Two brave – or should that be foolhardy – male presenters volunteered to experience labour pains for a skit on their TV show – and found it harder to stomach than they realised.

Dutch presenting duo Dennis Storm and Valerio Zena were hooked up to electrodes that replicated the contractions women are forced to undergo – but the men only lasted two hours before they begged for the electrodes to be taken off.

The faux labour was filmed and screened during an episode of the pair’s hit TV show, Proefkonijnen (Guinea Pigs).

Brave or foolish? Presenters Dennis Storm, left, and Valerio Zena, right, signed up to experience simulated childbirth for their television show, Guinea Pigs

But the labour challenge proved too much for the hosts, who writhed in agony as the electrodes kicked in.

Speaking ahead of the simulated labour, Storm and Zena revealed they wanted to experience the pain of childbirth because they’d heard that ‘giving birth is the worst pain there is’.

Strapped up to the electrodes and with the stunt seconds from starting, Zena asks of a nurse: ‘Do you think the pain will make us scream?’.

Bluntly, she replies: ‘Yes, it definitely will.’

Taking the plunge: The men had electrodes attached to their muscles that would as closely as possible replicated the sensations of childbirth

Coping: The men experienced soaring levels of pain and turned to gas and air to combat the agony

And the nurse’s prediction proved entirely accurate as the pair are left doubled up in pain within moments of the fake contractions kicking in.

Although they make a brave attempt to laugh and joke their way through the experience, the misery on their faces gives the game away.

So bad is the pain, Zena is left questioning whether he even wants children as his wife would be forced to go through an experience he describes as ‘torture’.

Torture or not, Zena and Storm aren’t the first men to volunteer for fake childbirth.

Comfort: Dennis grips his partner’s hand to help bear the pain – while his pal Valerio questions whether he could ever now have children and put his wife though this pain

Keep moving: Dennis emulates a mobile birth by kneeling to try to relieve the pain

Cranking it up: The nurse in charge of the experiment turned the electricity coming through the machine up higher and higher until the men were writhing on the bed in agony

In 2009, Dr Andrew Rochford went through a similar experience for Australian TV show, What’s Good for You.

Two hours later, Rochford was turning the air blue as he struggled to deal with the pain, adding afterwards that he could now ‘understand why women swear’.

Storm and Zena are no strangers to painful stunts. In 2011, the pair cooked and ate each others’ flesh, which was shown on live TV.

Worth it? Dennis is handed his baby after the experiment – but the pair are left shell-shocked by their experience