Spoz and friends: Tales of a London medical student

These delightful stories chart the stuttering and at times quite hapless progress of ‘the Spoz', (so named by his brother ‘the Woog') from Norwich schooldays through his time as a student at a prestigious London medical school in the 1970s. From his initial interview at St Thomas' Hospital - an institution he chose because he had never heard of it and on that rather dubious basis thought he was more likely to be accepted - to his final exams, the book documents the author's painful progress as an immature seventeen-year-old away from home for the first time. Sexually naïve, he devotes much of his time attempting to lose his virginity, while his excessive beer-drinking hampers his success and results in several awkward brushes with the London constabulary. Chronically impecunious and homeless for several months, Spoz devises various hair-brained money-making schemes and ultimately has to take extensive time out of his studies to work on a nearby building site. From there he witnesses the bombing of Westminster Palace by the IRA, while his absenteeism from classes almost results in a premature end to his already unpromising career. While always infused with the author's characteristic humour, the Tales of Spoz offer the reader a more serious yet unobtrusive social commentary on the problems of being a student in that era, charting the often tortuous transition of a group of young men from immature schoolboys to responsible young doctors.

Dr Grahame Howard was born in London in 1953 and his family moved to Norwich when he was four years old. His childhood, particularly the eccentric behaviour of his father, is documented in his first book, ‘The Tales of Dod', published in 2010. He returned to London to study Medicine at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School, from where he graduated in 1976. Following a series of junior doctor posts in both London and Cambridge he was appointed consultant Clinical Oncologist in Edinburgh in 1986. His subsequent career was spent at the Edinburgh Western General Hospital, specialising in prostate and testicular cancer, eventually becoming Clinical Director of the Edinburgh Cancer Centre, an examiner for the Royal College of Radiologists and assistant editor of Clinical Oncology. ‘Spoz and his Friends' documents the writer's life as a medical student in the 1970s, and relates with humour the faltering transition of these young men from schoolboys to newly-qualified doctors.