Oh Mickey, what a pity

There's always been something of a double standard when it comes to gender issues. Sexually aggressive women are all too easily dismissed as sluts, whereas men are proud to declare their propensity for promiscuity.

So give it up for Mickey Rourke, whose Lazarus-like comeback continues, with the announcement that his superstar virility saw him bed 14 different women in a single night.

Despite the fact that his ill-advised foray into boxing and a hunger for reinvention have resulted in him resembling a partially defrosted meatloaf, Mickey knows how to attract the ladies, and has a voracious appetite for the 'nasty' that would put Caligula to shame.

Just let those numbers sink in for a minute. 14 women - one night. Chances are, they were lined up outside his hotel room, like supermarket customers proudly brandishing their deli-service tickets.

I'm prepared to bet that it wasn't quite the night to remember for most of them. In the words of Evelyn Waugh, the last few to be serviced by the Kwik-Fit of sexing would be lucky to end up with a 'handful of dust'.

There was a time when Mickey Rourke was a thing of beauty, with a dark, brooding sensuality that practically leapt off the screen. But a self-destructive streak that made Robert Downey Jr look like Chris Martin got the better of him and he spent the best part of a decade making direct-to-video movies, hitting his lowest point in a TV movie about Shergar.

Thankfully, directors like Robert Rodriguez and Darren Aronovsky saw past the bloated face and stretched features that made Mickey look like a bad Sky News reconstruction of himself. Now he's riding high on a different kind of reinvention, having bagged a plum role as the lead villain in Iron Man 2.

Although Mickey may have the constitution of an ox, and the genitals of the Duracell Bunny, even his appeal has its limits. It turns out that glamour model and, erm, I'm not sure what else to describe her as, Abi Titmuss, found that the word "no" was in her vocabulary, when she rejected the lumpen-faced lothario's advances.

Still, let's just be glad that there's currently no Mrs Rourke. Because, as Mickey himself recently admitted, even "WAGs get an easy time - they should try living with Hollywood hellraisers." Cheryl and Toni, let that be a lesson to you.