GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
Petronella Wyatt says that rich men would
rather have a plain but clever businesswoman as a second wife than a bimbo
A MATURE businessman acquaintance of mine recently divorced his first wife. You know the kind of thing: wealthy middle- aged magnifico grows out of his childhood sweetheart and into a younger, sweeter tart. She is invariably platinum, lissome, and appears about as intellectually threat- ening as Anita Loos's ditzy fortune-hunter, Miss Lorelei Lee.
To continue: I was in a restaurant wait- ing for the arrival of bride number two when a woman walked in, bespectacled and in her forties, a cross between Carol Galley and a history lecturer. 'Hello,' I said in my usual affable way. 'We're waiting for so- and-so's new wife. What kind of lingerie do you think she models?' There was ice-pack in her answer. 'I am the new wife and I get my underwear at Marks & Spencer's.'
Cor lumme. The mind boggled. He had traded in that for that, an old bag for an even older, not to mention larger, tote. Funnily enough this was the second time it had happened recently. Only weeks before a very successful lawyer I know, to the gap- ing astonishment of all his friends, had left his fresh and charming young bride for an older intellectual.
This raises the question: whatever has become of the Trophy Wife, that truest of clichés that has spelt misery and ruination for every woman over 40 married to a grand fromage? That time in a man's life when he had done the sports car, the sun- seeker and the sunbed, and needed a brainless bird to go with them. In the 1980s and early 1990s the place was crawl- ing with Trophy Wives. Who can forget how people like the racing impresario Robert Sangster swapped blonde for younger blonde in dizzying succession?
Then there were the Americans, for when England sneezed, it was America that caught a cold. Think of Donald Trump and Marla Maples and various exotic models. Then there was billionaire John Kluge, in his seventies, whose wife Patricia was near- ly 40 years younger; not to mention the 60- year-old Michael Dingman (a relatively young shaver), chief executive officer of the Henley Group, and his new wife Betsy, who was 30 — trophies all to hang on the walls along with the signed pictures taken with the Reagans and the Bushes.
But perhaps it all became too much. Per- haps the Trophy Wives spent too much, talked too much, and flirted with younger men too much. As Jane Austen observed in Sense and Sensibility, 'His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman.'
My colleague, the economics writer Martin Vander Weyer, identifies some- thing called Goldman Sachs spouse syn- drome. The theory goes that investment bankers have become so strained and stressed that they can no longer tolerate women who are unable to tell their Rossini from their tortellini. 'What these men are now looking for are genuine helpmeets; fund-raising wives, yes, but highly intelli- gent ones with whom they can discuss deals.'
Perhaps we should have seen it coming when Rupert Murdoch married Wendy Deng. Young, yes, but a bimbo, no. Miss Deng is a former company vice-president, multilingual and frighteningly competent. It is said that Murdoch admires her business acumen and her understanding of China. She may have temporarily become a 'house- wife', but friends say Miss Deng exercises a tremendous influence over Murdoch's busi- ness, especially with regard to the Far East. Not so long ago the two were spotted at the Cipriani hotel in Venice. Murdoch was in bathing trunks, but Miss Deng was dressed demurely in a blouse and long skirt like a schoolteacher. No silicone and Brazilian bikini waxes there.
Then consider the second wives of busi- ness panjandrums such as Tony O'Reilly. O'Reilly could have had any supermodel he wanted. Instead, he married a woman his own age, a powerful woman in her own right: the Greek shipping scioness Chryss Goulandris. Miss Goulandris is clever and spirited and can tell O'Reilly where he is going wrong in the boardroom as well as in the bedroom.
I concluded that things were really up for the traditional Trophy Wife when a strange announcement was made by Jur- gen Schremp, the head of Daimler-Benz, which recently took over Chrysler in the USA. Mr Schremp said he was parting from his attractive wife to spend more time with his merger. It then transpired that he had gone to live with his hard- working, same-age administrative assistant. They are poised to make beautiful mergers together. This is a long way from Born Yes- terday, when the dumb blonde asks William Holden, 'What's a conglomerate?'
Many New York businessmen are fol- lowing the example of Henry Kravis of Goldberg Kravis Roberts, the leveraged buy-out firm. His wife Carolyne Roehm is said to abhor the assumption that she is a rich woman who dabbles on the side. Miss Roehm has her own dress business and starts her working day at 6 a.m., toiling away for a solid 12 hours. Meanwhile, her friend Audrey Butvay Gruss runs the suc- cessful Terme di Saturnia cosmetics com- pany which makes nearly $4 million a year. Miss Gruss's only marginally older husband Martin runs Gruss & Co, a private invest- ment company worth $400 million.
Suddenly it is modish for the careers of both spouses to blossom at a terrifying rate. If the woman doesn't have a job, then at the least she is expected to be cul- tured and accomplished. A friend of mine who works at University College, London says that he has never known so many rich men's wives to apply for postgraduate courses. 'These women are now required to be clever and intellectually stimulating. Brains are the new Viagra,' he insists.
So that's it, then. The Trophy Wife is fast turning into the Atrophied Wife. Bang go my hopes of marrying a millionaire.
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