Men are rubbish at looking after themselves. If something's troubling them, most grin and bear it rather than see their GP, and that goes double if the problem's "personal". But what if it could be typed out online? Would they come out of their shells?

That's the thinking behind Man MOT, a virtual surgery set up by the drugs company Pfizer with the support of various worthy organisations such as Heart UK and the National Obesity Forum, and where every Monday evening, shy or time-poor men can now chat with a doctor. Also on hand are non-medical experts, mostly specialising in sex or relationships.

Seema Jani is one of the service's GPs (her day job is at a surgery in London). When the service launched a fortnight ago, she says, "The men were quite candid about what was worrying them." Her longest conversation lasted 30 minutes.

For many users, the attraction will be anonymity. There's no signing up, no logging in. If you don't want to provide a name, the doctors will simply address you as Guest.

The downside is that you won't get a formal diagnosis nor prescription.

I visited the site on its opening night and, despite the involvement of Pfizer, which makes Viagra, I didn't see a single ad for little blue pills. Instead, Jani gave me advice about a cold and, encouraged by her screenside manner, I asked her – as Guest – about my alcohol intake. I had a sneaking suspicion it was too high.

So she quizzed me about how much I drank (I'm not repeating it here), how long that had been the case (ditto), whether I'd ever given up (yes!), whether booze had ever affected my work or relationships (not as far as I knew), or caused me any health problems.

"No doubt your intake is too much," Jani concluded, "but you can act now to stop the damage." And she sent me a link to a website that might help. Scrolling down, I found a section called The Problem of Denial.