Eastenders, BBC1, Thursday
Eunuchs, Channel 4, Tuesday
I have had fun this past week. It was my birthday on Friday, with resulting party, presents of birthday cake and bottles of wine, and so many empties in the flat on the Saturday morning that I am embarrassed to put them in the communal bin (yes, they’re still there on Monday). I have moved house again and am now closer to Lavery’s, and Spud’s. And I have been happily torturing all and sundry with the idea of Ian Beale’s sex face, based on my usual reasoning that if I have to suffer so does everyone else too, so there.
I was and am still mightily traumatised by last Tuesday’s promiscuous serial killer leer from Mr Beale, but there was really no excuse for Eastenders to then on Thursday show the man padding about his living room clad only in his keks. They looked like plain black knickers from the half second I saw them before snapping my eyes tight tight shut, but of course this was not how I described them to a roomful to people on Friday night.
Posing pouch, is the phrase I used. There were screeches, yells, and even threats of violence against my person for introducing such a concept to people who don’t even watch the show. I didn’t care though, because I was on the floor laughing like a loon at this point. It was the way wife Jane screamed when she saw him and said nervously that maybe they "could just have a cuddle" that night that really got me. But now, having been forced to think about Ian Beale in the nip for two weeks straight, I’ll shut up.
In a similar vein, I’ve just related to our photographer in great detail the contents of Channel 4’s documentary Eunuchs last week. It’s quite interesting, and most amusing, to see men’s faces when informed of this topic. It was certainly the quietest I’ve ever seen the male friend I watched it with.
The documentary followed four men, three in the US and one in Britain, who had all decided to have themselves voluntarily castrated. (I’ll pause at this point for any male readers to wince, cross their legs and check to make sure everything’s still there.)
Two of the men had already had the procedure done, one was about to have the procedure, and the fourth, which was the most amusing part of the documentary simply by virtue of my friend’s face when watching it, was trying to do it himself with a burdizzo, an instrument of torture looking pretty much like a huge pair of pliers.
This man came across like an attention-seeking idiot, choosing to tell his sister the news by brandishing a burdizzo at her, making her guess what it was for, and having the cameras present throughout. She played it like a trooper though, trying to hide her obvious shock and act supportive.
This was the same for the mum of 20 year old Zachary, who travelled with him to have the operation done and who was clearly completely confused and bewildered by the whole thing. It’s difficult to say whether it might in fact have been more effective for her to smack him across the head and tell him to wise the feck up, but, having presumably decided that it wasn’t, watching her struggle to deal with her son choosing to have his nads chopped off was actually kind of heartbreaking.
It was the same for his old-fashioned type dad, who, when he heard the news, was clearly struggling with trying to be supportive of whatever mad scheme his son had come up with now, versus screaming at him something along the lines of what the hell he thought he was doing. Once again I’m glad I’m not a parent.
I have had immense fun this Monday morning "discussing" (read: "relentlessly describing") this programme to the mostly male staff in the newsroom, who have all turned interesting shades of green while declaring it sounds like a mad programme and they’re glad they didn’t see it. Mr Editor, who appears to have been forced to watch it by the females in his household, somewhat wimpily says he left the living room halfway through, although he claims this was more to do with what he thought was a poor documentary than any pressing concern for his nads.
Doubtless me saying I enjoyed the documentary will invite unkind comments about the range of my feminism, but I enjoyed it simply because it’s always fascinating seeing just what we crazy humans can get up to. The one flaw in it though was that it just profiled the four men, without any sciencey bits or attempts by a shrink to explain why someone would want to do this to themselves. This made it feel more like car crash type TV, so nicely satirised in That Mitchell and Webb look by a fake programme called "The Boy With An Arse For a Face".
Still. A good show, made all the much better by watching it with a bloke, and particularly enjoyable to imagine applying it to one Mr Keith Macdonald, from Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, who is about to become a dad for the seventh time. At 21. By seven different women. While unemployed and not supporting any of the seven financially. Does this eunuch-ism have to be voluntary?
Eunuchs, Channel 4, Tuesday
I have had fun this past week. It was my birthday on Friday, with resulting party, presents of birthday cake and bottles of wine, and so many empties in the flat on the Saturday morning that I am embarrassed to put them in the communal bin (yes, they’re still there on Monday). I have moved house again and am now closer to Lavery’s, and Spud’s. And I have been happily torturing all and sundry with the idea of Ian Beale’s sex face, based on my usual reasoning that if I have to suffer so does everyone else too, so there.
I was and am still mightily traumatised by last Tuesday’s promiscuous serial killer leer from Mr Beale, but there was really no excuse for Eastenders to then on Thursday show the man padding about his living room clad only in his keks. They looked like plain black knickers from the half second I saw them before snapping my eyes tight tight shut, but of course this was not how I described them to a roomful to people on Friday night.
Posing pouch, is the phrase I used. There were screeches, yells, and even threats of violence against my person for introducing such a concept to people who don’t even watch the show. I didn’t care though, because I was on the floor laughing like a loon at this point. It was the way wife Jane screamed when she saw him and said nervously that maybe they "could just have a cuddle" that night that really got me. But now, having been forced to think about Ian Beale in the nip for two weeks straight, I’ll shut up.
In a similar vein, I’ve just related to our photographer in great detail the contents of Channel 4’s documentary Eunuchs last week. It’s quite interesting, and most amusing, to see men’s faces when informed of this topic. It was certainly the quietest I’ve ever seen the male friend I watched it with.
The documentary followed four men, three in the US and one in Britain, who had all decided to have themselves voluntarily castrated. (I’ll pause at this point for any male readers to wince, cross their legs and check to make sure everything’s still there.)
Two of the men had already had the procedure done, one was about to have the procedure, and the fourth, which was the most amusing part of the documentary simply by virtue of my friend’s face when watching it, was trying to do it himself with a burdizzo, an instrument of torture looking pretty much like a huge pair of pliers.
This man came across like an attention-seeking idiot, choosing to tell his sister the news by brandishing a burdizzo at her, making her guess what it was for, and having the cameras present throughout. She played it like a trooper though, trying to hide her obvious shock and act supportive.
This was the same for the mum of 20 year old Zachary, who travelled with him to have the operation done and who was clearly completely confused and bewildered by the whole thing. It’s difficult to say whether it might in fact have been more effective for her to smack him across the head and tell him to wise the feck up, but, having presumably decided that it wasn’t, watching her struggle to deal with her son choosing to have his nads chopped off was actually kind of heartbreaking.
It was the same for his old-fashioned type dad, who, when he heard the news, was clearly struggling with trying to be supportive of whatever mad scheme his son had come up with now, versus screaming at him something along the lines of what the hell he thought he was doing. Once again I’m glad I’m not a parent.
I have had immense fun this Monday morning "discussing" (read: "relentlessly describing") this programme to the mostly male staff in the newsroom, who have all turned interesting shades of green while declaring it sounds like a mad programme and they’re glad they didn’t see it. Mr Editor, who appears to have been forced to watch it by the females in his household, somewhat wimpily says he left the living room halfway through, although he claims this was more to do with what he thought was a poor documentary than any pressing concern for his nads.
Doubtless me saying I enjoyed the documentary will invite unkind comments about the range of my feminism, but I enjoyed it simply because it’s always fascinating seeing just what we crazy humans can get up to. The one flaw in it though was that it just profiled the four men, without any sciencey bits or attempts by a shrink to explain why someone would want to do this to themselves. This made it feel more like car crash type TV, so nicely satirised in That Mitchell and Webb look by a fake programme called "The Boy With An Arse For a Face".
Still. A good show, made all the much better by watching it with a bloke, and particularly enjoyable to imagine applying it to one Mr Keith Macdonald, from Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, who is about to become a dad for the seventh time. At 21. By seven different women. While unemployed and not supporting any of the seven financially. Does this eunuch-ism have to be voluntary?
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