Many legends surround the pilgrim, mystic and faith-healer Grigori Rasputin, one-time advisor to the Romanov family and, as Boney M famously put it, 'Russia's greatest love machine'. However of all the famous fables, few are quite as long-winded or amusing as the stories directly concerned with the Mad Monk's gigantic genitalia. Since the Siberian's assassination in 1916 many people have claimed to own the penis of the dead man, with one prominent Russian doctor currently displaying what he upholds is the real Rasputin rooter in his museum in St. Petersburg.

Rasputin Exhibition Guided Tour

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Hang on a minute! How can anyone claim to have grabbed hold of such a schlong when surely the Russian mystic and royal advisor was buried with his tackle intact? Well not so according to some, who would have us believe that a maid came into possession of the prize privates after Rasputin's death. Some say that Rasputin was castrated by his assasins and that a maid found the dismembered... Errr... member when cleaning up the next day. Others claim that the canny wench, one of the hairy man's many bedtime conspirators, severed the sausage as a souvenir after the autopsy.

Whatever the (un)truth of the matter, the (alleged) fact is that Rasputin's ramrod was at large in the world. And much like in its making hay-day, the beast was wont to wander. In fact it next turned up in 1920s Paris, where a group of Russian ex-patriates worshipped the wonder weiner, certain that it would bring them fertility.

However, on finding out about this crazy cult, Marie Rasputin (the Mad Monk's daughter) expressed her extreme disapproval of such goings-on and demanded the return of daddy's dong. However, just when it seemed that the saintly shaft had finally shrunk from the annals, it popped up again in 1994 for a final hurrah.

It happened that Michael Augustine of California aquired the jolly John Thomas by accident when he purchased the effects of one Dr. Ripple in 1977. Dr. Ripple had collaborated with Marie Rasputin on a hagiography of her father, and so had inherited the whopper willy on Marie's demise. Or had she? Well after Michael Augustine sold the item in question to Bonham's auction house, tests were done and the would-be winkle turned out to be not a penis at all - but a dessicated sea-cucumber.

And that was the (bell) end of that? No, siree. The latest twist in the trouser snake saga involves eminent Russian doctor Igor Knyazkin, head physician of the Prostate Centre of Russia's Academy of Sciences. The good doctor proudly opened the nation's first Museum of Erotica in 2004 (in a sexual health clinic!) in order to display some of the 15,000 items he has amassed during his time as a sex objects collector. Amongst them - you guessed it - is none other than the alleged appendage of the Mad Monk himself.

An impressive 11 inches (nearly 30cm) long, and as thick as most men's wrists, the pickled pecker certainly measures up to the reports of Rasputin's raking rapier - which according to his daughter Marie (we're afraid to ask how she would know this!) was a whopping 13 inches long when pointing skywards.

So Dr. Knyazkin's exhibit looks the part - so to speak - but is it really the genuine johnson? Well, no tests have been conducted on the mummified monster, which raises one's suspicions, whilst the general consensus amongst zoologists is that the ostracised organ most likely once belonged to a horse or bovine animal...

Making the tool tale of Rasputin's penis, quite literally, a cock and bull story.

More sleaze Vicar?