THE other morning I was hard at work in the downtown office (i.e., Ermete's bar) reading the papers over the capuccino and cornetto and minding my own business when a friend came over to say hello.
"What's new in the papers this morning?" he asked. "Just as long as they're not going on about that Viagra business again. I can't believe it, every time you turn on TV or open a paper, it's all they're talking about . . . I don't believe that ALL those people can have all those problems," said the friend - an Italian, by the way.
Indeed, these are strange times. It would seem that another modern myth is about to bite the dust. If one is to believe the plethora of doctors, medical experts and professors of "Andrologia" (roughly, male, er, health) who have taken to the airwaves, then the Latin Lover (the famous stereotype such as the young Marcello Mastroianni) will soon require a preservation order as an endangered species. Ah yes, even the Latin Lover has had resort to Viagra. Day after day we are bombarded with the revealing statistics. More than three million Italian men suffer from impotence; 29.3 per cent of Italian men between the ages of 25 and 60 are fast losing interest in sex; 21.4 per cent of men are "frightened" of sex; 25.8 per cent suffer from premature ejaculation . . . and so on. Never mind, Latin Lover, the America wonder pill Viagra has come riding over the horizon to save the day.
In truth, Viagra is not yet on sale in Italy but it can be obtained in the independent Republic of San Marino, close to the Adriatic coast. San Marino, often known as the "oldest republic in the world", like the Vatican City is a tiny statelet that jealously guards its juridical, legislative and fiscal sovereignty within an overall Italian socio-commercial context.
Put simply, this means that San Marino can import and sell drugs that are not yet available in Italy, including Viagra. The six chemist shops in the tiny republic have been working overtime since Viagra went on sale there on April 17th, with each shop selling a daily average of 80 little plastic bottles of the magic pill at a cost of £340 a bottle.
Such has been the public demand that the San Marino medical authorities have altered their existing practice and rather than accept a normal medical prescription for Viagra now require that the client presents a specialist's prescription.
While some travel to San Marino, others (about 500 a day) ring in to the Italian Society of Andrologia's freephone, looking for help and information. Everyone has a different context in which to cite the problem but the problem itself remains the same - an inadequate erection and a lousy sex life for the couple. All the callers, too, hope that Viagra will save the day.
Inevitably, TV chat shows have taken up the topic with huge enthusiasm. Former Italy and Juventus goalkeeper, Stefano Tacconi, prompted widespread disapproval last week when he told a Canale 5 chat show that he intended to "try out" Viagra for one night. Twenty-four hours later, Tacconi dutifully reported back to the programme with a report on how things went.
"Well, it didn't really start too well," he admitted. "As soon as I had taken the pill, I began to feel heat flushes on my face and legs and then Laura, my girlfriend, hardly helped matters by telling me about all those people who had died after taking Viagra . . . In the end, however, it was fine and our lovemaking went on for twice as long as usual."
While Tacconi and friends were turning Viagra into a TV event, medical experts were up in arms, protesting that Viagra was not an aphrodisiac but rather a medical drug to be prescribed only to those who need it.
"In any case, it will have no effect on normal people who have no (sexual) problems," Prof Aldo Isodori told TV viewers.
And there's the rub. Not everyone seems to believe this. Among the many heading to San Marino and Switzerland for Viagra, there are clearly people with a genuine problem but there are also those who look on Viagra as just the latest craze, a performance enhancing drug, if you like. For the latter, Viagra is merely the Latin Lover's last line of defence.
For the former, it may be something much more serious if one is to judge by one phone call received by one of the six chemists in San Marino. "I have two pieces of good news to give you. Firstly, I'm cured and secondly I've made my wife pregnant."
The EU's medicines agency confirmed in Brussels on Monday that its scientific advisory committee had recommended that Pfizer Inc's impotence treatment Viagra be marketed in Europe.
The London-based European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products said the European Commission would make the final decision after consulting the 15 EU countries - a process that normally takes three months.