We are pleased to share the results of the first Pharmacomedy competition, which ran from December 2024-January 2025.
The competition was a real success, receiving 30 entries. They were judged anonymously (by a panel comprised of Alistair Corbett, Kirsten McKnight and Steve Tucker) and scored on their originality, how funny they were, and their relevance to pharmacology. Judging the competition was a joy, there is clearly a wealth of comedic talent among our members. The entries varied from raising a smile to laugh out loud funny (on more than one occasion) with the great majority scoring on each of the criteria.
The winner simply hit the brief, scoring highly on each of the criteria but with the raising of an additional smile at the thought of the attempts at a Scottish accent in its retelling.
We initiated this competition to honour our friend and longtime Society member, Alexander (Sandy) McKnight, who died in 2023. We were pleased to have Sandy’s daughter, Kirsten, on our judging panel, as she knew better than anyone what a funny man he was.
She said, “Judging the entries for the competition was bitter-sweet; I needed my Dad to explain most (read: all) of them to me! He would have explained each joke to me as if I had a PhD in pharmacology (I don’t). Thinking about this made me laugh at each joke, which was great. He would dined out on the winning joke for months.”
And the winner is...
Robin Plevin is the winner of the 2024/5 Pharmacomedy competition, with his joke:
A Scottish and English Pharmacologist were arguing about receptor theory in a pub. The Scotsman says: I think occupancy theory is correct, The Englishman says: I think rate theory is correct, The Scotsman replies: No, you’re Rang!’
Note from the authors: The punchline of this joke is best appreciated when read with a Scottish accent!
We were impressed by the focus on a major pharmacological principle and the acknowledgement of Professor Humphrey Rang who, during his illustrious career, made major contributions to our understanding of drug-receptor interactions.
As our winner, Robin is the recipient of the £100 prize. However, he has kindly asked that the BPS uses his prize money to support early career activity at the BPS, which has allowed for us to create two free registration spots for ECRs to attend the upcoming UK Pharmacogenetics and Stratified Medicine Network 12th Annual Open Meeting in London this June.
Robin’s second entry was also one of the runners-up:
Two inflammatory mediator molecules were in a cell chatting.
The first one says: Oh no, they’ve added aspirin to the media, we’ll all be killed!
The second one replies: Relax, you’re just being prostanoid!
Robin happened to know Sandy personally, and shared some memories with us.
“It’s ironic, it took me ages to recognise how funny he was because he was so dry in his delivery. He was a pharmacological Chick Murray (a renowned dry witted Scottish comedian). My memory of Sandy- I am sitting at tea at Merck, and he looks me in the eye and says, “Have you read Prebble, son?” “No” I reply. Next day he walks past my desk and dumps the Highland Clearances and the Glencoe Massacre on my desk and silently walks away. A further awakening of the Scottish experience for which I will be forever grateful.”
Our runners up
As well as our winner, we’d like to share four more fantastic runner up entries:
Submitted by Peter Taberner:
‘Q. What do you call an active drug without prejudice? A. An impartial agonist’
Submitted by Shiva Sivasubramaniam:
Submitted by Anthony Lewis:
‘Bloke walks into a pub and says to the Landlord "I'll have a pint of adenosine triphosphate please". "Sure," says the Landlord, "that'll be ATP".’
Submitted by Will Redfern:
‘Q. Which Class Ia antiarrhythmic was a midfield maestro for France and Real Madrid? A. Quinidine Zidane’
Thank you to all the entrants for getting involved!
We’d like to thank everyone who entered the inaugural competition. We’ve had a lot of fun running it and it’s been great to see so many people engage with the idea; there is always space for a bit of humour, even if the work we do is a little more serious!
We’ll be back at the same time next year for the next Pharmacomedy competition – watch this space!
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