IT IS perhaps fitting that Noel Fitzpatrick will be taking to the stage of the Manchester Arena the day after U2 play the venue for there is undoubtedly something of the rock star about the TV Supervet, writes JOHN ANSON.

His show on Channel 4 is the station’s most watched programme, regularly attracting millions of viewers who are captivated by the work Noel and his team carry out at their pioneering veterinary practice.

From fitting bionic limbs to cats to revolutionary procedures to treat poorly pooches, Noel is at the cutting edge of veterinary medicine.

And now he is taking his one-man show, Welcome to My World, to some of the country’s biggest venues giving audiences the chance to find out more about what makes him tick.

And as with other aspects of his career, the 50-year-old Irishman isn’t doing anything by halves.

“I’m hoping to achieve something that’s not been done before,” he said. “The show is autobiographical but really starts really 25,000 years ago and then goes forward to probably three or four hundred years from now to what the world might look like.

“I’m also going to show the secrets behind the bionic inventions and where they came from. Hopefully I’m going to take the entire audience inside my operating theatre in virtual reality and show them.”

Noel has always been surrounded by animals. He grew up in Ballyfin, a small village in County Laois where his father was a farmer. He admits that experience shaped his life and he came to regard the animals as his friends.

Ironically he even used to make up stories about a mythical superhero, Vet Man, who would care for the animals.

“It was the belief there that a creature like a cow owed its existence solely to its value as a provider of milk, whereas I saw them as sentient creatures with their own needs and wants,” he said.

Bullied as a child, Noel eventually trained as a vet and now, to give him his full title, is a professor of an orthopaedic-neuro veterinary surgeon.

As he prepares to bring the show to Manchester he said: “It’s been really interesting to write.

“It’s proved very insightful to look at what my journey has been through childhood. From being bullied at school and my aspirations and dreams and becoming a vet to why a love for animals is important and how that can reflect into the wider context.

“I firmly believe there are only three important things - love, health and something to look forward to and hopefully I can give all those three things to the people who come to the show.”

Welcome to My World is very much a reflection of Noel’s personality and beliefs.

“If anyone has seen the TV show, they will know I don’t settle for complacency,” he said. “I believe in pushing the envelope for all the right reasons and it’s going to be fascinating to look at medicine from the last 500 years and then fast forward a few hundred years and see what kind of world we may have.”

Coming from anyone else his next statement - “I’m going to show people the future of medicine before it happens in real life” - might come over as far fetched, but with Noel, you know it’s firmly part of who he is.

As part of his pioneering work, he founded the Humanimal Trust to promote the idea of ‘one medicine’ where human and veterinary medicine are brought closer together.

His TV show has shown how the advances in technology have made radical treatments in animals possible and that the developments can also benefit the treatment of humans.

“People do have a fear of the unknown,” he said, “but you just have to remember that 20 years ago I was operating on a guy’s dog on his kitchen table. If you consider where we are now and then look forward 20 years, do you really think the bionic legs we are putting in animals now aren’t going to be given to humans in 20 years’ time?

“I’d like to think that I’m a guardian angel of progress because change is going to happen anyway. My job is try and guide it in a sensible, rational, compassionate way.”

TV viewers often see Noel in tears as he has to break bad news to pet owners and it is this compassion which makes the show so watchable.

“I think if you don’t have a currency of love as a clinician then you are really missing your vocation,” he said.

“If you think about it people don’t care what you know until they know that you care. I could be the most clever guy in the world but if I’m an arrogant person and don’t hold your hand or your paw then what’s the point?”

As a vet, Noel often has to make what are literally life or death decisions.

“It’s all about the quality of life,” he said. “It’s about integrity, it’s about doing the right thing.

“Hope is always the best outcome but sometimes it results in death.

“It is important to look realise that biology is not perfect, surgery isn’t perfect but we are all in it together.

“At the end of the day as a morally responsible society we would like to think we are going to do the right thing by the animals and our fellow man.”

Welcome to My World, Manchester Arena, Sunday, October 21. Details from 0844-249-1000 or www.manchester-arena.com.