Patrons
Dr Phil Hammond is an NHS doctor, journalist, broadcaster, speaker, campaigner, and comedian. He was a GP for 20 years and spent 11 years in a specialist team for young people with severe fatigue, including post viral fatigue and long Covid.
Phil is Private Eye’s medical correspondent and possibly the only comedian to have appeared at a Public Inquiry; his coverage of the pandemic in Private Eye was highly praised, and a book of the columns – Dr Hammond’s Covid Casebook – was a Sunday Times bestseller.
Phil was half of the award-winning double-act Struck Off and Die, with Tony Gardner. His NHS comedy Polyoaks, written with David Spicer, had five series on Radio 4. In his Radio 4 series – Dr Phil’s Bedside Manner – Phil toured NHS hospitals, chatting intimately with staff, patients, carers and volunteers, and then cheered them up with a comedy show.
Phil has done Edinburgh fringe shows since 1990 and four solo UK tours. He took two shows to the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe: Dr Hammond’s Covid Inquiry and How I Ruined Medicine, which is available on BBC Sounds along with his new podcast, Doctor Doctor, and his 2026 comedy with Tony Gardner, Doctors on Hold. He was back at the Fringe in 2024 with Fifty Minutes to Save the NHS and The Ins and Outs of Pleasure. He has appeared on Have I Got News For You, Question Time, Countdown, The One Show and Long Live Britain.
Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey OBE is an independent Crossbench member of the House of Lords where she works on legislation to eliminate modern slavery, having founded the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion, and Sport, Modern Slavery and Human Rights. She is Co-Chair of the Foundation for Future London and Chancellor of the University of Nottingham.
Lola is a former actor, Professor of Cultural Studies, and Head of Culture at the Greater London Authority. Lola has written and broadcast extensively on a wide range of cultural issues and has served on the boards of several national cultural organisations including the National Theatre and the Southbank Centre, as well as serving as a Commissioner for Historic England.
She was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and has chaired the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Orange Prize for Women's Fiction, and the Man Booker Prize. In 2024, her memoir, Eight Weeks, was published, "a spirited, eye-opening and beautifully written account of being a child in care and a Black child in a white family and is a vital part of contemporary Black British history."
Baroness Young was an active member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing's Inquiry 2015-2017 and was a Commissioner for the Creative Health Review in 2024. She joined the NCCH as a Patron in February 2026.
Image of Lola Young, photo © Jenny Smith
David Shrigley OBE joined us as the first Patron of the National Centre for Creative Health in December 2025. David Shrigley (1968) is a renowned British contemporary artist whose work revels in the absurd. Through drawing, sculpture, animation, and installation, he captures the strange, the awkward, and the darkly funny in everyday life.
In 2016, David attended a roundtable in the Houses of Parliament to hear the stories of people who had experienced ill-health and had found that being creative helped them. In response, David made a series of illustrations which were included in the short report Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing .
In 2020 David established Sidmouth School of Art in Devon which uses creativity as a catalyst to help people embrace lifelong learning, develop talents and skills and strengthen their health and wellbeing. You can hear David talk about the importance of the arts for our health and wellbeing here. In 2023 David illustrated a book by Richard Layard titled Wellbeing: Science and Policy
David’s illustrations were adapted for the covers of the 2023 report Creative Health Review: How Policy Can Embrace Creative Health which makes recommendations to government for a cross-departmental creative health strategy.
Image of David Shrigley, photo © Pål Hansen 2025
