He worked as a newspaper and magazine columnist, published three novels, edited World Medicine, wrote and presented over 100 television and radio documentaries, and helped found the charity HealthWatch.
[2] He was born in Yorkshire, the son of a general practitioner, and educated at Stonyhurst College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he studied Natural Sciences.
[3] He completed his medical training at St Thomas' Hospital paying his way through the clinical course by working as a part-time scriptwriter at the BBC Variety Department, a petrol pump attendant in Streatham, and a stage lighting technician for the theatrical producers H. M. Tennent.
When he applied for admission to St Thomas's, he opened his interview with a tentative question, 'Could this hospital countenance the notion of a part-time medical student?'
According to journalist Paul Vaughan, 'O'Donnell was a remarkable medical editor, a man who had ricocheted gaily between the professions of medicine and journalism, with an occasional lurch into the theatre… He now contrived to bring all these talents together as editor of World Medicine and … established it as a bright entertaining and - in terms of medical politics - radical newcomer'.
[5] O'Donnell himself claimed his editorial approach drew heavily on his experience in Weybridge in the 1950s when local GPs met at the Cottage Hospital after their morning surgeries to drink coffee and exchange ideas and gossip.
When serendipity parked me in an editor's chair, I decided I wouldn't just report news about medicine but would try to reflect the uncertainties, the paradoxes, and the black comedy that make practising our craft so rewarding.
'[6] World Medicine attracted a large and intensely loyal readership but in 1982, after a dispute with the publishers over editorial policy, O'Donnell was forced to leave.
'Michael O'Donnell, whose appointment as editor of World Medicine was abruptly ended two weeks ago, has put both the profession and the public in his debt.
He has campaigned vigorously and successfully for the apparently impossible, such as reform of the GMC; he has got doctors to laugh at themselves and their practices; he has highlighted the pettiness of the jacks-in-office and their new bureaucracy; and he has exposed awkwardness that the Establishment would sooner have forgotten about.
( 1983–90), the panel game with Frank Muir and Denis Norden, and wrote and presented the award-winning series Relative Values (1987–97) which the radio critic Anne Karpf nominated as her favourite programme.
'[11] He appeared regularly on Stop The Week, with Robert Robinson as chairman, and wrote and presented the series Utopia and Other Destinations (1996–98), Murder, Medicine, and Magic (1998–2001), and The Age-old Dilemma (2007).
The fee angered doctors who believed they had a lifetime contract and were not keen to finance the GMC's "expansionist ambitions"[12] In a postal ballot, 11,540 World Medicine readers voted against the ARF and only 466 in favour.
Doctors in hospitals around the country held protest meetings at which the GMC foolishly declined to be represented and BBC Television's Panorama devoted an edition to exploring the dispute.
[21] The Daily Telegraph ran articles supporting the dissidents and The Times published an editorial headed 'Clapping Rebel Doctors in Irons'.
It refused to reveal the number who had refused to pay — rumours suggested 8,000 to 10,000 — but, faced by the prospect of the NHS losing the services of a large number of doctors, the Secretary of State, Sir Keith Joseph set up the enquiry the 'rebels' had asked for, appointing as chairman Dr (later Sir) Alec Merrison.
The council became 'more democratic and a good deal less straight-laced … rather more concerned with shortcomings which prejudice good patient care and rather less with private sexual relations, and allegations of self-advertisement … more argument in the chamber and less unquestioning acceptance of the dicta of committee chairman and the secretariat'[23] O'Donnell felt the impetus for change came to a halt when Richardson retired.
He was also depressed by 'the habit of some senior GMC members to work to an agenda significantly different from that allegedly being discussed'[25] and described how '… when I was appointed to a working party set up ostensibly to recommend change, it soon became clear that certain members were so determined to prevent us recommending anything useful that, like caricature bureaucrats, we spent all of our first meeting (out of eight), and most of our second, debating what our title should be.
'[28] He has often expressed his belief that 'the only safe place for Authority in a free society is on the defensive'[29] and that one of his jobs as a writer 'is to keep it there'[30] Although for his last two years he was Chairman of the Standards Committee, he later described his role on the GMC as 'Rebel in Residence'.
[37] And in 1993 he described how "Some years ago, I wrote in the BMJ of an unnamed doctor whom I'd much admired until he achieved the knighthood he'd so coveted "with an act that denied the very qualities for which he'd won my respect".