FORGET your local health centre - one Gwent doctor is setting up surgery in supermarkets.

Abersychan GP Dr Stephanie Balboa will be taking questions from the public in a new series of HTV's Supermarket Surgeries.

Previously a part of The Ferret on Health series, Supermarket Surgeries has been launched as a programme in its own right, and features 34-year-old Stephanie visiting supermarkets up and down the country with a TV crew and setting up ad hoc surgeries. "People get the chance to ask questions which they might think are too trivial to ask their own GP," she said.

"We get all sorts of itches and rashes, and we've come up with some weird and wonderful diseases."

The whole thing is completely unstaged, and as she explained, she's got to think on her feet.

"The presenter, Chris Segar, does his best to catch me out," said Stephanie. "I've got absolutely no idea what queries I'll be facing."

Stephanie has been working with Supermarket Surgeries for three years, so her own patients at Abersychan know all about the show - in fact some of them have featured in previous programmes.

What's the most unusual ailment she's come across? "I once had someone come straight out with 'I've got acute intermittent Por-phyria' - which is an extremely rare metabolic condition," she said.

"Another time we had a gentleman who arrived on a motorbike announce very boldly 'I can't get my leg over'. He had to lift it over his bike."

Supermarket Surgeries is on HTV on Tuesdays at 7.30pm.

*PICTURED: Dr Stephanie Balboa and TV presenter Chris Segar.