Embarrassing Bodies: a redfaced reflection on the NHS
Embarrassing Bodies (Channel 4) has baffled me for years. It is a show featuring people supposedly too mortified to visit their GP about a particular medical condition, yet quite happy to get their bits out on national television before an audience of millions. And I really do mean get their bits out. After watching this week’s episode, I could confidently recognise Sam by her vagina alone.
And, of course, there are people who tune in to the show purely to gawp. But it is not a shamelessly prurient exercise – unlike, say, Naked Attraction, which proved to be the final nail in Channel 4’s coffin. It serves an important publicservice function. Because there will be viewers at home who suffer from embarrassing conditions; seeing these things discussed must go some way to removing the stigma, making the sufferers feel less alone, and hopefully encouraging them to seek medical treatment.
So hats off to the contributors, whatever their motivation. I now suspect part of the motivation is the fact that the programme organises private treatment, swiftly packing patients off to a Harley Street consultant before scheduling them for surgery. Because, and this probably wasn’t the original intention, Embarrassing Bodies doesn’t present the NHS in the best light.
Two of the people featured here – Sam, who had lived with a painful genital condition called lichen sclerosus for decades, and Ethan, whose cholesteatoma caused pus to pour from his ear and had been ruining his life for the past seven years – had been treated in the past (presumably on the NHS) but were still suffering. Private treatment sorted out both issues – in Ethan’s case through surgery, and in Sam’s case via some eye-watering plasma injections.
A third contributor had undergone gastric bypass surgery but was left with an unsightly “apron” of skin, which left her depressed. She also ended up having surgery.
The show’s resident doctors – “three of the UK’S best GPS”, it says here – also spend part of their working life in private practice (one of them is an NHS GP for some of the week, and a cosmetic doctor on Harley Street for the rest). Embarrassing Bodies reveals more about the state of the health service than it realises. Anita Singh
The tension was manifest, the bets placed and the drinks were on ice as we sat down to watch the final of Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars (BBC One). It couldn’t have been more exciting – after eight weeks of knuckle-gnawing nervousness, would this be the moment where FFS
finally made even the most cursory attempt to not be The Apprentice?
So close, so close. Actually, not close at all – perhaps the only thing that has stood out across this show’s run has been its complete shamelessness in stealing another programme’s clothes. FFS is so flattering in its imitation that it has even borrowed The Apprentice’s
faults. Principally, these are that the whole protracted assault course whittling down the contestants from 12 to one doesn’t make any sense: why throw people off cliffs to test their mettle as leaders if what you’re really interested in is the viability of their business idea? Why boot the losers out every week if you’re then going to bring all those losers back at the end to help the non-losers win?
The answer, of course, is because contrived jeopardy and zero-sum struggles make good telly and The Apprentice, to take one random example, proves the point – it’s remained a ratings stalwart even when they changed the format so Lord Sugar didn’t have to actually employ anyone at the end of it all. What Future Food Stars lacks is The Apprentice’s
understanding of casting and its boardroom panto.
Last night’s final, supposedly the climax, was the definition of meh. Were I to reveal here who of the three finalists won I would guarantee that there’d be not one single complaint – they were all perfectly competent, all perfectly likeable; any of them could have won with their gluten-free plantain smoothie brownie things.
What’s worse is that Ramsay seems to have switched from blood-vessel bursting anger to a mid-atlantic CEO’S Ted Talk calm. The thing is, Gordon, no one liked you for your ability to maximise shareholder value. I found myself longing for some literal tearing out of that transplanted hair, or just a modicum of the rage that made Kitchen Nightmares a classic.
Instead, FFS was just soggy blancmange bland. Let’s hope it’s one and done, and send it off with that best-known catchphrase: You’re fired. Benji Wilson
Embarrassing Bodies ★★★ Ramsay’s Future Food Stars ★