He completed his medical training at St Thomas' Hospital paying his way through the clinical course by working as a part-time scriptwriter at the BBC Variety Department, a petrol pump attendant in Streatham, and a stage lighting technician for the theatrical producers H. M. Tennent. He also teamed up with the pianist Catherine Dorrington Ward, who later became his wife, to form a cabaret act. When he applied for admission to St Thomas’s, he opened his interview with a tentative question, ‘Could this hospital countenance the notion of a part-time medical student?’ To which the Medical School Secretary replied, ‘Is there any other kind?