Professor Grant may be wishing he'd stayed within the rarefied corridors of academia, rather than making a surprise move into the dirty politics of the NHS this year. A former provost of University College London and a trained lawyer, Professor Grant has made something of a Basil Fawlty-esque entrance into his new post as chair of the NHS Commissioning Board.
After calling the health bill ‘intelligible' before MPs on the House of Commons Health Committee, he then admitted he was not a ‘patient of the NHS'. After following that up with a misjudged jibe that GPs are out playing golf rather than seeing patients (and subsequently issuing a mealy mouthed apology), you wonder if he is a secret double agent sent by Dr Clare Gerada to sabotage the Government's health reforms from the inside.
