We had really good teaching, partly for what I mentioned before that a lot of people had come back from the wars, and I don't think I appreciated this at the time, but there were people there who, as supposedly junior doctors, had seen the most incredible amount of stuff of all kinds – tropical medicine, war wounds of course, everything – and they taught us mostly, I have to say, I don't have a sort of great father figure thing about this place, I have to say most of them were very conscientious and very good teachers. They could strip you off. There was a good deal more, you know, kind of aggression and sadism going around but, you know, it wasn't all that bad really. The women did get into a bit of, but they could get... give as much as they could... whatever it is – they could give as much as they got, you know.

So I do remember a lot of unnecessary sarcasm, which I thought was completely ridiculous. I remember there was a hand clinic even then. Pilcher was a forward looking chap and realised that people didn't treat hands with the respect they deserved and there was an incredibly arrogant surgical registrar that was doing this clinic and the patient was sitting there and he examined me about my knowledge of the finger anatomy, which was I would have to say, dismally absent then, he handed me the scalpel and said, 'Open this chap's finger', and I thought, that's a rather stupid thing to do. So I had plenty... I'm remembering the bad lessons, aren't I, more than the good ones.

[Q] Well, they obviously stand out, don't they? They do stand out. And I suppose that's one of the things one can say about, about, about education that, that you, if you're a sensitive person you, you do learn from the bad things but not necessarily to follow them one hopes. You really do.

Yeah. Yeah, it's true.