Sex Education star on how friendship with hospital staff helped recovery

George Robinson spent seven and a half months at Sheffield's Princess Royal Spinal Cord Injuries Centre

Actor George Robinson, who stars in Netflix's Sex Education, spent 10 months in hospital after a rugby accident in 2015 left him paralysed. The BBC joined him as he returned to the specialist spinal injury unit which treated him to support plans for a new therapeutic garden.

George Robinson is greeted like an old friend by nurses and doctors as he tours Princess Royal Spinal Cord Injuries Centre, eight years on from the accident which changed his life.

The British actor jokes with staff in the specialist unit at Sheffield's Northern General Hospital as they catch up on life since he was an inpatient here.

One topic of conversation keeps coming up. "You're famous now," exclaims one nurse, teasing Robinson about the celebrity status thrust on him by Netflix's Sex Education.

Millions of viewers know Robinson as Isaac Goodwin, his character in the teen comedy-drama which explores the love and personal lives of the pupils of the fictional Moordale Secondary School.

But staff at Princess Royal remember him as the teenage patient who spent seven and a half months on the hospital's wards as he came to terms with being paralysed.

George Robinson visited the centre on Wednesday as part of plans to build a new garden for patients

Robinson was a 17-year-old pupil at Lincolnshire's Stamford School when he broke his neck and badly damaged his spinal cord while attempting a tackle on a rugby tour of South Africa in July 2015. The accident left him quadriplegic - with paralysis affecting all four limbs.

After undergoing surgery in Cape Town and spending 47 days at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, Robinson was transferred to Sheffield for rehabilitation in October.

The actor said he coped with that period by "just taking it day by day".

"As cliché as that sounds, you just wake up in the morning and you're like, I've got physio today and you try to get yourself mentally stimulated by watching Netflix and stuff," he says.

"I don't know whether it's my natural way of processing things, but there was a level of acceptance that, 'right, things are going to be a bit crap for a bit, but you can be alright, if you listen to the doctors'.

"It's not ideal, breaking you're neck and being in hospital for 10 months but, you know, you just sort of deal with it."

George Robinson starred as Isaac in Sex Education

He said returning to hospital, where he remains an outpatient, "brings back a lot of memories".

"You look back at the place where you had a respiratory arrest and it's like, 'oh, that was a weird day'," he says.

"In one of the rooms just behind us I spent Christmas here having the thinnest slice of turkey you've ever seen."

But the actor recalls fondly some of the time he spent here - such as watching films with his family, who visited him every day, and bonding with the staff.

He says: "I was very lucky that I was with the staff here. They all helped me - obviously physically and clinically, making sure I didn't get too ill - but they also offered their companionship and their friendship and it was really lovely of them to do that.

"You sort of get invested in people's lives."

George Robinson talks to another spinal injury patient during his visit to the hospital

After being discharged from hospital in May 2016, Robinson returned to finish school and was offered a place on a philosophy course at the University of Birmingham - but paused his studies after being cast in Sex Education.

He was involved in the show's creative process with the aim of ensuring Isaac's character and storyline genuinely reflected the disabled experience.

The actor says he is "really grateful" to be able to portray a character that "feels real" and for people to "see a character who looks like them, with a disability, on screen".

Robinson is now writing his own comedy series about a "disabled vigilante".

"I've feel like I've got an opportunity to tell stories that haven't quite been told from from a perspective that we haven't really heard from too much," he says.

The actor returned to the Princess Royal this week as an ambassador for Horatio's Garden, a charity which is planning to create a therapeutic garden for patients at the spinal centre.

Horatio's Garden is planning to turn a car park into a nature sanctuary for patients

The garden is being designed by three-time RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winners Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg, with the intention of allowing patients with life-changing injuries a sanctuary away from the hospital environment during long stays on the wards.

Robinson knows how important the chance to spend time in nature can be for long-term patients, having left the Northern General's grounds just once during his rehabilitation - for a trip to the cinema, during which he says he fell asleep.

He says: "It would make a big difference to all of them. I would have loved to have that while I was here.

"Having that place to get away from the hospital and the beeps and and all of this stuff, to just get out in the sun and get some vitamin D, that's a big thing."