Show me your tits !!!!!

I am angry, really angry today. I feel like smashing my head as hard as I possibly can against the concrete wall in our kitchen. Why, you may ask? What has riled the normally placid and cheerful Rog T to such an extent?

Let me tell you what - The Vanessa Feltz show on BBC London this morning, thats what. Not the excellent Ms Feltz who is a superb radio talk show presenter, but the subject matter. You see they were discussing breast cancer and reconstructive surgery. I'm 47 years old and I doubt there's anyone my age who hasn't lost friends or family to this horrible disease.

Breast Cancer is always viewed as a "womens issue". Listening to the Feltz show, it did strike me that men are a big part of the problem. I doubt that any man would rather have a dead wife than a wife with a mastectomy. As such men should leave their loved ones in no doubt about this at all times. I think that this is one issue where women really don't understand how men think.

What really upsets me is the way we live in a society where women die because they are worried about their body image and so refuse to have surgery. I first became aware of this problem by accident. In 1981 as an 18 year old, I bowled into the culture centre in Stockholm. The entire length of a wall was covered in pictures of breasts. Some were perfectly formed, some were rather strange (to an 18 year old who's chief source of information about breasts was page 3 of the Sun). Some were horribly mutilated. This was my first day in Stockholm, and I naively thought that this was indicative of a Swedish obsession with all things sexual.

As I pondered this rather (to me) shocking display at Stockholms premier art venue, a rather attractive blond sidled up to me and said something completely unintelligable (in Swedish). I responded that I was English and couldn't understand. She replied "Oh, then you probably don't understand what this is all about then?". As I didn't I replied in the negative. My new found friend told me that it was part of a massive drive to raise awareness in women about breast cancer. She said that the pictures were all before and after shots of women who'd had reconstructive surgery following a mastectomy. The message was that there is no reason why women should fear the effects of the operation. As I was the first English teenager to see the installation, she was interested to canvass my views. I was shocked that women should refuse life saving surgery purely because they thought society may perceive them in any way as inferior. My own mother had a massive operation for cancer in 1970 and was very sensitive for a while about her scar. My Dad had told her that she looked better in a swimsuit than a bikini anyway and she should get on with her life.

Having spent a very interesting 45 minutes in conversation and being guided around the display, I realised that health education has huge importance. 28 Years later, in Great Britain, women are still more scared of being viewed as "odd" by society, than they are of dying a horrible and preventable death. As I contemplated the issue, I thought back to the Swedish display. I think the time has come to go on the offensive against this atrocious disease and get the message over that a mastectomy  is not the end of anything for the vast majority of women that have one. It is just a ticket to a healthy life and the cosmetic issues can normally be addressed successfully.

What I'd like to do is recreate the exhibition I saw in Stockholm, but in a way that everyone would have to take notice. I'd like to plaster the 4th Plinth with pictures of successful cosmetic surgery following Mastectomies. I am completely serious in this suggestion. the British have been too prudish about too many things for too long and it has cost thousands of lives. Putting a display on the 4th Plinth would get huge publicity and might actually change a few peoples perception of the issue and save a few lives.If anyone knows Boris and how I get my display onto the plinth, please let me know.

It enrages me that we live in a society where page three is fine and dandy, but the results of life saving surgery are seen as grotesque and fearsome. This is a battle we really must win.

I think quite enough people have suffered, don't you?