Adam Richard Kay (born 12 June 1980) is a British TV writer, author, comedian and former doctor.

[1] His television writing credits include This is Going to Hurt (based on his memoir of the same name), Crims, Mrs. Brown's Boys and Mitchell and Webb.

Kay worked as a doctor between 2004 and 2010, leaving the profession after a patient's caesarean section was complicated by an undiagnosed placenta praevia;[1] the expectant mother was subsequently taken to the intensive care unit, while the baby was delivered stillborn, which left him with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

[8][9] Kay's first book, This Is Going to Hurt, based on diaries from his former career as a doctor, was published by Picador in September 2017[10] and became a Sunday Times bestseller.

[11] The paperback edition was also a Sunday Times number one bestseller,[12] a position it held for over a year[13] and selling more than 2.5 million copies.

[31][32] Kay is now an established screenwriter, having written and co-created the 2015 BBC Three sitcom series Crims – along with Grandma's House writer Dan Swimer,[33] with other television work as a writer and script editor including Mrs. Brown's Boys, Mongrels, Watson & Oliver, Up the Women, Very British Problems, Flat TV, Our Ex Wife, Who Is America?, Mitchell and Webb and Child Genius.

[7] In April 2020, it was announced that Trapeze would publish a collection of personal stories about the National Health Service (NHS) edited by Kay.

[39][40] Kay has sold out shows for six years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe[41] and has also had sell-out nationwide UK tours.