NOT funny! I have a very similar phobia. It's not cotton but its also a very common every day item. I don't give a shit I would of beaten that maury bitch over the head with a chair repeatedly if he ever did something like that to me.
There's a lot of phobias out there like that and I have a lot of sympathy for them. I'm lucky the few people in my life that know of my phobia are very helpful with it. Anytime it goes near me they get it out of the room or dispose if it while i hide behind a chair or something. Although I totally see the humor in it and am always joking about it, its just a reaction I can't help. If it's just incidentally there I'm scared and hide until someone gets rid of it, which i carefully monitor from a safe distance, if there's a threat of it actually touching me I react with blind rage. I've only had one person who knows about the phobia actually try something and i just blacked out in anger and ended up hitting him extremely hard with a 2x4. I felt bad about it but even after he got out of the hospital (nothing too major) he even apologized and admitted he knew shouldn't of done it and did it anyways.
I've seen several of those maury shows where he does that to people like with the person scared of pickles and shit. He needs to watch his ass. Those people when they're in a complete panic like that can't be responsible for their actions. Eventually someone is going to get seriously hurt trying to pull a stunt like that.