Medicine Men Go Wild, Channel 4

9:00am Wednesday 30th January 2008

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I'M SURE "medicine men" Chris and Xand van Tulleken's idea to travel to far flung corners of the world testing if pain can be conquered by the power of the mind seemed like a good idea at the time.

It's just that after trying out the first thing on their "to do" list, the Hindu ritual of having their cheeks and tongues impaled with spikes, you got the feeling they'd already got their answer - a resounding no!

The ancient ritual is supposed to be painless because the volunteer has been put into a deep trance, but shock horror, guess what? They reckon it's agonising. It definitely made me hide behind the cushion anyway.

The identical twins' brave new documentary saw them try to find out why people react differently to pain and how some cultures tolerate it without the help of anaesthetic or even basic painkillers.

Although it didn't really come up with an answer per se, they certainly won over my respect for having a go.

Another ritual the boys didn't try out for themselves, thankfully, was suspending themselves on metal hooks pierced through the skin of their backs. Yuk.

And by the time the film had got to the bit where the Tibetan man was calmly having his rotten fingernail pulled off I was ready for an aspirin myself.