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If the secret to a long and happy marriage is the sharing of interests, as Basil Fawlty once read on the back of a matchbox, the time has come for Ashley and Cheryl Cole to put down the deposit on their golden wedding bash venue.
The 50th anniversary of their elegantly-understated marriage isn't until the summer of 2056, it's true, but why wait when they have enough in common to guarantee a blissful future together? Much better to make the statement of intent without delay.
If the sterner moralists of the press and radio phone-ins wish to be scandalised by Ashley's encounter with the law outside a South Kensington bar early yesterday morning, I see it differently. Far from yet another case of a childish Premier League prima donna disgracing himself, here was a heartwarming instance of a loving spouse showing solidarity towards his absent wife.
The uxorious little chap demonstrated a commitment to match her own to helping others through the gift of laughter. While she was climbing Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief, Ashley was doing his bit to provide comic relief for football supporters across the land.
God knows we all need a giggle in these dismal days and few of us more than the followers of Coventry City. The "Ghost Town" of the reforming Specials' immortal single has been particularly vulnerable to recession before and given its reliance on a vanishing motor industry will be again.
So none of us will begrudge them their fun tomorrow lunchtime when Chelsea attend Ricoh Arena for the first of the weekend's FA Cup quarter-finals, least of all the travelling faithful.
No supportership shows more empathetic compassion to impoverished rivals than Chelsea's, whose rendition of In Your Liverpool Slum ("You look in the dustbin for something to eat/ You find a dead rat and you think it's a treat") has long been such a touching choral tradition. The wording of the chants with which Sky Blues fans will serenade Ashley is of less interest today, however, than Guus Hiddink's reaction to his left-back's escapade.
I suspect the Dutchman will handle him with kid gloves. No one who's coached a legendarily obstreperous Holland squad is likely to overreact to the sort of misdemeanour any loyal husband might commit while missing an unspeakably gorgeous wife off ascending Africa's highest mountain.
Guus, in other words, is not the kind of guy to - wait for the criminal pun now; just wait for it - kill a man (for a) jar o' whatever it was, presumably lashings of finest Cristal, Ashley threw down his neck.
This trivial setback aside, Chelsea's resurgence under Hiddink continues to impress. The imminence of next Tuesday's Champions League second leg at Juventus, where they must defend a fragile 1-0 lead, will concern him, because that trophy far outranks an FA Cup. But even a weakened side should have too much for Coventry and Ashley shouldn't require any further sorrow-drowning tomorrow night.
Arsenal, meanwhile, have a score to settle with the Burnley side that so gratifyingly removed them from this season's Carling Cup. Now that Arsene Wenger's celebrated blank-firers have finally relocated the route to goal, it is depressingly hard to imagine them struggling to despatch the plucky little clog-wearers at the Emirates.
And so to the tie of the round, in which Fulham host Manchester United at Craven Cottage. This one has the look of a classic, because United, like Chelsea, will be distracted by the Champions League. If Sir Alex Ferguson rests half his first team before the home fixture with Jose Mourinho's Inter Milan, you have to fancy Fulham to end all the talk of that unprecedented Quintuple.
But not as much as you have to fancy Cheryl Cole (frankly, it's a moral obligation). What the Geordie Aphrodite is doing with Ashley had been arguably the greatest conundrum of an endlessly-confusing age, but no longer.
Now we finally see what binds them together in the holiest of matrimony, roll on July 2056. And if they are keen to book that golden wedding venue, there's a place called The Collection in South Ken that might make the ideal setting for a stroll down memory lane.
Reader views (1)
Uxorious, indeed, Mathew. But which one's wife do you mean?
By the way, I didn't know Cheryl was a Geordie. Or and aphrodite, even. We didn't have lasses like that when I lived up there. But if we had, my dear old Mum undoubtedly would have warned that having a good personality is much more important. So you can imagine how I turned out.
- Jac Mills, loudon, usa, 06/03/2009 15:43
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