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For some reason, diplomats get agitated when you suggest to them that there may be something about their status and way of life that makes them prone to adultery.
I only asked them because the latest revelations about the British Ambassador to Yemen, Tim Torlot, encourage this line of thought.
Mr Torlot installed his pregnant mistress in the ambassador's residence in Sana'a, taking the place vacated by his wife of 23 years, Bridie.
Now the mistress, Jennifer Steil, a 40-year-old American journalist, has left Yemen for London to have the Ambassador's baby. For ordinary Yemenis caught in adultery, the penalty is stoning.
Mr Torlot, fortunately for him, is exempt from Sharia law. Miss Steil has included her romance in her memoirs, called The Woman who Fell From the Sky, about her adventures in Yemen.
Why should the misbehaviour of Our Man in Yemen matter? Well, he's Our Man, isn't he? A diplomat is the Queen's representative wherever he's been posted.
That sense that diplomats' behaviour reflects back on Britain is reflected in the Foreign Office rulebook which says you should do nothing to bring the office into disrepute. That means both in Britain and wherever they're posted.
It's fairly safe to assume that in Yemen, a conservative Islamic society, they're not going to be much taken with Mr Torlot's domestic arrangements. (He seems to have been relaxed about the Foreign Office's own guidance to visitors, which instructs them to “observe local traditions, laws and religions at all times”.)
But so far as causing scandal back at base in London goes, one former diplomat observes: “Things are much more relaxed than they used to be.”
In other words, where the current Foreign Office is concerned, pretty well anything goes in terms of private life — a tendency that's probably accelerated under the present government.
Mind you, there has always been scope for diplomats to create glorious, humongous scandals.
Katie Hickman's book, Daughters of Britannia, about the lives of diplomats' wives, is full of them. Peter Jay, when he was ambassador to Washington, ran off with the nanny.
Christopher Meyer's glamorous second wife Catherine was a talking point at the US embassy.
Pamela Harriman, as US ambassador to France, could hardly have functioned without becoming acquainted with the ceilings of some of the great men of Europe.
Craig Murray, when he was ambassador to Uzbekistan, was famous for exposing the regime's willingness to boil critics alive, but also for teaming up with a belly-dancer.
There's still a stubborn kind of glamour about diplomats, a hangover from the days when Britain's global status was different from now and when many of the people who became diplomats were likely to be quite grand.
The reality now, of course, is that with global communications, regular intergovernmental meetings and an international European Union presence, diplomats' jobs are less important than they were.
“Actually,” says a friend of mine who left the service, “you spend a lot of time in these in-grown communities, mixing with other diplomats. A lot of what you do is very boring.”
In that scenario, a woman falling from the sky probably seems like a welcome distraction.
