I AM now convinced that Channel 4's television schedule is intricately woven around my own working life to cause me as much distress as possible.

How else could you explain why every time I am working late and sit down in front of the TV with my dinner, there is a programme that my wife wants to watch and my stomach doesn't.

The latest series of Embarrassing Illnesses is a perfect case in point.

Aired at 8pm - in my mind six hours too early - its central premise of highlighting the kind of ailments and diseases we should be aware of and have treated is a very worthy and noble one.

But you try eating a sausage casserole while a team of naked rugby players are juggling their todgers in the search for errant lumps.

Or chewing on a bunch of grapes while a middle-aged man with the world's most inflamed haemorrhoids is violated by a young doctor wearing a lubricated rubber glove.

Two points here.

Firstly, why on earth would any normal human being want to expose their rear end to an audience of several million people, at least one of whom was trying vainly to cover his eyes with a knife and fork?

And what possesses a man who has suffered with unfeasibly large piles for fully two years to choose national television exposure of the most graphic kind ahead of a quiet private session with his own GP?

At what point did: "How would you like a good-looking young man making your eyes water while your backside's hanging out for Britain's viewing public to savour?" become a really good alternative to privacy and dignity?

You can only imagine those winter evenings just flying by as Gerald sits everyone down to have a re-run of his fame.

Secondly, how can you take a programme seriously when the doctor looks like he was thrown out of The Chippendales for being too good-looking and fit?

Granted, as we get older, our doctors are looking younger.

Indeed, on a recent visit to my own surgery to have a golf club removed from my bottom (it's a long story, but I won't book a game on our wedding anniversary again), I walked in and asked the youngster at the desk to go and fetch his Daddy.

But Christian Jessen takes gratuitous eye candy to a different level and I for one can only hope that he has an embarrassing illness of his own to offset the effect he seems to have on my own wife at least.

(Having said that, I am sure that she is not alone in requiring treatment for a static electricity shock to the nose during the naked rugby players' sequence.) Having said that, the squeamish amongst us were given ample preparation for the horrors ahead as Coronation Street's writers conveniently included the sight of Ken and Diedre Barlow kissing and Gail Platt being called "sexy" in the episode immediately before the show aired.

And to complete the trilogy of horror, few remote controls will have remained unpressed as Kate and Aggie suggestively lubricated their own Marigolds...