Ralf Little found fame as dogsbody Antony in The Royle Family. He’d dropped out of medical school to take that role – and act year lashed out at the government over their treatment of the NHS. Jeremy Hunt bit back but Little had verified facts at his fingertips. Twitter was gripped and the debate was shared by thousands. He told us why he proved Jeremy Hunt wrong.
My brother is a junior doctor and I started medical school myself (I dropped out after a few weeks to do The Royle Family). I’ve always had an eye on that world.
I watched [former Health Secretary] Jeremy Hunt spin the junior doctors’ strike – telling an untrue story to people who don’t have time to sift through all the bullshit to get to the facts. It’s not that people are stupid or ignorant, but now more than ever they don’t have the time.
He spun vast sections of the British public against doctors – actual doctors – doctors whose job it is to keep you alive. He spun it like doctors were greedy for wanting protections to ensure they could do their job safely and received fair compensation for it.
I started arguing back. Not losing my cool, but trying to convince people.
When the Jeremy Hunt thing happened, it was absolutely not my intention for it to blow up the way it did. I saw him lying on TV and I was furious. I went ‘you’re a liar, mate. Sue me if I’m not telling the truth, I dare you’. Then he came back at me and I was thinking – ok, I can’t let that go. He issued a challenge to see if I could prove him wrong, so I did. I got in touch with some of my junior doctor-activist mates on Twitter and we agreed that we couldn’t let it slide. We sat down together and said, right – let’s go at him hard.