Even if a man’s first wife doesn’t cast a long shadow, there are always his children to amuse on those eternally long weekends. Scenting weakness, they generally play the new wife up shamelessly. If she cooks their favourite food, they say their mother makes it much better. If she plays with them, they get over-excited and won’t go to bed. If she tries to suck up to them and buy them expensive presents, they’ve always got them already.

“I got it from a 13th century recipe. Was it all right?”

And then there are those endless dreary afternoons on the Serpentine steering the little mites away from necking couples, or at the Zoo steering them away from copulating animals.

If she’s a girl friend rather than a wife, they spend their time telling her how much prettier the girl friend was who came last weekend. Having snapped at them, she remembers they’re victims of a broken home and feels guilty.

“Now, come of children, you do remember Susan …”

Don’t catch men on the rebound immediately after they’ve been left by their wives: they’ll sob all over you, and then go off with someone else.

Any girl who is determined to get married should go for a man who’s been married six times, and get him into bed. He will then divorce his sixth wife and marry her, being one of those incurable romantics who believes that if he sleeps with a girl he’s got to do the decent thing by her.

Divorced men who show no sign of marrying again and appear to be thoroughly enjoying themselves will be a constant source of irritation to their friends, for the men will be jealous and the wives will sense their husbands’ jealousy.