Punam Krishan

Punam Krishan
Krishan in 2021
Born	(1983-05-28) 28 May 1983 Glasgow, Scotland
Employer(s)	BBC NHS
Television	Laid Bare Morning Live Strictly Come Dancing
Medical career
Sub-specialties	general practice
Notable works	Laid Bare

Punam Krishan (born 28 May 1983) is a Scottish doctor, TV personality and author. Born in Glasgow, she married Sandesh Gulhane and took a post at a medical partnership but left after burning out and became a locum general practitioner (GP). She has presented the BBC Scotland series Laid Bare, appeared on Morning Live and The Weakest Link, and written a Glasgow Times medical column and children's book. In 2024, she placed eleventh on the twenty-second series of Strictly Come Dancing with her professional dance partner Gorka Márquez.

Life and career

Punam Krishan was born 28 May 1983 in Glasgow, and grew up in a small tenement flat with her younger sister and extended family. Her parents had an arranged marriage, and moved from Kapurthala in Punjab to Scotland in the late 1970s, where her father owned a corner shop. She told Susan Swarbrick of The Herald in July 2019 that education was important to her family, with her parents taking the view that she was either going to become a "doctor, lawyer, accountant, or a failure", and described herself in January 2019 as "raised in equal parts on curry and Irn-Bru".

Krishan went to Hillhead Primary School, Notre Dame High School, and the University of Glasgow, where she studied medicine. She failed her third-year exams the first time round and had to retake them. After graduating in 2006, Krishan took a post at a medical partnership, but left in September 2017 after burning out, and took a post as a locum (a substitute for a physician). She stated in April 2018 article for Pulse Today that she had "learned the hard way to live without patient 'satisfaction' ", and went viral the following January after tweeting an exchange between her practice's receptionist and a racist patient. In 2011, she married Sandesh Gulhane in 2011, another doctor, who went on to become a Member of the Scottish Parliament and the health spokesman for the Scottish Conservative Party.

In October 2019, Krishan began presenting Laid Bare for BBC Scotland, in which patients were given a comprehensive medical check-up and then given a dressing down by Krishan. Writing that month, Swarbrick described her interrogations as "a living post-mortem". During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, she wrote for the Glasgow Times each week about health and her experiences as a doctor. By October 2021, she had begun making appearances on Morning Live and on BBC Radio Scotland. In June 2022, she published a children's book, How to Be a Doctor and Other Life-Saving Jobs. She appeared on The Weakest Link that December. In April 2024, Dorling Kindersley commissioned Krishan to write a further two children's books intended for publication the following year; these comprised a flap board book about human anatomy, You and Your Body, and a first aid book, A Superhero's First Aid Manual.

In August 2024, she was announced as a contestant on the twenty-second series of Strictly Come Dancing, where she and Gorka Márquez comprised one of fifteen pairs that year. Her 5 October performance to "Bhole Chudiye" from the film Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham... marked the first time a contestant had performed a traditional Bollywood dance on the programme, though Will Young and Karen Hauer had previously performed to The Pussycat Dolls' "Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny)", which sampled Bollywood music by A. R. Rahman. She and Marquez were eliminated fifth on 27 October after losing a unanimous vote against Shayne Ward and Nancy Xu, coming eleventh overall.