And although I would be more of a Princess Margaret girl myself . . . come on, boozy, bolshy, and a battered beauty . . . even I have to recognise that $8m dollars is a lot of money.

At the risk of having an Austin Powers flashback, you do have the chance here to sit back and say, "Eight million dollars, " in a strange foreign accent. That was the income in the Clinton household last year. Hillary had to reveal it because she is a member of the United States Senate, and she is seeking re-election to the Senate, at the very least. Maybe more. Maybe she will run for president herself next time. At these wages you can see why.

We all know that the average woman's wages do not come anywhere near the wages of the average man . . .

oh, just for the usual reasons, you know: girlish shyness, tearful gratitude, not wishing to rock any sort of boat at all . . . but few of us have to live with the disparity in income tolerated by dear Hillary.

Because she earned about half-a-million dollars.

And her husband earned the other $7.5m. That must make for some interesting discussions over breakfast.

I mean, even Chelsea cannot be expected to absorb more education, and what else are they going to spend it on?

As we all know from Laura Bush and her slash-and-burn initiative on the Clinton decor installed at the White House, the Clintons are not going to invest too much in their home. Or homes.

Although Hillary seems to have spent some energy on transforming herself into a Martha Stewart lookalike . . . and rightly so, because Martha always looks cool, even in custody . . . one cannot imagine that the exercise was very expensive. How many wraps can one woman wear, after all? And, despite the fact that her hair has got much better, one head could not possibly absorb half-a-million dollars;

let alone $7.5m . . . even at the prices charged by hairdressers in Ireland.

Similarly, Bill could not throw it all away on green fees, no matter how many golf clubs he turned up at. I suppose the Clintons' spending must remain a mystery. But the interesting thing is that their income does not.

The income is derived from book royalties and fees for speaking engagements. Some enterprising reporters in the US have established that this works out at about $350,000 per speech for Bill Clinton. To which the only response is not so much, "What can you say?" as "What does he say?"

Bill flies around the world chatting to people like the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. We can only hope that they feel the better for it. That they feel important and included in a little gallop along the corridors of power in a virtual tour that makes Disney look restrained. That their party bags, after an evening with Bill, contain samples of the hem of his garment.

I mean how mad is the world of corporate entertainment anyway?

Those World Cup tickets squandered on empty executive boxes. Heli golf, which is more insane than a manicure party for the under 10s, and just that little bit more damaging to the environment. A Woodstock party for the managers of hedge funds. All these events are, if not exactly realities, at least events that occur regularly on this planet. And of course many of them are thrown for the benefit of charidees.

And there is Bill Clinton in the middle of it all, vacuuming up the cash, a sort of Jack Charlton for very, very senior executives. We do remember Jack Charlton and all his gigs, don't we? Honestly, when you think of the derision heaped on the Anne Summers party, which is positively austere in comparison.

For most of us Bill and Hillary's earnings are only an excuse for this type of idle speculation. But for some people they represent the future. We will have to wait a little while to see what can be earned, on the same strange circuit, by Tony and Cherie.