So it turns out that Iris Robinson, previously in the news for her unfortunate remarks regarding homosexuality ["abomination", "sick", "nauseous" and so on] and adultery, spent 2009 having an affair with what can only be described as a toy boy. Robinson, who will have been 59 at the time, started bedding the delightful Kirk McCambley (now 21) when he was only 19.
Really, the closer you look into this one, the worse it gets. Firstly, it seems that Mrs Robinson may have inadvertently left herself open to allegations that she channeled money his way, both from her friends and from the local council on which she sat. Indeed, Mr McCambley claims that she asked him for a "cut". Secondly — and how can one put this most sensitively? — it seems that Mr McCambley first came to Mrs Robinson's attention in 2008, when she promised his dying father (a close friend of hers) that she would "look after" Kirk, his only son!
I do hope she has the dignity not to ask for understanding, since that is precisely the thing she wants denied to us. Indeed if the state has a duty to carry out "God's laws", as she believes it does, then there are plenty of places in the world even now where she would be looking forward to being publicly flogged or even stoned to death.
The BBC News website has a good article detailing the whole sorry mess quite exhaustively. The most striking thing about it is the photograph at the top: the betrayed husband, looking old and grey and, well, betrayed; the virile young lover looking absolutely scrumptious in a clear-eyed, clean-limbed, closely-cropped kind of way [just how I like 'em—GM]; and finally Iris herself, looking for all the world like a white-leaded and rouged restoration whore.
