A hospital worker boasted on Twitter that he intended to use pubic hair shaved from a patient to stick on his face and create the famous sideburns sported by Sir Bradley Wiggins, a disciplinary hearing has been told.
Paul Nam used the pseudonym “Sir Cockhardt” on the social networking site to tweet: “I was going to save the pubes from the first patient I shaved today and stick them on Wiggins-style”, the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) was told.
The operating department practitioner, who was working at United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, posted the tweet on August 1 2012 the first of a series on the site before a member of the operating theatre team raised the alarm and Nam was suspended in September that year.
The tweet was just one of a series of offensive posts from the account.
Nam, who is present for the hearing in central London, has admitted posting the tweets and further admitted misconduct.
His lawyer, Lee Gledhill, has told the panel hearing the allegations that it is up to them to decide whether his misconduct amounts to his fitness to practise being impaired.
Elena Elia, for the HCPC, said Nam had accepted that he had posted the tweets and apologised for them in a letter he sent once an internal investigation was under way.
He attributed his behaviour to “frustration for my own predicament” including his “limited career progression” at the trust. In relation to the Wiggns tweet, she said Nam had commented: “There was no actual patient, it was just a joke around Wiggns’ sideburns.”
The hearing continues.