Tally Ho

There's something on the British mind other than just sailors in Iran. It seems that a plant called "winter heather" has the exact same effects as Viagra:

The latest gardening craze was triggered by a discovery by a 55-year-old furniture restorer, Michael Ford, on his allotment. He was always experimenting with drinks made from different plants and one day he tried an infusion from his winter-flowering heather. He said: "The effect was almost immediate. I had to stay in my potting shed for an hour or so before I could decently walk down the street."

Word has gotten out and garden stores have been mobbed. It's harder to find a place to buy winter-flowering heather than it is to find remaining Tony Blair supporters.

Seems it's pretty easy to throw together a dose:

From the limited amount of information available, it is suggested the Viagra-analogue is best extracted by steeping the detached small flowers in neat alcohol. An infusion of about 20g of flowers in 100ml of fluid liberates the active principle. A quality full-strength vodka (at least 40 per cent) is also effective.

I recommend Grey Goose, Belvedere or Precis.

Mr Bennell added: "There is some confusion whether oral consumption or topical application is more effective."

Ouch!

I spent my junior year of college in London, and one typically overcast Sunday at Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner enjoyed an energetic, boom-voiced, very funny rant complaining about the poor lovemaking abilities of British men. I'm not sure if this guy was a professional comedian, but he had drawn a crowd and was shouting to keep from laughing as he went off on how British women always want French guys and any other non-English boyfriend because British men are so bad in bed. I'm not saying it's true, but I did wonder if it was some sort of generally accepted stereotype somewhere.

Maybe this heather discovery won't actually answer that speaker's call to action, but it certainly seems to be having some salutary effect:

But not everyone is happy about this new discovery. One woman shopping at a Wyvales in Dorking yesterday said: "It's amazing. My husband has never shown any interest in gardening before, but now he's out there night and day fussing over his heathers. Frankly, I preferred it when he left the garden to me and wasn't so frisky."

Frisky. That my pet gerbil's name! Never did clean his cage often enough.

So can we expect Pfizer to buy up all the winter heather available in America, and then lobby to ban its importation? Or will some drug plans let you buy it from Canada?

Will this make people named Heather more popular?