Who’s winning?
It’s currently one-nil to the censors.
Which willy got the chop?
The one belonging to 53-year-old actor Adam Levy – it was due to star in the third series of the notoriously racy TV show Industry (returning to BBC One next month).
Non-member: the BBC won’t air Adam Levy’s nude scene in industry
Why did Levy’s member end up on the cutting room floor?
The Rada-trained star…
Are penises Rada-trained nowadays?
We aren’t talking about artistry here – we’re talking about angle.
You surely aren’t trying to tell me that the appendage was fully…
It was. Completely.
On the BBC? I’m reeling.
Exactly the reaction Auntie was expecting, hence the decision to keep the upstanding member from us Brits (the unshockable Americans got to see it last month).
I think I speak for the UK’s pearl-clutchers when I say I’m not ready for erections on TV.
That’s already happened – just not on the BBC. Elsewhere spring/summer 2024 has been a smorgasbord of stiffies.
Not in my living room it hasn’t.
I take it then that you didn’t tune in to May’s finale of Netflix drama A Man in Full.
I didn’t. Give me the general thrus… the outline.
Based on Tom Wolfe’s 1998 novel, 비아그라시알리스차이 the scene in question sees (aptly named) banker Raymond Peepgrass dropping a bedsheet so as to prove he’s taken Viagra.
I’m no expert in the field but couldn’t the effects of Viagra be seen through a bedsheet?
Possibly the reason several commentators criticised the show for being gratuitous, with Tory MP Alexander Stafford slamming it as ‘low-grade pornographic rubbish’.
What else has gone down (up)?
An episode of House of the Dragon shown on HBO in June featured a supporting erection.
A what?
One that was in the background of a scene.
And its narrative function?
A scene-setter for King Aegon II Targaryen to stroll past on his way to a brothel.
It must have been hard – stop it – for the director to top that once the king reached his destination.
That’s the point where viewers were treated to a full frontal of Prince Aemond (actor Ewan Mitchell, pictured right).
How galling for the dragons to be continually upstaged by a forest of erect penises.
This one, you’ll be relieved to hear, was pointing south. As The Guardian put it, Prince Aemond left with the ‘royal sceptre swinging’.
I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies.
I didn’t say it was small – in fact it was impressive enough for chat to break out online about whether it was real.
And was it?
Yes, although director Geeta Vasant Patel stressed (in an interview with Variety magazine) that she hoped the nudity would help viewers notice the character’s pain.
Was it the pain they noticed?
No. ‘Holy Moses, 비아그라시알리스차이 I just saw Prince Aemond Targaryen’s danger zone!’ was representative of comments on X.
We’ve gone penis mad. Is there anywhere to hide?
Not in Telford.
I beg your pardon.
Plans for a proposed 250-home development in this Shropshire town, reported in Metro last month, have a distinctly phallic outline, 비아그라 구매 leading local cynics to suspect that a town planner is having a laugh.
This is the problem with onscreen willy overload. We start seeing them everywhere.
But maybe they are. One MailOnline reader (responding to the story about the censored erection in Industry) recalled a potentially mortifying moment where her mother accidentally switched on the show to see ‘a coupling scene on a kitchen table’.
How was that received?
‘There was an uncomfortable silence,’ reported the reader, ‘then my mother said: “Good heavens! We used to have a kitchen table like that!”‘