The bumbling TV presenter attempts to make navel piercings seem like the extremes of body modification in a spectacularly cringeworthy broadcast from 1994.
Lest younger readers be confused about all this, let me assure them that by 1994, navel piercings were about as exotic and confrontational as they are now – the below-the-neck piercing of choice for people too nervous to go for anything more intimate. The levels of pain involved are minimal, yet Madeley – the sort of man who you suspect is still shocked by men with earrings – does his best to make it sound like a terrifying, agonising process, even bringing on a hypnotist to put the ‘patient’ in a trance. A warning to the curious – you don’t get to see the piercing take place as the camera stays a long way away from the gruesome act.
Now, no one was expecting to see a Prince Albert – or even nipple piercings – being fitted on daytime TV, but this is a ludicrously desperate attempt to make the banal seem exotic and edgy. Madeley, as you might expect if you are familiar with his career, prattles on with incessant nonsense – so much so that even the pointless hypnotist has to tell him to shut up and let the piercer get on with her job at one point. Everyone looks very embarrassed to be there – I hope it was worth it.
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You’d think they were doing an amputation by the build up and Madeley’s trepidation rather than piercing some skin. How does this simpleton still get work?