Extra Kinky Sex Please, We're British

The headline in last Sunday's News of the World said it all: "F1 Boss Has Sick Nazi Orgy With 5 Hookers." Some translation may be in order: "F1" is Formula One, the auto-racing league that's big business everywhere but the United States. The league's president is Max Mosley, a wealthy Englishman who just happens to be the son of notorious British fascist Oswald Mosley. That's what makes a Nazi orgy all the more piquant. As for what sort of behavior makes a Nazi orgy sick (as opposed to healthy?), well, I'd rather not speculate.

But I don't need to. The News of the World details it all: how the 67-year-old Mosley spent five hours (!) whipping prostitutes, being whipped by them and, almost pedantically, engaging in sex acts. Some of the hookers were in striped outfits reminiscent of concentration camp victims. Mosley barked at them in German.

Mosley couldn't deny that this had taken place, since the tabloid had photos and posted a video of selected highlights on its web site (since taken down, interestingly, though you can find sanitized excerpts on YouTube). In his defense Mosley said he spoke German not because he was engaged in some sick, twisted Nazi fantasy, but because two of the prostitutes were German. Ah, that explains it all. He was just putting them at ease. (The really sick ones speak in Esperanto. "Frappi mi nu!" Or, "Hit me now!")

The battered F1 chief isn't taking this lying down. Or, rather, he did take his battering lying down, but now he's fighting back. This was a covert sting, he said. And perhaps he's right. I can see a bunch of News of the Screws editors kicking around ideas on who to entrap and how, and being enormously pleased with themselves at coming up with the concentration camp theme. Perhaps Max had ordered the randy schoolgirl fantasy package ("I'm sorry, Headmaster, I won't lose my homework again") but when confronted with Elsa She-Wolf of the SS he just went with the flow.

Mosley got a little early support from the Telegraph's motor racing writer, Kevin Garside, who said it shouldn't matter what Max got up to in private with his privates. But even he has backed down after Mosley's latest maneuvers. After the Toyota, Honda, BMW and Mercedes racing teams wrote a letter criticizing the F1 chief, Mosley responded by saying he wasn't surprised BMW and Mercedes would sound off, given their history "particularly before and during the Second World War." You'd think Mosley would've approved of that history.

So, a wonderful British sex scandal, involving what all good British sex scandals involve: wealth, aristocracy, the delicate sting of the lash, along with a side order of fascism.

I'm fascinated by the way Mrs. Mosley--for there is a Mrs. Mosley--is depicted in the News of the World article. Jean, his "devoted wife" of 48 years, is a saint. Guess where they met? At a fascist rally. Lovely couple.

BritNews RoundUp: Model Behavior
It would be hard to compete with that story, but I offer Naomi Campbell, who yesterday was arrested at Heathrow Airport after one of her bags was lost. She allegedly spit at a cop who had come to calm her down. This took place at Heathrow's Terminal 5 which was unveiled last week with much fanfare and then quickly descended into a sort of Dantean hell. Mere hours after it opened flights were being canceled because the baggage system was all screwed up. By mid-week more than 20,000 bags had been lost and travelers were told they could bring only carry-on luggage.

The British love a disaster of their own making--they wallow in their failures*--but this one was colossal. What's worse, we leave tomorrow for a week in Rome. Guess where we're flying from: Terminal 5.

*(A side note: When we visited Dover last week we toured the secret bunkers from which much World War 2 strategy was planned. It was from there that the Dunkirk retreat was overseen. I had always thought of Dunkirk as a disaster, a broken army barely escaping from the Nazis. But at Dover the evacuation of 300,000 soldiers is celebrated as a great victory. I can sort of see it, since it allowed the British to keep fighting long enough for us to come and save the day.)

As bad as it is for Max Mosley and Naomi Campbell and Terminal 5 travelers, it could be worse. They could be Mischa Barton and be fighting the heartache of "dimpled thighs." According to the Daily Mail, "the slender 22-year-old's extremely pale thighs already appear to have some issues with cellulite." The horror.

How much do you love your spouse? Would you save him/her from a crocodile? Norm Moreen did. The Australian didn't just watch as his wife, Wendy Pethereen, was grabbed by an 8-foot-long beast. He jumped in the water, poked out its eyes and rescued her. How long before crocodiles evolve goggles?

It might be time for Glenn Crawley to get a new hobby. The 52-year-old from Newquay in Cornwall enjoys sailing. That's a problem, since he doesn't really know how to sail. He has needed rescuing by the local lifeboat team so many times that authorities have banned him from launching his 16-foot craft until he learns to sail. Said Crawley: "I'm just being victimised because I go out there and push the limits - that's what I enjoy doing."

Gargoyle of the Week


This rather agitated fellow clings to the wall of the Career Services building on the Banbury Road. Can't find a job? Don't worry. I will eat you.

Arrivederci
Blogging may be a little sporadic next week, as the family will be taking a Roman holiday. And we're visiting Pompeii, though I hear it's kind of run down.

The End of the Affair(s)

Eliot Spitzer resigns and Michael Todd kills himself. Those are two different outcomes from alleged bouts of infidelity. Both are just plain sad.

Spitzer is the New York governor caught up in a high-class prostitution ring, though one wonders how a prostitution ring can be said to be "high-class." "High-price" maybe, given how much the Emperors Club V.I.P. charged. Todd was a high-ranking English police chief, head of the Greater Manchester force. He was found dead halfway up a Welsh mountain, a half-empty bottle of alcohol beside him. He may not have meant to kill himself, but the Daily Mail suggests he was distraught that an alleged affair with a "high-flying married mother-of-two" was about to be exposed. (What is it with the "high-" prefix lately? Can no one or nothing just be normal any longer?)

Spitzer apparently dithered over resigning. It would have been interesting--or at least novel--to see him argue for keeping his job. "You know what," he could have said, "I behaved like a jerk. I may have broken the law. But I think I'm a pretty good governor and, after chemical castration, I will go back to doing the people's business." But, no, that really wouldn't have worked. The alleged scale of his subterfuge was just too much. (Slate has a great video showing the different ways politicians 'fess up to their indiscretions.)

And for those who might argue that Spitzer was wrapped up in a victimless crime, just read about "Kristen," the call girl who serviced Client 9. Ashley Alexandra Dupré sounds like the sort of fragile, damaged person you'd expect would end up a hooker, not the self-actualized feminist that some TV producers serve up. Spitzer's conversation with his teenaged daughters--the oldest not much younger than Dupre--must have been the most uncomfortable of his life.

And what of Chief Constable Todd? I wonder whether exposure of his alleged affair really would have ended his career. It wasn't illegal. (I also wonder who he worried would expose it. Which tabloid was poking around?) It sounds as if he may have suffered from depression, which could have made him feel that walking up a Welsh mountain in a storm with a bottle of gin was the only recourse he had left.

I'm not sure there any any lessons to be learned from either of these events. It's not like anything new happened. As I said, it's the shamed politician who doesn't resign that would be the real story, man bites dog instead of man behaves like dog. For as Nick Lowe sang:
All men, all men are liars;
their words aren't worth no more than wornout tires.
Get rusty pliers to pull his tooth,
Cause all men are liars and that's the truth.

Lust Potion #9, or 'Spitzer? I Don't Even Know Her'

I imagine not much work got done in New York yesterday, except for in the newsroom of the New York Times. The rest of the state, and much of the country, was obsessed with the amazing public downfall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer. Early headlines on the Times' web site made it sound as if Spitzer was perhaps running a call girl ring, and that seemed more believable than the crusading former attorney general as a customer ("involved" with the ring? "linked to" the ring? what did that mean, I wondered). But, no, Spitzer was apparently a client of the Emperors Club V.I.P. escort service.

That name has a certain resonance. Do men willing to pay $5,000 for a prostitute consider themselves modern Caesars, able to flout the law with impunity?

This is no doubt a tragedy for Spitzer's family, but it's the sort of story journalists love: a total bombshell that can be gleefully picked apart over the coming weeks. Eventually we will know more about Eliot Spitzer's sex life than we know about our own. (But pity the poor reporters who have to nibble the less interesting aspects of the story, such as this article from the Globe and Mail on how the scandal will affect the troubled bond insurance market. Who cares? Tell us why Client 9 was "difficult"! Did he like to keep his socks on or hum the "Good Times" theme song?)

The Post's Hank Stuever has a nice essay about the appeal of the hotel room to men. "Men lose their minds in hotels." Hotel rooms are like mini-Las Vegases: What happens in Room 871 stays in Room 871.

Unless you're a politician.

When will politicians learn that they will always get caught? Is it only politicians that we care about? If a Hollywood exec or a corporate CEO were to be revealed as an Emperors Club customer, would we expect him to resign? Then again, it's the hypocrisy that bugs us. If you're charged with prosecuting prostitutes don't use them.

Washingtonpost.com's Mary Ann Akers points out that Washington's prostitutes apparently weren't good enough for Spitzer. He preferred to order one from New York. Not only did that increase the tawdry transaction's carbon footprint--the train, the taxicabs--it was just more disrespect for my birthplace. First we can't get a voting representative in Congress or a commemorative state quarter and now this....

It seems to me that British political sex scandals have cooled off lately. We Americans used to find them so entertaining, especially since they involved Soviet spies and riding crops. The tabloids here are still full of illicit sex but it's usually about footballers or pop stars. The gutter press seems to want photogenic people for their scandals, not pasty-faced politicos. Being under an under-secretary just doesn't sell like it once did.

Spitzer has to resign, right? There's no way he can govern after this. He doesn't strike me as the kind of man to do a full Oprah: tearfully confessing and begging forgiveness on national TV. I think he'll silently slink away. And we'll await the next politician who thought he could get away with it.

Media Monday: I Divorce Thee

Proof is what separates good journalism from crappy journalism and so let me retroactively apologize for my blog post of a few weeks ago where I criticized British newspapers for printing questionable stories based on self-serving research (last item). I didn't include any specific examples.

I knew, though, that one would come along eventually and sure enough a nice illustration appears in the Guardian today. The story, by legal editor Clare Dyer, is headlined "Mid-life crises pushing couples to divorce, survey of lawyers finds." The article begins: "Growing numbers of people are divorcing because of 'mid-life crisis,' a survey of 100 leading divorce lawyers in England and Wales reveals today."

The quote marks around "mid-life crisis" are just one clue to how wispy this story is. "Mid-life crisis"? That's not a scientific term, not even as precise as "adultery," which at least is a definable act. And in fact infidelity was the most common cause of marriage breakdown--"for the survey's fifth year running"--with "mid-life crisis" on the rise and coming in second. Family strains were third most common.

Funnily enough, there were no quote marks around "family strains." Would a mid-life crisis cause a family strain? Could a family strain lead to infidelity? The story is a mess all around, the data useless for anything more than a frosty, intraspousal breakfast table discussion. Extramarital affairs as a reason for divorce were listed in 29 percent of cases, down from 32 percent a year ago. Surely those three percentage points are within the margin of error. And is that 29 percent of all U.K. divorces or just 29 percent of those reported by "100 leading divorce lawyers in England and Wales"? Why even bother to release something so squishy?

The reason becomes apparent in the third paragraph: The "survey" comes from chartered accountants Grant Thornton and the first quote, in the fifth graph, is from the head of the firm's London matrimonial practice. To me the survey looks like an ad for Grant Thornton wrapped up in the guise of news. And the Guardian leapt on it like Michael Jackson on a Cub Scout.

They're not the only ones. I'm sure by day's end the story will be everywhere over here. That was the case with previous iterations. Last year's news was that private investigators were being hired more often in divorce cases. In 2005 the BBC headlined its story: "Affairs 'main reason for divorce.'" Browsing the coverage of this dubious survey from the last few years we can assemble an Infidelity Metric. Here are the percentages of marital breakdown caused by affairs:
2007: 29%
2006: 32%
2005: 29%
2004: 27%
2003: 29%

To me the headline isn't that there's been an increase in mid-life crises--whatever they are--but that, amazingly, every other year exactly 29 percent of divorces are due to affairs. According to 100 leading English and Welsh divorce lawyers, anyway.

I called Grant Thornton to ask if this annual survey wasn't just a big ad for its services. Of course not, said spokesperson Dee Crooks. "If we were a law firm, you could argue it was 'Come to me, come to me,'" she said. "But [clients] have got to go through a lawyer. We have relationships with lawyers, which is why we survey lawyers. We’re really down at the end of the line. We’re accountants. "

Okay, so a little story like this isn't the end of the world. God knows I've put lipstick on a pig before. But the practice is so common over here that you might think editors would simply bin these press releases when they come in, even those impressively marked "Embargoed until 00.01 hours, 25 February," as this one was. I think stories like this would fall under the "churnalism" heading Nick Davies is on about.

Why Newspapers Are Dying
British presswatcher Adrian Monck had an interesting post a few days ago about why newspapers are withering. It has nothing to do with journalism, he said: "The problems journalists are confronting are to do with the changing social habits of people who once purchased newspapers and were thus appealing to advertisers."

I can't tell whether he thinks the product needs changing--he sort of suggests it doesn't--but surely he doesn't believe we can change peoples' social habits instead?

Friday Grab Bag: Wet, Wet, Wet Edition

I understand that it snowed in Washington yesterday: lovely, sticky snow, up to six inches deep in places. We love to complain about snow in Washington, about how it snarls our traffic, springs our students from school, inspires manic trips to the supermarket. And yet I love it. Or, loved it. The chances of a little snow visiting Oxford fall somewhere between slim and "When an English tennis player next wins Wimbledon."

Instead, we get English sunshine. We've had gallons of the stuff this week, enough to cause flooding in some of the places that were flooded last summer. ("Let's see that war spirit again," reads the headline over today's Oxford Mail editorial, exhorting readers to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of the deluge. I expect we will soon be taking in some ragamuffins from East London to keep them safe from the Blitz.)

The English take rain as a matter of course. It runs off them like, well, like water off a duck's back. They grin and bear it. Well, bear it, anyway. They're not really a grinning people. I've become stoic myself, except when it comes to cycling. I hate biking in the rain. Unless you wear a rubber suit that you strip off at your destination, you will arrive wet. And because my bicycle seat seems to be made out of a sponge, even when it's stopped raining--even after I've squeezed the seat as much as I can to wring the water from it--I spend the day walking around with a moist crotch. ("Moist Crotch"? Wasn't that Spinal Tap's under-appreciated seventh album?)

Of course, what I should do is wrap a plastic shopping bag over the seat, like so:


That's what most cyclists in Oxford do. For some reason, I can't bring myself to do that. I just tell myself that it will stop raining soon.

The Darfur Flies
At any one time, dozens of lectures on a variety of arcane topics are being offered in Oxford. That's one of the great things about the university and about my fellowship: I can drop in to whatever I like and fill up the old brain pan. Yesterday I attended one on Darfur, co-hosted by my fellow Fellow Meera Selva. Meera covered Africa for the Independent and wrote about the troubled area of Sudan.

Like many Oxford lectures, it attracted a diverse group: students, academics, journalists, former aid workers, people interested in free cookies. Most interesting of all, though, were the four or five officials from the Sudanese embassy in London, who sat in the front row, vibrating with anticipation. As soon as the lecture was over and question-time started, the communications minister leapt to his feet. The Darfur crisis was misrepresented in the Western media he said. How come no one writes about the good things happening in Sudan? I'm sure President Bush feels the same way about Iraq. What about all the people who aren't being killed every day?

BritNews RoundUp
A tourist council in Suffolk is reprinting one of its brochures after someone noticed that the cover has a photo of a girl picking her nose.

Which married media star has fathered a love child? This column in the Daily Mail doesn't say. But he ought to be pretty easy to find. According to the photo that accompanied the story, the father has very dark skin and a big question mark in the middle of his head:



The dirtiest hotel in Britain is in Oxford, according to users of TripAdvisor.com. The Nanford guest house was described as "squalid," "horrendous" and a "total and utter dump." The owner of the guest house is keeping that war spirit: "I don't give a damn what TripAdvisor says," he told the Guardian.

Cats in the news, Part I: A man in Wales was arrested for murdering his girlfriend after police secretly taped him confessing to his cats. "I don't know if they can prove it or anything," he allegedly said to one. Unclear whether the cat is cooperating with police but given how duplicitous they can be, I wouldn't doubt it.

Cats in the news, Part II: A Bournemouth cat named Sgt. Podge takes a mile-and-a-half walk every night and waits in the morning in the same place to be picked up in the car by its owner. "I know where to collect him - as long as he's not wandering the streets," said owner Liz Bullard. Great. A cat with a carbon pawprint.

And just so my dog Charlie doesn't get jealous: A Hungarian scientist has developed a computer application that can translate a dog's barks. Sadly, it translates them into Hungarian, and what good is that?

Gargoyle of the Week



Sorry, haven't the slightest idea where I saw him, but he reminds me of Tom Hanks.

Have a safe and happy weekend.

Friday Grab Bag: Wrinkly Face Edition

BritNews RoundUp
The British media, the Daily Mail in particular, love tallying the toll that age takes on the formerly beautiful. Every other day, it seems, there's a story about how absolutely awful it is that a one-time Bond girl or supermodel has developed cellulite or crow's feet. Look how the mighty have fallen, the paper seems to gloat. Strangely, the related fascination of the Mail is at botched plastic surgery. If you're a celebrity, you're either punished for getting older or you're punished for trying not to look any older.

Comes now Britt Eklund, whom the Mail says has "trout pout." What's that, you wonder? It's collagen implants that make the lips pucker like the face of a fish. The Mail helpfully includes photos of other actresses suffering from the same ailment, including Meg Ryan.

I love the headline on this Daily Mail story: "I Lost Everything After Succumbing to the Office Piranha's Seduction." (Trout? Piranha? What is it with the Mail and fish?) It's the sad tale of a married father of two who...well allow me to let him explain: "I was reeled in hook, line and sinker by a woman who deliberately set out to find a husband. She knew I was married and that my wife was pregnant, but she still targeted me for herself. She seemed happy to try to seduce me and then destroy my marriage in the hope that I would marry her."

And guess what? Her diabolical plan almost worked! Britain has banned smoking in pubs and hunting foxes. Surely Parliament can introduce legislation banning office piranhas.

According to today's Daily Mail, 1,000 binge drinkers are hospitalized every day in Britain. According to today's Daily Telegraph, 500 marijuana users are hospitalized every week in Britain. By my rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations, by 2046 every person in Britain will have been hospitalized for one or the other.

In other news, a dog in Wigan missed his late feline friend so much that he dug up his dead body and carried it into the house. Reports the Times: "Arthur [the cat] is now reburied in a secure grave. And Oscar [the dog] has a new playmate, a kitten called Limpet." I'm guessing Limpet sleeps with one eye open.

According to the Telegraph, a chapel outside Manchester is going to be heated with power obtained by burning corpses at a nearby crematorium. Ashes to ashes, dust to BTUs.

Finally, if you're flying to Fiji, make sure to ask for a seat in the "non-urinating" section: "Urinating Soldier Blamed for Falling Fiji Tourism."

Gargoyle(s) of the Week
This window is absolutely encrusted with the guys:


I really should write down the names of where I take these pictures. I've forgotten where I took this one. It might have been Christ Church. Definitely in Oxford, though.

You know what would be really funny: if inside this building you could see the bodies of these 13 figures, crouched over on all fours, their heads stuck out through the wall.

It's a rainy day here in Oxford, a day to go to the library, if only going to the library didn't involve going out into the rain. Whatever the weather in your neck of the woods, have a great weekend.

The Goings-On at Number 28

You never really know your neighbors, do you? When I saw a young woman with a latte in hand going into a house around the corner from ours a few weeks ago, I assumed she was a student. "Ah," I said to myself. "She must be going to a tutorial in the home of a kindly old Oxford don. Or perhaps she is an exchange student working on her English."

"Working on her English." Yeah, I suppose you could say that. The lack of books should have been a tip off. For the woman was apparently engaged in the world's oldest profession, and no, I don't mean Amway.

The tipoff came courtesy of an anonymous flier that blanketed the neighborhood last week: tucked under windshield wipers, scattered on the sidewalk. There is a brothel at No. 28 Middle Way, it announced. Perverts are coming into our neighborhood. Something must be done.

And something was done. Yesterday around 2 p.m. the police burst into No. 28. According to the Oxford Mail: "Inside they found three prostitutes and a middle-aged man who were all quizzed by officers. [An aside: 'Quizzed'? As in, 'Who won the 1977 EuroVision Song Contest?'] A woman was arrested on suspicion of assisting in running a brothel and was last night in custody."

"Sex for Sale in 'Much Loved' Suburb" read one of the headlines in the Mail, which, incidentally, carried an advertisement for the brothel. Sasha & Friends it was called. There was even a web address which I, die-hard investigative journalist that I am, checked out.
"The offers on this and following pages are for time and companionship only," the site says. "If anything else happens it is a matter of coincidence and choice between consenting adults."

What a coincidence! I gave you 70 pounds and now you're having sex with me!

My Lovely Wife was walking the dog when the raid occurred yesterday. We'd been surprised by the flier (this place is literally halfway down the block and around the corner from us) and so were extremely curious. We'd look at the recycling No. 28 put out as we walked past, trying to decide what it meant. Hmmmm, prostitutes drink a lot of bottled water. And they don't care to separate glass from plastic.

Yesterday Ruth called me from her walk and I rushed over there to rubberneck. I stood on the sidewalk across the street. There wasn't much to see. The employees had already been removed and a half-dozen cops milled about near three police vehicles. I watched as two elderly women walked down the pavement towards me. As they drew near one said to me, "Should we ask what's going on?"

A brothel's just been raided, I answered.

"Ohhhhh," she said, in that Monty Python-in-drag voice that all English old ladies possess. And then the pair toddled on.

Friday Grab Bag

Tattoos! Tea! Gargoyles!

The Illustrated Idiot
Like many people--and like most journalists--I am prey to crippling bouts of self-doubt. Am I living a virtuous life? Am I a good writer or am I a fraud? Am I kind enough to my family and other animals? Just as I'm rolling into the fetal position (or what the British disturbingly call the "foetal position") I'm rescued from the abyss by the happy realization that as bad as I may be, there's someone out there worse than I.

This week it was a Daily Mail story about man in Wales who got a life-sized tattoo of his wife and two daughters on his back. It's not a very handsome tattoo--it looks like one of those sterile, computer-generated designs you can get inked in frosting atop a sheet cake--but he's not a very handsome man. Perhaps that's why, not long after Alan Jenkins had endured the painful tattoo process, his wife left him for a "Latvian hunk she had met at work."

A family torn asunder. Sad. And yet the photos accompanying the article reduced any sympathy I may have had. The first photo is of the shirtless cuckold surrounded by his wife and daughters. Taken pre-split perhaps? No, because the second photo is of the adulterous wife and her Latvian hunk, and she's wearing the same outfit. The pix were obviously taken at the same time. Ditto for the story in the Sun. (Britain's tabloids will not be beaten when it comes to tattoo-related articles.)

The family gathered one last time for their sordid 15 minutes of fame. How gross is that? As we ponder the excesses of the media, let's not forget the excesses of the public.

It's in the Bag
Time for another study on the beneficial effects of tea, this one touted in a USA Today story. According to the article, drinking tea inhibits the growth of human cancer cells implanted in mice. Ingesting or applying green tea polyphenols protects against skin cancer in mice.

I don't think any of these findings will change my intake--about one or two cups a day. The real message is, if you are a mouse you really ought to try to get your paws on some tea.

Claws Celebre
To update my Sept. 25 item about the BBC's cat-naming controversy: In a letter published in the Guardian, the BBC's children's programming director said there was not a suspicious surge of votes for "Cookie," nor was there the belief that the name had a sexual connotation.

Over the weekend a letter-writer to the Daily Mail speculated that the discomfort over the name must have come from a joke that was "popular in the Seventies" in which a man tripped over a cat and uttered the Spoonerism "Cooking fat!"

I dave my houbts.

Blog-Rolling
At least two of my fellow Fellows here at the Reuters Institute have blogs: Abel Escudero Zadrayec and Wang Yao. Too bad I can't read them, they being in Spanish and Chinese, respectively.

By the way, Wang Yao said he gets around 200,000 hits on his blog. If I can siphon off just a few of those.....

Gargoyle of the Week
I think I snapped this one at Christ Church College:


We should have a caption contest. My entry: "What's that smell?"

Have a great weekend.

Dirty Laundry

Someday I'll have more to say about the Daily Mail, Britain's most popular newspaper. Today, though, I want to concentrate on a story it's following about an inquest into the demise of one Andrew Chubb, a judge who in 2001 burned to death inside a shed behind his country house in Chard, Somerset.

This story has so much going for it: The name "Chubb." The name "Chard." The country house. The mistress. The laundry. It positively reeks of Englishness, crying out for a Miss Marple to start poking around in the ashes.

Wait a minute, I hear you asking, the mistress? The laundry? What's up with that?

In a nutshell, shortly after Judge Chubb told his wife of 34 years, Jenny, that he'd been having an affair and wanted a divorce, 20-foot, gas-fueled flames were engulfing their garden shed. Judge Chubb had the misfortune to be inside. As he was being transformed into a human bratwurst, it was reported, his wife calmly took the washing in off the line. "If her husband was in the shed, why was she bothered about the washing?" said neighbor Peter Evans, who testified at the inquest.

Why indeed, Mr. Evans (as Miss Marple might say).

Jenny Chubb received an insurance payout and moved to Australia, where she now is dating Michael Palin, or a man that looks incredibly like him.

But let us pause for a moment. I will not condemn Jenny Chubb merely for taking the washing in off the line while her husband was roasted to death. Since we've moved to England we have become obsessed with laundry and making sure it gets dry. When I say "we" I mean My Lovely Wife, for I have studiously avoided learning how to operate the incredibly complicated washing machine nestled in the kitchen. All I know is, Ruth does the laundry every single day. And since she dries it on the line, she is incredibly attuned to the vagaries of the weather, ready to whip the clothes down at a moment's notice.

A laundry-related compulsion is not a capital offense in this country. It is a smart bet.

What I found oddly touching about Andrew Chubb's final hours on this Earth was this line from the Mail story: "The 58-year-old father of three died in a fireball less than 90 minutes after telling his wife he wanted a divorce and walking out to mow the lawn."

Emphasis added. What a sad domestic tableau. The bad news delivered--and surely Mrs. Chubb must have suspected: the long hours at work, the weekend travel to "conferences," the hushed mobile phone conversations, the stray hair picked from his coat jacket--Mr. Chubb set about tidying his garden. Why, if the tables had been turned--if it had been Mrs. Chubb inside a burning shed--I'm sure he would have done the same, calmly cutting the grass in the summer sunshine.