How James Goldsmith’s wisdom on mistresses could revolutionise mobile phones

I wouldn’t worry much about the future of the British economy. Because I have a simple plan to make the UK the world’s leading exporter of mobile phones. They will be manufactured by a new consortium including Alfred Dunhill, Cordings and Bowers & Wilkins.

The idea came to me when I was watching coverage of the new scandal in France, where a government security officer was photographed at 8 a.m. delivering a bag of croissants to Hollande’s love nest. My first reaction was disgust — I mean, how bad must things be in a country when even the president can’t get a cooked breakfast? But his behaviour also made me think of a peculiarity of the French: while our Gallic chums have largely been slow to absorb the teachings of Adam Smith, there is one place where they seem to believe fervently in the division of labour: not in the pin factory but the bedroom.

It was the half-French James Goldsmith who observed, ‘When a man marries his mistress he creates an immediate job vacancy.’ The French approach is that mistress and wife are two separate roles which cannot be combined: a ‘wifetress’ doesn’t work. It’s like a sofa bed, a washer-dryer or a spork. Something that pretends to do two jobs, but in effect does both of them badly.

I wouldn’t propose applying this French approach in Britain. With our property prices, having a mistress is a bit like living in central London: something you only do if you’re a billionaire, a foreigner or on benefits. But there is one other place where we could apply this French idea and separate one bad thing into two good ones.

You see, the modern smartphone is a rubbish idea. It’s a spork. It is a slab of glass combining two entirely different functions — that of a tele-phone and that of a tablet-shaped connected media device.