Cringe alert! Eamonn Holmes is getting up to hanky-panky
Pass the brain bleach. Eamonn And Ruth’s Seven Year
Itch (C5), presented by the married This Morning presenters, was crammed with images that I may never be able to erase from my mind.
This delve into the tacky world of swingers’ parties and orgasm robots was broadcast just after the watershed, but it still should have come with a stern warning: ‘This programme contains scenes of Eamonn Holmes in a soho sex dungeon. You’d really be better watching safe House instead.’
Eamonn was trying to pretend that he wasn’t intrigued by all the talk of partner swapping and fetishes. When one therapist coyly referred to ‘things down below’, he pulled his best Frankie Howerd face, a moue of distaste.
and the idea of outdoor fumblings drew a horrified gasp of ‘Oh-no-no-no-no-nooo!’
But his enthusiasm gave him away, when he grabbed a riding crop from Ruthie and began beating the backside of a nearly naked man in handcuffs. and donning a feathery mask, he dived into a wifeswapping party at a mansion with the abandon of late brothel keeper Madame Cyn plunging into a bath of champagne.
The show was billed as therapy for couples who, like Eamonn and Ruth, have been married for seven years and want to ‘ explore different ways to keep the sparkle in a marriage’.
Much of the time, though, this appeared to mean methods of prolonging the unhappiness of a failing relationship. My heart went out to the woman who encouraged her spanish scientist husband to build a robotic sex doll, as an alternative to visiting prostitutes.
she came home from work, she said, too tired to meet his physical demands. so he built a creepy plastic porn pixie, that uttered mechanical bleats of passion when he fondled its buttons.
The scientist, sergei, claimed that sex with robots would soon replace human physical contact, for older couples. You’re wasting your time, sergei — that’s what gardening is for.
suburbia has always been partial to a bit of wife- swapping hankypanky. Think of the yearning in Paul Eddington’s eyes, as frustrated ad executive Jerry, every time he gazed at Felicity Kendal next-door in The Good Life. The explicitly kinky Fifty shades Of Grey books and film franchise provoked a surge of interest in bondage among middle- class couples, commented a soho dominatrix as she showed off her collection of whips and shackles.
But business was best, she added regretfully, back in the Thatcher era. It must have been all those Cabinet ministers, popping in to spend their luncheon vouchers. This whole cringeworthy hour was bearable only once, when Ruth tried a milder form of sex therapy — the tango. Eamonn watched her swirl around the ballroom and sniffed: ‘I can see why they call it hoofing — she’s like a carthorse.’
How jealous do you suppose he is, that she’s doing strictly and he isn’t? The Supervet (C4) was factual TV to watch between cracks in your hands, for a different reason. animal surgeon Noel Fitzpatrick faced one of the nastiest injuries ever seen on the show: a staffie called Lulu had been hit by a speeding car as she chased a fox, and her pelvis was shattered into 26 pieces.
The X-rays showed her bones were now just a bucket of gravel. How Noel managed to piece Lulu back together is beyond comprehension. Yet six months later she was walking again — a miracle.
For any dog-lover, this was difficult viewing. But Noel’s pioneering work is far better use of bionics and prosthetics than any deranged attempt to build synthetic humans for sex.