Embarrassing Bodies

 The Embarrassing Bodies crew: they say "discharge" a lot

(and we love 'em for it)

It’s my Mum’s birthday today. Happy Birthday Frazzlegran!

At the moment she’s basking in a bit of newfound celebrity. For one her picture is in my book, and for another one, she’s delighted that she and my Dad, Frazzlegranda are being so well received on this here blog. Well, I say delighted, she’s letting me know that she’s noticed she’s featuring more and more on the Misssives and that I’d better always be nice about her or else she’ll find out.

I’m very much my mother’s daughter. Among many similarities between us we are first and foremost real ghouls. We love the disgusting. If there’s a boil to be lanced, we’re there. If there’s a skelf (engl: splinter) to be teased out of a finger, it’s tweezers at dawn as to who gets to do the honours. If a cat comes in riddled with fleas, we’re fighting over who gets to delouse him.If the dog has a tick- we'll wrestle each other to the ground before we let the other get it out.

My mum once confessed that she and another teenage friend invited another girl with them on holiday mainly because she had sores on her legs that needed lancing every couple of days.  I'm amazed my mum didn't train to be dermatologist. Meanwhile, I look at my son’s teenage skin blossoming into some challenging blackheads with thinly veiled excitement. Yes, we are freaks. But I know we’re not alone.

How do I know? Well,  because this show is now occupying the prime time Friday night slot on Channel Four in the UK. 

Yup, it’s Embarrassing Bodies. The show features three doctors who go round the country setting up a makeshift clinic for people too coy about their disgusting ailment to go to the doctors. Yes, too shy to go to their doc who has a confidential patient doctor code and a  lockable door, but not shy enough to pull down their trousers on telly and allow their bum area to be filmed so that we can see their pile encrusted bumhole/ freaky misshapen dark purple and red coloured infected penis/ monstrous anal carbuncles of which there seems to be an unending variety.

Throughout the land families settle down just like us to scream as underpants are pulled down, third nipples are revealed,  lady beards are unfurled and labia are poked at with surgical implements. We watch through our fingers wailing with disgust and delight as skin flakes are collected to send to the lab, pimples are popped, the correct way to have a crap is discussed openly and blown up pics of sexual diseases are paraded in shopping centres. Me and my son watch the show shrieking and wailing whilst my husband shouts from the other room that he can’t believe we are watching this voyeuristic nonsense. By half way through the show he’s on the sofa with us asking me to rewind the shot of the man with the mangled scrotum so he can have a closer look. This is a scene that is replicated throughout the country. I can virtually guarantee it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great show and I’m sure it helps many people realise that their own problems aren’t just their own. But let’s face it, the reason  it’s the top rated show on a Friday night is because we want to see lots of broken vaginas and see what happens to the lady who can’t stop farting or the guy who sweats so much he has to change shirt ten times a day...we watch the poor unfortunates and we feel normal because of it. We bask in the glory of our unblemished arse cheeks, our shining carbuncle free vulvas and our wart free foreskins. We feel ALIVE!

That and we’re all voyeuristic freaks and this is only made worse by the fact we're eating our Friday night nibbles and takeaways and drinking our weekend wine as we view scenes previously confined to medical text books.

Ah, that's entertainment.

Embarrassing Bodies is on Channel Four at 8pm every Friday night.
(as Misssy M is sat in front of her telly eating a curry)

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