Becky Street • 1 min read

Taking a break from touring the expo halls of Europe, Team OSP was working closer to home this week — filming on location in a microbiology lab.

The finished programme will show the journey of an infected pus sample from aspiration or swabbing of a wound, through analysis, to final diagnosis. Real patients or their wounds could not be used for confidentiality reasons — so the skills of Siân Revill, an experienced medical make-up and prosthetics artist, were added to the team.       

As you can see the results look truly gruesome and the clinicians working alongside us said they looked exactly like the real thing. Our patient, Samantha Davies arrived looking glamorous, but within an hour or two facial spots appeared, teeth were deformed, a nasty abscess grew on her neck and an infected knife wound on the leg applied.

The life-like transformation used latex, paints, makeup and KY Jelly to create this ‘masterpiece’. A separate fibreglass shoulders and neck model was used to ensure a needle wasn't stuck into our patient. Cameraman Trevor Burgess did go weak at the knees when the needle went in, followed by the extraction of lovely yellow pus created from soya yoghurt and Worcestershire Sauce!

The team had curious looks over coffee — but strangely no-one wanted to sit near us!