Something on the side?

Chris Huhne & Carina Trimingham Affair

Chris Huhne with his (soon to be ex) wife

There’s precious little mystery about the connection between power and sex. Sex is so often about control (or the relinquishing of that control) that it is natural that someone with power has natural sex appeal – regardless of whether they fit the usual standards of what is ’sexy’.

So Chris Huhne, a relatively well presented man in his middle fifties and a member of Britain’s politest and wettest political party was able to dangle a significant carrot in front of PR girl Carina Trimingham.

A pity then, that his wife of 26 years was kept in the dark about the whole thing. A classic politician’s affair. In a short statement, he said:

“I am in a serious relationship with Carina Trimingham and I am separating from my wife.”

Trimingham herself is a high flyer – with a string of high profile roles in the media already under her belt. Whether it will have been adequate preparation for the scrutiny she herself will come under over the coming weeks is unknown.

As is always the case with new governments, his affair has been more or less swept under the carpet and no-one is calling for his head. We’re pretty sure that had this come to light after years of government he’d have been hung alive.

We wish Huhne and Trimingham well, but remind her that when a man cheats, it is rarely once and rarely confined to one woman. If you’re thinking of having an affair, remember that you don’t have the protection of high public office and tread very carefully.

Rev Simon Lloyd – Banned from Preaching for Cheating

The close relationship between a religious minister and their congregation is sometimes too close for comfort. And we’re not just talking about those awful Catholic priests and the scandal of abuse that went unreported for decades.

Any situation where confessions and secrets are shared is one where the illicit love can blossom. Whether it is the close relationship that grow between co-workers or online friends, the logic of the human condition means that anyone can slip over the borderline while they are discussing things that only they are privy to.

So it was for Rev Simon Lloyd the 51 year old vicar of Minehead in Somerset, who was caught having an affair with one of his congregation. Now he is barred from serving as a priest for 4 years – but that’s the least of his worries, given his wife and young daughter.

Remember: having an affair can be fraught with peril for the unwary. But if you are going to stray, why not choose the path of relative anonymity and safety offered by online services such as Illicit Encounters? While there can be no guarantees, a relative stranger from the world of the internet poses less immediate threat than someone in your day to day social circle.

Stay safe, kids.

Ashley Cole a cheat. Who saw that coming?

London 24th February
Cheryl Cole has finally got around to separating from Ashley Cole. As a Leeds fan, I can’t say I’m too unhappy to see the weasel-faced little shitbucket getting his comeuppance for sleeping around. I mean… hell.. you’d cheat on Chery Cole?? Hello… mist mist… I am mad etc.

OK. Deep breaths. Onto the facts. Hot on the heels of John Terry’s confession of adultery, team mate Ashley Cole has been the subject of rumours before. In fact, Cheryl moved out of their home shortly after their marriage following the first public allegations of cheating. It seems that he’s blown his second chance after being caught in an affair whose details have yet to surface properly, but will no doubt involve machism

It’s perhaps no surprise to find that footballers are a veritable magnet for extra-marital sexual dealings. Young, rich and in their athletic prime, they are surrounded by an air of the disrepute as they lollygag around town, aflame with youth and barely attainable sex.

Of course, such people attract those who would use their own sexuality to get close to the money and the fame. The thrill of illicit sex leads people to risk everything for extra-marital sex with a perfectly average family man or woman, so the thought of a tautly muscled young sportsman sets feminine hearts pulsing. And with an array of beautiful young women prepared to fulfill any secret desires he might have had, who among is so simon-pure to be sure that we too wouldn’t fall prey to temptation?

Peter Ling and Linda Casey. Another Marital Affair. Another Murder.

Surrey, UK: February 19th

It started as lovers’ tiff in a woodland in Surrey, but ended in murder. The trial of Peter Ling has been told that the 50 year old Ling had been having an affair with 54 year old mother of three Linda Casey prior to the incident.

Both Casey and Ling had complicated personal lives. Casey had been married twice before and had separated from her husband but still lived with him at the same address. Her affair with Ling was one of two relationships she was carrying on.

It is alleged that it was Ling’s discovery that he wasn’t the only man in Casey’s life that led to the fatal argument, in which Casey was battered to death with a piece of flint, covered in leaves and left to decompose in the secluded woods.

John Coffey, prosecuting, told the courtroom how Casey would meet Ling on Thursdays and Saturdays and another man – named as Ian Tolfrey – on Friday. While Casey’s affair with Ling dated back as far as 2005, her daughter told the court that her mother had become “besotted” with Tolfrey, who she had only recently met.

The prosecution say that on the day of the murder, Ling and Casey had sex prior to a walk in the woods during which time Casey told Ling about Tolfrey. They allege that the discovery of a second man in her life made him ‘crazy’, saying that ’something inside him snapped… he picked up whatever was lying around and hit her with it”

Ling does not deny killing Casey and has entered a plea of manslaughter caused by provocation. The trial continues.

Of course, regular readers of these pages won’t be startled to see that extramarital sex can quickly spiral into murder. Like all such cases, complications arise and emotions get out of hand. We remind you to take precautions to keep yourself safe and trying to avoid emotional attachment remain the best protection against things getting far, far too heavy.

Malaysia Starts Caning Love Cheats

Malaysia: Feb 18th.

Three women have been caned having been found guilty of adultery by an Islamic court. Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein admitted that he wanted to draw attention to the case following an outcry over a similar punishment handed to a woman for drinking in August last year, which he claimed had been ‘overhyped.’

“People are saying that no woman has been caned before… today I am announcing that we have already done it”

The belief that public examples of justice are a necessary part of law enforcement – the so-called deterrent theory – is something that is common to lawmakers across the world. Calls for criminals to be used a ‘examples’ are hardly unknown in our own country, for example.

But in the Islamic world, the increasing stridency of such calls and the extreme nature of the punishments meted out mark the ascendency of a more extreme form of Sharia law. Stonings in Somalia have attracted much attention in recent months, but these represent just the tip of an iceberg.

Whether such punishments actually work to prevent a higher rate of adultery is really an unknown. Even when the penalty is death, it is apparent that women and men alike still fall prey to temptation.

What is certain is that the polarisation between the West and the Islamic world is brought into stark relief over the issue of affairs and adultery. Our own debate about Jon Terry’s affair centred on whether we believed he should be stripped of his captaincy of a football side. Aside from Arsenal fans, almost no-one called for him to be publicly whipped.

Jon Terry Has Been Having an Affair

John Terry. Equally at home at centre back or in your fiancee's privates

Ahhh… the perennial topic of celebrity cheating has a new figurehead today as England Captain John Terry has been caught knobbing Vanessa Perroncel – fiancee of team mate Wayne Bridge. Naughty naughty… especially given that Terry himself is married to his childhood sweetheart and a father of two.

We’ve seen time and again in these pages how the pressure cooker of emotional that an affair can unleash in even the most apparently stable of lives. What this all means for Terry and Bridge, who must share a dressing room having shared a girl is anyone’s guess.

One thing is for sure – the allure of a man such as Terry, captain of his country, athletic, inspiring, fabulously wealthy is such that even someone married to another multi-millionaire athlete can fall under that spell.

It also shows that man who has everything in the world – a stunning wife, money beyond reason, at the very pinnacle of his profession can still fall prey to the temptation of illicit, dangerous sex.

Whether you’re a housewife, doctor, golfer or footballer the pull of the dark magic of sex can override every rational calculation. Perhaps it can lead to fulfillment… but it can also lead to despair. Are you ready to have an affair? It’s not for me to say. But even the rich and the famous struggle to keep a lid on the emotions and sexual tension that it can unleash.

Be careful out there…

Angelina Jolie thinks marital affairs are OK?

In your face, Pitt - Angelina says she might shag me. Kind of.

The big-lipped star of such classic films as Gia (which, frankly, we only know about because it has a some sensational lesbian sex scenes) and.. err… Tomb Raider has told a German magazine that having affairs is no big deal.

“I doubt that fidelity is absolutely essential for a relationship. It’s worse to leave your partner and talk badly about him afterwards. Neither Brad nor I have ever claimed that living together means to be chained together. We make sure that we never restrict each other.”

I guess that’s fine and dandy when you’re rich as Croesus and have a great ass but it probably doesn’t translate well to normal people. It’s also not exactly a great message to pass onto the kids, I guess, because there’s no guarantee that they’ll end up with someone as ‘understanding’ when they come home reeking of other people’s sex.

On the plus side, I guess that means it’ll be fine to try out some chat-up lines on Angelina if she’s ever in town. I’m going for my all-time classic standby: “Are you a spanner? Every time I look at you my nuts tighten”. Whaddyathink?

New Hampshire to Legalise Adultery?

We’re used to seeing how some parts of the world still treat adultery as more than a mere moral failing and have actually gone so far as to criminalise it. Punishments vary from a mere two years porridge to a public stoning.

Despite the fact that most of us associate that kind of legal system with backwaters like Somalia, adultery is still on the statute book of several US states. New Hampshire’s own law is in the spotlight as the state plays host to a debate about whether the law should be repealed.

Over the years, the punishment against adultery has softened from ’standing on the gallows with a noose around your neck for an hour’ (WTF?) to 39 lashes to today’s more liberal $1200 fine.

Republican Timothy Horrigan is one of the most visible proponents of a change in law. His summary is crisp and eloquent:

“We shouldn’t be regulating people’s sex lives and their love lives. This is one area the state government should stay out of people’s bedrooms.”

According to experts from DePaul University of Law in Chicago, laws against adultery are very rarely actually used in the states following a Supreme Court decision in 2003 (Lawrence vs. Texas) which found that the state had no legitimate reason to intrude on personal lives.

Although that case centred on the case of two gay men who were arrested in their own bedroom for sodomy, the principle that the state cannot arbitrate sexual conduct has proved to influential. Much to the annoyance of conservatives such as Kevin Smith who makes the counter-argument.

“Even though this criminal law probably is not enforced right now and probably has not been enforced for some time, I think it’s important to have a public policy statement that says generally or in all situations adultery is not a good thing. And I think, by repealing that statute, you’re essentially diminishing the harmful effects of adultery.”

Personally, that reminds us of the use of laws here in the UK to “send out messages”. Like the continuing debate on the legalisation of drugs, there’s little evidence that merely having a law acts as any kind of deterrent. Hell, try screwing some guy’s wife in Somalia and you’ll find yourself getting the lash – or worse. Despite that, people still screw around. The law is a poor instrument to use to attempt to change personal morality.

Against the backdrop, campaigners in the state are stepping up their attempts to get the law repealed and make life a bit easier for people who want to have an affair.

“Unofficial death sentence” for having an affair

We’re kind of used to stonings and executions for people caught having affairs in lands where more extreme forms of Islam hold sway. What is more disturbing is a case from Spain – where a woman from the Catalonia region has been rescued from the hands of 9 men who had unofficially ’sentenced’ her to death.

The men allegedly held her in a remote farmhouse where she was awaiting her ’sentence’ when she engineered a chance to escape. A police spokeswoman told reporters:

“According to the victim, she was taken against her will and sentenced to death by a group of men. The men may have formed a court to apply sharia law.”

7 of the 9 are now in jail waiting to face trial for illegal detention and attempted murder, whilst 2 have been released on police bail. It’s pretty disturbing that attitudes like that have made the leap from Islamist parts of the world to the heart of modern Europe.

Still – at least Tiger Woods is probably safe. For now.

Tiger Woods was really putting it about!

Tiger Woods and some chick. Possibly his wife.. but who knows??

Wow. We had him down as a bread and butter, up at the crack of dawn on the links in plus-4s kinda guy. But now we know that his ‘extra practice’ was taking place nowhere near a fairway. In fact, you might say he was spending way more time in the rough.

And you can forget about a hole in one – he had a hole in 6! Six!!

That’s the number of women who have now gone public on affairs with Woods. As well as Rachel Uchitel and Jaime Grubb – Tiger was using his 1 wood on another Las Vegas party girl, a New York nightclubber and a waitress from Florida plus various other floozies who were dazzled by his putting ability.

(I can’t resist these gags – but fear not, only another couple of paragraphs to go!)

Anyway, this is the peril that serial offenders must run. Having an affair is one thing – and it’s conceivable you might get away with it – but trying to juggle 6 people at once is going to trip you up in the end.

And if you’re famous and the promise of a fat cheque is just a shag away, why wouldn’t you take advantage of some star’s loose fly.

Away from the joking though is the tale of a poor wife who married for love, has kept out of the spotlight and raised kids under the difficult circumstances of being married to one of the world’s most famous sportsmen. Spare a thought for her while you chuckle.