I read that tomatoes might be good for a fella’s sperm count. Sperm’s always been a worry for me, ever since the day of the 1978 FA Cup final. I’ll spare you the goriest of the details, but the long and, er, short of it is that I fell off my bike going to my nan and grandad’s house to watch the match and sustained serious injuries to my pudenda. Fifteen stitches were required to sew my boyhood up, but I made it home in time for kick off, which is all I cared about. I was only 11, after all.
My parents had other worries. I don’t know whether some doctor at casualty at Corbett hospital in Stourbridge had said anything, but they were concerned about how my fertility might be affected. Mercifully, having begat two children 20 years later, all seemed to be in fair working order. And almost 20 years after that, I found myself doing a radio item about the National Sperm Bank. This involved having my own stuff analysed. Having breezily agreed to do this, I found myself in a small room in a fertility clinic in London trying to conjure up a sample, with a colleague called Steve standing outside holding a microphone.
“Now,” said the white-coated woman when I handed her the vessel, “when I bring your results, are you sure you’re OK for it to be recorded? Many men are sensitive about it.” Why would I care? My procreating days were well behind me. Except suddenly I did care; the concern seemed to be hardwired, as if being pointlessly fertile constituted some meaningful measure of masculinity.
Silly really. My heart bled for the blokes who had struggled with this for real. How much anxiety must those walls have witnessed?
It took ages for the woman to reappear. She had a studiedly neutral look on her face. “Can I just check your age again?” she said. She made a couple of notes and then announced that, for men of my age, the World Health Organization reckons 15m sperms per millilitre is the average. With deadpan authority she then told me I was rolling with no fewer than 32m of the things and they were quite active, or something. I felt great relief and, absurdly, no small amount of pride. I was walking an inch taller as I strode out of that clinic. And this feeling grew and grew all day.
That evening I was on a long motorway drive. Anytime I overtook a female driver, I made sure my window was up, lest one of my 32m had slipped out earlier and was lurking around me looking for an egg to fertilise.
However, it wasn’t long before I was put in my place. During the course of the live show from the National Sperm Bank in Birmingham, I met a guy from Northfield, south of the city, who was one of the star donors. “What kind of numbers you posting, mate?” I asked airily, waiting to slap my 32m on the table between us. “Eighty-five million,” he replied. Enough said. My sperm might not have that much going for them after all, but I’ll say this much for my virility: anyone who can do a three-hour live show from a sperm bank must be doing something right.
