IT’S NO secret that most blokes let their mobile phones get a bit grubby. Smears. Fingerprints. Men are not fond of housework, so phone-dusting? Don’t think so. They’d rather swipe than wipe. But it’s time to ratchet up the suspicion, ladies. That guy on the train next to you…with the spatters on his phone…what exactly ARE they? Just the usual, like fingerprints of man moisturiser that isn’t marketed as moisturiser, but grit salve or scruffing lotion? Sauce from lunch? Dressing from a posher lunch? Oh, he’s just dropped his phone. Why exactly was it slippy? Should you be a good person and pick it up?

No.

Here’s what’s just changed. A Japanese app has come out, on which men can check their masculinity. It’s not a quiz entitled: How Blokey Are You, the results of which you publish on Facebook. It’s an app to count sperm: called Seem, it has a logo that uses ‘e’ with a long tail. The Seem app is part of a kit which includes a tiny lens you attach to your smartphone. After the app is downloaded, you can take a video using this lens. Then, boy-hands be busy, for once not on video games, and you have the stars of your video. Your sperm. Take a small amount, dab it on the phone and get filming. Yes, dab it on the phone. The lens records your sperm, the app analyses the images, and an algorithm gives you a count. The important thing about this video is not how many likes it gets, but how many sperm it holds. Not how many followers you have, but how many followers you could create.

So, you wonder, why? Japan, it appears, is suffering from a fertility problem, yet men are highly resistant to attending fertility clinics. They are far fonder of attributing problems with conception to their wives – ‘it’s not me, it’s you’, further down the relationship line. So this app is an attempt to help. But does it, ladies? Does it?

Issues, as I see them:

Henceforth, the biggest worry is not what you might see on a man’s screen – like Whatsapps to another woman - but what you see on the man's screen.

The question: Can you get pregnant from a toilet seat, is augmented by can you get pregnant from a man’s iPhone?

Given over-sharing culture, how long before some of these videos get posted online? Virility Vines?

Men are not interested in your number, but their number.

You can never accept a hankie. What if he has been doing some phone-dusting?

But then you think, it’s in Japan. Sure, sushi broke the cultural barrier, but digital sperm count apps? Never going to happen. Ha, I disagree.

This is an opportunity that combines virility with tech. Show me a man who can resist that. I don’t need an app to know the count won’t be high.

So, next time a bloke hands you his iPhone, so you can input your number, grip the phone by its side.

And if you’re reading this on a phone, and the text after the first paragraph is blurry, I hope it’s because you haven’t yet paid your subscription. Not that there is something daubed on the screen….