You're wrong Jeremy, we need the NHS more than ever - your own experience shows why

It was the US writer Irving Kristol who famously said a neo-conservative was a liberal who had been mugged by reality. We could, by the same measure, say an NHS basher is a newspaper columnist, politician or pundit who's never had need of urgent medical treatment. Step forward, Jeremy Clarkson. Last week the owner of Diddly Squat Farm took the standard neo-liberal line in his newspaper column by lambasting the NHS as a "creaking monster" that needed a complete rethink.

The NHS was a "bottomless abyss" sucking up all our money. It was an out-of-date 1940s relic that was past its sell-by date. And it must be put out of its misery.

Just a few hours after the piece appeared, quite ironically, our Jezza needed to go to hospital "in something of a hurry." He needed urgent medical treatment, but guess what - his private health provider could only offer him treatment two hours away in London. So, Jeremy had to use the NHS, in nearby Oxford. And to his great surprise, he found it to be exemplary. He "genuinely couldn't find anything to moan about at all". He admitted:

"The doctors, the nurses and everyone I met were kind. It was all spotless. Lunch was kids' food brilliant, and they even made me better - for which I shall be eternally grateful."

Clarkson's actual experiences of the NHS appears was at sharp variance with the ideological, anti-NHS line he was spouting earlier. Yet, despite the care he received, and acknowledging that the NHS is "an excellent organisation and the frontline staff are superb", he still thinks our health service needs major change.

"In its current state, we as a nation can't afford it," he opines. Surely though his experiences show we can't afford NOT to have an NHS. The problem with private health care, as the Clarkson case demonstrates, is that it very often comes up short when you most need it.

I remember interviewing the late, great Dad's Army creator Jimmy Perry on the occasion of his 90th birthday back in 2013. Jimmy told me he'd had private medical insurance for years, but after he'd got to a certain age, it was "no bloody good". They weren't interested. So, he had to rely on the NHS - and was extremely thankful it was there for him.

Likewise, my dear mother. Her hip was giving her tremendous pain as she approached 90, and she was offered a hip replacement. The NHS gave her the option of a number of hospitals for the operation, including a private one where the waiting lists were lower.

But the private hospital turned Mum down - clearly believing she was too old and the risks too great. So, Mum had her hip replaced at an NHS centre and is still alive and well today in her 98th year.

As a carer to my elderly parents, I have had numerous emergency ambulance dashes over the past ten years and some for myself too. My dear father, who sadly died last year aged 97, collapsed with double pneumonia in the summer of 2022. Like Clarkson, the care he received from the Oxford NHS was excellent. By the end of his first week in hospital, it was me who was in the bed ill with flu, and dad who was standing over me with a smile on his face saying: "Come on, let's get cracking and make the beds!"

It's oh-so-easy to pen ferocious ideological attacks on the "out-of-date" NHS, and call for its abolition or radical reform when you have never had need of it and believe your private health insurance is all you'll ever require. But don't be so sure that you won't need the NHS one day - and when you do, you'll be glad your 'opinion' pieces weren't acted upon.