Charlie Fairhead, Casualty Chosen by Jo Brand, comedian and former psychiatric nurse In 1980, I came out of the Ritzy cinema in Brixton with some nurse friends, having just seen the extraordinary film The Long Good Friday, in which a certain Derek Thompson, playing Bob Hoskins’s right-hand man Jeff, meets a grisly end. (What do you mean spoiler alert? You’ve had 40 years to see it.) We stopped off for a drink at the pub afterwards and sitting at the bar was “Jeff”, brought back to life by the magic of not having been dead in the first place. A golden, curly-haired angel. Six years later, and still a nurse at the same hospital, a series called Casualty began, fronted by “Jeff”, who had metamorphosed into charge nurse Charlie Fairhead. I was working at a psychiatric emergency clinic by then, also a charge nurse, and I felt an affinity with Charlie. Why? Well, the stress, the threat of violence and the constantly shifting emotional landscape of troubled humanity, I suppose. Charlie was the perfect calm centre at the eye of the storm. Kind, controlled, intuitive, unflappable and always happy to lower his status in the face of any raging person volcano. And believe me, a schoolmistressy, highly judgmental code of acceptable behaviour is not one of the personality traits that is useful in this sort of environment. Charlie, veteran of multiple blood-squirty incidents, failed relationships and face-offs with management (not to mention the array of traumas each week, detailed in the first five minutes of the show, as cars hit prams, bridges collapse and distracted schoolkids step in front of toerags on nicked motorbikes), was always there to smooth troubled waters, especially the breaking ones (pregnancy reference!). So to all you sneery types too cool to appreciate Casualty’s big-hearted appeal, we viewers have watched avidly as, over the years, the show has added several layers of kitsch – like its overdressed little sister Holby City – but we don’t care. I love a busman’s holiday, and whenever I go to A&E I want a Charlie. Gregory House, House Chosen by Dr Alex George, Love Island star and A&E doctor House was always my favourite TV character. I used to watch the show when it first started – I would have been at school preparing for my med school application – and was obsessed with it. I actually used House each time I sat an exam: I’m a huge believer that if you go in with the right mindset you’re much more likely to get the outcome you want. So I used to be like: “Right, come on, pretend you’re House, you can do this, you can get everything right.” It was a bit of fun in my head, it relaxed me. And it worked; well, I don’t know if it was him, but it did work. Pretty well. I think the reason he’s my favourite doctor is because he wouldn’t actually exist. He is not someone who would do well in a traditional sense as a doctor. His character wouldn’t be tolerated: he’s rude to colleagues, he’s not someone you would want to comfort you at the bedside. As a personality type, House couldn’t be much more different from me. He is definitely quite arrogant and very impatient. But he is such an amazing physician: strong-minded, determined, super-intelligent. He’ll do whatever: he’ll stay up all night, as long as he needs to, to work out what the problem is and fix it. And Hugh Laurie’s acting was great. In the series House is a diagnostician: everything that’s hard to diagnose goes to him because he’s a genius and works out all these medical mysteries. He just wants to work out what the science is, but there’s so much more humanity to being a doctor. Your ability to interact with a patient and comfort them and find rapport with them is as powerful as anything else. If you went in like House – really arrogant, rude – you wouldn’t get anything out of the patient. My favourite quote by him is: “There are three choices in life: be good, get good or give up.” We all face challenges in life, so it’s about overcoming them and not succumbing to the situation, and finding strength in yourself and in people around you. What we’re going through right now is difficult, and it’s about enduring and staying strong, and realising this won’t last for ever. It’s a tough time, but we’ll get there. As told to Kathryn Bromwich Doctor Strange Chosen by Jay Sean, R&B star, who studied medicine at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London As a fictional character, Doctor Strange is probably as cool as they come: he’s a superhero who’s also a trained neurosurgeon – and he can fly. It’s all the coolest things in one. I really love Marvel movies. For me they’re pure escapism: the special effects, the graphics, the storylines, the plot twists … I thought Benedict Cumberbatch was incredible, and a really great actor for that role. Basically, Doctor Strange’s story is that he has a car accident that damages his hands for ever. He can’t get them fixed by modern medicine, so goes off to try to find another way to heal himself. I think it’s pretty cool that there’s a big element of spiritualism to him – magic, mysticism – which combined with the science gives him his superpowers. As a character he’s very cocky, very intelligent. Because of that he lacks the humility initially to accept that he can’t be fixed and can’t go back to where he was. I love that he was so desperate to find a means to become strong again. As corny as it sounds, something like that could just defeat you if this was real life; you’d be like: ‘I’m done for ever.’ I kind of do feel like that’s similar to me and my path. There’s been a lot of ups and downs in the entertainment industry – the music landscape’s changed so much. But what do you do? Do you just give up and go: “Oh, nobody buys CDs any more, boohoo,” or do you go: “OK, well, what’s going on in the world now? Let’s see how we can adapt.” I think that in real life, one of the heavier aspects of being a doctor is the amount of times people don’t make it, the amount of times you have to break news to a family and break a mother’s heart … I’m pretty sure that’s what’s at the real heart of what being a doctor is. It’s the sleepless nights – you don’t get to sleep yet you have to perform some of the most important procedures in life – but how many times are they going to show that on TV? It’s just going to be another shot of a doctor trying to get some rest for 15 minutes. There’s a lot of people who are still going out there doing some of the most dangerous things every day for others. I think that’s why all of us now have been looking at medical professionals as the real superheroes right now. As told to Kathryn Bromwich