Dual life of Dr Chris and Mr TV Presenter

You might have seen Dr Chris van Tullekan on Channel 4 this week, getting stoned out of his mind, as part of a carefully orchestrated experiment to demonstrate the difference between cannabis and skunk — how dangerous the latter is — and try to change its drug classification.

“A difficult task for a children’s TV presenter,” he admits, “but it’s a legally, ethically approved trial to demonstrate that the law needs to be consistent with the science.”

When he’s not taking drugs on TV, you can find Dr Chris in a lab, focusing on the battle between viruses and cells in his a fight against HIV, or in TV studios bottling farts and talking poo and snot for CBBC’s Operation Ouch.

He’s keen to bridge the gap between science and the rest of the world, while dedicating himself to entertaining and enlightening our children and solving the world’s great medical problems. In fact, he has to hurry out of his London lab for our interview, desperate to get back but keen to promote his talk at this year’s Oxford Science Festival.

“I’m happiest in the lab all day. When my wife’s away and there’s no TV scheduled in, I will be there for 14 hour days and am at my most productive. But being on TV is also a massive privilege; inventing a new way of looking and talking about the world.”

And therein lies the conundrum for this TV doctor and science researcher: his two lives, both occupations being incredibly demanding, utterly addictive and all encompassing, although he may be better than others at coping, having grown up with identical twin Xand, a doctor and his Operation Ouch co-star.

“I’m the worst multi-tasker in the world,” Chris grins. “It’s the hardest thing, having to switch between my two worlds. It’s hard to flip from molecular biology, conducting experiments in the lab, which is very involved and really taxing on the brain, and transforming into a TV presenter and talking about diarrhoea and weight loss.”

Was it part of the plan, to launch two dynamic, good-looking, amiable, driven, adventurous Oxford graduate doctors on the world of TV?

“Nothing in my life has been goal driven, other than the fact that I wanted to be a doctor and a vague scientist, but I certainly never planned to be on TV and tumbled into it having done a race in the Arctic, which was filmed.”

In 2004, Chris left his emergency room job for two months to go to the Arctic for a race to the magnetic North Pole. He came second; a surprise for a man who learned to cross-country ski only a month before. He was then invited to be one of Bruce Parry’s team as they recreated Captain Scott’s expedition for the BBC’s Blizzard: Race to the Pole.

Chris then worked on expeditions in Tibet, Belize, Brazil, Greenland and the Canadian Arctic both for medical research and filming and Medicine Men Go Wild was conceived. This looked at health and medicine in some of the world’s most remote places.

“I went to places I’d never have managed to see, to live with indigenous tribes and pygmies in the rainforests. In that way, TV changed my life. It’s what got my twin into humanitarian medicine and me into tropical medicine.”

They both studied at Oxford, which is why Chris is delighted to be returning with his talk, Is There a Right Diet For You?, one of his BBC projects.

“We are big Oxford fans, so coming back is a really special thing. Building an understanding of science is becoming more and more important as science gets more complicated.

“It’s a shame teens are being asked to choose whether they want to do science or humanities at such a young age. We really need to bridge that gap,” and with that the 37 year-old is off back to his lab.

Oxfordshire Science Festival
Runs until March 22. Dr Chris van Tullekan’s Is There a Right Diet for You? is at St Helen & St Katherine, Abingdon, on Friday, March 20
Listings: oxscifest.org

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