Physical stress

The final programme in Pauric Dempsey's series on Icons of Irish Science was inspirational. He interviewed Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell who, while still a PhD Student at Cambridge, was the first person to discover pulsars. This discovery was the first step in verifying the existence of black holes. Professor Bell Burnell spoke about her youth spent outside Lurgan in a house called Solitude. She failed her 11-plus exam but went on to be the only woman in the physics class of her year at the University of Glasgow. At the time (and she feels the practice continues at some technical universities in Germany), the male students stamped their feet and whistled and catcalled and banged their desks every time a female went into the lecture theatre. Her discovery of pulsars brought the Nobel Prize to Cambridge, not for her but for her supervisor and team leader. While others campaigned for her to receive the recognition that was her due, she contented herself with joy that, for the first time, the Physics Committee of the Nobel Prize had let the prize go to astronomy. The media descended on Cambridge, putting all the questions to her male supervisors and, turning to her, asking for her vital statistics – if she taller than Princess Margaret and, would she open another button or two on her blouse for the photographer? "They could only think of women as page 3," she recalled. At the other and very sad end of human ambition came some of the participants in Richard Beirne's A Bitter Taste of Beauty. Richard indulged in a kind of Dick Tracy detective-speak. "Feeling really good, really motivated. Up for it. Bit of an edge because I want to get rid of this belly. Bulge is still there. Lycra still stretched. Am all set. I'm going to hightail it out of here. One thing left to say: Burn belly burn. Part of my grand plan: a six pack in six weeks. It's early days yet but with the help of my own personal trainer...anything is possible." He interviewed another man who lost over eight stone. He'd been upset because he couldn't fit into nice, trendy clothes. Unhappy with the shape of himself. Stopped eating crap. He was unhappy with the skin left and the fat deposit... Like a balloon which had just burst, loads of saggy skin... Got a tummy tuck. Fat person gone away... Scar on bikini line... Got a tattoo over the scar. Got skin taken off back and sides. Got liposuction on thighs. Tiny incision, tiny slit, rod in, suck out the excess fat... Slight bit of bruising. Give you a lot of painkillers and suppositories and you don't feel it. Regularly has botox. Collagen injection on lip. Layer of skin off his face. Appearance is everything. Regularly has colonic irrigation. There were women on later in the programme, most of whom go to Curves. Richard described it as a "building on top of a hill, outside of town, no windows, no men, one door". One of the women was trying to lose weight for her daughter's wedding at the end of September and is making headway, but she goes out for a drink on a Saturday night and binges a bit of a Sunday. "Curry chips would be my chocolate," she said. But she's still lost weight and is still talking in real sentences. Richard went "looking for some answers". He "found himself" in Alva Smith's office in the women's department of UCD. She said that people are very self-absorbed and that we are in an increasingly intense relationship with ourselves. No kidding? We can tune in next week to hear about the young and the glamorous. Don't let me stop you.