{"id":14887,"date":"2018-09-07T08:30:02","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T12:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2018-09-19T15:18:05","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T19:18:05","slug":"operation-ouchs-xand-van-tulleken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/operation-ouchs-xand-van-tulleken\/","title":{"rendered":"Operation Ouch!\u2019s Xand van Tulleken"},"content":{"rendered":"

Operation Ouch! co-presenter Dr.\u00a0Xand van Tulleken\u00a0tells\u00a0<\/em>TV Kids\u00a0about why the series, represented by Serious Lunch, works and what\u2019s in store for the future of the show.<\/em><\/p>\n

The BAFTA Children\u2019s Award-winning Operation Ouch!<\/em> revels in being gross\u2014and kids love it. Fronted by twin brothers Chris and Xand van Tulleken, who are both doctors, the series uses humor and experiments to demystify the human anatomy.<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV KIDS:<\/strong> As doctors, what made you and Chris decide to enter the world of children\u2019s television?
\nVAN TULLEKEN:<\/strong> We wanted to make the show that we wished we could have watched when we were kids. We loved science shows, but there was nothing really about the human body. Maverick, the company that makes Operation Ouch!<\/em>, had an incredible track record with Bizarre ER<\/em> and Embarrassing Bodies<\/em>, two iconic medical shows of the last couple of decades in the U.K. [featuring] amazing bits of public health with incredible access. So we knew Maverick would do a very good job. And there\u2019s something quite fun about [the fact that] if you\u2019re siblings, you can mess around on children\u2019s telly in a way that you can\u2019t on adult telly.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong> How does Operation Ouch!<\/em> help young viewers become more comfortable with doctors and hospitals?
\nVAN TULLEKEN:<\/strong> The message in every episode is that if something goes wrong, there are teams of people who are there to help you all over the country. No matter what goes wrong, whether you\u2019re having an asthma attack at school, whether you get lost on a mountainside, whether you get stuck in the mud or you drift out to sea\u2014whatever the situation is, there are people who can help. We\u2019ve filmed with paramedics, firefighters, police officers, Coast Guard\u2014all sorts of different people. Then in the hospital itself, there are a few things that we try to do. First, we get the kids to tell the stories themselves, so you hear what\u2019s happened from the kid. The story is then animated, so there\u2019s heightened reality, but you get a good idea of what\u2019s happened. And then we show a huge amount of the details. A lot of the show is quite gory, but it removes all the mystery [behind] stitching and injections and the processes. The way that we put it together, we don\u2019t show kids in pain, we don\u2019t show kids who are embarrassed or screaming; we usually show kids having a pretty good experience, which is quite typical of an emergency room. A modern emergency room is pretty good at managing pain, at getting kids comfortable and relaxed, and we show that. The nicest feedback we get is when we\u2019re filming in hospitals now, the staff will say, Your show makes kids better patients and they\u2019re just more relaxed. We give them enough information that they\u2019re quite informed about their body. The hospital is demystified. They\u2019ve seen lots of doctors, nurses, radiotherapists, physiotherapists and all kinds of other people in the hospital\u2014all of whom we show the best side of.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong> Is there anything on the series that can still gross you out?
\nVAN TULLEKEN:<\/strong> I was doing the voiceover for a little girl who had been rolling down a hill and had her arms above her head so that as she rolled, her arm pushed her earring inside her earlobe. It\u2019s sometimes the small things that make you squeamish; watching the doctor get the forceps and have to pull hard to extract this thing from her earlobe while I\u2019m in the recording phase was like, Eww!<\/p>\n

Every time something gross is going to happen, there is a big \u201cgross\u201d alert on the screen; there\u2019s a voiceover saying, Look away now if you\u2019re squeamish! Don\u2019t look now! Whenever we\u2019re filming in schools, we ask everyone, Should we make it more gross or less gross? And we have never met a child yet who doesn\u2019t say, Make it more disgusting!<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong> What are some of your favorite experiments from the show?
\nVAN TULLEKEN:<\/strong> When we were little, our dad used to do weird experiments with us. When we went to the butcher shop, he would buy hearts and show us that if you held a heart under a tap of running water, you could fill it and squeeze it and make it pump the water in one direction; the valves still worked. Then we\u2019d cook them and eat them. We did that as a proper experiment in Operation Ouch!<\/em> and showed it to our dad. It was just a silly thing that he did one afternoon to amuse his kids\u2014which was cheap and easy and a bit ridiculous\u2014so it was nice to have our old dad\u2019s idea on the screen.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another experiment where we show how sneezes work. If you get a room full of doctors or medical students and ask them what a sneeze is, most of them will give you the same answer, which is: A sneeze is an irritation in your nose; you take a deep inhalation and when you sneeze, it blows the irritation out of your nose. That is completely wrong. If you sneeze in a relaxed way, your entire sneeze comes out of your mouth and nothing comes out of your nose at all. You can direct it out of your nose, but a free sneeze comes out of your mouth. It\u2019s stimulating pressure receptors at the back of your mouth, which effectively trigger mucus production and your nose will start to run. So, your sneezes are about getting your nose to wash itself out.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong> How do your interactions on the show compare with how you and Chris behave around each other in real life?
\nVAN TULLEKEN:<\/strong> Because we\u2019re not actors, we can only be exaggerated versions of ourselves. So in real life, I\u2019m the sillier one and he\u2019s quite serious and stern. The characters are sort of caricatures of us. You know how when you\u2019re with your family, you regress and go back to being about 12 or 14? That\u2019s every day filming Operation Ouch!<\/em> [Laughs<\/em>] You can\u2019t pretend to be someone else when you\u2019re with your brother.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong> How do you achieve the right balance between being both educational and entertaining?
\nVAN TULLEKEN:<\/strong> We start with the idea that we can take something fascinating that people don\u2019t know and the material is engaging. It\u2019s so interesting to understand your body. And then because it\u2019s fun explaining it, it\u2019s not too hard. The body up close is just full of poo and pus and blood and guts\u2014all of this disgusting stuff that\u2019s intriguing as well. The material of what makes us human is so fascinating, particularly to children. There\u2019s a limitless supply of it. You make it as fun as possible.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong> Is it challenging to keep the show fresh season after season?
\nVAN TULLEKEN:<\/strong> Medicine is just endless; every patient is different, every human body is different, every condition is fascinating. Medical stories, particularly in which people are getting ill or injured, have a beginning, middle and end; they\u2019re just such perfect natural stories. I felt that after six years of medical school, we\u2019d barely scratched the surface. I\u2019m still learning things now when we do Ouch!<\/em> And then science is always evolving. It\u2019s just the gift that keeps on giving. We haven\u2019t even covered all the organs in the body yet.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong> What\u2019s in store for the future of the series?
\nVAN TULLEKEN:<\/strong> We constantly get emails saying, Because of your show, a kid was able to call 9-9-9 and save their parent\u2019s or grandparent\u2019s life; they knew how to treat a severe injury, they were able to stop some bleeding, they were able to do some CPR, etc. We wanted to recognize those kids, so in the next series, we\u2019ve got the Ouch Awards, which is for kids who have either showed immense personal courage in coping with an illness themselves, have called the emergency services to help someone or have done amazing first aid.<\/p>\n

We have a burp filmed from the inside. We managed to get a camera to the back of my throat and then up and around into the back of my nose to see my nasal turbinates, which is a view that I cannot find anywhere on the internet.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re also doing more search and rescue. We\u2019ve done paramedic stuff in the past where we\u2019ve gone out with a rapid response vehicle and got to the scene of emergencies quickly. The next season, we\u2019re going out with a proper ambulance and follow the patients all the way to the hospital. We have a boy who\u2019s lost his leg and we\u2019re following him as he deals with various prostheses and his ambition to become a sprinter. We\u2019ve also got a little girl with scoliosis who\u2019s got a magnetic spine. They\u2019re serious health problems, but the kids are all super lovely and all the stories are very optimistic.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019ve got a new presenter who\u2019s joining us! She is an emergency department doctor and she\u2019s phenomenal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The co-presenter talks\u00a0about why the series, represented by Serious Lunch, works and what\u2019s in store for the future of the show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":479,"featured_media":14888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,21],"tags":[3976,1022,1024],"class_list":["post-14887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-dr-xand-van-tulleken","tag-operation-ouch","tag-serious-lunch","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nOperation Ouch!\u2019s Xand van Tulleken - TVKIDS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/operation-ouchs-xand-van-tulleken\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Operation Ouch!\u2019s Xand van Tulleken - 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