Medically astounding and emotionally piercing, this look at the man who had the hardest job on Earth is exceptional viewing. Then he has a stunningly frank encounter with a woman who has hated him for three decadesEarly on in Confessions of a Brain Surgeon, a crew member pipes up from behind the camera. Would Henry Marsh mind saying something, anything, to see if the microphones are working? “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,” Marsh says instantly, not pausing for a moment to gather the words, “I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, and look upon myself and curse my fate.” A simple “testing testing, one two” would be standard practice, but Marsh is not your standard documentary subject.Marsh is a retired neurosurgeon, having spent decades at the top of his profession. You’ve probably seen hospital documentaries that have featured an “awake craniotomy”, the macabre procedure that keeps a patient with a sawn-open skull conscious, so the effect of the scalpel’s cuts can be monitored in real time. Marsh, along with his longterm colleague, anaesthetist Judith Dinsmore, pioneered that. He performed numerous other exceptionally advanced operations with unique skill. Countless patients who were told by less able, less imaginative medics that they were terminally ill were treated successfully by Marsh. Continue reading…

Pleasance Dome, EdinburghIn an eyebrow-raising debut, Galvo shares not very fond memories of her education in IrelandRachel Galvo ditched a career in business a few years back, fleeing Dublin for London drama school – where she wrote what is now The Shite Feminist, her first standup show. As the name implies, and her intro (“Ladies, and hopefully not too many gentlemen …”) confirms, it’s not made with the likes of me in mind. But there’s still plenty to enjoy for sheepish men in the crowd, as the 25-year-old shares not very fond memories of life at an all-girls private Catholic school on the other side of the Irish Sea.At least initially, it’s no great sob story, and not only because Galvo openly admits (and sends up) how pampered and privileged a childhood she had. But the religious education she depicts can still raise eyebrows, even if Galvo’s account of it (fetishising Jesus, or observing that the Bible’s only templates for femininity are “a virgin and a prostitute”) feels well-worn. It’s less the superstition that shocks you than the sexism, as Galvo, like her schoolmates, is prepped to become – in her words – “the highly educated stay-at-home wife of a rugby player”. Continue reading…