I THINK they want me to blow the back of his head off, Steve Chambers said. You know, plenty of blood and gore. That sort of stuff. Spread his brains all over the nearest wall, he added.

I'm sorry if you're reading this eating your bacon and eggs liberally lashed with tomato ketchup. The good news is it's not as bad as it sounds. There is an upside to such gruesome mayhem.

For this was not a family meeting at Tony Soprano's place, but an insight into the world of special effects for film, television and theatre conducted in a little cottage at Whittington, opposite the village pub and within a stone's throw of M5 junction 7, just outside Worcester If you want someone's arm lopped off, eyes popped out, head severed or neck gashed wide open with rivers of blood, Steve is your man.

As we talk, he casually lobs over a dismembered hand. One that he made earlier.

"Feels pretty real, doesn't it?" he asks rhetorically. Because he knows it does. Suppressing an urge to take another look at the breakfast I had consumed a couple of hours earlier, I put on a brave face and after feeling a finger or two, out of professional duty rather than natural curiosity, I place it on the sofa beside me - where it stays, pale and hairy, for the rest of the interview.

Steve is a special effects wizzard, who has worked on classic television series such as Dr Who and a whole host of films, the latest of which required an unfortunate young lady to cop her lot in the opening sequence. Her throat is ripped out and just for good measure, she gets a savage and deep slash wound to her chest.

"She was a real mess," he said, "blood everywhere. Then the poor girl had to lie on a cold slab almost naked for the autopsy scene. She was really brave."

I hesitated to ask why someone with not much left of their chest and even less of their neck needed a cause-of-death examination, but there you go. At this point, I just know you want to know how they work the blasted brains stunt.

It's all done by compressed air.

"We fill a tube with fake blood and bits of banana and attach it to the back of the actor's head," Steve explained. "The end of the tube is covered by a platinum based silicone and then false hair goes on top.

"The other end of the tube is attached to an air compressor and when that's flicked on and the air released, it blows the silicone apart and the blood and brains burst out.

"Bits of banana are very realistic for simulating the effect of brain matter splattering against a wall."

Enjoy your next Fyffes.

The fake blood is made from golden syrup and red food colouring with a touch of blue.

"It has to be edible because it can fly about a bit and you never know when somebody might swallow some," he added.

"In fact it's quite popular when we do talks to schools and colleges. You get kids gurgling out blood everywhere trying to frighten people," he said.

As well as running a special effects company called Optillusion FX, Steve also holds workshops and lectures across the UK.

Later this year he is to be a guest speaker in special effects at the Marbella Film Festival.

Two of his Worcester students, Helen Rowe and Alex Wathey, are currently working on the new series of Dr Who being shot in Wales.

"It's great to see them doing so well," he added. "I worked on Dr Who back in the Colin Baker days."

He also did Blake's Seven and Red Dwarf among others.

"The materials used in special effects have come a long way since then, partly due to the advances made in breast replacement techniques," he said.

"The silicone we use now looks and feels like natural skin. When you slap it, it sounds like skin and when your face muscles move, like when you frown, it moves with you."

So lifelike are the techniques, the fire brigade is likely to commission Steve to work with it on a road safety video to be shown to schools and colleges.

"I think the idea is to be as realistic as possible and scare them about what can happen in a car crash," he said. "So it will need to be pretty gruesome with bones pushing through skin and body parts missing," he said.

If it's realism they want, the emergency services have certainly gone to the right man, for there are more severed heads in his house than at a cannibals' dinner party.

He can also do dessert - frozen index finger drizzled with a red blood coulis.