I don't know what's wrong with you lot, but if you want doctors to deal with your problems I suggest you stop treating us like a bunch of bastards. I walked into a cubicle on the ward yesterday with my biggest, most beaming and helpful smile on my face (there's a physiotherapist on the fifth floor who wants to snog me) to be met with a crowd of thugs and a video camera shoved up my nose.

"Shit," I thought. "An ambush."

"Right, so you're this doctor, are you?" said one thug. I looked down: white coat and a stethoscope. The cameraman pulled back to get a better view. "Well, frankly, we're sick of this."

Me too. Does that mean I can go to bed now? "I'm terribly sorry. Is there a problem?" I frown, and think back to the communication skills classes of my misspent youth. I'm tolerant and charming. And terribly dishy. I am Dirk Bogarde in his 1954 romp Doctor in the House.

"You're obviously completely fucking clueless and none of you know what's going on with my mother." Weirdly, for once that wasn't true. Actually, this man's mother had diverticulitis, which is both easy and boring, and she had developed it quite predictably at the end of a lifetime spent sitting on her fat arse eating bad food with no roughage and neglectfully raising a small village of thuggish offspring. She'd only been in hospital for about a day and she was already practically better, although still too fat to really walk.

So I settled down and gave them a frankly undeserved and rather fabulous five-minute package on diverticulitis: how you diagnose it, the best treatment, the most likely outcome; and I even missed out the bit about how it was all her own fault and maybe they could all just hurry up and die of stupidity so I could get on with the rest of my job.

And I did it because normally I'm just a nice guy with a lot of sympathy and respect for other people, and not because I had a video camera shoved in my face. Actually, I rather enjoyed the video camera bit. It made me feel like one of those ropey media doctor types on telly, and secretly I've always rather fancied myself on Richard and Judy. I got well into my stride; I felt good about myself. I had put aside other commitments, put in some time and pacified the loons.

"Well she didn't have that diverticulitis before she came into your hospital, did she?" He was victorious. It was indeed my fault that his mother was ill. They zoomed in on my name badge again.

Unfortunately, you see, people have funny ideas concerning the abiding importance of their own mortality (believe me, it's very humdrum), and even more peculiar ideas about how the state is going to nobly tend to their needs, even though they have consistently voted to have it dismantled for the past two decades, just because they pay some paltry sum in taxes that wouldn't buy you a quick catheterisation in any other country's health service.

Now as a little baby house officer and, at least still in public, a nice guy, I don't feel I have the right to put these nasty, rude little people in their place. As a doctor you're supposed not just to cope with extreme-sports social interaction, but to manipulate it to everyone's mutual benefit. We had long and farcical communication skills practical classes at medical school specifically to train us up for it.

But last week I was blessed with a locum registrar; and temps, as everyone knows, neither give a shit nor take any. So when I dragged him in to cast an quick eye over another patient in A&E as a favour, before I had really given them a full work-up, and we were met with "When am I going to see a fucking consultant?" and the common "And why doesn't anyone know what's going on in this fucking shithole?" followed by the diagnostic "I know my rights," he was kind enough to restructure the rules of engagement in the following fashion.

"Until tomorrow morning, sir, I am in effect the consultant, whereas you are a rude man with a slightly sore tummy who deserves nothing. This nervous soul on my left has been a surgical doctor for four months. He is now your only doctor. Goodbye." He snapped the curtains shut and left me in the cubicle. Thanks a bundle. No community spirit, locums.

But when I left to fetch a drug chart he was standing outside, wearing an enormous smile and carrying two cans of fizzy pop. "The moment he gives you any shit, Mike, just tell him to fuck off. And I'll see you for a game of pool in 10 minutes or you're fired." Rock on, brother.