I certainly wasn’t afraid, and I don’t remember feeling nervous at all. I felt embarrassed.
I was going in to the Royal for what was, by all accounts, a very routine operation, but the procedure … well, I did feel slightly embarrassed.

I was to go ‘under the knife’ to allow surgeons to treat an infected pilonidal sinus, which sounds like quite an undertaking, but, put simply, the doctors were going to drain an abscess at the bottom of my back: well, the cleft at the top of my arse, if I’m brutally honest.

I had had visions of my bum being bared to all and sundry as a team of medics raised their scalpels to take on the evil Pilonidal Sinus, and, while I wasn’t looking forward to this particular experience, I knew it wasn’t life and death. I wasn’t even ill.

As I remember ours was an all-male ward – this was 1980 – and, as the youngest in the ward by some way, I was very much the new boy.

The arrival of a fresh new face gave the old hands in the beds opposite me some welcome relief to the daily monotony of hospital life. They regaled me with stories they had doubtless told dozens of times before; a slick, well-rehearsed double act. Cannon and Ball. Little and Large. Or Statler and Waldorf. I could see their punchlines coming a mile off, but I laughed along anyway. It was good to be part of the club, one of the gang.

Statler and Waldorf – I don’t think I ever knew their real names, or what they were in for – were presented with a fresh, and a much bigger challenge in every sense, when another ‘new boy’ arrived.

This was a giant of a bloke. He must have been six foot five or six and built to match. He wore a blazer and tie bearing the badge of a famous posh school’s rugby club. Doubtless he played for the FPs, and I guessed he maybe coached some of the school teams too.

Statler and Waldorf tried to engage the giant in conversation, but he wasn’t interested. In fact he was downright rude, huffing and puffing and pulling his Scotsman high up in front of his face. Both Statler and Waldorf made faces at him, and one even made out he was going to set fire to the newspaper with his lighter – all good, knockabout stuff.

Both the Unfriendly Giant and I were prepped for our ops – no, I don’t know what he was in for and there was no way I was going to ask! – and I can’t remember much after that.

Later. back in the ward, as I came out of the anaesthetic I became aware of a wailing noise that got louder and louder.

‘Mother. MOTHER! MOTHER!! Help Me … Please, save me, mummy’ A child’s voice. The rugby player.

Statler and Waldorf didn’t say a word.