Most shocking aspect of question about British prime minister's health was the outraged reaction it received, writes LUCY KELLAWAY

ONE WINTER’S morning 24 years ago, I had a meeting with an elderly man in a basement room near St Paul’s Cathedral. He made me lie on a hard bed, hit my knees with a rubber hammer and peered into my mouth.

He then shone a light into my ears, put a metal implement on my chest and pressed his fingers into my stomach. Had I been a man I would have suffered the indignity of having to pull my pants down and cough so he could cup his hand around my testicles.

We did not think twice about it. This was a check everyone had to pass to get a job. We didn’t wonder if the condition of our tonsils – or testicles – was our employers’ business or what it had to do with our ability to write news stories.

We understood that our medical details were confidential in the sense that they weren’t a topic for general discussion, but we also understood that if the test had thrown up something sinister (which it seldom did as it was so perfunctory) our employers would be entitled to say they didn’t want to hire us. Now the relationship between our health and our employment is more murky, and none of us seems to understand it.

Last week, the journalist Andrew Marr asked the British prime minister if he was taking pills to help him cope with the pressures of the job and all hell broke loose. Viewers complained to the BBC that Marr had no business making such an impertinent and insensitive inquiry. Marr replied that the prime minister’s health is relevant to the nation and that the question was quite fair.

Newspaper columnists lined up to thrash it out. What has happened since the days of my medical is that the law has changed to protect the employee. Employers don’t usually bother with a medical as they know if they turned anyone down on the strength of it they’d be likely to have the pants sued off them.

But employees’ reticence about discussing health matters at work has vanished. In the office, I recently overheard two women noisily discussing their menopause symptoms; on television, there are programmes in which a cod doctor examines people’s stools and celebrities calmly discuss their enemas.

Yet despite this, the biggest problem of all – mental health – remains tight shut. There is no shortage of general chat on the pressures of work and the effect this has on mental health, but no one wants to admit to suffering any symptoms themselves. To do so would seem weak and weakness is still even more unacceptable as an office trait than laziness or lecherousness.

I can only think of four people in the public eye who have admitted to suffering from mental illness and three of them don’t count. Stephen Fry made a TV programme about being bipolar, but he doesn’t count as he is a national treasure who can get away with anything. He is also creative and depression mixed with creativity can look (to the ignorant observer) borderline glamorous. Then there is Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former press man, whose admission doesn’t count as he had such a reputation for being hard and mean, being seen as a bit weak made him more human.

Then there was Kjell Magne Bondevik, the Norwegian prime minister, who said he was depressed through pressure of work and needed time off. He didn’t count because he was Norwegian, and Norway is evidently a lot more civilised about these matters.

And there was Lord Stevenson, who admitted when chairman of HBOS to having had spells of depression. This was brave and did count: employers, he said, should be a lot more sympathetic. Which, alas they are not.

The truth is that given our ignorance and squeamishness about mental health, it is probably better to shut up about it. We have very little idea what is going on in the minds of our workmates or how anyone is getting from one end of the day to the other.

Leadership jobs are now so hellish that one might think the only sensible response is to swallow pills. If, in some hideous reincarnation, I was the prime minister or a CEO, I’d be on uppers and downers and sleeping pills to make things seem less bad. But if these enabled me to do the job, my bathroom cabinet would be my business alone.

I asked a couple of doctors if most of the leaders in the country took pills. No, they said. Senior jobs can damage one’s mental health, but not as much as junior jobs, or no jobs at all. A doctor who worked for a huge retail chain told me that by far the most serious problems were presented by the company chauffeurs.

Either way, there are 36 million prescriptions written in the UK each year for drugs to help people get through the day. What is really shocking is not that Marr dared to ask the prime minister if he took pills, but that it was seen as such a big deal. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)