Butcher Jon West, aged 43, has concocted a ‘saucisson d’amour’ in the hope of giving loved-up guys and girls something  meatier to get their teeth into this year.

While some might see Valentine’s Day as a blasé exploitation of the merits of chocolate, petal-bearing plant life and cards littered with the worst of both saccharinity and innuendo, one Cambridge scientist-turned-butcher is going to great lengths to restore the sizzle of the 14th February; thick, juicy, meaty lengths.

With a blend of 50% pork, 20% chicken and 20% rabbit, Jon gets his sausage up (to standard) by adding exotic aphrodisiacs: champagne, cocoa nibs and even oyster essence. Viagra was even considered as an ingredient, but its properties deserted the sausages and stopped them from coming together.

Mr West, who is now in his sixth year as a butcher based at ‘West & Son: The Art of Meat’ after stepping down from his lab position, attributes his passion for the product to the desire to put ‘a smile back on the common man’s face’.

‘I decided the best way to cheer up the British man would be with an aphrodisiac sausage - what more could you want. Everyone knows that butchers make the best lovers, so we have harnessed our meat-mojo to create a sausage that will aid the common man in the affairs of the heart’.

Despite this evident pride, the artisan butcher has no intention of roughly stuffing his love sausage down the town’s collective throat: there is a disclaimer for willing customers permitting them to buy a maximum of eight at a time, and over 65s are instructed to consult their doctor before eating for fear of any health risks. Under 18s are banned from buying them altogether.

The potency of his sausage is not the only concern, with the mixture alone apparently having a ‘residual effect’ on the staff during production, the strength of which lead them to hang pictures of mature female politicians on the walls to calm them down.  Margaret Thatcher was unavailable for comment on this revelation, but Jon testifies that he and his ‘exhausted’ wife Clare, 40, ‘certainly enjoy them’, evidently making them top bangers.

The sausages will be on sale until the 14th at £8.20 a kilo from Jon’s shop, leading some students to speculate as to whether their performance will justify their price, with responses ranging from hopeful to sceptical:

Anonymous Student 1: 'Valentine’s Day sausages? They’ll definitely help mathmos and compscis win over their beloved, for sure.'

Anonymous Student 2: '… SAUSAGE!'