It’s bad enough looking in the mirror when you’ve got a hangover – seeing your face all haggard and worn and tasting the aftermath of the vodka party that took place on your tongue. Imagine staring 
at yourself on the inside, watching the alcohol wreak havoc with your liver. Imagine surveying the smoke you inhaled as you sat in that human ashtray all night, curl around your nice pink lungs and choke them into a darker shade of grey…
Usually you’d just take the bacon butty and hide your sins behind another episode of Hollyoaks, but the truth behind your aberrant actions is on display right now over at Earls Court. ‘Bodies… The Exhibition’ is getting the whole town off the sofa to discover a truth about the human form that’s far from any textbook analyses. This time, we’re learning from real people. Yup, it’s true. Although they might look like giant science class models, all the bodies in this exhibition were once alive and breathing. They’ve actually been preserved with a chemical solution called polymer and all the water replaced with acetone. Now that’s hardcore. Puts David “I can live under water for a week” Blaine to shame, really.
The best thing about this exhibition is being able to see with your own eyes, what the textbooks and plastic exhibits fail to hammer home – the full on effects of our excessive lifestyles. Obesity, cirrhosis of the liver, bone fractures and breast cancer are all issues tackled in fascinating glass cases. And the separate room displaying a series of foetal developments is definitely not for the squeamish. Flesh, bones, organs and arteries are all on display and available for your perusal at extremely close range.
There are no velvet ropes here – probably because no one really wants to touch a pound of human flesh that looks like beef jerky.
Perhaps the most memorable part of Bodies is the pair of blackened lungs, positioned ne
xt to a pillar box in which to drop your “unwanted cigarettes”. To the non-smokers they serve as a serious and sickening reminder of how even sharing a room with those fatal fags can take hours off our lives. God only knows what the smokers must think.
See this before it leaves London and no doubt goes on tour to teach the rest of the world a thing or two about the way we treat the shells we’ve got to live inside forever. For a nation that spends so much time worrying about how they look on the outside, Bodies is one exhibition that really does prove it’s what’s inside that counts. - By Becky Wicks
Test your own body to the limits, in a good way:
- Indoor skydiving - special 2-for-1 - For a Limited Time only £49
- Introductory flying lessons - from only £89
- Tank driving experience - get tanked up £159
- Zorbing - Special Offer 2 for the price 1 - £35
- Ferrari driving at Silverstone £99
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