Great cheats of today

Cheating, in the sexual sense, is essentially an ignoble act, in which one emotionally stabs a loved one in the back by launching oneself headlong into a deliciously selfish world of illicit excitement.

Yet despite its sordid and heart-breaking connotations, cheating – and cheats – fascinates us. Vicariously, we can't get enough of infidelity; however much we disapprove of it, we seem to yearn for magazine and tabloid exposés on the delicious indiscretions our politicians, footballers and reality television stars.

And, in a curious way, we are secretly grateful to our idols and leaders for falling from grace so publicly. Whether it is the drunkard dalliances of a Premiership footballer or the clumsy deceptions of a prominent politician, we love the spectacle of those tangled webs of deceit coming crashing down on the rich, famous and powerful.

A lot of us, of course, are no better ourselves. It's been calculated that, last year alone British men and women spent £650m on their illicit bedroom antics – a staggering amount to spend on hotel rooms and flowers. And it's a figure that implies that millions of us must be at it – even if many are neither caught nor exposed.

So it seems fair to pay tribute here to some of the great cheats of our time. Our criterion for "greatness" is essentially notoriety, and perhaps the word "great" is misleading. The greatest cheats are presumably the ones we don't know about. None the less, as we relive the brazenness and, often, sheer stupidity of these notorious love-rats, the chaste and unchaste alike will, no doubt, relish their exposure – but perhaps also envy the illicit thrills that led up to it.

Bill Clinton

It's just over 10 years since a small gossip website broke the sex scandal of the decade: Bill Clinton, a sitting US President, had been having a sexual relationship – in the White House – with an intern. Within a day half the world knew that intern's name (Monica Lewinksy) and in the months that followed we all became versed in the affair's lurid details, from the box of cigars to the stained blue dress. Clinton's brazen "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" turned out to be a tad misleading. He narrowly survived impeachment and, while Hillary ostensibly forgave her husband, the chill in the Clinton marriage could be felt a thousand miles away. Still, he seems to have more or less got away with it.

Jude Law

Like many a cheating pin-up before him, Law was found wanting both in the fidelity department and, no less important, the news management department. A four-week affair with his nanny, Daisy Wright, became public knowledge in 2005 just months after his engagement to Sienna Miller. It didn't help that the then 26-year-old Wright had kept a diary of the affair. A damp apology from Law did little to limit the damage. Soon afterwards, Miller broke off the engagement, and although the couple briefly got back together, the rest is celebrity history. Public sympathy for Law was less than spectacular and his career is yet to fully recover. Perhaps he had his pie and ate it one too many times.

Max Mosley

Still holding on to the lucrative presidency of the Fédération Internationale d'Automobile, Max Mosley has earnt a grudging respect as a leading figure in the cheating world. It's one thing for a married man to cheat with one person, or even a succession of individuals; but to get them all in one place – a Chelsea "torture chamber" – and indulge in five hours of sado-masochistic sex, lice-inspections et al, is cheating on a truly monumental scale. His exposure made most of us smile, while his subsequent defiance was seen by some as an overdue stand for sexual liberty or (alternatively) privacy. Others note with envy that he appears to have won the lot – spectacular orgy, still married and £60,000-worth of compensation.

Prince Charles

The Prince of Wales used the oldest excuse in the book to justify his extra-marital transgression with long time lover Camilla Parker-Bowles, claiming that he was only unfaithful with her "once it was clear the marriage had broken down". The tabloids were unimpressed and went for the jugular, aided by the emergence of a secretly recorded raunchy conversation between him and Camilla (Charles: "I want to feel my way along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out"). Yet Charles, the wily dog, survived the storm, married his mistress and before long will no doubt become King and head of the Church of England.

Edwina Currie

Most of the UK was gobsmacked when Edwina's diaries, published in 2002, revealed her four-year affair with John Major. Former Downing Street press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham caught the faintly revolted, faintly admiring amazement when he said: "The news puts grey boring old Major, with his shirt tucked into his underpants, in a new light." But perhaps we should have seen the writing on the wall. Currie had written several raunchy novels, including one aptly entitled A Parliamentary Affair. Meanwhile, Major's sister, Pat Dessoy, managed to find a bright side to her brother's discomfiture: "At least it wasn't Ann Widdecombe."

Mark Ramprakash

Being described as "so indecently gorgeous" that "half of British womanhood melts into a puddle" was clearly too much of a temptation for Mark Ramprakash. The England cricketer and Strictly Come Dancing star might have triumphed on the dance floor, but his six-year on-off affair with a woman who wasn't his wife left him suffering on the home front. He subsequently tangoed his way back into his wife's affections, however, after touchingly telling a sympathetic Sunday newspaper that he was "distraught at the grief I have caused my wife and family, who I love very much". Not a good example as a husband, then, but a good example (compare with Jude Law) of damage limitation.

John Prescott

We always knew that punch-wielding Prezza had spunk but few of us saw him as a sex symbol. The revelation that he had an affair with his diary secretary, Tracey Temple, changed both his image and his nickname from "Two Jags" to "Two Shags". Temple sold her story to a Sunday newspaper for a six-figure sum two years after Prescott charmed her at a ministerial Christmas party in 2002. She said of Prescott: "He exploited power for his own sexual gratification." The small matter of cheating on his wife didn't stop Prescott serving as Deputy Prime Minister for another year, and ITV even made a comedy based on the liaison. How things have changed since Profumo.

Jeffrey Archer

The conservative establishment refused to believe it, as did the judge in Archer's 1987 libel case against the Daily Star: "Remember Mary Archer in the witness box ... Has she been able to enjoy, rather than endure, her husband Jeffrey? ... Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?" The answer to the last question turned out to be "yes", although it didn't emerge publicly for 13 years. Many of the protagonists, such as Monica Coghlan, the prostitute, are now dead. Archer, who served time in prison for perjury, remains irretrievably disgraced: living proof that, even for the most determined cheat, brazen denial doesn't always work.

Hugh Grant

Two words: Liz Hurley. And then, for some reason, two more: Divine Brown. Even the famously good-looking man from Notting Hill struggled to look good when caught receiving the prostitute's attentions on Sunset Boulevard in 1995. He did the next best thing and 'fessed up: "I think you know in life what's a good thing to do and what's a bad thing, and I did a bad thing. And there you have it." His relationship with Liz Hurley never quite recovered, and fizzled out over the next five years; but he does seem to have sweet-talked his way out of the bad books of the general public. More than a decade later, he is once again seen as a charming smoothie.

MR A

This "prominent" – and married – professional footballer obtained a gagging order preventing a Sunday newspaper from revealing his identity or the lurid details of his affairs with two indiscreet blondes, Miss C and Miss D. The scandal-watching public was tantalised as Mr A ran up an estimated £200,000 in legal fees – only for the High Court to refuse to extend the injunction and the Court of Appeal to refuse him leave to take the case to the Lords. The irony was that, before he brought the case, few of us had heard of Gary Flitcroft or his love life; whereas now he will always be known as the love rat who tried and failed to set down in law the right of adulterers to cheat in privacy.