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Craic Health tries to integrate comedy-on-prescription into NHS policy as part of social prescribing. It’ll be interesting to see how this project grows, says Peter Kelly…

David Whitney has seen it all. As a teenager playing rugby for his school, he remembers the excited chattering of a great young talent on the opposing team.

That young talent would lead the English to the pinnacle of international rugby and mount the summit of World Cup glory with a drop kick down under in Australia. His name; Jonny Wilkinson.

After school, David ended up in drama school with another exceptional talent, Tom Hardy. Tom and David would set up a theatre company together in Battersea called the Shotgun Theatre.

Tom Hardy, of course, went on to Hollywood stardom and Marvel Universe villainy.

People blame Gwen Stefani for the rise of Donald Trump

David then became a stand-up comedian and a very good one at that. During the first few years you do stand-up, there is a plethora of new act competitions.

David was in the finals of three competitions; the Amused Moose New Act, So You Think You’re Funny and the Hackney Empire Best New Act. Comedians often see the acts they competed with in these competitions as their graduation class. Jack Whitehall was in David’s graduating comedy class.

And if that wasn’t enough proximity to celebrity, David also played the bagpipes at Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani’s wedding after the best man at the wedding spotted David busking at Piccadilly Circus.

A little aside here. Some people blame Gwen Stefani for the rise of Donald Trump to political dominance and the menace he is now. How, I am sure you are wondering?

The story goes that while employed by NBC to host The Apprentice TV show, Trump discovered that Gwen was receiving a bigger pay packet from the same network for her role on the TV show The Voice.

This ego-bashing affront led him to throw his name into the hat to run for the Republican nomination the first time around. Some say his original objective was simply to run to raise his profile to negotiate a higher TV salary. Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction.

But back to David. Having lived such a rich and cultured life, who better to take you on a walking tour of Soho on a Saturday afternoon than him? A group of about 30 met David at Tottenham Court Road tube station. This may have looked like any other group of tourists in London but it was not.

Socially prescribed to take part in an outing by local GP

Every one of the group was a local resident in the borough of Westminster and each one had been socially prescribed to take part in the outing by their local GP.

This was a group who, individually, suffered from isolation, loneliness and mental health complications. David’s job was to help them befriend each other, walk them around Soho and drop them off at the Top Secret comedy club in Covent Garden.

That would allow them to walk in as a group to watch an afternoon show of stand-up comedy. The event was organised by Lu Jackson and Craic Health (which describes itself as a creative technology platform that tries to integrate ‘comedy-on-prescription into NHS policy’ as part of social prescribing).

Shared experiences such as a comedy show can help us all feel less anxiety and depressed. As David said when I spoke to him, the idea for these people, indeed anyone walking into a comedy club on their own, can seem very daunting.

The end of the walking tour - walking with new friends

But hopefully by the end of the walking tour, they would feel and believe they were walking in with new friends. David has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Soho. He showed them where David Bowie was discovered and signed, and where Amy Winehouse was discovered and signed.

He showed them where the original Comedy Store was located above a strip club in the late 70s. The Toucan bar in Soho now claims to have the best Guinness in Soho. David informs the group that this may or may not be true but the bar is the site of a previous music venue where Jimi Hendrix once played.

David also showed them 18 Greek Street where Peter Cook’s famous club The Establishment was located. The club was the driving force in political satire in the 60s and had a big impact on the British comedy scene.

Sounds like a great day out, right? For some people, organising a day out like this to lift people’s spirits is an insurmountable challenge and that’s where social prescribing comes in.

David thought this initiative was a great idea. He could clearly see that during the hour, people started to come out of their shells a little. And it helped them take a degree of ownership of their local area.

He was told by a member of the group that they had lived all their life in the central London borough but had never been in Soho because they believed it was a no-go zone and too dangerous. David quipped anywhere with a Nando’s is not dangerous.

I also spoke to Lu, who is the visionary behind Craic Health and these events. She is from a family of doctors and have worked tireless for eight years to get the organisation where it is today.

It will be very interesting to watch this project grow and grow. You can follow David Whitney at @whitneycomedy on Instagram.

Peter Kelly is a pharmacist based in London and a stand-up comedian.