Peter Moore: 'If I met my younger self...he'd tell me to shut up!'

With a lifetime of experience, what advice would I give my eighteen-year-old self?

This is the theme of the Radio 4 programme “Young Again.” Any advice I might offer would not be helpful and probably downright dangerous. If I saw someone in the position I was in at eighteen and did not know the future, I would suggest, “Don’t be daft. You’re never going to make it as a doctor. Aim for something more realistic”.

Fortunately, we do not live life backwards, starting at the end, but some novels and plays do. Some movies and box sets, including Titanic, use a flash back.

When John le Carré asked Agatha Christie, “How do you make it so it’s always the person I don’t expect who’s the killer?” She replied, “Because I don’t know who did it either. I write almost the whole book. Just enjoy myself. Then I stop, and I work out who it can’t possibly be. Then I go back, and I make it them.” Having decided the murderer, she would then go back through, adding the odd clue or red herring.

This technique is also used in plays and TV detective programmes. It is also the way that the editors work in the BBC programme “The Traitors”. After each episode had been recorded and they knew who had been banished, they went through the episode and edited it, putting in the clips relevant to the round table. This makes the round table at the end far more exciting. The decision of who to banish may appear logical because the previous challenge has been edited to fit the story.

Why do we enjoy these stories? Life is more like Agatha Christie’s first draft. It is random. It makes no sense. Anything can happen. The most minor decision when we are young can affect our whole lives. This fits in with the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, who suggested that life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards.

As in the film Sliding Doors, apparently small chance events may have a profound effect in the future.

The other problem with advising my eighteen-year-old self is that the world has changed. I loved my job, but working as an old-fashioned GP is no longer an option. The work I did as a junior doctor was tough but fun. I dealt with all the medical admissions from heart attacks to diabetic comas and epilepsy. We did not have CT or MRI scans. Nurses did not stitch or take bloods. As a GP, I knew most of the hospital consultants and could discuss problems. I even went into the medical centre in the hospital for lunch and met my colleagues. The medical centre was only for doctors.

I knew my patients, and I hope that getting an appointment was not too difficult.

Although I always wanted to be a doctor, most of my career owes more to serendipity than planning. I worked as a police surgeon because my training practice happened to cover the police station. When I moved to Torquay, my predecessor had been a police surgeon, and so I just took over.

People always hope to see the future, but crystal balls do not work. Increasing numbers of young people are showing an interest in astrology. The astrology hashtag on TikTok brings up 4.5 million viewers, although I have never been on TikTok. Co-Star, which combines astrology with data from NASA, now has 30 million viewers. I do not know whether Mystic Meg predicted her death, but if she were alive today, she would do well.

If I could speak to my eighteen-year-old self, I hope he’d tell me to shut up. It is important to live life forwards and not backwards. Life is like the first draft of an Agatha Christie novel without the murders, I hope. We can never be young again.

As the Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it is about the future.”