P-word top of the US ratings

HONEY, did you hear that? That TV presenter just said the P-word - four times.'' ''Then turn it over to another channel.'' ''I did. They're all saying it too.'' That domestic, prime-time exchange must surely have been taking place in many households in the United States, from the Florida beachfront to the Dakota wilderness. It has to have been, because rarely can one issue have dominated the country's manic television-watching habit to such a degree.

The strange thing is that this P-word (five letters, ends in s) never used to be the sort of thing you would hear (or see) on television here, apart from on the most daring cable channels in the 3am insomnia zone. Now we have the P-word for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, prime-time and late-night entertainment.

The cause of the mania is a demure, poker-faced Venezuelan immigrant called Lorena Bobbitt who has become famous for cutting off her husband John's P-word in the middle of the night.

Few people around the world can by now be unaware that after an alleged history of abuse by the ex-Marine, Lorena flew into a Latin rage last June after he came home drunk and, she says, forced sex on her. As he snored in his post-coital bliss, she came back from the kitchen, removed the organ, then drove off with it.

Luckily for John - although not many women in America may agree - police managed to retrieve the severed P-word at the roadside where she had thrown it, and doctors restored it to its proper home after nine hours of microsurgery.

John Bobbitt was later acquitted on charges of marital rape, but that has not stopped Lorena being heralded as Woman of the Year by the feminist movement.