An Irishman's Diary

If you buy a ticket for the mid-week Lotto today, spare a thought for the inhabitants of the central Russian region of Ulyanovsk. They too may be entering a draw later this afternoon, but it won't be quite so simple. At least not for the female entrants, who will only know their numbers have come up if they find themselves in a maternity hospital in nine months' time.

For the third year running, September 12th in Ulyanovsk has been designated "Family Contact Day", an initiative designed to boost the region's flagging population. Locals have quickly dropped the euphemism and renamed it "Conception Day". But whatever you call it, the aim remains to produce a rash of babies born during Russia's national festival on June 12th.

This year there were 78 winners - up from 46 in 2006. They were born against a backdrop of patriotic festivity, and all earned prizes of one kind or another. To win the jackpot, however, requires more than mere fertility. A committee of judges sat for two weeks before rewarding the best parents with the grand prize of a locally-made sports utility vehicle, the UAZ Patriot.

But that's the glamorous end of the competition. Today begins the onerous task of organising entries. Employers are encouraged to give couples time off work to facilitate the effort.

Ulyanovsk is situated on a bend of the river Volga, whose length and voluptuous curves have made it synonymous with Mother Russia. But the region's main claim to fame is as the birthplace of one Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), after whom it is named. It was here that Mother Russia met the Father of the Revolution, and one thing led to another.

It's hard to know what Lenin would have made of the region's population initiative, though the plan does have faint echoes of his Marxist philosophy. The authorities are urging workers of the world to unite, after a fashion. Families are being encouraged to seize the means of reproduction. And there is even a Five Year Plan, or at least a four-year one, to improve childcare facilities. But the scheme has been criticised by at least one human rights activist, angry that the local government is dictating when children should be born.

There are certainly subtler ways to engineer a baby boom, though they can be expensive. Proven strategies range from having the Pope visit your country - an event that produced dramatic results here from June 1980 onwards - to hosting the World Cup. Germany's maternity units were bursting at the seams last February, nine months after the euphoria of the soccer tournament.

The snag is that a World Cup baby boom may depend on the performance of the home team. Der Spiegel reported the typical case of Pia Schmidt, who had been trying to get pregnant for two years and credited Germany's dramatic last-minute victory over Poland as the breakthrough. "I can remember it exactly," she said. "We had a barbecue, had invited friends, and everyone was in a good mood." Afterwards, she and her husband continued the celebrations in time-honoured fashion. The result (apart from 1-0 to Germany) was a daughter named Farina - born five weeks prematurely on February 11th and greeted as the country's first World Cup baby.

Low birth rates are the bane of many European countries, Italy included. If the French Paradox is that people in that country eat lots of rich food and don't get fat, the Italian Paradox is that people there love babies - as you'll know if you ever visit with one. They just don't have any.

There are many reasons for Italy's low fertility, which at current rates will shrink the population by 14 million over the next 40 years. But one big factor, I suspect, is that Italians have unrealistically high standards about who they will procreate with. In the country of La Bella Figura, the obsession with physical beauty is intense. And lovely as they are, many Italians struggle to come up to the mark.

One town, in the Marche region, has long ago stopped trying. Piobbico is home to the Club de Brutti, an international association of ugly people. The town prides itself as a global capital of ugliness and celebrates an annual festival - held last weekend - on the theme. Highlights of the event include the award of a "No-bel" prize, given only to those of outstanding unsightliness.

Of course, it's all a joke, as the club president Roberta Iacobelli explained to me by phone yesterday. The people of Piobbico are no more ugly than anywhere else in Italy. But the Club dei Brutti originated over a century ago as a dating agency for lonely locals. Since then it has expanded to embrace more than 30,000 members, including seven Miss Italys. There is no objective standard for membership. Self-proclaimed ugliness is enough.

The first thing Roberta wanted to know when I called is if there were many ugly people in Ireland. I assured her that we had to be seen to be believed - "if we didn't have beer, the birth rate would be disastrous" - and she was delighted. "We need more ugliness," she said. "It's a kind of biodiversity." There is a serious philosophy behind Piobbico's revolt against the cult of the body, which "destroys lives", says Roberta. "We're fighting for the beauty inside," she adds. The point was made on Sunday last by the unveiling in the town of a sort of monument to the unknown ugly person. "He is looking in a mirror, but the mirror only shows his inner self."