I have noticed a lot of activity from Scottish men and women on the site lately – especially women.  But apparently this is to be expected according to a revealing survey which has revealed that a third of Scots women aged 25 to 44 have cheated on their partners.

Questions about sex, relationships, happiness and dating were put to 500 women in a poll organised by No 1 magazine and the Daily Record ahead of the Girls’ Day Out show at the SECC in Glasgow next month.

It threw up some surprising results. Women in both the 25-34 age group – 35 per cent – and the 35-44 age group – 33 per cent – admit to infidelity at least once.

When asked to explain reasons, many blame boredom, feeling unappreciated, inability to resist temptation and drunken mistakes.

The majority of unfaithful women don’t own up but some admit it to their partners because of guilt and shame.

One woman cheated on her partner because he was cheating on her. He went on to marry who he was cheating with and so did she.

Not to be outdone a new survey in Italy suggests that around 50% of italians are unfaithful with 45% of women being naughty.  Three fifths of affairs start in the office, with most trysts taking place between 2pm and 3pm as people sneak off during their lunch breaks, research found.

In around half of cases, cheating partners are found out through indiscreet mobile phone text messages, emails betray one in five and a further one in 10 are given away

Adultery has had a good press recently and statistics suggest that more of us are being unfaithful than ever before. But although adultery is a staple of farce and mainstream drama, there are few plays that deal with the subject with quite the unsettling ambiguity and disturbing depth that characterise this revival of Martin Crimp’s 2000 modernist play, The Country.

Crimp’s love triangle is composed of a 40-something couple, Richard and Corinne, plus Rebecca, a young American. Richard is a GP, who has moved with his wife and their children to the country in search of the simpler life. One night, he comes home with an unconscious woman in his arms. Gradually, it emerges that he is a recovering addict and that Rebecca, the woman he claims to have found collapsed on a rural roadside, is more intimately connected to him than he’s willing to admit.

Crimp constructs the play with impressive intelligence, staging it as a series of encounters between two characters, first Richard and Corinne, then Rebecca and Corinne, then Rebecca and Richard. Their dialogues constantly slip from the certain into the questionable, so we only slowly become aware of what is happening and who has done what to whom. However, over the whole play, there’s a distinct feeling of bad faith and guilty conscience as Richard tries to worm himself out of the truth. For him, truth is a foreign country.

The dialogues between these pairs are constantly disturbed by telephone calls, chiefly from Richard’s boss, Morris, who wants to know why he has failed to visit a seriously sick patient. These interruptions from the outside world not only push the plot forward, they also act as unwelcome visits from a reality which this claustrophobic marriage tries to exclude. All the characters use language as counters in their power games and as a way of creating the world of their own choosing. Cool, ironic and evocative, the text sings satirically of pastoral myth and compromised suburban marriage.

The politics of the play are subtle, questioning as they do the clichés about happy families and responsible members of society. The GP, once one of the pillars of the community, is now shown as an addict, a liar and a dangerous lover. Myths about the bucolic bliss of olden days and modern fantasies about getting away from it all are equally derided. To be human is to be a clenched fist, ever ready to slam into the face of your nearest and dearest.

Amelia Nicholson’s production is intense and atmospheric, with a circular stage surrounded by trees and the scent of the forest in Anna Bliss Scully’s lovely design. Although they sometimes slump on chairs, the actors are constantly standing, slowly circling each other, like wary wrestlers about to engage in combat. This gives their verbal duels a sense of palpable menace and suggests a world of primal feelings that lies like a skeleton beneath Crimp’s sparring dialogues.
Amanda Root excels as Corinne, her invincibly confident middle-class manner immediately at odds with her troubled eyes. Slowly, her exasperation breaks out into barely controlled rage, only to retreat instantly into a determined coldness. Similarly convincing is Simon Thorp’s slightly sleazy Richard, who innocently raises his eyebrows while clearly radiating guilt. As Rebecca, Naomi Wattis is given to languid drawls and provocative purrs. If there’s any cream to be had, this cat will get it.

With its intriguing mix of cruelty and lyricism, its word games and its sudden insights, and its portrait of male falseness balanced by its account of female trust and emotional directness, this is a superb play in a well-staged revival. And you don’t have to be an adulterer to enjoy it.

Whilst the world counts the regular comings and goings of the rescue pod an interesting side issue finds its way onto my blog.  At least 5 mistresses have also hoisted themselves to the surfac in the expectation of government handouts. One miner has four women fighting over him in an effort to claim compensation offered to the families of those facing between three to four months underground until a rescue shaft can reach them.  Government officials are considering asking the 33 trapped miners to name those they want to claim the benefits entitled to them in a bid to solve problems on the surface.

"There has been a lot of conflict between women," admitted Marta Flores a Red Cross worker at the makeshift camp where relatives wait for news of their loved ones. "We had a big bust up in the canteen tent when a wife came across a woman who claimed to be her husband’s lover – we had to step in and pull them apart before things got physical." At stake are welfare packages issued to the families of the trapped miners as well as future compensation claims that could run into tens of thousands of pounds.

"Unfortunately the conflict stems from money issues," said Mrs Flores. "Some of the men have children from numerous women and all of them have arrived here to stake their claim. I’ve met five families in this situation but I’m sure there are more." Some women turned up at the camp to discover that their partners already had a wife and children who they knew nothing about. 

One of the trapped miners, Yonni Barrios Rojas, who is using his first aid training to treat medical problems underground is among those who faces difficult questions when he finally makes it the surface.

His wife, Marta Salinas, 56, discovered he had a mistress when she came across another woman holding a vigil for him. The other woman, Susana Valenzuela, said they met on a training course five years ago and he was planning to leave his wife for her.

"He is my husband. He loves me and I am his devoted wife," insisted Mrs Salinas. "This other woman has no legitimacy."

Three years ago I took part in a really crap documentary called ‘Diary of a Mistress’ that went out on Sky 1.   From time to time it pops up on Sky channels and gives us spurts of publicity.  I only know it has run when women phone me asking to be mistresses.  I wonder who actually watches Sky travel 2 at 4 a.m but obviously some people do.  It cropped up again the other night on Sky3/sky Documentary and we had a big influx of interesting new women.  So although the documentary was not something I was very happy to be involved in it has paid back handsomely in regular publicity.