Interview - James Nesbitt: A doctor's dilemmas for star as he learns fresh role

The building – a former GP practice – is crammed with expectant visitors as well as those who would normally use and work in the place, which is the new HQ of the head injury charity Second Chance Headway (SCHC).

After a couple of years of anxiety about losing their old premises in the grounds of Pinderfields Hospital due to redevelopment of the site, everyone concerned is now happily settled into a "home" that is twice as big as the old one.

All that remains is the formal opening – and the thrill of anticipation would probably be only slightly greater if the Queen herself was drawing up at the front door and snipping the ribbon.

The guest of honour is actually actor James Nesbitt, he of the wry Northern Irish tones that have stamped their mark on films as well as highly-rated TV shows like romantic drama Cold Feet and long-running detective series Murphy's Law, in which he played the eponymous undercover detective. His stock is extremely high at the moment, for not only has he been cast as the dwarf Bofur in Peter Jackson's forthcoming adaptation of The Hobbit, but he is also the star of a big ticket six-part new medical drama Monroe, now on location in Leeds, where the buildings of the former Leeds Girls' High School have been adapted to become the fictional St Matthew's Hospital.

His presence in Wakefield today is down to a special relationship – a friendship that has grown in recent months between the 45-year-old actor and Phillip van Hille, president of SCHC. Van Hille is a neurosurgeon at Leeds General Infirmary, and his dealings with Nesbitt began after ITV called on the doctor's expertise as a consultant to the producers and especially to the man who would play the flawed genius neurosurgeon Monroe. Co-starring Sarah Parrish as cardiac surgeon Jenny Bremner, each programme will feature one life-or-death story and show how head injury or disease cuts across the lives of everyone including the family, relatives and hospital staff.

Cocky, poker-playing Gabriel Monroe has, above all, to look credible as a surgeon – hence the vital input of professionals like Mr van Hille and his 30 years' experience as a surgeon.

Medical dramas and documentaries have littered the TV schedules in recent years, and audiences are increasingly picky, thanks to the ever more sophisticated diet they have been fed. Producers hope Monroe will bring something new to the genre, thanks to Peter Bowker's penetrating script (based in part on the experience of his daughter's successfully treated brain tumour as a small child) coupled with Nesbitt's charisma.

"I guess we all know of someone who has had a brain disease or injury," says Nesbitt. "But the aftermath of those problems is not something people talk about too much. The surgeons involved are in a sense superhuman, working on the mechanisms at the very centre of their patients' personality and being. But they're also ordinary individuals, with all the personal flaws and dramas the rest of us have going on. I'm finding the role demanding, and the stories we tell make me feel I'm very lucky. Rather than feeling too worthless as an actor comparing his job to that of a neurosurgeon, though, it's more useful to think of myself as fortunate in being able to use my skills to tell these stories."

Finding himself suddenly required to check scripts and locations such as operating theatres for accuracy as well as being under scrutiny in his every gesture while operating on real patients, Phillip van Hille has found the business of making drama out of medical matters quite an eye-opener.

"Jimmy's been a very conscientious student. I didn't realise how much so until I saw how he behaved in the operating theatre and how well he knew how to manipulate the scalpel and other instruments. He even stands how I stand. And as for the operating theatres they've created on-set, they are better equipped than my own and I would like to move in when they've finished with them." Mr van Hille and the team who run Second Chance Headway were particularly delighted to have a visit from a high-profile actor who happens to be highlighting the kind of injuries the charity works with.

"Being brain-injured or having it happen to someone in the family is a very isolating experience", says the doctor. "At the beginning no-one knows if the surviving patient will regain skills they have lost through the illness or trauma. They may get some skills back and not others, and the world can be very judgmental when a person looks physically fine but behaves 'differently'. The world doesn't talk about it easily, either."

After snipping the yellow ribbon, James Nesbitt stayed to meet some of the centre's users and their families. About 50 former patients use the centre each week. SCHC was set up more than 30 years ago, springing from the lack of ongoing support and advice for brain-injured people and their families and carers following discharge from hospital. It relies on a fleet of volunteers, many of them former nurses or therapists, and offers life skills training including cooking, English and Maths, arts and crafts and IT sessions, as well as physiotherapy, speech therapy and cognitive therapy. It costs 220,000 annually to run, 75 per cent of which has to be found through fund-raising.

The Brandwood family say their lives would have been much more difficult over the last 17 years without the support and respite offered by SCHC. In September 1992, 18-year-old Claire Brandwood left her home in Wakefield to begin a degree in Geography and PE at university in Roehampton, west London, with a long-term plan of becoming a PE teacher.

Although she enjoyed her social life she was a serious hockey and cricket player and didn't party hard. One night during freshers' week, she and friends returned to their accommodation after a party. Claire had had a couple of drinks, felt like some fresh air, and opened the window from her bedroom on to a flat roof that had clearly been used before, by the look of the glasses left lying around. She had walked only a few yards when she fell down a 15-foot deep light well on to the ground below. Her parents Glennis and Adrian arrived some hours later at St George's Hospital in London to find their daughter with brain injuries.

"She was operated on twice to remove a clot on each side of her brain," says Glennis. "No-one knew how it would go. We were told she might not walk or talk again if she survived, and she had also broken several facial bones. It was a matter of waiting and hoping against hope."

A few months later, Claire was transferred to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield. At that point, she was just about walking again and could live at home while being treated, but she was left with various problems including very slow speech, poor memory and disorientation. "It was at about that time that we found out about the charity which then had its base in the grounds of the hospital," says Glennis. "It's been an absolute godsend ever since, and I don't know how we would have managed without it." Claire has regained many skills and confidence, but still needs coaching through some activities and remains at her parents' home.

About a million people a year suffer a brain injury, 30 per cent of which cause significant impairment, says Mr van Hille. "People can lose their education, their job, their marriage, and the after-effects can mean estrangement within families. Brain injury or illness is focused on very little in the media, which is why we are pleased a prime time drama will show the realities of it, and why I'm happy to help them to get it right."

Second Chance Headway: 01924 366735.

www.schc.co.uk

Monroe will be screened on ITV1 next year.