Public discussion was forbidden. More Pricks Than Kicks, the 1934 book by Samuel Beckett, was banned on the strength of its title alone, although that came from Jesus's words to St Paul, "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." From then on, Beckett's heroes became the image of the wholly impotent man, short on both sexual prowess and economic power. They went on to help him win the Nobel Prize.

And it's not just a question of how the command to "Brace yourself, Bridget" progressed to the perhaps more sophisticated invitation "Will you come into the field, Bridie?" posed in William Trevor's The Ballroom of Romance.

The stated reasons for the no-cash-no-pill policy are financial. But the effect is to remind many impotent men that on the measures which seem to most reflect a man's sense of identity - sexual prowess and economic value - they are doubly so.