I don't wish to seem ungrateful, and it's nice that they've made the effort to write, but this morning I received twelve emails, all offering to help me with the size of my penis. Really, a man could get a complex. True masculinity is impossible without a substantial volume of male meat, they warn. Do you feel a great disappointment every time you recollect the dimensions of your pen!s? Actually I find women are normally quite kind about such things, but maybe they're just being polite.

I don't know what part of the world these little packets of insecurity come from, but they specialise in a kind of strangled English that's never been spoken down the Old Kent Road. Do you believe in magic? they ask. We think you're likely to give a negative answer. It's gramatically correct, but you'd never say it.

And nothing about the prose is making me rethink my scepticism of the occult. The action of this remedy on a human phallus cannot be called otherwise than a Miracle! The action of this sentence on my brain cannot be called otherwise than a short circuit, frankly. Asking yourself how to augment your meat stick? they ask hopefully. Not especially, but I wouldn't mind a go on your Thesaurus.

Occasionally they do it in rhyming couplets, or at least try to. At last you've found a girl that's hot, You wanna screw her tasteful twat, they declaim Byronically. I don't think rhyming is necessarily their forte. And imagine writing that and using the word tasteful.

Bizarrely, each email begins and ends with a William Burroughs pastiche. the danger I put Ryan Hollweg in and the damage I have A gas line at Lake Weatherford, Texas exploded Monday the completely out of it. murder. democratic values of France, his role and says one of them. They've caught the feel of The Soft Machine quite remarkably, if you ask me.

I't's probably an attempt to fool email filters, which perhaps are in the habit of just searching the beginning and end of emails. At random moments, though, like monkeys let loose with the cut and paste, it almost yields information. Azerbaijan played host to second place Finland 63 seats are required for a majority government in. 63 seats are required for a majority government in where? I have to know. An assembly with 124 or 125 members, but who? A single currency would stabilize European year. Why should he turn over a new leaf now? This is very post-modern in the way it hints at meaning without ever quite resolving itself, but it's making me anxious. Britain stayed out of the single currency - are our years now unstable? What about the implied threat to Christmas? Not that I even like Christmas, but won't somebody think of the children?

Sometimes you get some quite tantalising titbits. Wednesday, March 21, 2007 North Korea agreed on February 13 to dismantle their. Dismantle their what? Unusually for this kind of email, It could actually be quite important. It could even be thematic. Are the North Koreans agreeing to dismantle their enhanced penises? If so, will they be allowing the Inspectors in?

Not that any of it is persuasive. There's a note of hysteria in each one which clashes with the message of virile self-assurance that they're trying to put across. These are not the words of men who are supremely happy about their penis.

So on balance I don't need your assistance, thanks for asking. Thunderbird thinks these messages are junk, and I'm inclined to agree. And if the first fifty emails failed to move me, I'm not sure why you think the fifty first is going to have any effect.

Still, it makes a change from the other emails I get all the time. The ones with a suspiciously similar font and layout, telling me how I can get hold of some Viagra. All I need now is some glans mascara, and I'll have the whole penile package.

Incidentally, some dinosaurs breathed like penguins. Just thought you ought to know.