Guys and Dolls: C5, 11pm, 10 October.

One of the best things about having a psychology degree is being able to watch cheap, exploitative television programs about sub-groups and doing so with a clean conscience.

Psychologists probably have a word for that type of behaviour.

They doubtless also have a term for the behaviour of the men featured in C5’s ‘extraordinary people’ series, which focussed on four men and their special relationships.

With life-size dolls.

But let’s not rush to mock these guys. Let’s take a leisurely approach and gradually poke fun over a 1500-word article.

As anyone who’s gone through a dry spell knows, finding that special partner can sometimes be tricky. So thank God for the Californian dream factory pimping out the pumped-up women for those fellas struggling to find love and companionship with ‘organic’ women.

The program focussed on a series of American men and their real-life Barbies but, before us Brits get too smug, they also had a Dorset local on there. Although the individual circumstances of each man were presented in turn, parallels could be drawn between all four: an almost morbid fear of being alone, issues over control and reliability in a relationship, and a perceived incapability of living up to the expectations of women.

The oddly named Davecat featured first. Davecat still lives with his parents, which he found a little embarrassing, unlike his predilection for his blow up beau Sidore. Being a mid-western American, Davecat’s father was obviously not tolerant enough to accept his son’s relationship with Polythene Pam and considered it ‘unnatural and strange’. Clashes would often occur and, as a consequence, Sidore spent 99.9% of her time in Davecat’s room. But then you wouldn’t think there’d be much point in Davecat’s mom setting her daughter-in-law a place at the dinner table.

Davecat’s plastic fetish had started at an early age after his mother had taken him to a downtown store and found him talking to a mannequin with a tennis skirt. He admired their "beauty and stoicism" and sense of being "incorruptible".

But that’s not to say he hadn’t had a bloody good go at corrupting his latest.

To start with, his relationship with Sidore had been "sex, sex, sex", but had tapered off to just laying close by and appreciating her. Davecat had made half-hearted attempts with ‘organic’ women but had been unable to tolerate the "lack of constancy", unlike his situation with Sidorie. She was like an anchor, unlike real women, which was not surprising as being an inanimate object means a plastic doll has a lot in common with other inanimate objects.

However, he faced an impending separation from his love as she needed repairs after going all loose and floppy over the years (it’ll happen to you at some point, Davecat). Sidore would be away for three weeks which was the longest they’d been apart. Being alone was something he didn’t want to think about, although if he known the man he’d entrusted his true love to then their time apart would be even more unsettling, although perhaps not as much as the "second honeymoon" he’d promised Sidore on her return...

As soon as the camera panned around 50-year old computer technician’s Evarard’s house, you could see he had a thing for models, and this was before we’d come face-to-face with his lovers. Model airplanes hung from the ceiling, demonstrating that the man was clearly a dab hand at patching things up with an Airfix kit.

The production team had obviously arrived early at Evarard’s house as ‘Virginia’ was sleeping when they got there, but this wasn’t too inconvenient once he changed her eyes from the sleeping set to the awake ones. Everard cooed as he described how she just lay there and was so "very static" and didn’t move at all, but that was unsurprising considering Virginia was made out of plastic. And she had her closed eyes in.

The nearest he’d got to a girlfriend was a wren from the Royal Navy who’d taken dance lessons and was "quite fit" although, ever the fetishist, he was disappointed she didn’t wear the uniform when he met her. Evarard didn’t go into the specifics as to why the wren had flown, but had some generalisations as to why women don’t flock to him. He considered attractive women to be "unattainable", perceived himself as an "outsider" and that all women reacted negatively to him before he’d even said anything. Which is just as well if decided to enter into a conversation about the tricky subject of his alternative lifestyle.

To counter the negative perceptions Everard had taken up hang-gliding to distinguish him from the common man on the street, with the expectation that women would be naturally attracted to guys who do exciting things, although this hadn’t worked out either. If you ask me, he was going about it the wrong way: if he wanted to demonstrate his alpha maleness he should have casually slipped into the conversation that he was currently living with a couple of beautiful models.

As with Davecat, Everard was keen to stress the companionship angle to his latex loves. His mother had died eleven years ago and he’d clearly been unable to grieve and move on from his loss. Admitting that it "doesn’t make sense when your mother dies" he said he’d "probably" prefer it if he had a real woman in his life, but "sooner the dolls than no female company at all".

As he poignantly, if a tad self-pityingly, put it:

"I’m 50 years old. Losing my hair. I’ll never get a real woman that would look like this [his model]. A real doll will love me, no matter what."

So despite the subject matter, the program had been able to engender some sympathy for these lost souls.

Until it came to Gordon.

If anyone in the program met most people’s stereotype of a sex-doll user it was him.

Although his issues over control and dependency were similar to the others, his was the most misogynistic attitude of the featured men, and considered sleeping with a woman who’d had the audacity to have intercourse with another man before him as "like going to a restaurant and being served regurgitated meat".

His biological father had left him after six months and he’d been raised by his mother in Virginia (the place, not Evarard’s partner). Perhaps as a consequence of this Gordon was quick to emphasise the transitory nature of human relationships ("how many friends do you have from when you’re five or six years old?") and how it influenced his preference for plastic.

But leaving aside Gordon’s early attachment difficulties, his experiences in adult life had reinforced his preference for inanimate companions. He’d met a woman at a party and despite his perceived unattractiveness ("bad skin, bad teeth") had gotten talking to her and passed on his number. A couple of weeks later she called to ask him over to her place. To babysit while she went out with another man. Wicked, wicked woman!

Gordon had taken this rather hard, although he was at least able to look on the bright side by reflecting on the money he’d save at Christmas by not having to buy her any presents.

Perturbed by the unpredictability of human relationships, Gordon no longer had to worry about "lies and deceit" with his dolls, which gave him peace of mind.

Plus there were the obvious sexual advantages (no pregnancy or disease), although at least with real-life women you don’t have to take a puncture-repair kit on a date. Unless you know they cycled there.

As Jean-Luc Godard once quipped about movies, all you need is a girl and a gun, and Gordon had two of the former and three of the latter, which coupled with his Astroglide lubricant and two-handed broadsword made him his "own God" in his fantasy world. His dolls were worth everything to him, to the point he was planning on having them buried with him, although for the sake of a relatively dignified service I hope he chooses to leave his sword outside of the coffin when the time arrives.

The valley of the dolls responsible for all this latex love was situated in California, who ship around seven dolls a week worldwide. Even by their standards they had various unnatural requests to deal with, such as pregnant dolls (Gordon clearly hadn’t placed that order) or an eighty-year old doll (maybe Evarard was looking for a substitute for his mother). One had even asked for pubic hair going up to the belly button and the lower back, although they’d refused this request on the grounds they "had to draw the line somewhere". However, that didn’t stop them from sending the customer the pubic hair necessary for some DIY doll-work.

Doll creator Matt was flattered his creations were able to fill such an emotional space in the lives of his customers, considering the dolls to function like insoles function in shoes. For those guys incapable of talking to girls, opined Matt, "sex with a rubber doll is better than never having sex at all". Which all us guys would agree with. Wouldn’t we?!

Sharing a similar tenuous grip on reality was Slade, who was the maintenance man when the dolls needed their annual service. Some of Slade’s work were minor things such as replacing teeth. Or vaginal lips. In fact the model he was working on at that moment had what looked like to him as a "destroyed vagina". Of particular concern to Davecat, considering he was repairing Sidore, was Slade’s confession that he’d had sex with a couple of the dolls entrusted to his care. The bounder!

But just to prove the show was giving an equal platform for both men and women to demonstrate their psychological flaws, on came Slade’s girlfriend Rebecca. Unbelievably, she had been jealous of the dolls when she first started dating him, feeling intimidated by what she perceived to be their "physical perfection". However, as time passed she had gotten over this jealous phase, seeing the dolls as just "a very high form of masturbation".

Which is where Mike came in.

As the only man featured who was bridging the gap between fantasy and reality by having sexual contact with a real life woman, and perhaps not coincidentally, Mike was pretty upfront about his dolls functioning as an outlet for his 3am hard-ons. Unlike other guys who had Harleys, sex was his hobby, and the dolls provided sexual outlets for Mike, the latex Lou Bega, who even had his own eight-woman harem of individually named honeys:

A little bit of Wendy in his life
A little bit of Sandy by his side
A little bit of Misty’s all he’d need
A little bit of Christy’s what he see
A little bit of Jazzy in the sun
A little bit of Lexy, his number 1.

Trumpet!

Complicating matters for Mike was his burgeoning relationship with Texan lovely Jodie and the realisation that although sex with the dolls "can be awesome, [they] provide zero companionship". Jodie seemed admirably open-minded about Mike’s activities, but as she had met him via the Internet and he turned out not to be a serial killer then she’d probably consider his doll fetish as a bit of a result.

Mike saw the possibility of wedding bells and used his birthday as an opportunity for Jodie to ‘meet the prosthetics’ leading to a particularly memorable exchange as Jodie met his harem for the first time:

Jodie: Do you use all eight?
Mike: No. Just one at a time!
Jodie: I need a beer!

Jodie liked the fact that he’d opened up to her and took his doll fetish as just being a part of who he is, but if she ever found out he preferred sex with dolls over women she’d "break it off" (I don't think she was referring to his penis..." as she requires more at this point in her life.

So a happy ending. Or perhaps not.

A week after the birthday surprise, Jodie decided to end it. But then she’d probably found out the truth about the kind of man who has sex with inflatable dolls.

They’re notorious for letting their women down.