think are often, in your head, a scary place — for everybody.
“I just thought this is an interesting new world where I could use my expertise, such as it is, to explain what hospitals are like.
“It doesn’t need to feel like a stressful environment.
“But most of all, just to produce a book that was funny and silly and interesting and doesn’t patronise its readers.”
The most magical thing is when I get messages from parents saying that their kids aren’t big readers and our books have somehow unlocked reading for them
Adam Kay
Adam’s writing regime is pretty hardcore. He sets himself a target of 1,000 words a day, and Dexter is around 60,000 words.
Then there is the back and forth between his publishers, but also, crucially, his long-time illustrator Henry Paker.
The pair met at a party and have been working together ever since.
Adam reckoned there must have been at least 300 emails alone on Dexter’s eyelids and brows, which is “how you affect someone’s smarm levels”.
‘Spikiness to him’
Adam said: “Dexter’s a heightened version of lots of kids really.
“I think there’s probably a bit of me in Dexter. One of the challenges in writing this character is to still make him lovable.
“He’s got a bit of spikiness to him but you need to show that vulnerability.
“Even though I’m writing for kids, I think of the characters in the same way as if I’m writing a TV show for adults. It can’t just be one layer, one note.
“It has to have some layers to it because kids know. Every sentence counts.
“I never want to be accused of dialing it in. You’re only as good as your last thing. And I take it really seriously.
“I essentially write as I write for adults and then make sure that it’s language appropriate and it’s not full of cultural references about boy bands from the Nineties or whatever.
“I tell jokes that I think are funny, which I think helps because it means that parents will hopefully not find it such a drag reading it.
“But it is quite a big book and by the time you’ve added in the illustrations, no one’s getting short-changed.
“It’s over 400 pages because I quite liked reading a long book when I was younger — because it lasted longer.
“Also it’s got tons of illustrations because I would always feel short-changed any time I turned the page and there was nothing.
“For Henry Paker, his big thing is all the added details, which is something else I’ve heard from a lot of kids who’ve read the other books.
“They like finding that the more they look at the picture, there’s something in the corner and there’s a bird yawning at what the teacher’s saying, or this tiny bit of graffiti on a desk that he’s written, because everything he does is to add to the comedy. I’m very lucky that his background was as a comedian.
“He’s written a lot for panel shows and other comedians before he decided to focus full-time as a comedian.”
Adam added: “The most magical thing is when I get messages from parents saying that their kids aren’t big readers and our books have somehow unlocked reading for them.
“And they’ve read that book and then they’ve read my other one. Now they’re going and getting more from the library.
“It’s amazing. There can be no better feeling as a writer.”
Now enjoy an extract from the first chapter…
WHEN Mr and Mrs Procter’s son arrived, they knew for an absolute fact he was special.
The first clue came about four seconds after he was born, when he turned to the midwife who delivered him and said in a bright, clear voice, “Might I possibly borrow these?” and pointed to a pair of scissors, which he then grabbed to cut his own umbilical cord – you know, that squidgy kind of see-through snake that comes out of your belly button when you’re born.
I don’t know how much you know about babies, but they don’t normally talk. Well, not unless you count words like “goo” and “ga”.
Everyone gawped at the magical talking baby. Well, almost everyone – the midwife immediately fainted.
“Isn’t someone going to help that poor man?” Mr and Mrs Procter’s 20-second-old baby said.
“A few hours of bed rest for you, Mum, then we can toddle off home. I’m keen to check out my new abode.”
Mr and Mrs Procter stared at their son in total disbelief. How did he know the word “abode”? Actually, how did he know any words?
“Oh sorry,” he continued. “Are we doing ‘Mum’ or ‘Mummy’? I guess there’s Mother or Mater as well, but they sound a bit Victorian.’
“Mum’s . . . fine,” stuttered Mrs Procter.
“OK, wonderful,” he replied. “And while we’re on the topic of names . . . have you thought of one for me yet?’
“We were thinking about . . . Spike?” suggested Mr Procter nervously.
“What am I? A dog? No, that won’t do at all.”
Dexter wiped some gunk from his eyes, then looked around the room for name inspiration.
He saw a bottle of hand gel. Gelemy? No – too weird.
Then he spotted a poster about antibiotic resistance.
Ant? No, not right either.
Oh! The bed had a label on it: DEXTERITY PATIENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS.
“Dexter! Perfect. All agreed?”
- Dexter Procter, The 10-Year-Old Doctor, published by Penguin Random House, is out now.