IT is a lucky man, whatever his job in life, who can come up with a quote like this: "I am a round peg in a round hole - I could never want to do anything else."

It is even better when the man involved is a member of a distinguished profession which, although once considered beyond reproach, is now the target of a severe battering from politicians and the national media - and is even embroiled in a heated squabble here in Craven.

Meet Dr Peter Whitehead, general practitioner and proud of it, who asks for nothing more than to be left alone so that he can get on with his real job at the Fisher Medical Centre in Skipton: looking after his patients.

I was anxious to ask him a few difficult questions and, of these, the most urgent was: how does it feel when members of your profession, once treated as near gods, are now regularly attacked in Parliament or the media following a series of medical scandals this year?

Dr Whitehead, who despite the name boasts a fine crown of bright red hair, considered this thoughtfully before he replied: "Of course in any profession there are some bad apples. There are also some arrogant doctors who perhaps deserve to be brought down a peg or two.

"But more than 95 per cent of doctors are fine, hard-working, decent people - as indeed are more than 95 per cent of my patients.

"Despite all its faults - and it has many - the National Health Service is a cornerstone of civilised society here in Britain because a society which cannot offer first class healthcare to its poorer, disadvantaged members cannot be judged as truly civilised.

"For most people, the GP represents the sharp end of the NHS. Unfortunately, there are some people out there who use the service as a political football for their own ends without having any real understanding of what GPs do. That, of course, is a shame but we have to learn to live with it and get on with the job."

Getting on with the job, or even getting into medicine in the first place, is always a tough process but Peter Whitehead made it even tougher for himself by taking a route that was circuitous in the extreme.

His mother's family came from Wensleydale but he was brought up in Calverley, between Bradford and Leeds. He went to Bradford Grammar School and then Cambridge where he took a degree in - wait for it - engineering.

"It was nice to get a degree but almost as soon as I graduated I realised that I was more interested in dealing with people than with machines.

"I suddenly knew I had to become a doctor but the trouble was I had used up my grants on the engineering course. That meant I had to get together enough cash to keep me for five years at medical school."

He did this by going off to work as an engineer in the blinding heat of the deserts of South Africa.

Even then, it took him over two years to save up the necessary nest egg so by the time he got to medical school in Edinburgh, he was getting on towards 25 - an age when many young doctors were achieving their coveted qualifications.

That was just the start. Few people realise that it takes a minimum of eight years training before anyone can become a GP: five years in college and three years doing hospital work.

For Peter, the latter included one year as a houseman in Scotland working a regular 120-hour week and sometimes up to 152 hours - "an inhumane practice for both doctors and patients which, thankfully, would not be allowed these days."

Like many young medics, he expected to stay in hospital work and one day become a highly paid specialist. He might have, too, if he hadn't volunteered to do a month's work at a general practice in Ripon, more or less to have a "look-see". He was hooked immediately.

"I realised that as a GP you deal with the whole of a patient, not just a small part of the anatomy like a nose for instance," he recalls with a fond smile.

"What's more, you are involved in the whole human process, from pre-birth with the mother through life and all the way to death. That's what enthralled me: dealing with people in their normal habitats rather than stuck in a hospital bed."

He was well into his 30s when he eventually came to Skipton 18 years ago

"It was wonderful to get back to Yorkshire and the Dales in particular" - complete with a new wife, Kate from County Cork

They settled down immediately to bring up two sons, now 14 and 10, and Peter admits: "It is so wonderful to do your medicine in a place like Skipton that I sometimes feel guilty, that I ought to be out in Africa working with terrible suffering."

He does, however, take his time off to indulge in two hobbies, both quite dangerous: sailing and gliding.

With old friends from his Cambridge days, he goes to remote parts of the Lake District where they hurl themselves and their gliders off the mountains using bungees - a technique glider pilots invented long before Kiwis started bungee jumping off bridges.

At work, politicians are still kicking around medicine. The latest big idea from Whitehall - one of many over the years - is the formation of primary care trusts which could mean that Craven is forced into bed with Harrogate, proposals which have even caused a split between Craven doctors.

"There is a lot of scare-mongering over this because even if we went into Harrogate, we would still be able to send patients to Airedale, which is the logical centre for secondary care in this area," says Peter Whitehead.

"However, I don't spend much time on these committees although I admire those who do. All I really want is to be left alone so that I can get on with what I do best: treating my patients."