Harold Bishop Is Now Teaching Sex-Ed In A Boner-Killing Video Series Called ‘Ask Granddad’

Because there’s nothing more natural than a 76-year-old actor fiddling with dildos and condoms in front of a room of bewildered teenagers, Ian Smith, the man who you watched playing church-going, finger-wagging, jowl-shaking Harold Bishop on Neighbours for 24 years, is now in all likelihood your younger sibling’s high school sex-ed teacher.

From this week, Harold will be the star of a new set of teaching videos in Victoria with the most unappealing title in the world: ‘Ask Granddad‘.

Importantly, as The Age note, the new kit has been made in response to a recent La Trobe University study in which less than half of the teenagers questioned said they regularly used condoms. Considering the fact that 25 percent of year 10 students and 50 percent of year 12 students reported they were currently sexually active, that’s pretty worrying news.

To combat this, the videos made by the University, EntertainThinkInspire and Ansell, seek to relieve some of the stigma of talking about sex with your family members, as well as buying and using condoms.

At one point in this incredible series, Harold enacts the most awkward demonstration in the world where he empties a paper bag of condoms, lube and wobbly dildos saying “Oh well, you accumulate these things” then espouses various old codger-isms like “Damaged condoms are about as useful as hand cream to a crab”.

WHAT? No. What? It’s just too much.

It should also be noted that this same survey which La Trobe University based their teaching kit on found that 36 percent of students were actually likely to ask their mother about sex and 41 percent would go to a female friend (neither of which are featured in the videos). 50 percent of those surveyed also reported that they found sex-ed to be unsatisfying due to its irrelevance to real-world experiences and lack of discussion about same-sex relationships.

Though the full teaching kit does make some great talking points about the latter, it seems unlikely that Harold’s cameo will do anything but create a cringe-induced state of temporary abstinence.

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You can download and watch the videos via the Ansell website (if you dare).