Adam Kay kept a diary while working as a doctor. He never expected millions of people would read it.

Adam Kay's career path was paved by his family. His parents, who were Polish immigrants to the UK, instilled in him the importance of pursuing a "safe, sensible profession".

To them, work was about making the most of the opportunities afforded to you and making a difference in your community.

And so, Adam became a doctor. He spent six years studying, then dutifully toiled beneath the fluorescent lights of a British hospital. He endured the 95-hour work week, the life-and-death stakes, the bodily fluids, the stress, the poor pay ("I was earning less per hour for my shifts than the parking meter I could see outside," he said).

But he also found a creative outlet. Each day, he wrote in a diary. It was a catalogue of the people and events that he'd encountered. It told the stories of his day; some heartbreaking or poignant, but most funny, shocking, or disgusting. He never expected that millions of people would read them.

First, listen to Adam Kay on Mamamia's No Filter podcast. Post continues below.

Adam has since leveraged those stories into a new career in comedy and writing. He is an internationally touring stand-up comedian, a sought-after television scriptwriter and the author of 10 books. Among them is This is Going to Hurt, his hugely popular memoir of his time as a doctor (drawn straight from those diaries), which was adapted into a BAFTA-winning TV series in 2022.

Speaking to Mamamia's No Filter podcast, Adam humbly admitted that, combined, his books have sold "five million" copies — "or something". His This is Going to Hurt stage show, which he's bringing to Australia in April and May, has been seen by more than 300,000 people.

From peers to patients and their loved ones, women who've given birth, it's clear that most people can find something relatable in Adam's words.

"Everyone's got an in," he said. "Hospitals can be quite miserable, scary, difficult places that aren't laced with great memories. And so I think there is something about seeing that lighter side of it. Plus, obviously, [people love] hearing lots of disgusting stories about objects and orifices."

There are plenty of those in Adam's work. He talks about extracting a television remote from one patient, a toilet brush from another, and even a string of Christmas lights ("Gives a whole new meaning to 'I put the Christmas lights up myself'" he quipped). He says doctors often approach him at book signings or after his stand-up shows with their own tales of extraction.

Watch: The trailer for This is Going to Hurt. Post continues after video.

"I think it's a very competitive part of medicine," he laughed. 

Still, Adam says no one has beaten his Kinder egg story. It took place on February 29, 2004. A leap day, which, according to ancient Irish tradition, is a day on which women propose to their male partners. 

So, a female patient comes in with her boyfriend. She says she has something stuck inside her vagina. Adam gently extracts it with sponge-holding forceps. It's the plastic egg from inside a Kinder Surprise chocolate — the one that usually contains a small toy. 

"I am about to chuck it in the bin," Adam recalled. "She says, 'Oh no, no! Don't do that! He needs to open it.'"

Confused, but not asking questions, Adam hands the woman's partner a pair of latex gloves and the egg. When the man opens it, there's a ring inside. The couple became engaged, right there in cubicle three.

Adam Kay's career: from the labour ward to the stage.

Adam walked away from his career in medicine in 2010. It was a matter of "death by a thousand cuts". The stress, the loss of a social life, the lack of sleep and respect — it all built up. But a single harrowing case proved to be the final blow. While Adam was working as a senior doctor, a labouring mother suffered serious complications that resulted in the stillbirth of her baby and left her in the intensive care unit.

"All you want from every case, as a bare minimum, is a healthy mum and a healthy baby. And this is one of these terrible situations where we had neither of those two things," he said. "Essentially, I realised at that point that I didn't have the emotional buffer to deal with this stuff."

Faced with the chance to pave his own career path, Adam focused on what he enjoyed doing. He thought back to the comedy shows he'd performed in during medical school at Imperial College London.

He started doing the odd stand-up gig, telling stories pulled straight from his diary. He also managed to secure jobs as a junior television writer.

"I was earning less than I ever was as a doctor, but I was doing something with zero stakes," he said. "A bad day at work meant someone on a stage threw a can of tomatoes on my head. Or some producer said, 'This is the worst script I've ever read. Please never darken my door.' No one died."

As it turns out, this low-stakes career has brought him more material success than he ever thought possible. But there's a big part of him that tugs back to those fluorescent lights.

"I have a huge amount of guilt because I'm not helping," he said. "I mean, the arts obviously have the most enormous value, but I'd have to have quite the ego as an author or a comedian to say that what I do on a day-to-day basis is in any way comparable to saving a mum's life on a labour ward. It was that feeling that kept me in medicine, probably longer than I might have otherwise done."

He's not planning to return to life as a doctor. (But he suspects that if he were, we Australians would be able to hear his mother cheering all the way from England.)

Still, he recognises the tonic that he can provide in his new career: making people laugh.

"Definitely medicine is the best medicine, but laughter is a very important way to decompress," he said. "And I suspect if it wasn't for laughter, there would be a lot fewer people working on the wards."

Read more stories from our previous No Filter guests:

• When Riley Hemson lost weight, she gained followers. But it soon turned toxic.

• At 21, Ellie received routine blood test results. She thought her life was over.

• Tyler knew there was something unusual about her family. When her dad was arrested, she learnt the truth.

Feature image: Supplied.