Dr Maurice Guéret GP, writer and failed politician.
Personal & family: Born, bred and buttered in Dublin 41 years ago. Married to the ageless Lilian and doting Papa to one-year-old Mimi, two scruffy dogs and a clever cat.
What figure from the world of health/medicine do you most admire?
The late Prof Petr Skrabanek of Trinity College Dublin. He constantly urged his students to challenge medical dogma and to resist the lazy orthodoxy of blaming patients and their lifestyles for all of their diseases.
What alternative career might you have chosen?
A small animal vet. Succeed or fail, they always get a grateful lick.
If you were appointed Minister for Health, what would be your first priority?
I'd move my staff out of Hawkins House - probably the sickest building in Dublin.
Do you have a phobia/what is your greatest fear?
Dental extractions and Sinn Féin in Government.
Have you ever been a patient and were you a good one?
Yes and yes. I dropped chocolates back for matron and nightclub passes for her nurses.
What three books would you bring to a desert island?
The Death of Humane Medicine by Petr Skrabanek, In The Psychiatrist's Chair series by Anthony Clare and The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine by James Le Fanu.
Have you a fail-safe method of dealing with stress?
Reading newspapers in bed or walking the mutts from Sandymount to Poolbeg.
What is your favourite TV or radio programme?
Election coverage on RTÉ Television. Eamonn Dunphy on the radio.
If you did not live in Ireland, where would you choose to spend the rest of your life?
The non-descript agricultural town of Guéret in central France. At least I wouldn't have to keep spelling my name.
Summarise yourself in 12 words?
School reports repeated just one word - giddy. Je ne regrette rien!
Do you use alternative medicine/therapies?
No thanks. A badly educated quack with an open mind is always preferable to an uneducated quack whose mind is firmly closed.
Who or what makes you laugh?
RTÉ's special news correspondent Charlie Bird and the bathroom mirror.