{"id":339011,"date":"2026-03-10T16:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/339011\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T16:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:06:08","slug":"hospital-nurse-is-suspended-for-six-months-for-repeating-deeply-shocking-ricky-gervais-joke-during-other-appalling-comments-with-a-colleague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/339011\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospital nurse is suspended for six months for repeating ‘deeply shocking’ Ricky Gervais joke during other appalling comments with a colleague"},"content":{"rendered":"

A nurse who worked in hospitals for 20 years has been suspended for six months after he repeated a \u2018deeply shocking\u2019 joke he claimed was by Ricky Gervais<\/a> to a colleague.<\/p>\n

James Murray said the misogynistic line \u2018if they bleed, they can breed\u2019 when discussing the sexual maturity of children with a work friend.<\/p>\n

He defended himself at Fife Hospital by saying he was \u2018not the author\u2019 of the line and was merely \u2018repeating\u2019 a sketch by comedian Mr Gervais.<\/p>\n

The hospital, denying his explanation, brought the case before a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) tribunal, where Mr Murray was subsequently suspended for misconduct.<\/p>\n

Mr Murray worked as a nurse for 20 years at St Andrews Hospital, Fife, and Fife Hospital, Fife, and otherwise had a clean record.<\/p>\n

The nurse’s misconduct took place over the course of a day and began while he was discussing staffing with a colleague in July 2022.<\/p>\n

The conversation ended with Mr Murray shouting offensive language at a female nurse and sticking two fingers up at her.<\/p>\n

This left the colleague feeling \u2018belittled\u2019 as she was surrounded by other members of staff while abuse was shouted at her.<\/p>\n

\"Rickey <\/p>\n

Rickey Gervais pictured on his latest Netflix special Mortality which came out in December last year<\/p>\n

After being reprimanded by a manager, Mr Murray proceeded to complain to a separate colleague about the woman he had publicly embarrassed.<\/p>\n

Mr Murray claimed to have acknowledged his actions were wrong at the time and told the tribunal, held last week: \u2018I accept the fact that my behaviour was highly unprofessional, was quite rightly seen to be intimidating and could potentially be seen as being bullying, but that was never my intention.\u2019<\/p>\n

However the panel members rejected this claim, stating he had a \u2018requisite conscious objective or desire to bully, intimidate, or undermine\u2019 his colleague.<\/p>\n

After shouting at his co-worker, Mr Murray continued to have a \u2018highly inappropriate and unprofessional conversation of a sexual nature involving children\u2019 with another colleague later that day while in earshot of patients.<\/p>\n

Two members of staff overheard the pair, and one told the tribunal the \u2018deeply shocking and inappropriate\u2019 conversation started with a discussion on who at the hospital had contracted Covid.<\/p>\n

Mr Murray told his colleague, who was also his friend, he had probably caught Covid from him, to which the colleague replied: \u2018Yep probably when I s****** you up the a***.\u2019<\/p>\n

The nurse responded it would rather be the other way around, leading the colleague to make a crude comment about children.<\/p>\n

Mr Murray replied: \u2018If they bleed, they can breed\u2019.<\/p>\n

The nurse who overheard these words told the tribunal she thought it was \u2018really disgusting\u2019 and \u2018entirely inappropriate\u2019 – and said the pair did not allude to having heard the joke elsewhere.<\/p>\n

She added: \u2018You don\u2019t know anybody\u2019s backstory and it particularly upset me.<\/p>\n

\u2018They didn\u2019t mention they were relaying a joke they had heard.\u2019<\/p>\n

Mr Murray told the panel the conversation had been \u2018misconstrued or misinterpreted\u2019 by the two colleagues who overheard it.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u2018I think [my colleague] had started talking about it and then, you know, we were teasing each other with stupid answers.<\/p>\n

\u2018Neither myself nor [my colleague] were the authors of this.<\/p>\n

\u2018We didn\u2019t make this particular joke up. We were repeating the joke or interpreting the joke.\u2019<\/p>\n

However the panel rejected his defence and said \u2018such language has no place in a professional healthcare setting\u2019 which \u2018aggravated its seriousness\u2019, while Mr Murray \u2018demonstrated a serious lack of judgment\u2019.<\/p>\n

It added: \u2018[The act] was capable of causing shock and distress to colleagues, risked reputational damage to the profession, and was inconsistent with the standards expected of a registered nurse.\u2019<\/p>\n

The incident \u2018risked [the] reputational damage to the profession\u2019 of nursing, it said, and would have \u2018significantly shocked and concerned\u2019 a patient.<\/p>\n

It deemed the suspension of Mr Murray was needed due to the \u2018range of highly inappropriate behaviour\u2019 which included \u2018sexualised comments concerning children\u2019, marking a \u2018very serious breach of professional boundaries and fundamental tenets of the profession\u2019.<\/p>\n

It added: \u2018The panel has considered this case carefully and has decided to make a suspension order for a period of six months.\u2019<\/p>\n

NHS Fife have been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A nurse who worked in hospitals for 20 years has been suspended for six months after he repeated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[539,103,397,396,61,60,43,819],"class_list":["post-339011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-dailymail","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-ricky-gervais"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}