Naked Attraction is a flaccid attempt to titillate the nation – no wonder it left us all bored

Human rejection comes in many guises. “It’s not you, it’s me”. “I just need some space”. “It’s not working out”. Most of us have been there, one way or another.

There can be few of us, if any, however, whose worth as a potential lover or life partner has been dismissed with the words: “That is one hell of a hairy crack."

That was the fate of one wannabe date featured in Channel 4's latest dating show Naked Attraction. The premise of what its presenter calls the dating show "that likes to let it all hang out” is that primeval physical attraction really matters, and perhaps more than many of us would like to believe in our etiolated world of Tinder and eHarmony. Imagine Cilla Black’s wholesome and oh-so-coy Blind Date crossed with soft porn and you get the (sometimes unwelcome) picture.

You see – unlike some, I concede – todgers aren’t really my thing. The sight of a pantheon of them arraigned cross my screen was asking a lot of me. And no, I am not jealous of any of them, girthsome or not. There were no mankinis, no G-strings, no thongs: nowt but a full on parade of lower halves, stable door style, as contestants were eliminated by successively revealed physical characteristics (penis/vagina, bum, top half generally, face). Then the lucky couple put their togs back on and went for a conventional date, neatly reversing the usual train of events, and ensuring that there are no nasty surprises in the bedroom.

What to make of all this? Well, it is certainly candid. One contestant was asked, almost casually, if they “were a fan of a fuller bush”, and I was mildly disappointed that a full discourse on the topic of pubic topiary did not ensue. I mean, who hasn’t got strong views on that? Maybe Owen Smith, I suppose.

“What sort of vagina do you like?” was another polite enquiry, uttered in the matter-of-fact manner of a waiter asking which Pinot Grigio you’d prefer.

Overall, there were more questions than answers in this show, and the fig leaf of science inserted hurriedly every so often (for example, that the average male member is about three and half inches long on the slack) was pretty meagre cover for an intellectually bankrupt commission.

Admittedly it is isn’t the sort of show you’d leave on in the lounge of a care home. But it wasn’t all that shocking either. It was more dull, like being trapped in the changing rooms at the gym, the tedium alleviated only by the occasional intrusion of some unintended humour, as when a chubby bloke named Rob commented that Aina’s neatly-trimmed pudenda were “quite presentable when you go down there”, like an estate agent recommending a newly completed cellar conversion to a first-time buyer. It was all unpleasantly clinical.

The contestants were twenty- or thirtysomethings and, a few stray pubes aside (though not literally aside), perfectly “presentable” physically, to borrow Rob’s expression – except for the chap who decided to draw some elephant ears either side of his magic wand, presumably a misplaced attempt at irony.

None of the contestants had piles, happily, or anything else that would have one running screaming from the bedroom. But there was no sense that brains, wit or simple kindness and compassion have much role to play in human relationships, let alone “love”, a word I don’t think I heard once during the whole hour of meat market offerings.

I would have liked for the physically flawless winner of the date to take his or her lover home to discover that they like torturing cats or had a poster of Fred West on the wall, or voted for Brexit, just to make the point that looks aren’t everything. But they didn’t. They just fancied each other, and that’s really the naked truth of it.

So, plenty of flaccid penises here – televising a boner is still illegal I believe – but nothing so flaccid as Channel 4’s latest attempt to titilate a jaded nation.