Little mermaid joins the media circus

Not the Bodyshock programme itself, you understand, but its subject: how television responded to the birth, in a remote Peruvian village in April 2004, of Milagros Cerron, born with her legs fused together up to the heels, a rare condition known as sirenomelia, or mermaid syndrome.

A hospital porter recalled his shock “because it looked just like a mermaid”, believing the mother must have tangled with the evil mermaid thought to live in a local lake.

In rural Peru, it turns out, birth deformities are often seen as a curse. But among the metropolitan sophisticates of the capital, Lima, they are evidently also seen as a useful opportunity for political advancement. As news of Milagros’s birth was leaked to the local newspapers and then to national television networks, Dr Luis Rubio, a well-known Peruvian plastic surgeon with an interest in rare medical cases, was watching a news bulletin about the mermaid baby.

He immediately realised that he had, in his network of hospitals, the opportunity to perform an operation that would separate the baby’s legs and — who knows? — maybe help along his political ambitions. The minute Dr Rubio sent an ambulance to the Andes to fetch the baby, Milagros seemed to belong more to Dr Rubio and to the Peruvian public than to her own parents. Rubio even arranged for Lima’s mayor (and presidential hopeful) to become the baby’s godfather.

The complex, life-threatening, six-hour-long operation was broadcast live on primetime television, handily hitting all the major evening news bulletins and coinciding with Peru’s premier current affairs show. You had to double-check the television listings to reassure yourself that Milagros really exists and that this wasn’t all a Chris Morris satire on the shamelessness of the modern media.

While Peru’s press was kept abreast of each step of the surgical carnival, Milagros’s parents were kept in the dark, like mushrooms, having to rely on snippets on the television news for updates on their daughter’s progress. Dr Rubio — surrounded by fellow surgeons, nurses, anaesthetists, and his press officers — gave filmed interviews throughout the operation.

“Marianne, look at the monitor!” snapped Dr Rubio, a veteran of the television studio, and a renowned dandy who is always seen about town in his trademark white suit and tie, like a cross between Dr Kildaire and Tom Wolfe. “It’s too bright on this.

He needs a filter on the camera, otherwise he won’t get a good picture. That’s what filters are for. Don’t you have anything on the camera to control this? Use it! I can see the picture on the monitor and I don’t like it.”

And the whooping part? That came when the surgical circus was over and you heard that Milagros had survived the operation, her legs finally eased apart like two segments of an orange. And guess what? It turns out, according to Dr Rubio’s friends, that the primetime publicity has done the flamboyant doctor’s political ambitions no harm. No harm at all.

The Perfect Penis, Channel 4’s second eye-popping offering of the evening, was like an hour-long television version of those spam emails you get offering you implausible penis enlargement.

Hands up those of you who thought PE still referred to those classes in school where you bend down to touch your toes and climb ropes? It seems that it has been hijacked by the Penis Enlargement industry. Had you any idea? If anyone should mint the acronym EPE, for Extreme PE, then just don’t look. It will presumably be referring to people like the man we saw who has been injecting silicone into his willy until it is now so engorged that it looks as if he has a bald pug snuggling in his groin.

I bet nobody’s going to offer to operate on that in primetime.