Hugh Quarshie's long-suffering character has seen and suffered so much since he joined the soap in 2001 that he feels like the personification of the best of the NHS: wearily irritable, still just about hanging on despite 25 government-initiated reorganizations (I exaggerate, but not much), still good at his job and still trying to be selfless - against the odds.
I'm hot, irritable, tired and probably hungry.
Things started to happen that couldn't be easily explained – absences from high-profile appearances, erratic behaviour – and friends grew uncharacteristically irritable when pressed about that, as if searching for ways to protect him without lying.
Infrequent heavy drinking sessions at Christmas and New Year are unlikely to have a serious health effect, but you may experience short-term symptoms such as feeling anxious or irritable when you stop.
These equivocal formulations drip in irony when you read the emphatic demands that follow and the hundreds of detailed words about decaying buildings, the power of homeopathy to tackle irritable bowel syndrome or the power of organic vegetables to help hospital patients get better.
Those who work in highly competitive industries, known for a "work hard, play hard" culture that revolves significantly around alcohol, are often found to have a "type A" behaviour pattern defined by aggressive, irritable personality traits and an overwhelming drive to try and achieve more and more targets in increasingly smaller amounts of time.
"I was only 27 when I was told I had cancer after suffering six months of pain which I put down to irritable bowel syndrome or bad kebabs," Luke Bennett, 33, told the charity.
Nowadays their customers are more likely to be tired and irritable travellers, picking up the keys at an airport hire desk, lacking the energy to quibble with all those optional extras being loaded on to the bill.
The practice has long been an open secret, but in the present irritable political climate, with speculation about an early election, it has now become a scandal.
Naive questions from well-meaning newcomers attract irritable responses.
De Tocqueville again: "There is nothing more annoying...than this irritable patriotism of the Americans".
