Harry Hill considered returning to work as a doctor at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.
The 55-year-old comic was asked to join the staff at London’s Nightingale Hospital to help fight the pandemic, but after realising how long he had been out of the job he made up an excuse to decline the offer.
Appearing on ‘The Weekly Stand Up’, he said: "I’d submitted the form and then I thought, ‘Oh Christ. What the hell could I actually do?’
"I’ve got cold sweat dripping down my back, and I said, ‘Well, to be honest, I’m in south London so it would be quite difficult for me to get to’. I did say to her, ‘It was 30 years ago. I was only a junior doctor and my specialisation was general medicine.’ "
Harry – whose real name is Matthew Hall – trained in neurosurgery before landing a job at Doncaster Royal Infirmary.
But he decided to quit the medical profession at 25 years old, as he "didn’t feel in control of what was happening".
Harry then turned his hand to comedy and achieved his breakthrough in 1992, when he won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
The television star’s best-known show ‘Harry Hill’s TV Burp’ ran for 11 series from 2001 until he quit the programme in 2012.
In 2017, he presented ‘Alien Fun Capsule’, saying at the time: "It’s great to be back on ITV with an all new format that finally tackles the problem of an imminent and prolonged war with space aliens, by proving to them that us humans are really a lot of fun to hang out with!"