Dispirit Housewives
YOU can stop asking questions about what people are excitingly calling “Chris Tarrant’s affair with a blonde woman”.
We are now down to the facts part of the show, when the money gets divided and the winner/loser disappears into the backstage ether.
Before wronged wife Ingrid Tarrant collects a large cheque from the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? host – the Mail says she’s in line for £10m in any divorce – she addresses the crowd.
It has long been the fashion among the celebrity set to release official statements. Why Ingrid cannot speak off the cuff as the wronged wife we don’t know. Perhaps she hopes to get back with Chris – the Mirror says he will try to woo her.
Perhaps she hopes that her statement will be seen as full, frank and final, enabling her to retreat from the spotlight. Perhaps it’s just the done thing.
Whatever the reason, instead of reading about the “cheating swine” and how revenge will be hers, Ingrid tells us of Chris’s “infidelity”, which she has known about for “several months”.
“I was shocked at the discovery, but I successfully disguised my shattered heart,” says Ingrid. She says she has “maintained a dignified silence”. But: “Unfortunately Chris drew unwelcome attention by behaving indiscreetly in a wine bar.”
It’s all so po-faced. Even the wine bar smacks of something above the norm and sterile. This is essentially a middle-class affair. Dirty washing will not be aired in public – although it’s debatable whether the knickerless women of Surrey, who Ingird says flash her husband, have any.
And others seem willing to join in. After the Sun’s front-page “Ingrid: My shattered heart”, columnist Jane Moore (herself blonde and so well placed to comment) tells us what’s what.
She says Chris’s affair is “very stereotypical and simplistic”. He was having a “major mid-life crisis”. Having lost his morning job at Capital Radio, and “suffered the death of his beloved father”, he was “clearly dispossessed and miserable”. It’s a “martial hic-cup”.
Over in the Mirror, the story is given a full-stop by Dr Miriam Stoppard. It’s “MIRIAM’S VERDICT”, and in it, Miriam (an assisted brunette) says that deciding to separate is a “very mature step”.
Indeed. It is. It’s all so sensible and, as the doctor says, mature.
Unless, of course, the divorce does not go to plan and the contestants row. Then we might hear something more about the cheating. And Ingrid might cough…
Posted: 20th, September 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
