Sex, Sleep or Scrabble

by Hammond, Phil

  Horizontal teabagging is another experience entirely, as the testicles abseil down from above and can land pretty much anywhere. Dominant partners are more likely to dangle onto submissive ones, and if you both enjoy the erotic humiliation then fine. But consent is the key and it’s always worth having a get out clause. Teabagging for the over-sixties is easier in one sense (things dangle down more) but looks even more inelegant and there’s always the danger that your hips will give way and you’ll topple down into a full-on squat.

  Teabagging has been used for centuries as an initiation rite into assorted male groups, but received wider recognition thanks to a fleeting appearance in the 1998 John Waters film Pecker. If you’re thinking of trying it, Dr Phil’s formula for the perfect teabagging is as follows:

  Where C1 and C2 are the recipient’s level of consciousness and consent, V is degree of verticality and L is lung capacity. H represents the hip stability of the donor. The denominators are quantitative measures of the donor’s thrust and frequency of dunking, scent, moulting and inappropriate commentary. Enjoy!

  Have you ever seen bladder tennis go to five sets?

  No. Bladder tennis is played almost exclusively in London medical schools. Two people (generally male and of an ex-public school, rugby-playing persuasion) catheterise each other, join the catheters up in the middle and then score a point for each time they manage to pee into their opponent’s bladder. The game presents a number of logistic challenges. The act of catheterisation removes sphincter control from the bladder so it’s hard to shoot with any force, especially from behind the baseline. Also, it’s a very hard game to score. With no umpire or hawk-eye, there is no satisfactory way of resolving disputed line calls. Finally, unlike Wimbledon, the gladiators are generally so drunk that I’ve never seen a game advance beyond 30–15 before rain stops play.

  Can you make your own Sailors’ Sweetheart?

  Yes. It’s generally not something you’ll see on Blue Peter, but a lot of men get through hard times by fashioning their own penile repository. A sock or an oven-glove allows you to fantasise about a hirsute hand job. Soft fruits are a safe favourite, not least because they have enough give in them to allow for expansion (TIP: Wait until you’ve got back from the grocers). Avoid the neck of a milk bottle; although it scores well for friction, the thrusting action creates a vacuum, rather like the pump-action cork in a wine bottle. This can cause a really rather impressive expansion but no way of relief without a trip to casualty.

  Is it legal to keep 2p pieces in your foreskin?

  Yes, but not terribly community-spirited. Some men have remarkably long and prehensile foreskins, and I have seen a medical student (now a consultant orthopaedic surgeon) unfurl the foreskin as if taking the rubber sleeve off a cricket bat, stack twenty-two old 10ps on top of the glands, retract the skin and stand up, leaving this loose change dangling without support and cleverly hidden from pickpockets. I suspect this is only illegal if you leave one behind and it stays there so long that the Queen is defaced. It will also make you pee all over the floor even more.

  What’s the best shoe for playing freckle?

  Freckle is best not played at all. If you must, do so at the end of the evening, after bladder tennis but while the bar is nearly empty but still open. It’s a game of staggering simplicity. Players gather around a table with a pack of cards which are dealt sequentially, face up. The first person to get an ace has to defecate in the centre of the table. The second person to be dealt an ace has to take his shoe off and bring it down with full force onto the turd. The person who ends up with the most freckles, has to buy the next round.

  In cases of dispute (generally when one or more players have freckles to start with), it’s wise to take a pre-game photo on the mobile to judge which spots are natural and which are late additions. A randomised controlled trial comparing different shoes has failed to attract sufficient funding but generally, stilettos give disappointing results. The best coverage I’ve witnessed has been from a fourteen-hole cherry red Dr Martin (right boot, air-ware, not cushion sole).

  NOTE: It’s important to get people to sign a public health disclaimer before attempting this game.

  Do people really put hamsters up there?

  Lots of people pretend to do it on YouTube (perhaps it accounts for Gordon Brown’s peculiarly unnatural grin) but none of the films I’ve looked at contain a money shot. I fear it’s at least been attempted somewhere. Humans have a seemingly exhaustible appetite for experimentation, self-indulgence and animal cruelty. And hamsters have great difficulty saying ‘no’. Placing a large piece of cheese or an exercise-wheel up there first does not constitute informed consent.

  I have found a discussion board suggesting the use of a cardboard tube as a runway, and a rodent with a bushy tail so you can fish it out again. But in an exhaustive search of the medical literature, I’ve found no evidence of anyone seeking medical help for a secretly concealed cricetinus. Of far more interest, at least to Countdown viewers, is that fact that most of the population pronounces ‘hamster’ as ‘hampster.’ There is no ‘p’ in hamster; particularly if it’s dehydrated and half-way up your ascending colon.

  Is it true they make plaster casts of your penis when you’re under anaesthetic?

  Only if you’ve given your consent and paid for the handling. It’s far easier to buy a penis moulding kit online and fashion your own spare (with balls attached) in latex, rubber or silicone and a choice of six colours and eighteen flavours. And if you squeeze the balls before they set, you can add on a few inches for good measure. Now you just have to find someone to give it to.

  Can you swaddle a penis?

  Yes. The ancient art of swaddling involves wrapping your penis in cloth or cotton wool to double its girth before hiding it in a condom. The glans at the end is generally left uncovered, to allow some sensation, and the swaddling is secured with rubber bands. Even if you do manage to get away with this ridiculous sleight of penis, there’s always a chance that the condom will slip off, particularly at the end when everything shrinks down. You then have some explaining to do: ‘I wanted to keep the heat in so I lagged it’ might just pass muster. If you’re really brave, you can wrap it in layers and dispense with the condom altogether, offering it to the group as a game of Pass the Parcel, where the final prize isn’t quite as big as expected, but everyone’s too polite to say so.

  Where can I ride a human pony?

  At home. All you need is a willing partner with a strong back. The bridal harness is optional, and so is the sex (coitus à cheval). If you want to see how it’s done, check out the website of Danny the Wonder Pony. www.wonderpony.com As Danny puts it:

  I get down on all fours and the lady sits in the saddle. Her feet go in the stirrups and I stand up and dance … Because I’m not shaped like a horse, I’ve studied and developed moves that correlate with a pony.

  Women find this stimulating, Danny thinks, because being on a pony was often their first sexual experience.

  Western saddles are better than English ones – they’ve got a horn and a slope at the front … Having women jump on my back isn’t unpleasurable but I really have to put forth effort.

  Does he get turned on? ‘Well, sure, mentally, in the same way as a weightlifter. You’re concentrating on lifting 300lbs, not getting an erection.’ So now you know. You can either buy back your old pony, fly to New York and hire Danny for the evening, or tempt your partner into the show ring. Or you could just fantasise about those golden Pony Club days. It may not give you the same adrenaline rush as the real thing, but there’s no mucking out and you’ll save a fortune on osteopathy bills.

  Can you catheterise yourself with tubular pasta?

  No. If you insist on trying (and I’m assuming only a man would), you need to cook it until it’s al dente. Then wash your hands thoroughly, retract the foreskin (if applicable) and stretch the penis perpendicular to the body to eliminate any urethral folds that may lead to false passage. Steady gentle pressure should be
used to advance the pasta-catheter, and any significant obstruction encountered should prompt withdrawal and re-insertion. Insert the pasta to the hilt and wait till urine emerges before blowing in the end to create a balloon. Remember to reposition the foreskin to prevent massive oedema of the glans.

  NOTE: This is a ridiculous and foolhardy hobby, and a shameful waste of pasta.

  Is it possible to have a phobia of penis-like musical instruments?

  It’s possible to have a phobia about anything. This one goes by the name of ‘aulophobia’ and you may need to change your music teacher.

  Yeah, right. And I suppose there’s a name for getting off on ants crawling all over your genitals?

  Yep, that one’s ‘formicophilia’. It generally includes all small insects and snails.

  Getting turned on by watching a loved one having sex with an animal?

  ‘Mixoscopia bestialis.’ The fact that sexologists have given it a label seems to confer an acceptability that probably shouldn’t be there.

  Sniffing women’s shoes?

  That’s more like it. ‘Retifi sm’.

  Note

  * Currently in The Royal Collection

  7

  About Dr Phil

  Dr Phil is a part time GP and comedian, who’s also worked in sexual health. He writes regularly for the Mendip Times and hides regularly in the Mendips. He appears in every Private Eye and occasionally on Countdown, Have I Got News For You, The News Quiz, The Now Show, The Gabby Logan Show, The Music Group and Radio Bristol. He is a patron of the Herpes Viruses Association and a Vice President of the Patients Association. His greatest pleasure is pretending to be somewhere else.

  What’s your favourite sexual move?

  I love the word ‘frottage’ but no doctor can condone arousal by rubbing up against strangers in a crowded casualty department. Apparently, this is a paraphilia of the solicitational-allurative type, as well as a good way to start a fight, and the perpetrator is known as a ‘frotteur’ (or a filthy bastard, depending on which school you went to).

  I also like the sound of ‘bundling’, a colonial American courtship custom where couples slept together allegedly to conserve heat and eliminate the need for the man to ride home in the dark. Premarital sex was discouraged by enclosing the woman up to her armpits in a bundling bag. It wasn’t very successful, particularly after the invention of scissors,

  Bundling sounds preferable to ‘fenstern’ (‘window courting’), a German custom to ensure all wives produced farm-workers. Women keen on marriage hung a lantern in their bedroom window, with a ladder up to it. Young men did the rounds but left before dawn. Women who subsequently got pregnant could choose any one of the visitors as their husband, not necessarily the father. In Scandinavia, a similar custom is known as ‘taking your night feet for a walk’ and the Mangaians of the South Pacific call it ‘motoro’ or night crawling. To me it smacks a bit of ‘droit de seigneur’; the ‘right’ of a medieval lord to deflower the bride of any serf. Also known as ‘jus primae noctis’ (‘the right of the first night’). TIP: Find out what ‘Bugger off, my Lord’ is in Latin.

  How much do you drink?

  Like any drug, I take the smallest dose that does the trick. My current medication is a bottle of Coopers Brewery Pale Ale (Australian Made, Australian Owned) a night. It’s only 4.5 per cent but it tastes great and it uses ‘a centuries old top fermentation method and natural bottle conditioning, resulting in a characteristic fine sediment’ – which keeps my bowels silky smooth and regular.

  What’s the rudest thing you learnt at medical school?

  I learnt some shocking games, detailed above for reference purposes only. Over twenty years later, the rude mnemonics still stick. For example, there are five branches of the facial nerve which I’ve just had to look up because I can’t remember them (temporal, zygomatic, buccal, mandibular and cervical). However, I can clearly recall the mnemonic I was taught at St Thomas’s: ‘Two Zulus buggered my cat.’ A friend at Guys used a slight variation: ‘Two Zulus bit my cock.’ Does it matter? I suppose it does if you’re a Zulu. And in the heat of your finals viva, you only remember the mnemonic. ‘What’s the fifth branch of the facial nerve?’ ‘Cat … Sorry, I meant cock.’

  Even though apartheid was in full swing, this mnemonic is the only context that Zulus were mentioned in my six years at medical school, apart from the song about Zulu warriors, which we sang with trousers down in the bar. But I don’t recall this as a protest against forced segregation. Medical school was a conformist cocoon, and we rarely challenged abuses of power in medicine, let alone the wider world. However, I did recently ask a medical student what today’s mnemonic is for the branches of the facial nerve. ‘Two zebras buggered my cat.’ Whatever happened to animal rights?

  Have you ever been reported to the GMC?

  Only once that I know of (but there could be a few complaints piling up in the in-tray), and it was for the piece below I wrote for the Daily Express on 25 June 1998.

  As a doctor, people often ask me ‘Is William Hague being a wimp?’ This seems a desperately uncharitable thing to say about the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, but he has been off with flu for six days now. It started, rather ominously, on the anniversary of his succession to the leadership, amid backbench rumours that Fat Ken is plotting his downfall. He then pulled out of the vote to lower the age of homosexual sex and cancelled a lecture he was due to give under catchy title ‘local institutions’. Not even Prime Minister’s Questions could tempt him back from his sick bed. We’re used to Party Leaders looking a little peaky – John Major looked permanently shattered towards the end of his tortuous reign and success has hardly been kind to Tony Blair – but we expect them to soldier on against the odds. When Thatcher had surgery for her Dupuytren’s contracture (curvature of the fingers) she was back at work the same day. Hague gets the sniffles and he’s on his back for a week.

  To be fair, flu is far more than the sniffles. The influenza virus can floor even the most sprightly politician, and Hague needs to get his rest in now if he’s to avoid fatigue later. A week is the average recovery time and if he needs more, he’ll have to bring in a doctor’s note for Miss Boothroyd. I’m sure she’ll understand. In the caring nineties, it’s fine for would-be world leaders to acknowledge their viral susceptibility. If that’s what it is. June isn’t the commonest time to get flu and I haven’t seen any other sufferers, but with the amount of meeting and greeting he does, he could easily pick up any number of bugs. Susceptibility to viral illnesses depends in part on your mental state. Happy in-control people tend to avoid them, while the persecuted and over-worked drop like flies. Is Mr Hague’s body trying to tell him something?

  That same day, I was sent letter by William Hague’s press secretary:

  Dear Dr Hammond

  I read your article in today’s Daily Express. I was surprised that a doctor would wish to put himself out on a limb like this by offering a medical opinion on an individual you have never seen and have no knowledge about. It is no surprise, therefore, that your article was inaccurate and worse it was insulting. For your information, Mr Hague has had a bout of flu complicated by acute sinusitis – as a doctor you should surely be aware of the pain this can cause.

  I thought the article was highly unprofessional and a poor advert for your profession. I have copied this letter to your editor and to the General Medical Council for their information.

  Yours Sincerely

  Gregor Mackay

  A few weeks later, I got a very sweet letter from the GMC saying they had looked into the matter but as I wasn’t, and had never been, William Hague’s doctor, there had been no breach of confidentiality and my speculations were not a matter for them.

  In December 2005, I met Bob ‘the Cat’ Bevan, an after-dinner speaker of some repute who also writes the odd gag for William Hague. He’d met Gregor Mackay and was amazed at his letter because he was so charming and charismatic. But then politics makes you behave in peculiar ways.<
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  On the way home, I borrowed a copy of The Times from first class and it carried Mackay’s obituary. Dead at thirty-six from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. For someone I’d never met and had very little knowledge about, I was surprisingly upset. He was joint Scottish schoolboy doubles tennis champion for two successive years. ‘While professional in his work, he was always able to find something to laugh at, even during the darkest days of the Tory meltdown of 1997.’ I wish I’d had a beer with him now. And his memorial fund helps treat cancer patients at the hospital where I trained. Why not join me in a donation?

  www.gsttcharity.org.uk/fundraising/gregormackay-memorialfund.html

  Have you ever missed a pregnancy?

  Yes. In my defence, the one diagnosis I was taught not to miss was depression, and the woman in question had insomnia, headache, fatigue, backache and changeable mood, all of which are common symptoms of depression. Alas, they’re also common symptoms of pregnancy. And, of course, you can be pregnant and depressed. It’s not easy making the right diagnosis first time, every time, which I guess is why doctors have an exalted position in society (until we get something wrong, and are hung out to dry with the bankers and MPs). I’ve only knowingly made the mistake once and I now ask all women, from seven to seventy, if they might be pregnant, whatever their symptoms.