The future of the French nation is in serious doubt if boffins don't get to the bottom of a serious decline in transmanche sperm production.

According to the BBC, the sperm content of Gallic nut butter fell by 32.3 per cent between 1989 and 2005, while "the percentage of normally shaped sperm fell by 33.4 per cent".

The results of the tests on 26,600 chaps' magic water are published in the Human Reproduction, where the authors issue "a serious public health warning".

Experts rolled out by the Beeb admitted they haven't really got the foggiest why French man oysters have suffered such a profound decline in fecundity.

The University of Edinburgh's professor Richard Sharpe offered: "Something in our modern lifestyle, diet or environment like chemical exposure, is causing this.

"We still do not know which are the most important factors, but perhaps the most likely is a combination, a double whammy of changes, such as a high-fat diet combined with increased environmental chemical exposures."

Well, we at El Reg have a couple of theories which we believe merit consideration. First up, it's possible that French testicles are feeling the long-term effect of their owner's penchant for riding bicycles while dressed in beret and stripey jumper and weighed down under strings of onions, resting only for robust three-hour lunches of stuffed songbirds marinated in Calvados.

Alternatively, we'd like to suggest a possible link between male fertility and a country's financial prosperity within the Eurozone. If they are indeed related, then the Greeks and Portuguese had better look to their 'nads pronto, while Germans should be able to make a lady pregnant merely by standing upwind of her. ®