Not many doctors jump to answer their phones when off-duty.
However, it’s lucky that one Dublin doctor’s wife picked up a late call twenty-five years ago, as it happened to be none other than David Bowie on the other end of the phone.
Douglas Bowie told Ryan Tubridy on Radio One this morning about his shock when his wife turned to him and told him who was on the line.
Of course, he took the call.
He explained to Tubs:
“Our phone rang late at night one night, it was 11, 11.30.
“I was a GP and I was off duty so my wife answered the phone to try and intercept it.”
“They said this was David Bowie’s PA (and) would it be possible to talk to Douglas Bowie. So I got on to her initially, and then she put me through to him. He was really phoning to try and find out the origin of the name Bowie.”
The name Bowie, which is actually David Bowie’s stage name, originally comes from the Scottish islands.
“He was doing some research on it so I was able to fill him in a little bit on that.”
However, when David kindly offered Douglas tickets to his show, we’d say he was more than a little taken aback by Douglas’ response:
“At the end he said: ‘As you probably know I’m coming over to do a concert in Dublin in a couple of weeks would you like some tickets?'”
“Without thinking, I said ‘No thanks it’s ok, I don’t really like your type of music’,” recalled the GP.
“The kids were in the room at the time . . . and the shouts of disgust and anger around me. We had a few more sentences together and said goodbye, but I’ve never really lived that down with the family.
“I’ve got to like him a little bit better now over the last few years.”
Words escape us.
