The X-Men star's newsreader character Walter Blunt calls on his assistant to beat him with a damp towel to help him recover from a heavy night in a scene for new cable TV series Blunt Talk - and the thespian admits he has learned it really does work.

Stewart tells WENN, "I have never been whipped with towels before, although there was one particularly vicious elder pupil in my school who liked to have a go at the other kids with a wet towel. But what a great idea.

"Were you aware that you could get the alcoholic poisons out of your system by being beaten with a wet towel?"

The new U.S. show's writer, Jonathan Ames, adds, "I based the wet towel whipping on Russian bathhouses where they sort of beat you with tree branches. But we substituted those for a towel. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that caught on as a hangover cure? And you could do it to yourself!"