A junior doctor has created his own parody of Adele’s ‘Hello’ and addressed it to Jeremy Hunt to explain why health professionals had chosen to strike.
Junior doctors staged a 24-hour walk-out on Tuesday that led to the cancellation of around 4,000 operations and was condemned as “wholly unnecessary” by the Health Secretary.
Mikey Warren, 24, donned a curly haired wig to sing ‘Hello Jeremy’ to the Health Secretary in time for Tuesday’s strike, filming himself singing into a mirror in what appears to be his flat and also outside in a deserted park.
Mr Warren has dubbed himself Guedel for the song, which is the name for a medical device used to open a patient’s airway.
He uses his own lyrics to tell Mr Hunt to “listen to the other side, we must have screamed a thousand times to tell you we’re sorry, but you couldn’t be more wrong, and when we call you never seem to listen”.
“It's time that you heard our side. The world needs to know that you lied about figures so say sorry and we can move on and we are the BMA so don't tear us apart.”
The first verse of Adele’s song has been changed to: “Hello Jeremy, I was wondering if after all these months you'd like to meet to go over the contract? I know I said some things and I'm angry but I can't help the way I act.
“I'm in work Jeremy, I'm in A&E, people screaming and waiting ages to be seen and yet I'm hungry, need to pee.
“There's something I need to tell you before it all falls at our feet. There's such a difference between 8pm on weekdays and weekends.”
The video, filmed in black and white, splices in images of people protesting against the new contract and of consultants and nurses pledging their support to junior doctors.
It also splices in news stories leading up to the strike, including The Independent’s stories of how Whitehall officials sexed up the case against junior doctors, and of criticism thrown at the health secretary for ‘misrepresenting’ NHS weekend mortality facts.
