What makes me feel sorry for Chris Huhne

If Chris Huhne hadn’t copped off with that woman who looks remarkably like the late comedian Jack Douglas, I suppose we would have been deprived of all the tumultuous glee which has attended both his utter collapse, as a man, and his likely incarceration. We would never have known about that small crime, committed years before he had become an MP. It was not the act of asking his wife to take those speeding penalty points which did for him, it was swanning off with his assistant, Carina -Trimingham.

Wives sacrifice themselves for their husbands in all manner of ways; it is part of the deal of marriage, I suppose. The compact breaks down irretrievably when the husband transgresses — as, it seems inevitably these days, he does. It was pathos rather than tragedy, I would hazard, that made me feel for the man as he exited the courtroom this week flanked by his strange frowning partner, the woman for whom he had given up everything. He reminded me a little of Joel Grey in the film version of Cabaret, singing ‘If You Could See Her Through My Eyes’ while leading an ape around on a chain to much public derision. I do not mean that Ms Trimingham looks like an ape, I hasten to add; simply that she doesn’t look much like, say, Jessica Alba. It made me feel very sorry for Huhne, seeing the two of them together, pushing their way through the righteous delight and laughter, the hilarity and vindictiveness, en route to obscurity and jail.