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You may remember it from hospital documentaries in the late 1970s. But it might surprise you to learn that, twenty five years ago, I looked exactly the same. I had the same teeth, the same ears, the same liver, and the same boring old arse. |
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To explain why this is we need to take you on a very long journey - way back to a time before the actual development of the cells which created my enormous moustache, back to a time before I started wearing glasses, back to a time before I started spending all my time making loads of women pregnant. That's right - we need to take you back to a time before television itself. This is my brain. And it’s one of the many and varied building blocks that make up the central nervous system - the body’s telephone exchange. And to show you how it works, I’m going to remove my brain and stick a great big pin in it. |
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 | You'll see how the synaptic fluids which keep my brain throbbing have leaked out onto the table. Now, if we were to wade, like tiny little ants, through the fetid canal waters my brain, what would we find? Well, you may actually be surprised to learn that what we'd find is the same as what we'd find on any brain, in any skull in any part of the late twentieth century. And do you know why that is? Of course you do. And why? Because of your brain! |
| The cortex here is literally the brain’s fire exit, a kind of neuro-washing machine, linked as it is to the spinea minora, the body’s cement mixer. The synaptic fluids travel along the brain’s M4 motorway, past the nerve’s botanical gardens, and round the back of the body’s self-assembly video cabinet. The key to understanding ourselves, however, is locked here in this small piece of muscle. This is literally the brain’s shit-house door. And as the positive and negative force of the ever-constricting muscles and nerve-endings cause it to bang away in the wind of my cranial vaccuum, so are the secrets of this wondrous creation revealed to us in all their elegance. |
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 | So, this then is my brain. Separated from my skull. And were it not for these...literal...hands, holding it in the air like a berk, I’d still be alive today... |
