But that’s what Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust has apparently done in developing a room for sperm donors, albeit with costs shared with the private company North West Fertility, which shared the cost of the suite.

So, it actually paid out £3.25K by those calculations, which went towards a computer, a TV and monkey on some Class A grumble (that’s £500 on porn if you’re not up on slang).

Value-of-nothing pressure group The Taxpayer’s Alliance is, surprisingly, ‘astonished’ by this revelation.

“This money could have been spent on treatment rather than on trying to improve on methods that have always worked just fine,” it raged, in its own twatty Little Englander idiom. What ‘methods’ would those be, we wonder.

Maybe, just once, it has a point. Wouldn’t an internet connection suffice? Or a couple of mags? Apparently not, and when you look at the situation at IVF Wales that cash pales into insignificance.

It relies on ‘donations’ by members of the public. And if you expect men to freely donate sperm, surely the least you can do is provide them with first-hand, er, left-handed mags.

Sniggering aside, a friend of mine recently made some sperm pops at the hospital as he was undergoing chemotherapy at the time. While the resulting story, including a discussion of the procedure with his Dad, was undeniably amusing, it left me in little doubt as to what an awkward, embarrassing experience donating sperm is.

So, the price of dignity is £3.5K in this case. Not a lot to ask, surely?