This fascinating, touching look at phalloplasty (and the ways having an arm-penis can make life tricky) has many moments of levity – and thankfully a happy ending
If, when you saw the title of this documentary, The Man With a Penis on His Arm (Channel 4), your first thought was: “Wait – like the mouse with the ear on its back? But a man and a penis and an arm?” the answer is ineluctably: yes. Just like that.
Malcolm, now 45, lost his penis 12 years ago and has had a replacement growing on his arm and awaiting transplant for the past six. As he put it, he was “an ordinary man doing everything a normal man does”. He had a job, “a nice partner” and was living “a man’s life, bringing in the money, putting food on the table”. The arrival of a baby, he says, disrupted things – though we later find out that the death of his father, to whom Malcolm, after time in foster care, had grown very close, killed “the happy part of me” – and he ended up on the streets and addicted to drink and drugs.
