Rob Gilroy: Making A Stand #13
So, I went to the doctors last week.
Don’t worry; everything is fine, promise. If it was something serious I’d have mentioned it sooner; I’m not the sort of person to keep these things bottled up until they become huge and problematic. That isn’t an analogy, by the way – I’m not constipated. I went to the doctors because I had something wrong with me.
I say ‘wrong’ but that implies it’s abnormal. It’s not. Abnormal is an undying love of celery or a devotion to the work of Floella Benjamin. What I have is a slight – very slight – defect. Not defect, I’m not a cyborg. At least, I don’t think I am. How would I know? How would any of us know? That’s the problem with alien cyborgs – if you’re secretly placed on this earth in preparation for the robot apocalypse, then you wouldn’t know until it was too late. Imagine how terrible you’d feel. You’d have to cancel that trip to Centre Parcs, and if you’d got some mince out to defrost that morning, it’d be ruined. Oh, god. Just think of it – a nightmare. But I digress.
Thankfully, I’m not as cyborg (that I know of) so my ‘defect’ is not as defective as it could be. It’s a minor physical anomaly on my body. The more I describe this thing, the worse it sounds. I’m making myself out to be some sort of Channel 4 documentary – ‘The Boy with a Billion Bollocks’. I’m not and I haven’t.
What I do have is a skin tag. A skin tag is exactly what it says on the tin – a little tag of skin. For the easily confused; they don’t actually sell them in tins. It’s this tiny, little ‘nubbin’ of skin on my thigh – there, I’ve said it. Don’t judge me; I’m not an animal, I’m a human being. Albeit, one with excess nodules of flesh on his body. When you put it like that; I should be on a Channel 4 documentary.
A skin tag doesn’t ‘do’ anything; it’s just there, staring back at me every time I take my trousers off. However, I decided the sensible thing to do would be to go to the doctors and get it checked out. I did and they said “Yep, it’s a skin tag, do you want to get it removed? And would you like to take part in this documentary we’re doing…”
After a lot of soul searching and thinking, I decided; yes, I did want to get it removed. It wasn’t bothering me but I thought it was for the best. Ironically, I once came to the same decision about an old flatmate of mine, however I didn’t take him to the doctors to get rid of him, I drove him down the M1 and left him under a railway siding somewhere near Watford. So, I took my skinny mound to the GPs to get it cauterised. If you don’t know what ‘cauterising’ is, it’s, well; you know in Scrapheap Challenge when they use a soldering iron to burn metal things together? It’s like that, but a few inches away from my scrotum.
Before I go on, I know what you’re thinking – Rob; why the HELL are you telling me this? What has it got to do with comedy? Good question. The fact is; when I knew I was going for the operation there was a moment when I actually thought “Hmm, this will make for a good bit of material.” It’s not the most original subject for comedy – plenty has been done about awkward colonoscopies or surgical procedures but I genuinely thought this could be mine. And especially when I knew it would involve taking my trousers off in public, then surely it would be the ultimate opportunity for medical hilarity.
Let me quash those rumours quickly. There is no hilarity to be found in stripping off in public. What, I believed, would be an anecdote of gut-busting proportions, turned out to be nothing but genuine discomfort from start to finish. For a kick off, it wasn’t just me and a doctor (not that that would have necessarily eased my concerns) – in the corner of the room there was a woman. Not a nurse, not another doctor, not a researcher for Channel 4 factual programming; just a woman.
At no point was her role in the proceedings either announced or apparent. She stood and watched me strip off. It wasn’t even proper stripping off. I had barely stepped foot into the room when I was asked to pull down my trousers. There is no dignity in shuffling round a GP’s office with jeans around your ankles, still wearing a coat. I looked like an overly eager passer-by. I was then ushered on to a chair, a huge, black, leather monstrosity without even the smallest courtesy of one of those paper sheets to stop the friction. I felt like Thumbelina taking part in some sort of torturous version of Mastermind, only my specialist subject was lying back and pretending that a middle aged man wasn’t touching my thighs.
Funnily enough, comedy was the last thing on my mind as ‘Doctor Death’ plunged the anaesthetic needle into my groinal region. The general idea was to numb the area, however my thighs are so thick (ladies!) that this took several attempts. In the end, after what can only be described as voo-doo-meets-Kerplunk-in-reverse’ we were ready to begin the cauterisation. It says a lot about your day when a man burning bits off your body is seen as the done thing.
The procedure itself took all of five seconds, leaving me to believe I could have achieved a similar effect by sitting on the couch in my boxers and rubbing a Yankee candle on myself. At least then it would have smelt of tea tree and lavender. The job done, the doctor showed me my skin tag, THAT HE WAS HOLDING WITH A PAIR OF TWEEZERS! He then placed a plaster on the wound, which didn’t stick because of the ridiculously hairy nature of my legs, and told me I could leave. As I peeled myself off the chair and waddled to the door, half trying to pull my trousers up, half holding the, now flapping, plaster, I thanked my abuser, nodded to The Woman, and left, feeling somewhat defiled.
After that whole ordeal I now feel like one of those alien-probe victims and, instead of having a new tight ten minute set, I am left with nothing but a cold sweat and sense of impeding doom, whenever I hear a comedian say; “So, I went to the doctors last week…” The only silver lining is my new documentary – ‘The Boy with the Wobbly Lump’, Tuesday night, Channel 4, 9pm.
Rob will be appearing at Comedy @ The Old English in Hull on Sunday 30 June with the Jolly Mixtures sketch group; and as Jerry Bucham at Seymour’s Gang and Gavin Webster’s Northumbrian Assembly on Sunday 7 July at The Stand, Newcastle.
