Comedian Peter Kay has written a new Car Share sketch to pay tribute to the NHS.

The 47-year-old has shared his short in a compilation of love letters, stories, and messages of thanks to the health service.

It follows Peter's character, John, as he tells friend Kayleigh about a brain cancer scare.

In the sketch, John goes for a brain scan after refusing to believe his doctor when he tells the supermarket manager that his headaches are caused by sinus problems.

John ends up crying during the scan, after picking some music to hear during his time in the MRI machine.

He said: "I went for the Best Of Simon & Garfunkel. I love them and they would have been the perfect choice if the first song hadn’t been The Sound Of Silence, with the opening line, 'Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again'… and there’s me laying in this MRI machine having a brain scan.

"It got worse – in the third verse the lyrics are 'silence like a cancer grows'. I was in tears. I was ashen when I came out. I told the nurse. I said I thought it was going to be happy, Mrs Robinson and all that.”

The sketch ends with Kayleigh asking if doctors found anything, and John answering: "No, nothing. The GP was right, it was my sinuses after all. A course of antibiotics and I was sorted in a week. That'll teach me."

Car Share last appeared on screens in 2018, with Peter returning to TV in April for his first appearance in two years.

He took part in The Big Night In, a one-off televised fundraiser hosted by the BBC to raise money to fight coronavirus, where he appeared from his back garden as he ate a Solero.

Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You was compiled by comedian Adam Kay, a former junior doctor.

Bolton lass Zoe Ball also contributed to the book, alongside Sir Paul McCartney, Ricky Gervais, Emilia Clarke, and Peter Capaldi.

The book opens with Graham Norton’s revelation that he was stabbed by muggers as he walked home from a party when he was at drama school, with Stephen Fry’s memory of having his stomach pumped aged 17 after taking a cocktail of drugs, and Sir Michael Palin’s recovery from heart surgery last year featuring too.

Adam said: “I was surprised by people’s responses. I didn’t want to dictate what the book was. I didn’t give them a steer. I thought Jimmy Carr would write something hilarious. He writes painfully and movingly about the death of his mum.

“I had no idea about all the health problems that Jacqueline Wilson has had; we all think we know Graham Norton and then he writes about such an enormous thing to have happened to him; Jamie Oliver’s interpretation is, ‘Let’s make some food for the NHS workers’.”

The compilation has a few little extras, with 109 contributions from famous faces, as the title was chosen before all the responses came back.

Stories come from some people who lost loved ones to cancer or other diseases in hospital, a few who saw their relatives recover against the odds, and others who watched them slip away.

All profits from the book will go to NHS Charities Together to fund vital research and projects, and The Lullaby Trust which supports parents bereaved of babies and young children.