I resembled nothing so much as a Victorian poster-boy advertising the perils of fornication

I am lunching at the Duke with my good friend Kevin Jackson, the noted wit, polymath, raconteur and vampirologist. I am trying to wangle a part in the promotional film for his new book, Bite, to which I have been looking forward for ages.I volunteer to be First Corpse. There will be no fee, but the prestige of being associated with such a project will be worth more than rubies. "Nick Lezard - First Corpse," he writes in his big notebook.

“What's my motivation?" I ask.
“You're dead," he says.
The Guvnor comes and joins us. He is looking even shiftier than usual, which tends to mean he is going to play some practical joke or mind game on me. But as he is generously subsidising our lunch, I know I will have to go along with it. The Guvnor has, shall we say, unusual business contacts. The day before, he had been flown to Le Touquet for lunch. Why don't I get flown to Le Touquet for lunch? Ever?

Today, he hands me a packet that advertises itself as a herbal libido and performance enhancer for men, given to him by the manufacturer, who was a guest at the Duke earlier. "They used to call it 'Herbal Viagra'," says the Guvnor, "but Viagra got the hump." I begin to feel that sensation so familiar to me when I enter into conversation with the Guvnor: that I am in an unusually rude, postmodern episode of Minder.

He tears off a couple of pills from the packet and hands them to me. They are large and brown. The Guvnor suggests, to put it somewhat more delicately than he did, that I try them out on my own and report back to him. I assure him that not only do I have no problems in that particular area, but that I have to do some work that afternoon. "Well, let me know how you get on anyway," he says.

A couple of days later, I am with a lady who does not wish to be either named or even alluded to in this column. We have had a nice dinner, a few glasses of wine and are feeling perfectly happy and mellow. I pull out the pills and explain their provenance. I add that although, of course, I have no problems in that particular area, it might be fun to have a go with them and see what happens, how about it?

Wisely, I had taken the precaution of jotting down the ingredients off the box when at the Duke, and we looked the main ones up on the web. The days when I would put any old rubbish into my system in the pursuit of pleasure are long gone. No side effects are mentioned, so I take them. "For best results do not take after food," says one website, so I imagine I won't be getting the full benefit. This doesn't bother me because, as I would like to assure readers of this magazine, I have no problems in that particular area.

I have always been slightly sceptical about the assertions of herbal practitioners. From now on, though, such attitudes will be undergoing a fundamental revision. On the matter of the basic claims made by the manufacturers, let us just say that they are justified. But there is more. Before hustling the aforementioned lady up the stairs with some urgency, I begin to feel a slightly psychoactive effect, as of a very mild tab of E. The
next couple of hours we shall pass over in silence, except to say that if I ever had a problem in that particular area before, which I did not, I certainly didn't now. Indeed, I was told that there was a marked improvement on what had previously been considered perfectly adequate.

The bad stuff came later. Sleep proved fitful in the extreme. And such sleep as I managed was haunted by dreams of extraordinary vividness and dread. In one, I dreamed I was, I promise you, trying to buy a pipe while being menaced by panthers. The next morning I felt dreadful. My eyes were bloodshot and sensitive to light. My hands trembled. My ears buzzed. I resembled nothing so much as a Victorian poster-boy advertising the perils of fornication, particularly as I was walking around with what was, to all intents and purposes, a bowsprit.

There was only one part of my body that was not unwell, and I wanted it to go away. I had, in short, a very pressing problem in that particular area. (I texted the Guvnor to complain. His reply: "They work best on people with small cocks." Cheers, Guv.)

It took a day for that problem to go away; two days for the bad dreams to go away; four days for me to recover my health to an even modest approximation of what it once was. Boys and girls, these pills mean business. Leave them alone. Unless, that is, you want to play a corpse in Kevin Jackson's film. How they get the coffin lid to stay down is someone else's problem.

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