Great Ormond Street Hospital

Professor Pete Smith is an allergist and immunologist with a PhD in molecular immunology.

After training at the Great Ormond Street Hospital and UCL's Institute of Child Health in London, he returned to Australia to found Queensland Allergy Services, one of Australia's leading allergy and immunology practices.

He is an active member of the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, the World Allergy Organization, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, and the European Academy of Clinical Immunology and Allergy.

With over 170 peer-reviewed papers, professorships across three universities and over 60 PhD candidates supervised, he spent four decades separating what works from what sells and translating that into real outcomes for patients.

And he was a bit weird about it, but I think there's never been any allegations of any kind of...

And famously, do you know that Peter Pan, all the royalties for Peter Pan go to the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

So he left the rights to Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, so Children's Hospital.

I didn't know that.

That's actually

He developed the shunt and the shunt kept getting blocked.

Roald Dahl worked with engineer Stanley Wade and neurosurgeon Kenneth at the Great Ormond Street Hospital to develop an improved shunt valve.

Ah, right.

Right, okay.

World of being on your own and, you know, to be very honest with you, you know, those first months and even years were financially very challenging because I was on a half decent salary as a deputy head in East London.

We'd already had our first daughter by then who was, you know, very unwell when she was born and we had lots of kind of... stays at Great Ormond Street and she had open heart surgery at 10 months.

And that was during COVID.

And then my wife was pregnant with a second.

Will they touch you with a barge pole?

One of the examples he gave about the impact of this documentary, I suppose, on his life was that he and his now wife, Laura Gallagher, had just had their son and he was undergoing some surgery, some heart surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

And he talked about how after the documentary was published, he was barred, effectively barred from his baby son's bedside at this time.

He said that it was unclear what kind of reasons they were giving that he couldn't be present.

So they covered some of the impact it has had around how this trial has played out for Russell Brand, but then they focused in on the personal impact on his personal life.

And Ian Winters said, is it true that you were not able to be with your baby son who was having open heart surgery in Great Ormond Street because of what was in the press, the allegations that were in the press? And Russell Brand responded saying, quote, the reason given by Great Ormond Street Hospital when my son was receiving open heart surgery and subsequent treatment was due to the material published.

He then added, they had to bar my attendance.

And he added, quote, they were unclear about what particular legal reasons there was, but that was the reason they gave to my wife, Laura, and I.