Readers who are under eighteen or easily offended should look away now. I'm going to discuss a slightly delicate topic. Because unsolicited email isn't all about bereaved Nigerians offering to share their wealth with you. It's also about ... well ... ahem ... increasing the size of your you-know-what.

Or at least, I thought I knew what. I had more or less managed to figure out that when spammers talked about my:

• longer hose
• little friend
• love gun
• drilling engine
• male instrument
• awesome friend in my pants
• amazing organ

they had just one thing in mind. But now the same spammers who want to enlarge my penis using MaxGentleman, MaxGain, PowerGain, MaxGain+, PowerGain+, Virility Patch, Penis Growth Patch and Enlarge Patch RX are apparently going after my breasts — or someone's breasts anyway — with something called Ultra Curves. I suspect that the principal active ingredient — sugar — is the same. And who knows, eat enough sugar pills and you might actually increase your bust size. There are probably cheaper ways to go about it, though.

The penis enlargement spammers still outnumber the breast improvement spammers by a large margin, though, and it's clear that they're working day and night to improve the product. For example, one recent message promised “PERMANENT GAINS that last”, which sounds like a definite improvement over permanent gains that don't. Another told me that I could “l'avoir plus grosse de façon naturelle ... et en français en plus”: ‘have it bigger naturally ... and, moreover, in French’. I can't tell you how excited I am by the idea of enlarging my penis in different languages. I think I'll enlarge it in Icelandic next week, and maybe Gujarati the week after.

Incidentally, before you sneer at the idea of enlarging your penis, the Register reports that Italian scientists have determined that penis enlargement can work. However, the method described appears to be mechanical, takes up to a year, and causes ‘pain and bruising’ significant enough that 25% of the research subjects quit the program. Ouch. You have to wonder why anyone would bother to put themselves through that for a mere half-inch of 'growth' when PowerGain, MaxGentleman, Virility Patch and all the rest are there to give them an extra three inches in a fortnight.

One final observation: there seems to be a close connection between sites selling penis enlargement pills and sites selling pharmaceutical products. This suggests that anyone who tells themselves that the pharmacy spammers have a real product — unlike those scam artists selling fake 'penis enlargement' pills to insecure men — is in for a nasty surprise. In many cases, both the sellers and the products may be exactly the same. I hope you like the taste of sugar.