“In a stressful world – and healthcare is a stressful world – fun is a vital release”

For me, counter-intuitively, small audiences are more intimidating than large ones. Talking to a small group is an intimate experience and you are close enough to be able to catch individual reactions. Facing a large audience, on the other hand, is much more performative: you see a sea of anonymous images and your only effective feedback is noise – at best, silence interleaved with occasional laughter (or, dare I say it, applause); at worst, the rustle of whispers and the sound of seats tipping up as people edge out. 

If you want anyone to listen to anything you want to say, you have to win their attention. Those first few sentences are vital

Our Excellence in Eye Care dinner, where we marked 10 years supporting 100% Optical and awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor David Whitaker (25 February), was one of those more intimate events, so when I stood up to do my customary 15 minutes of nonsense, I was keenly aware of how what I was saying was landing. Fortunately, overall, it seemed to go well. The laugh lines landed, and the applause at the end appeared genuine enough. 

But, as ever, not everybody’s reaction was the same and, standing there trotting out my carefully rehearsed ad libs, I noted a look of puzzlement on one or two faces. This was meant to be an optical event, they were clearly thinking, so why on earth was this bloke drivelling on about the history of the building or some foolish anecdote about a rat eating a kebab? (Don’t ask).

There are two answers to this question. The first is obvious: if you want anyone to listen to anything you want to say, you have to win their attention. Those first few sentences are vital: if they are dull, any hope you have of carrying the audience with you for the next 15 minutes has already evaporated. Grab them from the get-go and you have a chance; turn them off and you have none. Humour, insight, anecdote – whatever it takes. The ancient philosopher Lucretius wrote in poetry rather than prose on the basis that children would only drink a cup of bitter wormwood if you put honey round the rim; two millennia later, the modern-day philosopher Mary Poppins echoed the sentiment: “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” 

The second and more important reason is because fun is at the heart of the AOP. One of the reasons I took my job was because the interview process, rather than being a dry, mechanistic question-and-answer session, was discursive, creative and filled with humour. No-one watching our wonderful clinical and professional director, Dr Peter Hampson, spinning his gameshow wheel on the main stage at 100% Optical dressed in a sparkly gold jacket, can accuse us of being dull. 

The AOP may be a fun place to work – staff satisfaction is high and turnover low – but by any standard it is a high-performing organisation

Spend time at AOP Towers in Clerkenwell and you will learn quickly enough that irreverence and humour are celebrated, not frowned upon. 

There are some people who, I think, may consider that fun unprofessional, or that making jokes means you are not taking something seriously. And of course, there are limits. Under the jacket and gameshow schtick, Peter’s clinical content was rigorously evidence-based and his message deadly serious. AOP Board meetings may occasionally descend into giggles, but the papers are closely considered, and the decisions focused and clear. The AOP may be a fun place to work – staff satisfaction is high and turnover low – but by any standard it is a high-performing organisation. 

On the contrary: in my view, rather than fun being distracting or unprofessional, it is essential to success. Study after study has shown a direct connection between a relaxed, convivial workplace and high performance. It is not for nothing that firms like Google install ball pits and slides in their offices.

Humour is not just for fun, it can be a deadly weapon: it is well attested that the only opposition leader who Margaret Thatcher ever truly feared was Neil Kinnock, who mocked rather than attacked her. And in a stressful world – and healthcare is a stressful world – fun is a vital release. I have a very dear friend who has some health issues at the moment, with everyone around her treating her with reverence and sympathy, which drives her wild. What she needs me for, she says, is the opposite: someone who she can have adventures with and who, if her illness is to be mentioned, can be counted on to make a joke of it. 

As optometrists move increasingly into the clinical space, the importance of their softer, people management and communication skills increases too

For a profession which over the coming years is likely to be more and more engaged in difficult and complicated patient conversations, knowing when and how to use tools like humour to engage and communicate will become more and more important. Knowing what to say and when to say it is not always easy: a friendship lasting many decades has perhaps earned me the right to make the same hair loss jokes to a woman with cancer that she has been making to me since I was 30, but I wouldn’t recommend that as a more general strategy. As optometrists move increasingly into the clinical space, the importance of their softer, people management and communication skills increases too. And, as with my speeches or Peter’s presentations, while the substance need to be properly crafted and accurate, the packaging matters too.