FOR SALE: one time-ravaged body, for play purposes only. Males need not apply.

Well, what else am I to do? Credit card bills stacking up from the Christmas spending spree, winter-worn family begging me to book a place in the sun, pub landlords demanding I clear my slate.

I can't flog the car, it has more miles on the clock than I have. If you've seen a picture of the wife, you'll know she wouldn't fetch much.

Selling yourself is all the rage these days, it seems. Word from the steppes suggests Russian students pay their way through university with the proceeds of prostitution; and many bolshie ballerinas only keep the wolf from the door by becoming sleeping beauties.

All those Dying Swans put through years of the most gruelling training imaginable, eating even less than their calorie-challenged compatriots, and come perestroika the ballet funding dries up in the great new capitalist economy, forcing these poor girls into positions they would never learn at the Bolshoi barre.

So where's the shame in it when you are really hard up? I did offer to donate my body to science, but science took one look and laughed; even that cannibal chap in Germany said I was too skinny to invite to dinner.

I took it along to a car boot sale and they trampled all over it to get to the dodgy DVDs, counterfeit computer software and cheap cigarettes.

Surely someone, somewhere will cough up a handsome ransom for this sleek, sophisticated exterior. Perhaps it will be someone with a sight problem, or someone who is really desperate, or has a desperately-weird sense of humour and a sight problem.

But to make the prospect more attractive, I am picking out the keyboard grime from under the fingernails, trimming up the armpit birds nests and polishing the pate - and the leather gear waiting invitingly in the wardrobe.

Oh, I am also getting lessons in suavity from my mate John Prescott and being taught how not to slurp the soup in case I'm taken out to dinner. If it would get her a holiday, my wife might even issue a new MoT certificate on me.

Sorry, but I cannot offer my virginity - that was lost in the mists of time, or maybe it was Wetwang - unlike the 18-year-old Bristol University student who has offered hers to the highest bidder to help pay her tuition fees.

She reckons she was inundated with offers from men, including one for £10,000, within days of her placing an advert on the internet. And that was despite the fact that she is in a lesbian relationship.

In fact she said she received 7,000 offers in three days.

So here I go: journalist turned gigolo, an interesting career transition, but then Ken Barlow did it and he was a teacher... and newspaper proprietor, supermarket trolley stacker, lecturer, columnist and author. What a talented chap.

Just think, when the cash starts rolling in I can splash out on scented oils (women love the sweet smell of Brut), white silk suits, red Maserati and a hand-carved, ebony Zimmer frame. Late nights and sleeping 'til lunch, lots of red meat, too, to keep up the stamina, vitamin pills, and posh holidays in Viagra Falls. Then I can buy a little black book and list all - both, knowing my luck - my clients. Steady tiger.

So I'm sitting here by the phone waiting, like that student, to be inundated. "Hello, Bill Bigolo Fun Services. How may I help you?" Only offers over £3.20 will be considered.

As this advert is anonymous, it will be interesting to see who applies. If my wife is among them, I'll give the shameless harlot a good talking to.

It just wouldn't be right. There I'd be, crawling home on all fours after hours of grafting trying to raise money for my loving family, just for her to spend it on pleasure with a bloke she does not even know.

Updated: 09:59 Tuesday, February 03, 2004