What do you think?
Rate this book
Doctor in the House #7
Doctor On Toast
In this riotously funny comedy Dr Grimsdyke’s genius for disaster is given full rein. He falls in love with a model, only to find she is already married. His much-anticipated cruise is an unmitigated disaster and his role as Sir Lancelot’s biographer leads them both into misadventure in the extreme. And then there is the hypochondriac the Bishop of Wincanton, the murder specialist Dr Mcfiggie, not to mention the most alarming girl from Paris. With such potential pitfalls, it is not surprising that Grimsdyke and Sir Lancelot avoid imprisonment by only the narrowest of margins.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
1 person is currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Richard Gordon
278 books43 followersRichard Gordon is the pen name used by Gordon Ostlere (born Gordon Stanley Ostlere on September 15, 1921), an English surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere has written several novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He is most famous for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme starting with Doctor in the House, and the subsequent film, television and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex.
Gordon worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989, Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.
The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.
The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.
Gordon worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989, Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.
The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.
The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 28, 2022
Loved it even more than other doctor series books.
July 17, 2021
An absolutely delightful read! The narrator is an affable, self aware, and awfully charming young British doctor brimming with wry humour and witty commentary. The book is hilarious with its outrageous characters and a satirical tone - calling the most mundane things like animals and colds with the most complex Latin and medical terminology. A perfect Saturday read when you need a good laugh!
February 25, 2020
I’m not really sure what the point of this book was, but it was hilarious the whole way through. I haven’t read purely for enjoyment in a while and this one was a great hoot!
July 1, 2021
Hilariously slapstick. Grimsdyke shares similar qualities with Bertie Wooster and Psmith.
January 12, 2025
Sir Lancelot’s temperamental nature and one liners are hilarious on paper! Enjoyable read!
March 1, 2025
Thoroughly amusing.
March 16, 2014
Here's a piece of light, carelessly constructed humour about young men not taking life too seriously in a privileged world – chap-lit?
Another find from Tanzania’s street corner book bins: this one from the Clocktower book nook in Arusha. Someone has loved this volume and spent some time carefully taping its outer pages to the spine and reinforcing the edges of the covers. The owner must’ve appreciated the book far more than its publishers Penguin, who probably gave it a binding commensurate with its weight in the canon of English fiction. “Doctor on Toast” is supposed to be light comedy about a rakish protagonist who accidentally solves the problems of people around him. There’s some whimsical talk about dear old chappie bromances going back to the dear old digs and boarding school and people chumming together despite having been rather a cad to each other.
All the female characters in the book are described in disparaging terms, whether deliberately or out of habit. Out of around ten female characters, six are described as “little”: we have the pretty little receptionist as early as line 1, followed closely by “the most beautiful little blonde”, the love-interest; the pretty Italian maid; the maid’s employer, a “little fluffy thing”; the replacement French maid who’s also a “rather nice little blonde” and even the mother of the defendant in court is “one of those little sharp-faced women”. The other females include hypochondriacs, a mother of a two-year-old who’s not even described, an Italian opera prima donna, a middle-aged stripper and the Bishop’s wife, a “fragile-looking creature” who has latched on to a muscular husband “like the hookworm”. To be fair, some of the male characters – the unlikeable ones – are also “little”. I assume this is the result of writing in a hurry and going for an easy signifier of pouty, decorative mental eye-candy, and incidentally revealing what the author thinks about the fairer sex.
An accident of reading made me take ‘Doctor on Toast’ far more seriously than it merits. I read it directly after “An Experiment in Love” by Hilary Mantel, a real novel that’s set ten years later, also in London but in 1970 instead of 1961, about women who work hard as hell to turn Northern, Victorian/Catholic upbringings into lives in the modern world. In contrast, ‘Doctor on Toast’ is set – or tries to be set – in a backward-looking period London where people of breeding and/or means have afternoon tea, drive Bentleys, make jokes about their grandfathers chasing maids around the attic, and ring for the help to bring the sherry.
But among the set-pieces of aristo-porn modernity shines through. There’s no butler, except the penniless actor who manages to get promoted on the cruise ship because he’s played so many butlers on the stage. It’s hard for the surgeon and bishop’s household to find a replacement maid and they are reduced to having to stoke the boiler and cook dinner themselves. There’s even a homosexual advertising photographer. The main character runs out of money and has to take a rented basement room in Paddington and compromise on first-class proteins. The lawyers’ office is on “one of those modern buildings all made of windows” – the first instance of a concrete-era building described in the novel. (It’s full of “slim-legged office furniture and secretaries to match”). And I suppose it’s relatively modern that the main character does not end up enjoying buttered crumpets by the fire with his chums as a congratulatory celebration for jobs well done, but instead goes “back to the basement” to describe his friends’ successes. So perhaps “Doctor on Toast” is really a sly and cynical examination, cunningly disguised as chap-lit, of the hopelessness of the power of comfy patriarchy as it is being whittled down by the rule of law, feminism and meritocracy? Probably not.
Another find from Tanzania’s street corner book bins: this one from the Clocktower book nook in Arusha. Someone has loved this volume and spent some time carefully taping its outer pages to the spine and reinforcing the edges of the covers. The owner must’ve appreciated the book far more than its publishers Penguin, who probably gave it a binding commensurate with its weight in the canon of English fiction. “Doctor on Toast” is supposed to be light comedy about a rakish protagonist who accidentally solves the problems of people around him. There’s some whimsical talk about dear old chappie bromances going back to the dear old digs and boarding school and people chumming together despite having been rather a cad to each other.
All the female characters in the book are described in disparaging terms, whether deliberately or out of habit. Out of around ten female characters, six are described as “little”: we have the pretty little receptionist as early as line 1, followed closely by “the most beautiful little blonde”, the love-interest; the pretty Italian maid; the maid’s employer, a “little fluffy thing”; the replacement French maid who’s also a “rather nice little blonde” and even the mother of the defendant in court is “one of those little sharp-faced women”. The other females include hypochondriacs, a mother of a two-year-old who’s not even described, an Italian opera prima donna, a middle-aged stripper and the Bishop’s wife, a “fragile-looking creature” who has latched on to a muscular husband “like the hookworm”. To be fair, some of the male characters – the unlikeable ones – are also “little”. I assume this is the result of writing in a hurry and going for an easy signifier of pouty, decorative mental eye-candy, and incidentally revealing what the author thinks about the fairer sex.
An accident of reading made me take ‘Doctor on Toast’ far more seriously than it merits. I read it directly after “An Experiment in Love” by Hilary Mantel, a real novel that’s set ten years later, also in London but in 1970 instead of 1961, about women who work hard as hell to turn Northern, Victorian/Catholic upbringings into lives in the modern world. In contrast, ‘Doctor on Toast’ is set – or tries to be set – in a backward-looking period London where people of breeding and/or means have afternoon tea, drive Bentleys, make jokes about their grandfathers chasing maids around the attic, and ring for the help to bring the sherry.
But among the set-pieces of aristo-porn modernity shines through. There’s no butler, except the penniless actor who manages to get promoted on the cruise ship because he’s played so many butlers on the stage. It’s hard for the surgeon and bishop’s household to find a replacement maid and they are reduced to having to stoke the boiler and cook dinner themselves. There’s even a homosexual advertising photographer. The main character runs out of money and has to take a rented basement room in Paddington and compromise on first-class proteins. The lawyers’ office is on “one of those modern buildings all made of windows” – the first instance of a concrete-era building described in the novel. (It’s full of “slim-legged office furniture and secretaries to match”). And I suppose it’s relatively modern that the main character does not end up enjoying buttered crumpets by the fire with his chums as a congratulatory celebration for jobs well done, but instead goes “back to the basement” to describe his friends’ successes. So perhaps “Doctor on Toast” is really a sly and cynical examination, cunningly disguised as chap-lit, of the hopelessness of the power of comfy patriarchy as it is being whittled down by the rule of law, feminism and meritocracy? Probably not.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 30, 2012
These stories may be old, not much younger than me but they are goodies.
June 25, 2013
Meh!
Easy light reading.
Easy light reading.
September 23, 2015
The book started well, I enjoyed it too but the end was a let down ...not sure whether author wanted to have a sequel and hence left loose ends.
August 27, 2016
Very enjoyable read. Loved it! Richard Gordon is impressive as always with his witty humor.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews