There’s an excruciating moment of embarrassment contained within documentary Rhod Gilbert: Stand Up to Infertility that would not seem out of place in the latest biting satire from The Thick of It and Veep creator Armando Iannucci.
Welsh stand-up comedian Gilbert and his wife Sian, who has endometriosis, have been struggling to have a kid. Gilbert’s somewhat taken aback when, around two years down the IVF track, a sperm test reveals that he has “swimmers with zimmers” or “shit jizz”. Facing down overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, his eyes are opened to a fertility industry almost entirely aimed at women when, in fact, it’s a biological hurdle shared roughly equally.
Deeply uncomfortable sharing his personal story, Gilbert nevertheless feels that shooting Stand Up to Infertility will help prompt an open and honest discussion around gender bias and the damaging culture of silence erected around men’s feelings and fears.
The Iannucci-like scene comes when he stands in a corporate meeting room with advertising execs who have plastered his face all over posters, placards and pull-up banners for a public health campaign on the subject. You can feel the mortification radiating from him.
Comedian Rhod Gilbert. Source: SBS
Perhaps unsurprisingly, his discomfort only intensifies when launching the campaign in person in a Cardiff shopping centre. Gilbert grimly intones, “This is the worst day of my life.” He also jokingly suggests to passers-by that he is, in fact, fellow Welsh comedian Rob Brydon.
His humiliation allows for our illumination. The thought-provoking, and yes funny, show is packed with eye-opening statistics, including the fact that . It turns out it’s not just the quantity of “swimmers” that are plunging, but also their quality. Gilbert wants to understand why, and what he can do about it. Smoking is obviously bad, right? But does it affect fertility? What about drinking? Tight undies? Spa baths? Chemicals?
The mall shoot is telling. Most men swerve well out of Gilbert’s way at the very mention of the word fertility. It turns out that game-ifying the facts into a quiz of sorts is a more effective way of pulling in younger blokes. The statistics he shares emboldens several women to question why they must continually shoulder the burden of failure in the baby-making game?
The mall campaign: ‘Rhod Gilbert: Stand Up To Infertility’. Source: SBS
Gilbert is fascinated by these uncomfortable truths. Why is his sperm count so inextricably linked to his understanding of masculinity? He has a great chat with poet and Peaky Blinders guest star Benjamin Zephaniah about this very topic. In a heartbreaking moment, Zephaniah reveals that he didn’t even realise how much he wanted to be a dad until it wasn’t biologically possible. Suddenly he found himself envious of men playing in parks with their kids. The one time he did try to bring it up with mates in a footy changing room, one retorted, “bring your wife to me”. It made him shut down more. “This culture of men not talking to one another is killing us,” Zephaniah adds.
Gilbert reached out to like-minded men struggling with this reality through a Facebook group. You can see the weight lifted from their communal shoulders as they meet in a Cardiff pub. As confronting as some of their revelations are, Stand Up to Infertility never loses sight of its mordant sense of humour.
That’s especially evident in the stand-up show Gilbert creates inspired by the doco-making process. Flanked by all those banners bearing his face, he muses on why it is that not one person in the audience can tell him what the male-focused equivalent of a gynaecologist is. This despite them all being across the non-existence of mythical orcs. For what it’s worth, the answer is an andrologist, and there are fewer than 200 in the UK, compared to thousands of gynaecologists. Says it all, really.
Rhod Gilbert. Photo: Andrew Baker. Source: SBS
With COVID crashing the party towards the end of filming and fertility services across the UK shuttered, Gilbert indulges in most of the things he shouldn’t while attempting to get his “spaff” in shape. We can only hope that things work out all right for him and Sian. No doubt the work he has set in motion, despite his evident awkwardness, might help men all over the world get their head around this important topic.
Rhod Gilbert: Stand Up To Infertility aired on SBS VICELAND, Tuesday 21 December and is now available to stream at SBS On Demand
Streams with: Rhod Gilbert: Stand Up To Shyness
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