What is it with Germans and the human body? If they’re not trying to mutate it, they’re trying to eat it. I suppose we should be grateful that lovable rogues like Dr Josef Mengele and Armin Meiwes don’t come along all that often.

Having said that, there’s nothing a German research scientist likes more than conducting studies into the reproductive system. Give a Hamburg doctor a grant and the next thing you know he’s come up with a pill that makes your genitals so clever that they can forecast the weather and even tell if someone is lying. My willy could do with a pill like that. He doesn’t know what the hell is going on half the time.

A year ago, a company with the achingly beautiful name of Boehringer Ingelheim came up with a product called flibanserin. It was hailed as Viagra for women. Men around the world danced and wept with joy. Maybe it was just me.

Then, the US Food and Drug Agency went and spoiled everything by refusing to approve it. The chairman of the panel, a woman, said: “The efficacy was not sufficiently robust to justify the risks.” One of the side-effects was dizziness. Oh, please. You’d think walking into doors and falling down now and then would be a small price to pay for a drug that quite possibly could have ended global conflict. It’s true. Men wouldn’t fight if women were perpetually horny. There simply wouldn’t be time.

Iraq and Afghanistan would be very different countries today if America’s women were spinning out on flibanserin. I’d like to know what kind of man would rather stay home and nurse a painfully unrequited priapism than go off and kill strangers in a foreign country. I certainly wouldn’t. What a pity we don’t have an enemy. With any luck, the ANC Youth League will declare war on Botswana and we can all sign up to ride with Field Marshal Malema against those who would destroy us with their imperialism and Happy Meals.

Meanwhile, a university clinic in eastern Germany has just ended trials of a male birth control injection. What a silly idea. Everyone knows that men can’t handle injections. As far as pain goes, it’s worse than childbirth. More importantly, contraception is the woman’s job. The male testes produce zillions of spermlets every day while women make just one egg at different times of the month. It’s not always easy getting to them in time and we can’t be fiddling about with syringes if we hope to do our job properly.

The trial involved men aged 18 to 45 living with women who, presumably, weren’t their mothers, although with Germans you can never be sure just how weird things will get. Every eight weeks, the men were given a shot. Not of Jägermeister, you idiot. Of this filthy birth control stuff. The injections stopped the men from producing testosterone. As a result, the workers in the spermlet factories went on strike. You can see why this wouldn’t catch on in a country like ours. Without testosterone, we would be nothing. Actually, that’s not true. We would be something else altogether. When the rugby came on, we would all rush off to the kitchen to make salads and drink semi-sweet white wine and argue over whether Princess Kate is getting too thin. Then Hendrik will try to light his fart on the gas stove and blow up half the neighbourhood.

Without testosterone, we might as well give up our day jobs and go about on all-fours so that our women could at least use us for transport. Or footstools, if the shops were too far away.

Danken Sie Gott, the Germans have gone and cocked it up again. The study has been terminated because one in 10 men experienced depression, mood swings, weight gain, acne and, curiously, increased libido. The results might have been different if the test group had consisted of men who lived alone, since cohabitation causes very similar symptoms. For me, anyway.

At first I thought an increased libido would more than make up for the less pleasant side effects. But it wouldn’t. Not really. For starters, you’d have to find someone prepared to get naked with you once the contraceptive injection had turned you into a miserable sex-crazed sack of blubber covered in suppurating chorbs.

The solution is obvious. Weight gain, depression, mood swings and acne are already part of the joys of being a women. And while the injection might not work as an effective method of birth control, there’s a chance that it will at least boost their interest in bumping uglies. Hell, it’s worth a shot.