Secret Lovers

I’m going to tell you a secret this week. In fact I’m going to tell you several.

Secrets are in the news as it has been shown that one in five men keep secret bank accounts that their wives know nothing about. The smiley, innocent side of me says that this is fine as the men are obviously doing it as a nice surprise, but the cynical, and let’s face it, more sensible side of me says two things – first, how sneaky and underhand of them, and second I thought I was the only one doing this.

My secret bank account isn’t meant to be underhand, it’s there just for emergencies. And don’t rat on me to the tax man. It's not that much but you just never know when you’ll need a few million here and there do you?

This week I asked my listeners on Smooth Radio to text me, under reassurance of anonymity, telling me the secrets that they keep from their partners. And, my goodness, what a lot of secrets there were.

One man in Liverpool has yet to tell his wife that he sees dead people everywhere. He says he also neglected to tell her that he fancies Judith Kepple off TV’s Eggheads. I’m guessing here, but I think he’s kept quiet because he’s scared his wife might think he’s mad. I mean who on earth fancies Judith Kepple?

There were plenty of naughty secrets revealed on the texts too, like the woman who confessed that she had been seeing a married circuit judge for the past year, and yet another who told me that her husband doesn’t know she’s been having a string of affairs throughout their eleven years of marriage. Her reason? “Men just fascinate me”. This confession led, of course, to plenty of requests from male listeners asking for her number.

Our listeners must be a wealthy lot as one had kept secret from her partner that she owns three racehorses, while another had fixed a date for her marriage to her future husband without telling him she had just inherited three million pounds. A male listener in Birmingham kept secret from his wife that he had been betting successfully on horses throughout their twenty three years marriage and had a small fortune in a secret bank account. Well he did keep it secret until just after they divorced, and he then took great pleasure in telling her and showing the pass book.

And it seemed that more women had secrets than men. A lady from Bolton hated her husband’s snobbery so much she bought cheap ketchup and kept refilling the expensive Heinz bottle all the years they were together without him noticing, another encouraged her dog to wee regularly on her husband’s prize pumpkins, and yet another confessed she hadn’t told her partner that she had been abducted by aliens a few years ago. Then a Manchester woman said her husband thought she didn’t know that he dressed in her clothes when she was out. What he doesn’t know is that she does know, and that she’s about to serve divorce papers.

My favourite secret, though, was also the nicest. A male listener told me he has been buying up shares in his company without telling his wife so that when they retire he can sell them and give her a surprise nest egg. He can’t wait to see her face.

Secrets are probably not a good idea but they don’t have to be nasty, do they?