Monster mass
FATBERG AUTOPSY: SECRETS OF THE SEWERS
C4, 9pm
STEP away from your snacks viewers, you will not want to be eating for this one.
This new documentary is simultaneously so fascinating that you can’t look away, yet so revolting that you wish you’d never known anything about it.
Under the streets of Britain’s cities lurks something sinister – an epidemic of fatbergs which is plaguing our sewers.
These monster blockages of congealed fat and human waste are a product of what we’ve flushed down our toilets and sinks. In this stomach-churning insight, presenter and science enthusiast Rick Edwards volunteers (God knows why) to join scientists and sewer workers as they perform the first-ever fatberg autopsy.
“It looks like a murder scene,” says Rick, as he heads to join the team of admirably jolly “flushers”.
They have to wade through a thick sludge of sewage to reach the 750m-long fatberg hidden under London, one of the biggest-ever found in the UK.
It’s worth noting that if the fatbergs are not dealt with, the result could be sewage appearing in a few local kitchens or living rooms. All hail those who bravely tackle them. Once they have broken up five tonnes of the stuff for the autopsy, the experts then analyse the contents, discovering everything from wet wipes and cooking oil to condoms and syringes, not to mention more dirty secrets and deadly dangers. All together now, blurgh...