Terry Prone: The long and messy history of the condoms we now take for granted

On this day in 1988, the Virgin Store in Dublin started to sell condoms for the first time — and it was illegal until five years later

There are a plethora of urban myths surrounding condoms, including the one that said one in every thousand was punctured to ‘give God a chance’.

Here is a unique claim to fame. Here, in fact, are two claims to fame likely to be unequalled.

The first is that I probably know more about condoms than any reader of this paper. The second is that I have probably owned more condoms at any one time than any reader of this paper.