Fern Brady is embarrassed by teenage bodies

“So I’ve been getting the headaches for three months and that’s why I think I have brain cancer.” The doctor stared back at me with a cold, reptilian gaze. “And this worries you...?” He smirked while managing to look incredibly weary.

I skulked out, humiliated. Then I went home and switched on “Embarrassing Teenage Bodies”, another TV show that markets a Disney-esque dreamland in which general practitioners are positively eager to work tirelessly with an ever more needy general public.And the doctors are so cool! They get on stage at music festivals! They have names like Pixie! They take to the streets dressed as Bond and distribute condoms to youths while making flippant penis jokes! More than anything, they want to see your repulsive, hormonally-charged body. Every weeping, putrid, pus-ridden aspect of it.

This is done only partly out of concern for today’s teens, who we’re led to believe are now shagging at such a frantic rate that they’re creating new strains of STDs (Gonophylis, Syphorrea.) Largely, however, its appeal lies in the ‘freakshow disguised as health programme genre, spawned by Gillian McKeith’s laugh-at-fatties-shitting-into-hats’ shows.

For all the gag-inducing close inspections that took place, it became increasingly amusing to note the relentless use of euphemisms when referring to people’s genitals. Surely, once the screen is filled with images of a fanny resembling war-torn Rwanda, it’s time to dispense with tentatively asking to peer “down below”.

It’s mind-boggling when you consider that the people on this show are there on a wholly voluntary basis as most of them now face lives devoid of any sexual contact.

So, in honour of them, this week’s list is called “Becoming Celibate (And Staying That Way!)”:

1) Cover your clothes and face in fake menstrual blood while throwing it across vast pieces of paper. Think ‘Carrie’ meets Jackson Pollock. (It’s called a Period Painting, apparently).

2) Tell the whole country that you, your three brothers and your mum are unable to stop wetting the bed. Hammer the point home visually by cutting to repeated shots of your mum changing soggy sheets with a look of grim resignation.

3) Reveal to all (in gloriously technicoloured close-up) that you have a vagina which looks like [delete as applicable] a crime-scene/a dog sticking its tongue out/the Google Images result when you type in “genital herpes”.