Mrs Tarrant, who seems like a bit of all right in every sense of that term, sensibly described her husband as "a drunken twit". Even a journalist can spot that Mrs Tarrant, who is also a television presenter, has no future as a tabloid reporter. She is fatally encumbered by a sense of proportion.

However, that didn't stop us getting very excited. Chris Tarrant presents Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? , and this makes him a celebrity. A fortnight ago he was drinking in an establishment called the R Bar which is known to Esher locals, apparently, as Divorce Central. (Hey, that chain has stores in Dublin as well. ) Chris Tarrant was unfortunate enough to have his snogging of the mystery beauty, as the News of the World rather sweetly called her, witnessed by half of Esher. That's the other half of Esher, the half that phones the News of the World.

Mr Tarrant agreed that "Things are not good in the Tarrant household, it is fair to say." Chris Tarrant is not sleeping at the family home. The marriage has famously been described as stormy. The Tarrants have six children between them.

God knows people forget that they are married every day. Some people have to work very hard to forget that they are married, and some people find that amnesia just creeps up on them after their fifth drink.

If they are lucky a sober adult comes to take them home before they get into too much trouble.

(Chris Tarrant's step daughter, Fia, arrived at the bar to chopper him back to base. ) If they are really lucky no one rescues them and they go off and have a great time with a stranger, and have to work very hard to try and forget about that the next day.

Either way, who cares? Two years ago Ingrid Tarrant said it would not be the end of her marriage if her husband had an affair. "I couldn't bear to throw it all away for some silly woman, which is how I would see it, " she said.

This eminently sensible view caused outrage . . . not least in the breast of her husband. According to Ingrid Tarrant he told her, "I can't believe you said that, Ingrid. It's such a green light to have an affair. It's like you don't care."

I suppose he would have been happier if she had said she would kill herself if he betrayed her or . . . worse . . . that she would hire Princess Diana's lawyer and take away all his money before he could phone a friend.

Husbands don't like to think that their wives are not desperately interested in them. Mrs Tarrant was in France when the snogging of the (other) busty blonde occurred. She has complained that, since her husband gave up his job at Capital Radio, which necessitated that he leave the house at 5am, he has been at home getting under her feet all day. Most tellingly of all, Chris Tarrant turns 60 next month . . . a workaholic who does not need any more money, has an independent wife who is used to doing without him and time, to put it politely, hanging heavy on his hands.

This is all, of course, easy to say. There seems to come a time in every relationship when the woman has to decide whether to throw her husband's suits out the window (do t-shirts count? ) or to simply pour herself a drink and ponder the folly of the world. Mrs Tarrant seems to have taken the second option. It was only a snog, after all. And Mrs Tarrant has laid the blame firmly at the door of the female sex, which is where her otherwise admirable logic breaks down.

This whole 'Men are eejits and women are wicked temptresses' routine has grown weary with repetition. Yet it still seems to work.