London - Three devoted couples made news this week, in spite of the fact that not one among them should be able to stand the sight of each other.
All of them have, after all, committed the one sin that is widely believed to ruin a relationship beyond repair: they have all been unfaithful.
And yet, to look at them now, you have to wonder: did they get it wrong? Or have we? Is infidelity really the death-knell for a marriage?
Looking at this trio of contented couples, you might be tempted to think not.
Jilly Cooper, doyenne of lady authors, admitted that the reason she keeps up her punishing writing schedule at the age of 76 is to pay for round-the-clock care for Leo.
Her husband of 51 years suffers from Parkinson’s disease; hospital care is available but, thanks to Jilly’s efforts, this way her darling can stay where he longs to be: at home, with her.
Sharon Osbourne, setting straight the rumours about a rocky marriage, said that she did indeed demand a divorce from husband Ozzy when she found a secret stash of drugs and realised that he had relapsed into his drugs and alcohol addiction. But he has accepted help, she has lovingly relented, and the Osbourne road show rolls on.
Meanwhile - and tantalisingly - the Duchess of York reopened speculation that there could be a reconciliation with her ex-husband, Prince Andrew. “He’ll always be my handsome prince,” she insisted. And, with a tinge of a wedding vow, she added, “We really respect each other and we honour each other.”
These are all, of course, precisely the words or deeds you might expect from any happily-married couple - from people who entered the commitment of marriage with gusto and stuck to it: forsaking all others until death did them part.
Yet these are not such people. Far from it.
Jilly Cooper’s blissful marriage took a hard blow when, in the Nineties, Leo was found to have kept a mistress called Sarah Johnson for a full six years - before she blew the whistle to the press.
Ozzy Osbourne, in his rock ’n’ roll years, had more women than his addled brain could be expected to remember, including an affair with his children’s nanny.
As for Andrew, not for nothing is he dubbed “the Playboy Prince” - for he, too, has never been short of a bunny for a romp.
Nor does the naughty list stop there. In each case, the woman in the couple has also confessed to her own extra-marital relationships.
Even though Jilly Cooper has described an affair as “crucifying and cataclysmic”, she did confide in the late Lynda Lee-Potter that, “In the early days of our marriage, I fell madly in love with somebody else and had a fling.”
And, tellingly, “Afterwards, Leo just opened his arms and said, ‘Come back.’ “
Sharon Osbourne might have had to turn more blind eyes than most women could imagine - but she would have done so in full memory that in their early days she cheated on Ozzie with his guitarist Randy Rhoads.
As for the Duchess of York... well, perhaps we shall just mention “financial advisor” and “toes” and leave it there, shall we?
None of the above, by any standard, is a particularly edifying testimonial to the players involved.
Cooper is right not to underestimate the pain of infidelity, nor should we forget that someone, somewhere, always does get hurt.
It might be one of the couple - usually, but not always, the “wronged party”. It might also be the other woman or man in the triangle - it is too simplistic to dismiss them all as wily gold-diggers or Lotharios; some really are just innocents abroad who loved those whom they should not have loved.
Only a fool buys into the ancient mantra of harmless “free love” or “open marriage”; only the doubly foolish still try to flog the idea that an affair can be a force for good, a spark to reignite waning passion.
Nevertheless, looking at the three couples this week, with their chequered pasts and confident, close, united futures, you have to wonder: wrong as infidelity might be - is it really the deal-breaker we have always been taught that it is? Some people will always believe it so.
But if you raise sexual infidelity to a level of such importance that it becomes the only misdemeanour beyond the boundaries of forgiveness, are you not also making the sexual the single most important thing about a marriage?
What about - as the Duchess of York rather elegantly puts it - respect and honour? What about - as Sharon Osbourne so clearly demonstrates - help and support? What about - as Jilly Cooper proves daily - comfort and compassion?
There are so many worse things that some couples do to one another. The relentless bickering over details too scant to mention; the put-downs in public, badly masked by frozen smiles; the meals in restaurants, picked at in the deafening silence of nothing left to say.
Now let me tell you about another couple, married for 30 years. He is, to be blunt, a lascivious rogue. I once had to fly on a business trip with him, and at the end of a 90-minute flight he had arranged a date at our destination with the woman sitting next to him... AND a date with the stewardess. True!
But when his wife is with him? A different man appears; a man pulsing with adoration so genuine it lights the space around them.
When she walks into the room, any room, he stands. Yes: after 30 years. She opens her bag for a sneaky cigarette and, no matter how far away he is, his lighter is out before she can reach for hers.
He will chat animatedly to old friends - but pause should she tell a little joke, the better to let others hear and to join his uproarious laughter at the end. Her wine glass never, ever, falls empty; the tiny touch to her arm tells her, constantly, how lovely she looks.
Does she know about the other women? Probably. She might feel jealousy. But fear? No chance. This man is going nowhere; he is the Leo to her Jilly and, while I do not applaud his tom-catting, I do feel - yes - a sneaking envy for what they have and for what, like Leo and Jilly, they have still to come. - Daily Mail