WHEN I read that married footballer Ashley Cole had strayed, I was stunned. Cheryl Cole has always been a cut above the average Wag – a class act who has beauty, brains and ambition. Yet, despite this, her husband is said to have been intimate with a string of women.
The revelations by hairdresser Aimee Walton were lurid. It then emerged that Aimee wasn't the first when two more women claimed to have slept with Cole.
While I was surprised, my friend – who has worked alongside many top players at a premiershi
p club – was not.
"They're all at it," was her response. "They're young men with so much money, even bigger egos. When it's on a plate, few resist."
But you don't have to be a millionaire footballer to be a cheater. You just need to take a look on the Edinburgh Gumtree website to see what I mean.
At first it seems innocent enough – flats for rent, cars for sale – but in the dating section, under the banner Casual Relationships, things turn seedy.
In among the ads posted by girls in their teens and 20s are those looking for sex. Then there were the women asking to bed attached blokes.
Researching a feature, I posted an advert asking for no-strings sex with an attached man. Within minutes I had mail. As the day went on, e-mail after e-mail revealed complaints of partners who wouldn't say yes to sex at any given time and men who just fancied the thrill of sex with a stranger. There was a massive range of replies, from the tame to the explicit.
In just two days, I received 223 invites for sex from attached men.
One of the e-mails, from a 24-year-old banker from the New Town, said it all. "It's all good and fun," he wrote. "I've done this before. It can seem scary at first but it's the best thrill ever. I've got a girlfriend but she'll never know."
While there seem to be many men whose brains are in their pants, women – not silly girls – would never behave like this, or allow such a thing.
No woman deserves the humiliation and hurt at the hands of a man who patently has no respect for her.
As far as I'm concerned it's one strike and you're out. Let's hope Cheryl, who has said she'll stand by Ashley, eventually follows the advice she has for long dished out about love rats.
The full article contains 422 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
