Your Body Uncovered with

Rating:

The Holiday 

Rating:

Every week the back page of The Dandy ran an advert for X-ray specs, price five shillings: ‘Amaze your family!

See their skeletons!’

The illustration showed a delighted boy wearing glasses with whirlpool lenses, gazing at a woman with a fat head and a body of bones . . . and a skeletal dog trotting beside her.

I never sent off for them — five shillings was a serious investment, about ten weeks’ pocket money.

And, as a jaded primary schooler with cynical expectations from life, I doubted they would work.

But if I’d seen Kate Garraway’s wondrous 3D virtual reality — or VR — goggles on Your Body Uncovered (BBC2), nothing could have stopped me filling in the coupon and sending off my postal order.

Once we'd seen the spectacular 3D images in Kate Garraway's Your Body Uncovered (BBC2), though, this show didn't have a lot more to offer

Once we’d seen the spectacular 3D images in Kate Garraway’s Your Body Uncovered (BBC2), though, this show didn’t have a lot more to offer

Her headset let patients see a larger-than-life, three-dimensional projection of their own insides.

It’s similar to the home makeover shows where architects showcase their ideas with VR walkthroughs, removing walls and replacing windows through digital technology.

Kate’s floating computer graphics were based on scans from an MRI machine, one of those humming, cylindrical coffins that photograph the body’s innards, slicing through it like salami.

The scan is transformed into a full-colour hologram.

Don the X-ray specs and it floats before your eyes, like a ghost of your own bones and intestines.

Doctors were even able to peel away layers to show the soft tissue, then reveal problems that lay beneath. That’s worth five shillings of anyone’s money.

Her headset let patients see a larger-than-life, three-dimensional projection of their own insides. It's similar to the home makeover shows where architects showcase their ideas with VR walkthroughs, removing walls and replacing windows through digital technology

Her headset let patients see a larger-than-life, three-dimensional projection of their own insides.

It’s similar to the home makeover shows where architects showcase their ideas with VR walkthroughs, removing walls and replacing windows through digital technology

Fashion-lover Hilda, 40, was suffering from fibroid growths on her uterus, about 100 of them. The lumps weren’t cancerous, but they were painful and debilitating.

It must have been a relief to look at the VR display and understand what was going on inside her body .

. . and a greater relief, following a three-and-a-half hour op, to have them all out.

Afterwards, the surgeon arranged the lumps on a table in size order, like a fossil collection. I suspect Hilda could have done without that.

Once we’d seen the spectacular 3D images, though, this show didn’t have a lot more to offer.

Kate’s manner became patronising: ‘You have to put these silly glasses on, but they are very clever silly glasses.’ Yes, Auntie Kate.

Thank you, Auntie Kate.

Co-presenter Dr Karan Rajan popped up in YouTube-type clips, with lots of deliberately cheap and disjointed edits, to offer facile health advice.

If you suffer from insomnia, he suggested, it’s a bad idea to watch zombie movies in bed on your phone.
Thanks for that tip. I’ll stick to the first group reviews Dandy.

In Channel 5's four-part psychological drama The Holiday, Kate (Jill Halfpenny) suspects husband Sean (Owen McDonnell) of sleeping with all her friends

In Channel 5′s four-part psychological drama The Holiday, Kate (Jill Halfpenny) suspects husband Sean (Owen McDonnell) of sleeping with all her friends

The chief cure for insomnia on psychological family thriller The Holiday (C5) is vino and lots of it.

But not just wine.

Also flowing freely is sambuca, beer, champagne and anything else Kate (Jill Halfpenny) and her old uni chums find in the drinks cabinet at the luxury farmhouse they’ve rented for a summer getaway.

As moody teen Lucy (Lara McDonnell) practised the piano, the camera glimpsed a sideboard crammed with wine corks.

There must have been a couple of thousand pressed against the glass.

They really put the stuff away.

Kate suspects husband Sean (Owen McDonnell) of sleeping with all her friends.

I don’t know what she’s worried about — half the time, he’s sprawled unconscious in the bedroom or by the pool.
Teenager Jake (Shaun O’Callaghan Wade) is either swigging lager or rolling joints.

And when the girls headed out for a night together, they got so plastered they had to carry each other home. I’ve lost all sympathy with them.

Next time this lot go away, they need to forget the Med and book into rehab instead.

  • Unsafe bets of the night: For the second evening this week, on Match Of The Day Live (BBC1), ads for multiple gambling firms were visible on pitchside hoardings throughout.

    Telly tech can blur faces and number plates — why not these poisonous adverts, too?