Fassbender living it large with Hollywood’s ‘big’ stars

George Clooney’s quip about the Kerry actor’s manhood sees the Irishman join a long line of well-endowed leading men, says Ed Power

Being ‘big’ in Hollywood acquired a new meaning at the weekend as George Clooney used his Golden Globes acceptance speech to quip about the size of Irish movie star Michael Fassbender’s manhood. The reference was to Fassbender’s naked scenes in sex-addiction drama Shame.

“I would like to thank Michael Fassbender for taking over the frontal nude responsibility that I had,” said Clooney, who beat the Killarney native in winning best actor gong. “Really Michael, honestly, you can play golf like this with your hands behind your back. Go for it man, do it.”

Scientists have yet to adduce evidence for a link between the proportions of an actor’s manhood and their success at the box office. But being hung like a dray-horse doesn’t harm your prospects. Fassbender’s fellow Irish man Liam Neeson is rumoured to have a prodigious appendage.

That isn’t just cheap gossip. In her autobiography, No Lifeguard on Duty, model Janice Dickinson observed that the Schindler’s List star had “the biggest penis of any man alive. He unzipped his pants,” she wrote, “and an Evian bottle fell out.” The penile proportions of the famous are a source of public fascination. Colin Farrell’s looks ‘like a baby’s arm’ (horrible image), while groupie website Metal Sludge says Red Hot Chili Pepper singer Anthony Kiedis’ penis is ‘beyond gorgeous’. When Pamela Anderson and husband Tommy Lee’s sex tape leaked a decade ago, the biggest gasps weren’t for Anderson in her ‘altogether.’ They were deserved for Lee’s stand-out supporting act which, according to post-feminist website Jezebel, measured at least one third longer than the average.

No sex tapes existed in the heyday of Frank Sinatra. Nonetheless, mutterings about his prodigiousness were common. Seeming to confirm the rumours, Sinatra’s ex-wife Ava Gardner stated — look away now sensitive reader — “He only weighs 120, but 100 pounds is ****.” Never one to shy from the spotlight, Errol Flynn is reputed to have once used his penis to play a piano. Reputedly the owner of the most impressive dimensions in modern entertainment is rapper Jay Z. “Huge. Like a one-litre Pepsi bottle,” gushed a fan at another groupie website. “What do you call those things? The 20-ounce bottle. It’s beyond huge. It could block the sun.”

As you would expect, porn stars have traditionally been handsomely endowed. Said to be the inspiration for the Dirk Diggler character played by Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, John Holmes had, according to Jezebel, “one of the most celebrated ***** in porn history”. At the zenith of his fame, Holmes boasted of being a 13.5-inch man, a claim disputed by his wife, who, before he went into porn, claimed he clocked in at a (still impressive) 10 inches. A long-standing joke in the industry was that Holmes was incapable of becoming fully aroused as the blood flow from his head to his loins would cause him to lose consciousness (when one porn star joked that he was equipped with a ‘loofah’ she didn’t mean it as a compliment).

All this talk of super-proportioned porn stars and mega-hung actors might leave the average male reader thinking themselves rather inadequate. Apparently such feelings are not unusual. According to Cosmopolitan, anxiety over one’s ‘size’ is the male equivalent of body-weight issues among women. There is reason to believe this has always been an issue. However, with greater frankness over such matters in the mass media (blame Sex and the City, says Cosmopolitan) it is now something men feel it is acceptable to fret over. Hence the profusion of questionable websites touting penis-enhancing procedures.

Historically, the most well-endowed figure may have been ‘mad’ monk Rasputin. In addition to speaking in tongues and exerting an eerie influence over the Russian aristocracy, the bearded iconoclast packed a lot of heat below the belt. For confirmation, pay a visit to the Russian museum of erotica — for there is such a thing — at St Petersburg, where his 11-inch penis is preserved in an (extremely large) jar. Images also exist on the internet — but ask yourself, do you really need to see a 100-year-old penis floating in formaldehyde? Let us answer for you — no!

If you were to open a penile hall of fame, however, the undisputed champion would surely be Portuguese native Juan Baptista do Santos, nicknamed ‘lucky’ by friends on account of having a second appendage. Both are said to have functioned perfectly, meaning that his lovers — of which there was a profusion — quite literally received more bang for their buck. Fassbender should play him in a movie.