SAY what you like about Channel 4.
You have to admire its fearlessness, enterprise and tenacity.
If ever there’s a channel that challenges our perceptions of human behaviour, this is it.
And with its new project, Open House — The Great Sex Experiment, I can hear jaws dropping up and down the country.
Many will, no doubt, have reached for the remote in disgust last night. Some will say it’s gratuitous and unnecessary.
I beg to differ.
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The idea of monogamous couples exploring open relationships in a safe, controlled space will not be every one’s idea of heavenly entertainment or divine morality.
I think it’s worthy of some televisual sexploration.
After all, the concept seems to largely be working for Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, who have spoken publicly about their open marriage and her many extra- curricular boyfriends. Right?
A threesome or a “throuple” (which is on a more permanent footing) stays a psychological adventure because many don’t have the courage or even imagination to turn it into a reality. And it’s for this reason that the programme is a fascinating examination of the process and all its truths.
Could it be that the scheduling of the show is very timely?
Is it possible that the increase in public discourse surrounding sexuality, in all its shapes and sizes, has made this all the more pertinent?
I would argue, yes.
I am coming across more and more people (men) willing to admit to being bi-curious or hetero-flexible, who are proud of their uncertainty and curiosity and wear their willingness to explore new ideas surrounding sex as a badge of honour.
It certainly wasn’t happening so publicly 30 years ago.
For me, however, such a contemplation is unbearable. I have never, and could never, envisage a time when I would be in a committed relationship then bring a third party into that intimate, dedicated situation.
It’s just not how I function.
I’m acutely and proudly aware of my emotional limitations. The prospect of watching a person I love and care for swing from the chandelier or perform bedroom gymnastics with another person would break me.
I would not be capable of witnessing it. Perhaps I’m not generous enough. Perhaps I’m mean, jealous, selfish and possessive. For me, the idea of being in a relationship, dedicating my emotions, my sexuality and physicality to one person and then bring in a third person — male or female — would go against every fibre of my being.
It would bring about such complicated feelings, would change my mindset, and to that end, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to recover.
This is not about a threesome between (three) unconnected people enjoying a bit of a rumble under the covers with each other, where sex alone is on the menu and no emotions are tangled up in fraught and excited naked bodies.
I’m talking about a situation where two are a couple and the third is an outsider.
So I was fascinated to observe the journey the couples — all willing participants on the programme — went on.
For some it was a long-held intrigue, for others the prospect of spicing things up.
There was nothing gratuitous about the show, it fully honed in on the emotional aspects. And it got personal.
Fears and jealousy were exposed which helped me see the many dimensions of such a proposition.
And don’t be possessed by your own unconscious bias that it is only women who express emotions such as these. There are some unexpected surprises.
I always believed that people willing to explore open relationships were a certain breed, of a different ilk — they were detached in some way, maybe lacking in empathy, emotionally stunted perhaps.
What emerges from this sexual examination is that this is not true at all. The couples run the gamut of emotions — jealousy, introspection, doubt, apprehension. This is real life and people’s feelings.
And the biggest question the programme poses is whether monogamy should be consigned to the history books. Is it really natural, credible, feasible and doable for us to stay with just the one person? And when it comes to sex, limit ourselves to just the one partner?
Some might argue the idea of monogamy is a social construct — it’s not natural. I have my feet in both camps. I enjoy the loyalty in a relationship but a glance over my shoulder at my past, it’s clear that’s not been entirely achievable.
As we are living longer and likely to have more partners, I think it’s important we explore all these possibilities.
But for this old bird, I think I’d just stick to two in a relationship. Sometimes three is just a messy, emotional, damaging crowd.
Having said that, never say never.
Anyway, I was thinking about Jada Pinkett Smith. And her alopecia.
Men losing their hair or starting to thin on top is something we readily expect and accept – especially with age.
But a woman’s hair is her mane, it’s what helps her attract the other sex, it’s a provocation, an expression of her personality, her style and her taste.
Historically, it has been the language of femininity.
Losing your hair through a condition such as alopecia must be extremely painful, emotionally and mentally.
Hair often thins with age and my mane certainly ain’t what it once was.
So, while I empathise with Jada, I also feel she is unbearably lucky to be quite so stunning.
She has a ridiculously strong-featured face and a beautifully shaped head. She has big eyes, strong cheekbones and a sharp nose.
If I lost my hair – God forbid – I feel like I’d lose much of my identity and my confidence.
And I certainly wouldn’t look like Jada. I’d look more like Mr Potatohead. So sometimes there are little things to be grateful for
THERE are 201 babies and nine mothers dead.
Shocking doesn’t adequately describe the findings of the independent review into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust over a period of 19 years.
Mothers and babies were left with lifelong conditions as a result of their lack of care and mothers often made to feel culpable.
The Trust was understaffed and there was a lack of training.
There was an insistence on pursuing “natural births” as opposed to caesarean sections which are costly to the NHS.
There are many things that are not natural about giving birth, even though, frustratingly, there is an ongoing and wrongful claim that it’s the most natural thing to happen to a woman. It is not.
Pregnancy and childbirth put an enormous strain on the mother, and childbirth will often put the baby at risk.
There has been a societal obsession with natural births, too.
Water births, hypnotherapy, births at home where breathing is the only pain relief.
I had all my four children in hospitals. One was a C-section because my daughter was upside down – it was elective. The others were reassuringly, for me, brimming with pain relief and local anaesthesia for which I was extremely grateful, because I had big babies who did not want to come out.
My last one weighed in at 10lb.
And after two of my births I haemorrhaged. Badly. Had I not been in hospital, I would have died.
So, while I admire all the women who want to give birth in their own beds, with the fire burning and hypnotic music playing in the background, I would have had an entirely different outcome had I chosen to give birth at home. And it’s always going to be a gamble, because no one can predict exactly what is going to happen.
You can do all the meditation and breathing techniques you like, but when the s**t hits the proverbial and you’re miles away from medical care, you could face tragedy.
And yet, these poor families who suffered at the hands of the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust – like bereaved mothers Rhiannon Davies and Kayleigh Griffiths – thought they would be safest in hospital.
And they should have been, were it not for obstinate, careless staff. Sometimes a caesarean is the only option, we need to accept that. It’s not about trying to give birth vaginally at all costs solely because C-sections are pricey.
What price a mother and her unborn child? And their extended families who suffer such tragic loss and for whom life will never be the same again?
I sincerely hope this does not dissuade mothers from planning hospital births.
Because that is where they should be safest.
THE Tors pub in Devon, has removed the traditional Ploughman’s lunch from its menu and substituted it with a “Ploughperson’s” lunch because it “recognises the amazing ladies in the local farming community”.
Can the world, please, stop going quite so mad.
Is it offensive to be tucking into a lump of cheese, ham, pickled onions, chutney and a hunk of bread and call it a Ploughman’s?
The landlord said it was “tongue in cheek” but really?
Have we become so utterly woke and terrified of displaying even the slightest inequality in any aspect of our lives that we are now prepared to change our favourite pub lunch to something gender neutral?
There are already changes underway: The Porn Star Martini is now a Passionfruit Martini otherwise it normalises porn. And yet, porn is a fact of life and we know it’s not glamorous. And not forgetting chest- feeding and parenthood labelling in lieu of breastfeeding and maternity.
We have gingerbread persons. When we all know he’s a bloke, albeit without a willy. Am I even allowed to say willy nowadays? I’m nervous.
