Dr Christian Jessen (Embarrassing Bodies) Interview
Despite the fact that he‘s charming, intelligent and conscientious, you should hope never to need the services of Dr Christian Jessen. He’s a doctor with a special remit regarding sexual health, which means if you’re standing in his surgery, you may very well have your pants down, and the good doctor poking and prodding where the sun don’t shine. It’s a high price to pay for meeting a doctor from TV’s Embarrassing Illnesses.
Fortunately, while our meeting is a professional one, the pants stay resolutely in place: I’m here to interview Dr Jessen ahead of his new Channel 4 project, Embarrassing Bodies, a four-part series dealing with some particularly sensitive areas. Here, Dr Jessen reveals his outrage at our lack of sex education, explains what really shocks him about his job, and reveals why he never takes his work home with him.
What’s your advice to anyone who’s worried about going to the doctor with an embarrassing illness?
You really won’t be the first case of this, however special you feel otherwise. You’re not going to be unique, the doctor will probably have seen three of you already that morning. He’s not going to be fazed and embarrassed about it. If you want the problem sorted, go in and talk to a professional. The longer you lave it, the harder it is to great, and the longer the treatment may be.
In your line of work, do you ever see anything that really shocks you?
I do, and it’s not a horrible condition or something shocking to look at. It’s about the levels of ignorance, the lack of awareness out there. When I worked in Africa, I saw young guys who have contracted HIV who had no idea that if you had a lot of unprotected anal sex in Africa you might be at risk. Still, today, having no idea. That really shocks and upsets me. I think we’re failing. It’s very depressing. Or it’s the social side of things, people’s lives that are very difficult and really not very nice. That always gets to you. The day it stops affecting you is the day you need to stop practising medicine.
How do you go about finding people to take part in the programmes?
Well, sometimes they find us, and sometimes we find them. There’s an odd notion that people see a doctor on telly and think they know them, or that they’re on telly so they must be the best, so they contact us to come on the show. And we have a team of very hard-working researchers who find people willing to come on the show.
The new series, Embarrassing Bodies, is a bit different from Embarrassing Illnesses. What’s the premise?
Well, Embarrassing Illnesses covered everything mixed together, so each show was a mixture of this, that and the other. This series is four one-hour specials, and each special tackles a certain area. We’ve got one which is about hair, sweaty bits and skin conditions and feet, and things that go wrong generally; we’ve got a men’s health special, which does what it says on the tin; we’ve got gynaecological issues; and breasts. So we’re able to go into a little more detail. Hopefully it’ll be just as educational and just as interesting, and we’ve got some really good cases, but also we can get to know the patients a bit better, you find out a bit more about the human story behind each case.
It’s not just about aesthetics or odours: Some of the issues you tackle in this series are life-and-death issues, aren’t they?
Absolutely. We deal with a lot of cancers. A lot of the time we’re dealing with things that you can look out for yourself. We’re trying to empower the public, so they can look for these things themselves, and feel a bit more confident about checking themselves. And what they should do if they find a lump, what to look out for, what it might mean. we certainly aren’t shying away from these big issues.
Do you think that Embarrassing Illnesses has helped more people to come forward and visit their doctors with potentially embarrassing conditions?
From what I’ve heard, yes. Certainly from letters I’ve got, the first series did a lot of good. People have written in saying “I watched the episode you did with the rugby team checking for testicular cancer, and I checked myself and there was a lump and it’s been treated and now it’s gone, but I never would have checked myself in the past.” So I know that people were influenced, and it did help them a lot. And my GP colleagues have told me that whenever a show goes out, the next day they are inundated with patients with that condition. So at least people are coming forward now who might not have done so before. That’s our job, to deal with these things.
You’re a sexual health expert. What made you decide to specialise in that area?
I went off to Africa when I left school, and I was working out there. Sexual health, particularly things like syphilis and HIV, are a big problem out there. So I saw a lot of that, and I guess that sparked off my interest in infectious disease. And then I ended up working in London, where you see a lot of sexual health diseases.
Why is there embarrassment about some body parts and issues, and not others?
I think there are a number of reasons. I think it depends upon what sex you are - things that women are embarrassed about are not the same things that men are embarrassed about. Blokes don’t tend to go to the doctor very often, so we’re not very used to talking about this stuff. So embarrassment about our prostates and willies and bottoms is massive, just because it’s not the sort of thing we talk about. It’s a legacy of Victorian England, where it just wasn’t done to talk about these things, or about sex in general. That still very much carries on. If you think back to your sex education in school - if you had it at all - the whole thing was just a big embarrassment. The teacher was uncomfortable, and everyone was uncomfortable. That starts us off on the wrong track, as does the fact that it’s all done in one afternoon set aside. Women tend to get babies, periods, smear tests, it’s kind of a daily reality for them, so that sort of thing is less embarrassing for women. But things like skin problems, dermatological conditions, or body hair, more aesthetic things are embarrassing for women. It’s different for both sexes, but you can see the reasons for both sexes as well.
You mention sex education. Would we, as a nation, have better sexual health if there was better sex education in schools?
Absolutely! It’s a real bone of contention for me, this subject. I can’t believe that sex education in this country is not compulsory. I was gob smacked when I found that out. All this PC farting about with ‘We might upset certain religions’ or ‘Some parents might not approve’ is ridiculous. It’s poor kids who are suffering at the end of the day. It’s young girls who are getting pregnant or getting Chlamydia, and sadly it’s more and more young heterosexual people catching HIV, just because they haven’t got a clue about it. If only we could pull our finger out and have better, compulsory sex education in schools. And by that I don’t mean one hour when you get to the sixth form with a very embarrassed-looking headmaster with a few diagrams. It should run on throughout your education, so it becomes a normal thing to talk about.
What are the most common embarrassing ailments that you have to deal with?
Well, because I work in sexual health, it’s always, always lumps and bumps. They really freak men out. And usually they’re completely normal. Actually, the main cause of concern is the internet. People start trawling through pictures and things, and self-diagnosing, and absolutely working themselves up and convincing themselves they’ve got this terrible rare condition, and their willy’s going to drop off. And the other big thing in my practise is erectile dysfunction problems, which can afflict even quite young guys. It’s very embarrassing for them to actually go to another bloke, even if it is a doctor, and talk about it.
In your line of work, you deal with a lot of embarrassed patients. How do you deal with that embarrassment?
You need to be absolutely unfazed by anything. You need to be quite intuitive. You can see they need to tell you something, and you need to work out what that is, and then kind of say it for them. And you need to choose the language you use quite carefully. You need to use the language that they’ll feel comfortable with. And you need to be as helpful as you can in getting them to vocalise the worry. And then you need to discuss it as if it’s something you do all day every day, which of course it is.
So do you use different words to describe things like genitalia, depending on who you’re talking to?
Absolutely. It’s all about your patient - their background, where they come from, ethnicity - and then you use whatever words are appropriate and will make them comfortable. We’re told not to don that as doctors - ‘Never judge the patient’ - but it’s important if it helps the patient. It’s common sense, really - you don’t use the same language for a young gay guy as for a middle aged, upper class woman. The other big point is to let them know that they’re not alone in this. It probably won’t even be the first person that day you’re seeing with that problem.
On a personal level, as someone who spends all day examining and discussing sex-related problems, is it ever something that’s likely to put you off sex yourself?
I get asked that so much. It’s a really interesting question. I think you just sort of switch off when you’re not at work. It’s your job. If you’re in a clinic, you’re in a completely different situation, wearing your work clothes, talking in doctor mode. When you leave, you have to be able to switch that off. Your private life, your bedroom life, doesn’t come into it. I don’t think I’d do the job if it affected my private life in that way. I think I’d have to prioritise.
Lastly, you took part in The Weakest Link 999 special. What was that like?
Absolutely terrifying. I felt a lot of pressure, because I was the only real doctor there, everyone else was actors from Casualty or Holby City or Green Wing. So I met a lot of telly people I’d always wanted to meet, because some of them I think are brilliant and play doctors really well. But I did feel the pressure. I got knocked out after about four or five rounds, but they were very sweet, they said they were getting rid of me for tactical reasons, because I was doing well. So I didn’t make a complete arse of myself. Golly, it was a scary experience.
Embarrassing Bodies is on Channel 4 at 9pm from Monday 28th April to Thursday 1st May 2008.
