Mark Simpson on those ‘Massive Cock’ docs
A long, long time ago, I appeared on a documentary called The World’s Biggest Penis.
Although this will surprise some of my critics, I was not the subject of the doc. Nor was I demonstrating. I was merely a talking, er, head. Remember when there was such a thing as a ‘cultural commentator’? Before everyone became one on social media?
Made by World of Wonder (who make RuPaul’s Drag Race) in 2006 for C4, that documentary was then re-run somewhere, endlessly, for the following decade or so. I know this because I would get text messages late at night from random old ‘meets’ late telling me
‘Mate, I’ve just seen you on telly!! Talking about big cocks??’
I would like to think that the doc was popular because of my stunning insights, bon mots and pearl necklaces cast before swine. Sadly, I know the truth: I was playing gabby gooseberry. Or chatty chaperone. In those innocent, unspoilt early years of the 21st Century, a fun, exploitative filth doc still needed a bit of dull cultural commentary to make it kosher.
In fact, I’d wager its popularity had little to do with anyone in it, however humongously hung. Or much anything to do with the doc at all – save its title. ‘The World’s Biggest Penis’ is the most perfect, most ‘fascinating’ documentary title, particularly for post-pub viewing.
Which is why I guess earlier this week C4 aired a shiny new HD big penis doc – which will also be re-run continuously for the next decade or so – called My Massive Cock. Note how the medically respectable ‘penis’ is now replaced by the more vulgar, porny ‘cock’. Which is ‘massive’ – and first person.
How far we’ve come in 16 years!
They’ve also, thankfully, dispensed with the ‘cultural commentators’ – that dreary kind of thing is no longer needed. Instead, there’s the performative ‘concern porn’ and ‘raising awareness’ of the social media age: discussion of fetishization, objectification, racism (‘BBCs’), and the general curse of having a ‘massive cock’: trying to hide bulges, having to buy specially made hangerpants, and people thinking you’re happy to see them when you’re really not. One of the over-blessed guys even goes to see a Harley Street specialist about having a (very gory and dubious) penis reduction operation.
It’s not giving much away to mention that at the end of the doc he decides against it, as he never seems to be convincingly considering it – especially after seeing pixelated photos of the op that look like a major crime scene.
The chap in question does appear genuinely troubled and burdened, but it’s not entirely clear that it’s all down to his unfeasibly large penis.
Is it too much to ask that if you’re making a doc called ‘My Massive Cock’ that you have someone from Weights & Measures to check inflated claims made about the merchandise?
Another putatively unhappy hungee is a 35-year-old amateur football player, whose mates are obsessed with his nine-inch pee-pee. This is, at least to me, the most interesting and convincing part: unlike a lot in this doc, their joshing, bantering, rapt fascination with his schlong – taking pics and vids of it in the locker room – feels mighty real.
As I never tire of saying, some women may be size queens, but all men are. Especially straight men. Most of those late-night text messages from ancient randoms about seeing me on The World’s Biggest Penis were from ‘curious’ straight guys. You see, I too know what it means to be treated as ‘meat’: “Thing is, I’m not attracted to guys – at all – I just like BIG DICKS!” (Somehow, I managed to swallow my pride – while they tried to swallow my pride and joy.)
At the start of My Massive Cock (made by Out of the Blue productions, not WoW), the size nine footie player is shown showering and towelling post-match in the changing rooms with his semi-pixelated semi, while his mates cheer and gawp and take photos and vids. But later he announces he doesn’t like being ‘objectified’ or known for having a big dick and has a stage-managed confrontation with the ringleader of the (admittedly intense) ‘banter’.
Mr Bants defends himself quite handily, suggesting that Mr Horse enjoys the attention and trades off it – before later, perhaps after a word from the director, expressing the necessary contrition and ‘desire to change’ ‘going forwards’.
But the unhappy hungee’s position presented something of a ‘problematic’ conundrum, one at the heart of this ‘concerned’ doc: “I really hate being known for having a massive cock and the way my footie mates bang on about it – that’s why I’ve appeared on national TV in a doc about massive cocks, showing off my massive cock.”
I paraphrase brutally, but you get the general idea. I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t a downside to having a silly-sized penis, or that we don’t as a culture (sorry! there I go!) have a very peculiar investment in ginormous whangers, but I found this concern porn a bit limply cynical.
In an age of social media and online porn, TV shows like this inhabit a strange, quasi-virtual twilight world of their own. Out and about you can download, onto your phone, all the massive cocks you can eat, all day, every day. And you may well be doing so. I certainly am.
But then when you get home you are supposed to put your phone away, sit on your sofa and watch a TV doc about MASSIVE COCKS in which erect penises are pixelated, and suppress the gagging suspicion – well, certainty – that many of the people appearing in this socially concerned doc are only doing it so that they can then tweet and Insta the #MYMASSIVECOCK hashtag when it airs – while you tweet about how SHOCKED you are by the show. (The hashtag was top trending on Twitter that night and the next morning.)
Some for hard cash reasons. The semi-famous ‘gay for pay’ 34-year-old Only Fans performer from Dublin Andy Lee, whose videos often involve several straight-presented guys masturbating together or being sucked off by a male ‘slut’, makes an appearance (billed simply as a OF’s performer with no mention of the gay-for-payness). He’s supposed to be having a threesome with a male/female couple, where the woman is an enthusiastic size queen – though clearly her hung partner is too since he happily assists and shares in her endless hunt for mega-hung men.
We see the couple setting up the very professional lighting and camera equipment and a sweetly slightly blushing Mr Lee admitting his nerves. But as he arrives for the double-hung action, the bedroom door closes firmly shut on our camera. I suppose because C4 doesn’t have an Only Fans subscription.
Mr Lee has what we’re told by the posh lady voiceover more than once is “a 10.5-inch penis”. As ‘proof’ a pixelated blurred image is flashed up of his erect cock and a ruler next to it, that is impossible to read.
Now, I hate to be a pedantic killjoy – or… anal – and fair play to working boy Mr Lee for not complaining about his lunchpacket, and instead bigging up his talents, drumming up business. “I was a young Catholic boy from Sheriff Street with nothing and now I am famous for my huge c***”, he told the Irish Mirror this week.
But is it too much to ask of C4 that if you’re making a doc called ‘My Massive Cock’ that someone from the council’s Weights & Measures be on hand to check inflated claims made about the merchandise? Rather than just repeating them as fact?
I mean, otherwise we might as well just go on bloody Grindr.
Mr Lee has a good-sized and nice-looking girthy oirish cock, it’s true. I totally wouldn’t turn it away from my door. In fact, I would leave saucers of cream out for it. But it is definitely, absolutely, affirmatively nowhere near “10.5 inches”.
If you Google it, you get a variety of measurements. The porn site Waybig (which is in effect part of the porn PR business) bills him in their somewhat dated (judging by how un-hench and un-inked Lee is in the pic) profile as ‘eight inches’ in their text, and ‘9’ in their stats.
You can make your own measurements, if you have the stomach for it, by visiting his NSFW Twitter. But I suspect that the explanation is this: over time, in a highly competitive business – and mostly catering to (gay) men – Mr Lee’s poor penis has had to grow bigger and BIGGER!!!
You see the penis, no matter how MASSIVE it is, no matter how well-lit it is, no matter how well-marketed its OnlyFans page is, can never quite manage to live up to the promise of the phallus.
Trailer for The World’s Biggest Penis – which, bafflingly, includes me waxing/wanking cultural: