Men's troubles

ANYONE watching BBC 2 over the last few days may have seen the trailer for The Trouble With Men, next week's series about male health problems. In the trailer, a bewildered looking chimpanzee rolls around on the ground and covers its ears in response to a doom laden list of statistics about men's health. The implication is clear we males are pathetic evolutionary retards, doomed by our faulty chromosomes to live shorter, unhappier lives, riddled with terrifying diseases we don't understand and are too scared or embarrassed to talk about. We have more heart attacks, are more prone to suicide and accidents, and are prey to a range of life threatening illnesses that leave the female of the species unscathed.

The first programme, Why Men Die Younger, offers some explanations as to why we shuffle off five years earlier on average than our female counterparts, including the supposedly contentious notion that men are far more likely to take dangerous risks such as drunken driving, armed robbery and appearing in macho Pepsi Max commercials. This comes as a consolation to those of us whose idea of dangerous risk is crossing the road before the pedestrian lights change, but more ominous threats to our health are now emerging.

Angela MacNamara and Nora Bennis may be trying to do their bit for the battered male ego, but the problems run deeper than even they realise. With sperm counts in freefall all over the planet, the Horizon team's Assault on the Male suggests that the environment is now saturated with oestrogen, causing even more problems for the unfortunate male. In such a hostile world, is it any wonder we would rather not delve too deeply into what's going on in the bags of guts we call our bodies?

The programme titles next week have the kind of forced laddish jocularity that you might expect from an episode of Fantasy Football League. Thus No Hard Feelings is about impotence and Shooting Blank tackles infertility. Ho bloody ho. This sort of lcoker room humour is endemic to the subject a medical pamphlet on how to check for testicular cancer is entitled A Whole New Ball Game. Obviously, the idea is that health talk should become a regular guy thing, a normal subject for discussion and shared confidences over a few pints.

Of course, the reality is that most men, including this one, will do nearly anything to avoid watching these programmes. Prostate cancer kills thousands of men every year, but 90 per cent of men don't even know where their prostate is Proud in our ignorance, we stumble blindly towards our doom, doing our best to ignore the lumps, twinges and aches.

NEXT week's tempting schedule runs as follows Monday prostate Tuesday depression Wednesday impotence Thursday sexually transmitted diseases. If anyone thinks I'm going to watch any of those In particular, wild horses could not drag me to Tuesday's documentary about four men preparing for surgery in an urology ward. Bladder probes and penile prosthesis are things which may well exist, but that's no reason to put them on television, and it's certainly no reason to pluck up the courage to watch them. Ultimately, the real trouble with men is that we just don't have the balls for this stuff.