The long awaited medical memoirs by former-doctor turned critically-acclaimed comedian Adam Kay are now available to pre-order.

Now officially titled This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, the book will see Kay revisit his past as an obstetrician and gynaecologist, which also formed the basis of his 2016 Edinburgh Fringe show, currently in the middle of a sell out run at The Soho Theatre. (limited tickets for remaining nights available here).

That show sees Kay open up his real life diary from his time as a junior doctor, which ended dramatically in 2010 when he quit the profession to become a comedian and writer, quickly forming musical duo Amateur Transplants before writing for Mongrels, Up the Women and his own sadly short-lived sitcom, Crims.

As we said at the time: “For a solid fifty minutes or so, Kay fuses (we hope ‘heightened’) extracts from his diary of the time with a series of original ditties and musical parodies with medical themes. As to be expected from a man who wrote for Mongrels, and as anyone who is familiar with Kay’s Twitter feed will attest to, the gags are both savagely witty and wittily savage. At times, he pushes the absolute boundaries of what society deems ‘acceptable’ to say, and then brings the room back with a round of ‘Guess the ailment’ to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

“But as bitingly brilliant as his comedy is, it’s the final ten minutes of the show – in which Adam explains the horrendous events which led to his departure from practising medicine – which stick in the mind, and reduced many an audience member to tears. It would have been interesting to drop a pin during this stark climax every night, because there’s almost certainly a guarantee everyone in the room would have heard it. And that’s a testament to the brilliance of Adam’s show. He can get away with the sudden switch and still have audiences on his side at the end of it all.”

Previously titled Your Life in My Hands, Kay commented back in January: “Even if only one person reads it, that’s one more person who knows the truth about life as a junior doctor and one more voice who can stand up for the future of the NHS. Although if only one person reads the book, Picador will have made a catastrophic mistake in commissioning it.”

This is Going to Hurt is due for release on Thursday 7th September 2017. You can pre-order it for Hardback and Kindle over yonder.