The BMJ’s medics’ revue: a revival in 2026

These are both extraordinary and intense times; there is pain, loneliness, and disinformation, but there is also laughter, togetherness, and truth. The same might be said of clinical medicine and research. In their working lives, our readers have privileged insights into human experience and behaviour. Accustomed to playing their varied parts, BMJ readers navigate the joys, frustrations, and absurdities of health systems, senior clinicians, politicians, and other people who describe themselves as “leaders.”Yet there is one way to make sense of the mayhem while paying little heed to sensibilities. Medics’ revues are a tradition of UK medical school and hospital social life. A typical revue is outrageous, silly, subversive, and at times in dubious taste as it speaks out loud the unspoken truths of a most serious profession. The spirit of a medics’ revue was captured in an editorial written by The BMJ’s former editor in chief Richard Smith when…