Channel 4 just paid the rent on a serious load of actors' bedsits. The Great Sperm Racesaw hundreds of actors (actually glorified special extras), attired in white pyjamas, running around the undulating English countryside pretending to be recently ejaculated sperm. No, I have no idea why either. Well, I do, actually – the programme, bizarre and informative, and bizarrely informative, was disseminating information on the process of conception.
The millions of sperm were gradually decimated as they ran over a grassy ovary (what am I saying?), snagging in trees, falling into rabbit-holes, that kind of thing, until eventually one sperm, in spectacles, penetrated a great golden egg and, hey presto, cut from the sperm race to a romantic image of a couple in a park wheeling a pretty baby in a green duffle-coat, and not a pyjama-clad special extra in sight.
There were some interesting crumbs of information swept from the table of the sperm physiologists, however. For example, when women ovulate, their breasts become more symmetrical, their waists become smaller and their scent changes. And if you’re a sperm (hey, don’t knock it, it still reads as a telly job on the CV), that egg you wish to penetrate with your burdensome cache of DNA smells like lily-of-the-valley perfume.
Good God, the things you learn from the box, eh?