Married thespian Dmitry Nikolaev, 30, had his plums pinched after being approached by the attractive woman in a local bar as he relaxed after performing at a nearby theatre. He flirted with her, and shortly afterwards they hailed a taxi and went to the sauna.

“They kissed and had some more beer and after that the actor remembers nothing,” said a police source, as reported in the Daily Mail. Dmitry’s next recollection is waking up at a bus stop the following day in acute pain and with blood on his trousers.

He was rushed to hospital where incredulous doctors told a shocked Dmitry that he’d been drugged and his crown jewels skilfully removed by an expert in castration. “I thought it was just a cut but doctors told me my testicles had been removed,” he told LifeNews.Ru.

Russian police believe Dmitry was targeted by a ruthless criminal gang who spiked his drink before harvesting his gonads to sell on the black market. The gelded actor spent hours in intensive care as doctors undertook an operation to close the wound at the site of his lost orbs.

The theft of the testicles was expertly performed and the skin had been cauterised – leading surgeons to suspect that the nugget nabber may have been a doctor or even a vet.

And just as you think it couldn’t get any worse – poor Dmitry was still faced with the ever-so-slightly awkward task of explaining his loss of assets to Mrs Nikolaev. Nut nice…