Old Roman joke: "That slave you've sold me has just died." "My God, he never did that when he belonged to me!" Ah well...perhaps you had to be there...and by "there", I mean a tavern somewhere in the Suburra around 40BC, because the gag didn't exactly bring the house down in Michael Grade and the World's Oldest Joke.

Italian stallions are finding it hard becoming – and staying – aroused because they spend too much time getting their kicks on the internet when they should be learning their bedroom skills from more mature ladies, one of Italy's leading sex experts has warned.

A man pleaded guilty today to raping three young children he had drugged and who were also forced to sexually abuse each other while he watched.

Nasal spray of hormone used to induce labour can dramatically improve sexual performance in men

If there was a theme to Festival of the Spoken Nerd's mix of science and comedy tonight then it was pyrotechnics. From a tale of homemade napalm to a demonstration of a standing wave flame tube there were flashes and bangs aplenty, if no explosive end result.

Over 30 years on from his 1979 bestseller A Married Man, Piers Paul Read revisits the mid-life crisis. Geoffrey Jomier is a retired barrister living in Hammersmith.

OutKast star Big Boi has been charged with drug possession.

More than 8.5 million fake and unlicensed "Viagra" tablets with a value of £13m were seized last year, the UK Border Agency has said .

Media law

Those who believe the libel laws need updating might be intrigued by the new play by celebrated media lawyer Andrew Caldecott and his fellow silk Tom Shields.

George Freeman, the Tory MP and biotech expert, is calling on the Government to open Pfizer's site in Sandwich to venture capitalists and biotech angels in a bid to save as many of the 2,400 jobs, due to be axed when the plant closes, as it can.

The US pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer is to close the UK research and development centre which came up with its successful Viagra impotence drug, hitting thousands of jobs in the South of England.

The suggestion that 43 per cent of women are suffering from sexual dysfunction is bound to raise a few prurient headlines. But there is one group of people even more interested in the subject than newspapers. They are the drug companies who use such statistics to raise interest in the possibilities of pharmaceutical solutions. It is revealing that such statistics often come from scientists in the pay of that industry. Perhaps that's why there are so many such surveys around. Some suggest that the number of women affected may be as high as 63 per cent. One of the standard techniques of the modern drugs industry is medicalising conditions and creating new diseases – as they have done with pre-hypertension, pre-diabetes and pre-osteoporosis. This is a trend with which society should not collude.