The timeless insincerity of a little do in Las Vegas

All the available information on this perfectly formed vignette hints at a union in which speed was of the essence. Peaches had known her new husband, Max Drummey, for four weeks. The bride-to-be told her father of her plans two hours beforehand.

There is a fine old tradition of failed marriages in Las Vegas, stretching back as long as those with celebrity-fixated memories can recall. Peaches was almost certainly influenced in her choice of location by the fact that her father, Bob, married her mother, Paula Yates, there. Unfortunately, Bob and Paula were one of the few couples who bucked the Las Vegas trend, staying together long enough to raise a family.

Others have discovered that plighting one's troth in this den of iniquity is about as reliable as a spin on one of the local roulette tables.

Britney Spears sent up her first distress flare when getting hitched to Jason Allen Alexander on the spur of a squiffy moment. Billie Piper and Chris Evans also chose the city of eternal optimism and also went on a bender, after which they decided to be just good friends. Pamela Anderson and Rick Salomon, he of the Paris Hilton sex video, tied the knot during a 90-minute break in a magic show Anderson was doing; it lasted two months before being annulled on the grounds of "fraud".

Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton breezed into town, got hitched, breezed out, and got unhitched again. A union of more lasting significance was that between Noel Gallagher and Meg Mathews, but that was back in 1997 and times were more innocent then. And it still didn't last. Likewise Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow.

The appeal of getting married in the middle of nowhere is a romantic one. My wife and I, already married, were so desperate for a piece of the action that we reaffirmed our wedding vows there 12 years ago. For our second honeymoon, we went to see The English Patient that afternoon.

The drawback is that there's nothing else to do except gamble and take in a show, and the thrill soon wears off. That is why weddings made here don't last: the participants are thrown instantly upon their own devices and these are often found wanting.

I also have a suspicion that the wording of the wedding vows has been subtly altered for the benefit of the flighty of temperament. "Till death or any other minor inconvenience do us part" has the timeless ring of insincerity.