One of the stars of the new Geordie Hospital Channel 4 show is four-legged Poppy Jingles - and her boss head chaplain Katie Watson is not far behind.
Along with a diverse team of chaplains from all faiths and none, Katie is on hand at the RVI and the Freeman hospitals to help the staff and patients there cope with whatever a day on the wards can throw at them.
Ahead of the new TV show, she told ChronicleLive how she wanted to demystify what chaplains do - and highlight that "it's not all about religion".
READ MORE : Meet the Geordie Hospital cast as Channel 4 show puts Newcastle staff in TV spotlight
Speaking about her role on telly, she said: "The phrase around the hospitals is 'for anything else there are the chaplains'. The head nurse says chaplains are like water, that we get in everywhere.
"What I tried to do was demonstrate a bit of what hospital chaplains actually do, as opposed to what people might think we do.
"We have never been away during the pandemic, working throughout to support our staff and patients. For me, if you're a proper chaplain, it's not about religion.
"We are a 24 hours a day, seven days a week service for the Trust. We are there to be alongside our patients and staff. To sit with relatives going through something terrible and support staff through everything they deal with.
"We try to help in so many ways, from helping get hold of food bank vouchers for someone or baptising a baby which might be likely to die in a few hours or moving a little one down to the chapel of rest - there really is so much in our remit."
In addition to Poppy, the chaplaincy team includes staff from a range of religions - including Islam, Judaism and Hinduism, along with a humanist chaplain. But Katie said: "We all work with everybody. If someone needs a specific religious rite, they'll request the right person, but otherwise everybody sees everybody.
"We all see everyone. And the hope is that in that way we can break down barriers too."
As for actually being on TV, Katie - who became a chaplain after serving in the Royal Military Police in conflict-zones like the Balkans and Northern Ireland - said it had been "very enjoyable". She added: "At the very beginning I did a walk-around for the production team showing them the areas around the hospitals - with Poppy, so it was probably the dog they wanted!"
Poppy, 9, has scene-stealing role in the show, and is much loved around the hospitals - and she also shares her insights with the world on her own Twitter account too. With Covid-19 hitting staff hard over Christmas, she recently - lightheartedly - mused whether soon it "might just be us hounds left".
Katie explained that Poppy - who is officially a staff welfare dog - made a real difference, though perhaps moreso to the dog-lovers working at the hospitals.
"She's such a help to staff. Staff have come and borrowed her, or her and a chaplain if they need to talk, and taken her for a walk around the grounds or perhaps off into Paddy Freeman's park. She's really a part of the hospital."
The chaplaincy team have run events including "mooch with a pooch" in recent years as they look to ensure staff have ways to decompress even in traumatic situations.
But of course, the chaplains themselves are right in the thick of the stress and trauma too - Katie explained how they got through this.
"We have a great team and we look after each other," she said. "And everyone has their own way of managing. I run ultra-distance trail marathons, one of us does cold water swimming, others sing in choirs - it's all about finding ways to unwind away from the hospital."
Looking back on two unprecedented years - and counting - the Heaton-based chaplain added: "Of course there's nothing good about Covid but some good has perhaps come out of it - in particular the ability to work in more flexible ways.
"If you said to me on January 19 2020 that in a couple of weeks we would be doing virtual bedside visits or holding onto an iPad so someone could see us praying with their relatives it'd have been hard to believe."
Geordie Hospital starts on Channel 4 on January 17 from 8pm.
