Jo Brand and co return to ward B4 for a new series of the BBC4 comedy drama, Getting On, screening on Tuesdays from October 26... What did you want to achieve with Getting On? "We wanted to unglamorise life in the NHS and I get the sense that people are relieved that we've shown it how it really is. I always hear nurses saying it's a lot like their job – and not like Holby City where everyone treats patients for 20 seconds then has an affair with a surgeon!" The show has comedy and pathos in equal measure - was this intentional? "I've always wanted to do something that's sad and funny at the same time - and we're in a very sad arena on a hospital ward with lots of elderly people on it. We just wanted to show the contrast and the sort of humour that can come out of what is truly tragic really." What's your character, Kim Wilde, like? "My character is lower than the lino! It's always the lower qualified staff who are the dogsbodies but, in my experience as a psychiatric nurse, they tend to be much better nurses and much nicer people as well! I gave myself the nice role and let those two [Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan] be horrible." What happens to Kim, Sister Den Flixter and Dr Moore this series? "Kim continues down the road of being more put upon than ever and struggling because of that. Den is exploring her romantic options more fully and Dr Moore is in a state about whether she's going to be staying at the hospital or not and where her career's going." What does the real Kim Wilde think of your character? "I once met her on a programme I did called Britain Sings Christmas, where I had to sing Fairytale of New York with Irish gardener Diarmud Gavin. I told her I going to play a nurse called Kim Wilde and she said: 'Oh, can I come and be in a bed?' We'd love to slot her in in a Hitchcockian kind of way and not mention it." Nurses work all year round. Did you ever work a shift on Christmas Day? "I've done lots of Christmas Days in the NHS, they're great actually. Everyone's drunk from about 7 o'clock in the morning. The porters are always the ones that bring in gallons of booze and they're just sat with their feet up off their faces by about 8am!"
