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There was nothing alarming about the visitor limping with a crutch towards Dr Rosemary Leonard's house. After all, the BBC Breakfast doctor lives a short distance from her surgery and patients often try to catch her at home.

But when her sons Thomas and William, then aged 14 and 12, opened the front door, the stranger barged in and chased them upstairs, threatening them with the crutch and demanding to know where the valuables were kept.

"The boys are used to patients coming to the door and the man had hobbled up. They'd seen him through the window and they yelled, 'What is it?' He said, 'I've come to see Dr Leonard, is she around?' They assumed he was a patient."

He forced the boys into Dr Leonard's bedroom and said he'd beat them up if they didn't tell him where the jewellery was, at which point Thomas made a run for it, racing downstairs and to the vicarage next door, where the vicar called the police.

Dr Leonard, meanwhile, a single mother at the time, had just popped to the supermarket for some milk. When she returned, the house was surrounded by police. The intruder, however, had fled and was never caught.

The event made her and her sons feel extremely vulnerable for a long time afterwards. Initially they all had trouble sleeping, she recalls, keeping their doors open for comfort.

"The fact he'd been watching and waiting spooked us all," she recalls. "Victim Support spoke to the boys but they were very measured about it and felt it was their fault for opening the door. They were very shaken up. They realised they were extremely lucky."

After that, she changed the entrance security system and made a rule that on no account were the boys to answer the door to strangers.

"As a result, people coming to read the gas meter have a terribly hard time with us," she says, smiling.

This all happened years ago, and the worrying tale is just one of the true stories recounted in her latest book, Doctor's Notes, about life in her surgery as she recalls some of her most puzzling, and often humorous, cases.

"I'm very hard to shock," Dr Leonard, 57, admits. "Surprised? Yes."

Her book features a few raunchy tales, including questions of paternity, the insertion of an Easter egg in an intimate region, and issues involving manhood.

She's also encountered her share of badly behaved, even violent patients during her 25 years as a GP.

"I've been thumped, I've been threatened. And the worst thing is the verbal abuse.

"I have a stalker at the moment who lives in Yorkshire, but the police have been very good," she adds. "He's seen me on telly and keeps writing letters to the surgery. There was a time when he started coming down to the surgery, which is when we started taking action. He rings up for appointments and the receptionists know who he is. But I don't think he's dangerous, I just think he's mentally unwell.

"A couple of years ago, they had to take action and he had to be sectioned and it all stopped, but in the past six months it's all started up again. It spooks me a little bit. The receptionists worry if I'm working late at night in the surgery on my own. In the winter I never walk home, I drive."

But Dr Leonard has never considered moving because she loves her house in South London and the close community she's involved with.

As well as being a GP, she's also a regular broadcaster and medical writer. So how does she juggle media work with looking after her patients?

"The GP-ing is by far and away my regular day job. I must do 36 hours a week in the surgery. I'm a great believer in the NHS and it gives me better control over managing my patients," she says.

"But if I'm needed in Salford, where BBC Breakfast is, I have to get the train the night before."

In her years as a GP, the biggest changes she has seen are the rise in obesity and the number of cases of people with type 2 diabetes, she notes.

"There's also been a huge change in mental health," she reflects. "There's a greater prevalence of people coming forward with mental health problems and what's difficult to know is whether these problems were always there and people were reluctant to come and talk about them, or whether the incidence of mental health conditions has genuinely increased."

At one recent surgery, at least 75% of the patients had come in with anxiety and depression.

"This may sound a bit cruel, but people don't seem to realise that life is full of ups and downs. From time immemorial, relationships have gone wrong. Now, people aren't so resilient with dealing with adverse events.

"There's a big trend for counselling but, in the end, you've just got to get over it. It can be very difficult to diagnose someone who's just down in the dumps or someone who has clinical depression.

"I'm sure I've made wrong calls. If you meet a GP who says, 'I've never got it wrong', I don't believe them."

Three years ago, she married her second husband - Martin, a steel trader, whom she met on an internet dating site. He lives in Switzerland but she says the long-distance relationship works really well.

"I ski and snow-shoe in the winter, and in the summer we like going hiking and mountain-biking in Switzerland. Our kids were both older when we met," she adds. "We see each other every weekend. We're both so busy; my girlfriends all say, 'Lucky you!'

"If I had small children it would be a different kettle of fish. My sons are now in their twenties, sometimes they come with me at the weekend, as they're very keen skiers.

"We ought to think what we are going to do when we retire, but neither of us is even thinking of retirement. Martin's 61. We can't think of life beyond work. We both love our work," she continues.

Dr Leonard is currently writing another book, this time on the menopause, and there's no sign of her slowing down as a GP or medical media commentator.

But she will be keeping the gates of her house firmly locked at night.

:: Doctor's Notes by Dr Rosemary Leonard is published by Headline, priced £13.99. Available now