CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (five)

Chopped Off (C4)

The Perfect Penis (C4)

A HOUSEWIFE wearing a shopping bag for a shirt, rubber boots and a G-string is found dead in a car park. A couple are run over by a truck in their trailer home. And a car boot is opened to reveal decomposing bodies swimming in a pool of yukky fluid. "Six days in the sun and the trunk becomes a crockpot," noted the CSI team.

The new series' opener was as grisly as ever. The contents of a bag from Gooey Buns yielded vital information - and a surprise for those who thought gooey buns were something strippers developed after jiggling their bottoms too much.

From bums we moved round to the front for C4's short penis season. The season, not the penises is short. Not since they began televising Parliament have so many members appeared on telly.

Nothing in CSI could prepare you for Mister Mark's appendage in The Perfect Penis, shown on Monday. This was a penis that had been subjected to "silicone modification". Its owner is "challenging the idea of what a penis should be". He unleashed the beast at the film-maker's request to reveal a bundle that he sometimes refers to as "the blob".

To give you some idea of size, his testicles are 2ft around. It reached the point where he couldn't stand up to pee. He's been unwell of late, with doctors unsure whether it's severe pneumonia or silicone embolism. One thing is clear - he needs his head, not his penis examined.

There was no doubt what was wrong with marine John Wayne Bobbitt when he reported to casualty on June 23, 1993 - his wife Lorena had chopped off his penis. Even the doctor freaked out. "It was an awful thing to see," he told Chopped Off.

Lorena recalled fleeing the scene in her car and wondering why she had difficulty turning the wheel. Then she saw a bloody knife in one hand and a severed penis in the other. She threw it out of the car window on to parkland. It was later reattached to her husband.

That's the part of the story we all remember. The incident had lasting effects - the word "penis" appeared in US newspapers for the first time, bobbitt became a verb in the dictionary and the bobbit worm is so named as the male is castrated after sex.

Beneath the surface was a story of marital abuse and celebrity that continue to this day as Bobbitt's third wife, like many of the women in his life, accused him of abuse. He's been a porn film star, stand-up comedian, celebrity greeter at a brothel and, even briefly, a minister conducting wedding services. He's now a furniture removal man in Las Vegas. His celebrity career has got the chop.