Dr Pixie McKenna
If ever the demand for TV doctors dries up, Pixie McKenna could happily carve out a new career on the stand-up circuit.
Not only is the Irish GP is very, very funny, but she’d also have plenty of comedy material, thanks to some of the bizarre cases she’s encountered on the hugely-popular Channel 4 show, Embarrassing Bodies. Oh, and hecklers would be no problem either, as being yelled at in the street is par for the course.
“I don’t know why people are obsessed with piles, but one of the most common things we will get shouted at us is: ‘Do you want to come and look at my piles?’” says Pixie. “No! 50 per cent of the UK have them; I don’t think yours are going to be any different or more exciting, so keep them in your pants!
“But it’s fine, I’m used to it. I was in a taxi yesterday and almost did a full consultation - bar the removal of garments.”
It's not surprising that people feel so comfortable with Pixie. With her trademark cropped red hair and lop-sided smile, she's been a familiar face on our TVs since 2006, when she joined BBC Three’s Freaky Easters as their on-screen doctor.
But Pixie is best-known for Embarrassing Bodies, which returns next month. Now in its seventh year, the BAFTA-winning show isn’t for the faint-hearted: patients with all manner of intimate issues regularly bare their sticky, smelly or unsightly problems in a bid to be cured. So if they’re too embarrassed to go to their own GP, why on earth do they volunteer to go on national television?
“It’s the 60 million dollar question,” says Pixie. “Because we've been doing it for such a long time, they've seen other people go through the process and they think: ‘So-and-so had terrible acne, or really bad piles, or a prolapse down to their ankles, they got in touch with these guys, and yeah, they were on the tellybox for five minutes, but ultimately the prize is getting yourself fixed.
“Also, everyone that comes on the show has a psychological assessment to make sure they’re match-fit: three million people watching you is big exposure if you think that maybe you’ll be in Tesco and someone will say ‘I saw your bum’.
Does she have a favourite case? “Without a doubt a hilarious Welsh lady. In her application form she said she had a pair of testicles on her head; they had been there for 20 years, and her GP had said 'I can't take the testicles away because they're not uncomfortable or cancerous'. So she had her hair styled in a way that you couldn’t see them, and when the wind blew her children used to say ‘Mum, put your testicles away!’
“Anyway, in she came, and oh my God, she was the most fabulous, fabulous patient. I went to have a look and, honest to God, she really did have what looked like a pair of testicles on her head - that whole consistency and appearance of male genitalia.
“They were just sebaceous cysts; it wasn’t going to kill her and I’ve seen worse things, but she was very funny, very sweet. So they were taken off, and she had a new life. Minus her testicles.”
For the new series, the three doctors are taking on bigger cases, from a woman with excess skin and fibroids to a paralysed man who’s trialling a robotic walking system, “and then there are some smaller cases in between: the usual body hair and spots and stuff,” adds Pixie.
“The nice thing about it is that the people sitting at home can go to their GP and say ‘I think I might have this, and I saw somebody got some help, so can you help me please?’ We get an inordinate amount of piss-taking by GPs who say ‘Do you know that your programme means that we have to do far more work?’ she grins. “But then it prompts people to go and get treatment for conditions that are potentially very serious as well.”
Born in Cork in 1971, Pixie was destined to become a doctor; she and her brothers were helping their GP father from an early age. “As soon as I could speak, I was taking calls for repeat prescriptions, and we’d also have to sort the letters and go and collect X-rays. It was like child labour.”
In the school holidays she’d man the reception desk (“I was terrible at it, but at least I couldn’t get fired”), and then medical college followed, “but I certainly wasn’t the sharpest student. Oh no I wasn’t! My husband says I’m the thickest intelligent person he’s ever met in his life.
“I was doing one of my anatomy exams – I was really bad at anatomy; that’s why I wasn’t a surgeon; I had to rule out a lot of careers, actually, as I went along,” she muses. “But anyway, I was identifying a specimen, and I said ‘That’s a lung’. And the professor said: ‘Are you sure that’s what you want to say?’ And I said ‘Actually that’s the right lung’. And he said ‘That’s really interesting, McKenna, because that’s the liver’.'' She roars with laughter. “Oh God, how do you get yourself out of that? So I was never going to do brain surgery.”
Fortunately general practice suits Pixie perfectly. Every week, she spends two days at her clinic in London and a day filming, then juggles the rest of her time writing columns for assorted magazines at home - she lives in central Cambridge with her husband, Mitch, and baby Darcy Trixie Belle, who turns two in May.
“I came to motherhood very old in life, I was 40, and I thought I was busy before, but it’s just stratospheric now,” she says. “And you could be on your way out to work and you've got sick or poo on you, which happens an extraordinary amount of times.”
Is there a reason she left it so late? “No, not at all. I guess that’s just how life turned out. I was never someone who was like ‘God, I’ve got to have a baby’, I just go along in my own little bubble, and so far that methodology has worked for me. Also I didn’t grow up until I was about 38.
“But it’s amazing, it’s great fun, and she’s at a brilliant stage where she’s getting a real personality.” Is she like Pixie? “She's quite placid and good-humoured like me, and she loves shopping. I'm a total shopaholic, and in the womb she spent a lot of time in shops, with me looking at things thinking 'I can't fit into that! This is so traumatic!'
“And she’s always looking at boys, to the point of being embarrassing. If she's out in the park she'll immediately make a beeline for the boys. My father said 'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree,’ she chuckles, “but of course I’m not like that anymore...”
How long has she been married? “Three years? Four? God, I don’t even know. That’s one thing about having a baby, I don’t remember anything anymore. Three months ago my husband broke his neck, and actually I don’t think he remembers anything either. So the pair of us are like two dements.”
Yikes – broke his neck? Pixie nods. “He went back to playing rugby after ten years. He’s 43; he thought he was 21. I said ‘Don’t play rugby. You’re an eejit. If anything happens to you, I won’t be helping you’. And he broke his neck. Awful, disaster, complete nightmare.
“He’s fine, he made a complete recovery, but it took a while to get it diagnosed – doesn’t say a lot about my medicine – and he spent about two-and-a-half months in a brace. He couldn’t do anything.
“Those kind of things, if you come out the right side of them, you realise that actually you’ve got to enjoy every day of your life, because some people go out in the morning and they don’t come back, or they come back and their life has changed immeasurably.”
Keeping healthy is clearly important to the couple: Mitch does triathlons, and Pixie is often photographed in Lycra. “I’ve always been pretty active,” she says. “Growing up, we were always jumping out of trees or running around killing each other.
“When Darcy was born I was like, ‘I can’t be the size of a house, because I’ll get fired from Embarrassing Bodies’, so my husband bought me a jogging buggy, and it really made a huge difference; last year I did the Cambridge Town and Gown 10k, which was brilliant.”
Then there’s the cycling: alongside her Embarrassing Bodies colleague Dr Dawn Harper, Pixie regularly does 100KM bike rides to raise money for children’s charities: Dawn’s son Harvey has cerebral Palsy, as does Hannah, one of Pixie’s three stepchildren.
“And I’m trying to do a triathlon, so I’ve got to learn how to swim properly. I can swim, but I’m in the very slow lane,” she admits. “I applied for a triathlon last year, and this old lady in the swimming pool lapped me - and then proudly told me that she’d just got a new hip. I was like, great! I’ll be pulling out of that triathlon then...”
So what’s next for Pixie? “I’d like to do some big bold documentary exposure kind of thing on something like abortion in Ireland, or crystal meth. And I’ve just written the first chapter of my novel, which is just a little bit, maybe, about me and my girlfriends and our escapades. So I’m hoping to finish that this year.” Wow, when does she find time to write? “I don’t. I need a gun to my head.”
Yet in spite of her busy schedule, Pixie does find time to relax: she tells me she’s going to the Six Nations rugby at the weekend, “but that’s always bad,” she says, her mind turning back to those hecklers. Adopting a cockney accent she shouts: “Have you got any cure for a big willy?” and laughs. “You won’t believe how many times I’ve heard that. I’ve taken to saying ‘Fold it in half.’”