Michael O'Donnell

Michael O'Donnell (20 October 19286 April 2019) was a British physician, journalist, author and broadcaster. He became a full-time writer after working for 12 years as a doctor. On BBC Radio Four he was the last chairman and word-setter of My Word! and wrote and presented Relative Values. On BBC Television he presented the O’Donnell Investigates series and, on Yorkshire Television, the controversial Tuesday Documentary Is Your Brain Really Necessary?. He worked as a newspaper and magazine columnist, published three novels, edited World Medicine, wrote and presented over 100 television and radio documentaries, and helped found the charity HealthWatch. Early career He was born in Yorkshire, the son of a general practitioner, and educated at Stonyhurst College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he studied Natural Sciences. At Cambridge he joined the Footlights and appeared in La Vie Cambridgienne (1948), the first Footlights revue televised by the BBC. He was also a member of the Young Writer’s Group founded by Stephen Joseph and succeeded Joseph as editor of Cambridge Writing. His short story A Sense of Value was later reprinted, with a commendation from E. M. Forster, in an anthology of post-war Cambridge writing. 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?