Save the tackle for the pitch, St John

LIFE AND OTHER BITS: THE next thing we hear about free-scoring John Terry and his ball control is that he has been admitted to a plush private clinic in some leafy corner of the South East to be treated for sex addiction.

Unless, of course, the clinic is flooded with testosterone.

And after a few days of gentle (ahem! ahem!) massages and being shown pictures of Ann Widdecombe in a skimpy bikini he will get an honourable discharge (oops) and trot back down the tunnel of love to join his grinning Chelsea team mates to trade tales of stamina-sapping nights of passion.

But the England captain, far from being a sexually incontinent predator with a dribbling libido, will be recast by the image makers as a victim to be nurtured and pitied. And if, by some miracle, he could save his tackle for the pitch and help England to win the World Cup this year he will be beatified — Saint Terry the Trouserless.

But have you noticed how it is only sports stars with vastly more money and free time than sense, film stars who live in Hollywood mansions and share their bed with an ego the size of Manhattan and TV celebrities, making the most of their five minutes of fame, who suffer from this dreadful loin-threatening illness?

When did Gordon in accounts or Doreen in stitching return from a couple of weeks on the sick with a note from the doctor detailing sex addiction as the reason for absence?

One of the love machines in the pub thinks that his wife is addicted to sex because she came over all frisky on a Wednesday night and, according to him, “It wasn’t even her birthday” but somehow I don’t think that really counts.



OUR MPs (Pocket Moneys backwards, interestingly) have not come out of the crackdown on crooked expense claims too badly. Phil Woolas has only had to repay £886 (two months groceries) and Michael Meacher £447 (door knobs for his property portfolio) and man-of-the-people David Heyes does not appear on the crooks, swindlers, occasionally forgetful and can’t-do-sums-for-toffee list at all.
Twenty eight of the nation’s finest fiddlers have been asked to pay back more than £10,000 in a line of the shameless headed by Local Government Minister and wife of a millionaire Barbara Follett, who has had to repay us — me and you, £42,000.

Barbara claimed for security patrols, six telephone lines and insurance for works of art in her luxury home, using our money to protect hers. Nice.


FINAL WORD: I don’t know about Vance Miller for Mayor of Oldham but judging by the menacing photograph in last night’s Chronicle he would be perfect for getting reluctant council tax payers to cough up.