It's a serious quandary for every married man – who also happens to be ridiculously good-looking. You've been happily hitched for years, but members of the opposite sex either didn't get that memo, or, most problematically, choose to ignore it. Women literally throw themselves at you. What's a guy to do?
This week, David Beckham was left fiddling with his wedding ring in the face of a full-on flirt attack as a millefoglie of shapely Italian women inundated him at a charity dinner in Milan; Mrs Beckham, you see, had returned to Los Angeles, leaving her beau to the perfumed she-wolves.
The biggest test for the England man came after an auction, in which a busty Italian socialite called Gabriella Dompe successfully bid for one of Beckham's T-shirts. In one picture she is seen walking over to the player and appears to sit on his knee, almost going in for a kiss as she drapes her bejewelled right arm (pictured) round his shoulders (perhaps she imagined her prize would be the shirt on his back). If Beckham was left squirming – and he looks pretty awkward – the midfielder would do well to look at how other handsome-but-hitched men have dealt with this trickiest of situations.
First up: Tom Jones. The hip-swinging singer, who has been married to his wife, Linda, for more than 50 years, was such a heart-throb in his heyday that he once told the New York Daily News he "carries a .38 pistol wherever I can" to guard against crazed female fans.
A simpler approach might be to simply let it be known that your relationship is rock-solid and your partner's trust in you absolute. Johnny Depp's girlfriend of a decade, Vanessa Paradis, has frequently stated that the best protection from marauding admirers is trust – or at least a semblance of it. When asked about women's desire to mob her man, Paradis said "I understand. I want to mob him all the time. He's a very charming person."
There are those men who cannot be trusted. Despite his long marriage, Jones is no paragon – the Welsh sex bomb's extra-marital conquests include a lap dancer, a model and a former Miss World. On American television, Jones revealed his wife beat him "black and blue" after learning about one of the affairs.
If one man stands as the model of dignified behaviour, it's the late Paul Newman. His approach was to remove himself from the worst of the temptation – living far from Hollywood in Connecticut. When asked about female admirers, he quipped,"Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?"
Well, Beckham could at least start by steering clear of charity auctions – lest his wife should turn him into minced meat.
Update your Facebook status – not your CV
With unemployment figures creeping past the two million mark, jobseekers websites must – unlike most everyone else – be doing a roaring trade.
But are they really the best way to find work in this wired world? Most of us are entering a recession with the internet at our disposal for the first time.
Facebook has long been used to connect flats with flatmates, so why not jobs to jobseekers? The social network has advantages over more impersonal recruitment sites. Many posts are filled before an ad ever reaches the jobs pages; but your online social network is full of friends with inside knowledge. They know you personally, can match you to a job that suits, and become advocates on your behalf.
Farhad Manjoo, a technology writer for 'Slate' magazine, found a few readers who'd successfully used Facebook to get work. He discovered that those who managed the feat were from plugged-in professions: the media or, inevitably, IT itself.
One friend of mine hijacked a Facebook meme to jazz up her covering letter. Instead of Dear Sir/Madam, she wrote her own career-focussed "25 things about me"; presumably "1. name, 2. date of birth, 3. contact details, 4. words per minute..." etc. She got the job.
TIM WALKER
(Bottle) blonde ambition
Most of us – 62 per cent – take blonde colleagues less seriously than brunettes (according to a survey by Superdrug). I suspected as much when I moved to London, growing out of my golden dye to reveal the professional brunette within.
I imagined brown hair would make me behave with more dignity, less "bubbly". But it felt fake. Perhaps, if you've been dyeing your hair blonde for most of your life, it gets under your skin. So I'm keeping it real now, and am back on the bottle. It hasn't done Hillary Clinton any harm.
SOPHIE MORRIS
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