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With a doctor for a girlfriend and a gran and grandad who were cared for by hard-pressed hospital staff before their deaths, Russell Howard knows a thing or two about the struggles facing the NHS .

And the stand-up comedian fears the Tories will destroy the service with their crippling austerity if they remain in power.

He is also furious that in 21st century Britain there is still child poverty while MPs get subsidised food and that we are in the grip of a social housing crisis because callous Tories are blocking moves to make rundown homes fit to live in.

But Russell is astonished at how many people have become more obsessed with reality TV stars than the burning issues affecting millions.

(Image: ITV) (Image: Getty)

Speaking about the health service, the 37-year-old says: “I have seen first hand how hard NHS workers work. My girlfriend is a doctor, four of my cousins are nurses and my nan and granddad died this year.

“They were having to do all sorts to look after my gran. There was no glamour, they were just hardworking people. You see how well they were treated by the NHS and you could see the strain and the effort by the doctors and the nurses to care for people. They are all knackered.

“It is inevitable it is going to break unless something dramatic happens. Every winter it is getting worse and worse. Instead of austerity it is about pumping money in.”

Russell, who is now Britain’s biggest comedian with 1.3million Twitter followers, will address the issue on his new TV show which starts this week.

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Praising the dedication of staff such as his girlfriend, he adds: “As a doctor, how do you tell someone that their relative is going to die or has died?

“It is an unbelievable role and there is something peculiar that has happened in the last 20 years where we value someone on Love Island or on Towie more than we do a doctor or a nurse or a midwife.

“There are less doctors joining, there are less nurses joining, it is going to crumble. Why wouldn’t you go to Australia or Canada where you get paid more and it isn’t as stressful and people will respect you.

“The thing that frustrates me the most is the amount of toxic ­headlines implying they are doing it because they are lazy or selfish. If you are a doctor you are smart, your memory retention is extraordinary.

“You could easily work in the City, you could easily find a career that would leave you absolutely minted and being a doctor isn’t one of them. A lack of respect for doctors is seeping in.”

(Image: ITV) (Image: Birmingham Mail)

Turning to the social housing crisis, Russell says Tory MPs have been blocking votes to make more rundown housing habitable and build barely any new social housing.

He adds: “Once you dig deep into it there’s some extraordinary things happening. The very fact the Queen is getting £369million to do up Buckingham Palace … yet there was a story the other day that if you are single and live in London it will take 46 years to save up and get a ­mortgage. Rent in this country is the highest in Europe. And then you get into social housing, councils are just not building social housing. It is down 97% since 2010.

“ Nick Clegg claims George Osborne and David Cameron said to him, ‘Why do you keep banging on about social housing it will just create more Labour supporters.’ So we have found out some fascinating things… 39% of Tories and 22% of Labour MPs are landlords.

“And 309 Tories voted against making housing fit for human ­habitation. If you look in the dictionary a house is ‘a building for a human’. So you have a situation where the country is on its a**e and the Tories are arguing against language.” Russell tells of his anger at the number of children that suffer malnutrition while the minister behind austerity are allowed generous expenses, including ­subsidised food and drink.

Jamie Oliver will be amongst the guests on his new show to campaign for better food for youngsters, ­especially those who are poorest.

Russell adds: “There are loads of topics in it which I am really ­interested in trying to make funny and exciting because they are things I give a f*** about. This is the only TV show I could make at the minute.

(Image: Newcastle Chronicle) (Image: Getty)

“I couldn’t make a frothy show, like getting people from Love Island to eat meringues off each other’s nipples or playing swingball with Little Mix. Because it feels like every one of us is fascinated with the world at the moment so I want to do a show that reflects the woe and wonder of existence.

“I was talking to my mates about it saying we are going to make actual reality TV, not just orange people trying to have sex with each other.

“This is the reality… one minute there is a terrorist attack, the next minute North Korea are developing nuclear weapons or Trump has said something stupid.

“Or there is a Diana memorial in Chesterfield or a woman has got a turd stuck in a window in Bristol. This is what we are all talking about. Not cakes and tanned people.”

Russell’s new show is on Sky1, where he says he feels free to express himself unlike on the BBC.

The comic reckons Beeb bosses interfered with his hit series Good News and had to ensure the show was politically balanced. He adds: “There is always that thing on the BBC that if you do a joke about the Tories you have to do a joke about Labour. But no one talks like that.

(Image: BBC)

“Everyone was talking about Farage and we would have to say something about Ed Miliband.

“It got quite boring towards the end, having debates with humourless people and then they would look at a script and say, ‘You can’t do that’ and you would do it in front of a live audience and they would laugh or agree and you would be like, ‘See’ and then they were the quickest people to take credit for it.”

Despite the huge success of Good News on the BBC, he would not have made the recent talent pay list and says the gender pay gap at the BBC was “obviously ridiculous”, but that he knew it existed across society when he was at school and “nothing has changed”.

Asked if he might one day return to the BBC, grinning Russell says: “Maybe. If it all goes bad and I end up on Strictly Come Dancing. That is when you know there is trouble, if you see me there sweating.

“They always say, ‘It is the hardest thing I have ever done’ or, ‘The best thing I have ever done.’

God, you must have had a ­terrible life if that is it. I could never go on Strictly because I can’t dance, I dance like a newborn pony. If I see my mum dancing and she is wiggling away or my dad is dancing and his man boobs are flapping, that is a 10.

“It doesn’t matter, there is no right or wrong. Maybe that’s how I go on there, I just dance how I please.”