Regular ITV daytime show guest Dr Amir Khan has received supportive messages from fans after sharing an “embarrassing” update on Instagram. The telly star and full-time GP regularly posts on social media, and on Thursday he said he wanted to share a story after being reminded of it.
In a video, he began to explain: “It’s a true story, it’s quite embarrassing but someone reminded me of it today and I thought ‘It’s funny, I’ll share it’.” The incident happened “probably about five or six years ago now” when Dr Amir was on call at the surgery.
Explaining that he had been called out to a nursing home on a home visit, he went on to say: “While you’re away that list [of patients] continues to grow, so you come back to a longer list, so you want to go out, do your home visit, and come straight back.” He said he had assessed an elderly lady who had pneumonia and established that she needed to go to hospital in an ambulance, so he called and waited for the paramedics, and planned to do a handover before heading back to the surgery.
Dr Amir added: “I was looking out the window waiting for them to arrive and I saw them approaching onto the street that the nursing home was on so I thought ‘right you know what I’ve got to get back to the surgery, I’ve got my letter here’ – I’d written a transfer letter – ‘I’ll meet them in the carpark, hand over, get in my car and go back to the surgery’.”
But it wasn’t an ambulance he had seen, it was an ice cream van. Due to his busy day Dr Amir was “starving” because he hadn’t managed to have any lunch. He said: “I thought ‘I’m waiting anyway, I’ll get a 99′”, and he did, with sherbet and strawberry sauce on top.
Dr Amir said: “It was a really hot day and I was eating it outside waiting for this ambulance, and it was all dripping down my hand and onto the letter I’d written for the ambulance crew and eventually when the ambulance crew did arrive I was halfway through this 99 and they came out the ambulance and saw me licking this ice cream going ‘Hi I’m Dr Khan, sorry I just need to lick this before it drips’ and I gave the details of … this 86-year-old lady ‘and here’s the letter’.
“It was covered in strawberry sauce and the paramedic … the look she gave me, like she was absolutely disgusted and she slowly put on a rubber glove and grabbed the letter from me while I’m still trying to stop this ice cream from dripping all over, like licking, licking, licking.
“And yeah, I don’t think that was a good transfer. But I downed the 99, got back to the surgery and I had a long list of patients to see and call, so I didn’t get lunch, so that 99 was a good shout.”
Captioning the post, Dr Amir said: “Guys I was reminded of this story today from someone who DMd me after reading my Sunday Times bestselling book – The Doctor Will See You Now, the story is in there. But I’d thought I’d share it here. For those who don’t know, a 99 is an ice cream in a cone with chocolate flakes coming out of it. Anyway enjoy x”. [sic]
Fans are clearly loving the tale, with many rushing to the comments section. One follower wrote: “What a great story. Paramedic with the gloves just made it that more hilarious”. A second said: “You’re hilarious! Please don’t ever change Amir! xx”
And a third added: “This has got to be the funniest thing ever please don’t ever change you are just the tonic we all need this made me laugh out loud I can’t wait for your next story”.