Sometimes we could all benefit from an extra limb. Why if we had a third arm, we could sit here typing this and pick our noses simultaneously. How fabulous would that be? Immensely so.

However, today’s human female isn’t too pleased with her science-happy boyfriend and his limb growing antics. Thankfully, we’re here to lend a helping hand (NB: But not a helping arm, yeah? That’d be inappropriate).

Extra Arm

Hi. I'm in a bit of a fix. My boyfriend is a scientist, but not a very good one. But his heart is in the right place... even if his arms aren't. 

You see, he grew an extra limb in his basement laboratory and then had it grafted onto his chest. 

It's fully functioning, but has gone a bit septic and stinks bad. And it seems to have a mind of its own. It regularly steals stuff when we go to the supermarket and I'm sick of having to deal with security guards and their questions about the third arm and why it keeps taking baked beans and spaghetti hoops tins. 

Also, the arm keeps trying to throttle me when we're asleep. I think the arm doesn't like me. It's possibly fallen in love with my boyfriend and wants to bump me off so it has full access to him. I think this as it keeps flipping me the bird all the time. And I find that really rude!

What should I do? Hack the third arm off with a chainsaw? My boyfriend is really proud of his achievement, but I think he's turned into a public menace. Thanks, Laura

Hi, Laura. Whilst we must congratulate your boyfriend on his achievement, we do think he could have consulted you about whether you wanted him to attach an arm to his chest.

Indeed, he could have asked if you wanted him to have another leg. Or a second or third penis. Or a third eyeball or second bladder. Or seven noses.

His self-absorbed focus on that extra arm is arrogant. But now he’s gone ahead and grafted it to his body anyway, here are our arm suggestions.

Getting Rid of a Superfluous Limb

Although there isn’t a rulebook for ridding yourself of an extra limb, you can follow one or more of our suggestions below to restore your boyfriend back to normal. Best of luck, Laura!

• Botulism: Feed him dodgy food and hope that it causes at least one problematic limb to rot off.
• Space Invaders: Get him the arcade cabinet game. Force him at gunpoint to play it with his third arm until it suffers chronic RSI and needs amputating.
• Barbados: Take him on holiday and make him swim around in the sea until he’s attacked by a shark.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger: Get your boyfriend to arm wrestle Big Arnie, who’ll shred the spare limb clean from his body.
• Onions: Get him to cut 1,000 onions into finely diced segments. He’ll be so bored of his third arm after that task he’ll likely slice it from his body with a meat cleaver.
• Arms race: Enter him into a local arms race. By which we mean guns. During that illegal black market activity, his extra arm may be shot from his body. Or he could just be killed outright, which would also solve the problem.