Cheats study finds tales of seedy neediness

John and Marilyn. Bill and Monica. Charles and Camilla. Ashley and Whatshername.

The extramarital affair has a long and if not quite distinguished, then at least high-profile, history.

More often than not it is the men who occupy that central, adulterous role; difficult as infidelity statistics are to gauge, men repeatedly own up to committing the lion's share of affairs, outnumbering women by at least two-to-one. But why?

That question, age-old as it may be, is not terribly difficult to answer - at least not according to Peadar de Burca, and he should know, having interviewed almost 300 candidates on the subject.

A playwright, director and comedian, de Burca has spent the best part of six months travelling England and Ireland, interviewing men who have cheated.

He has spoken to more than 250 adulterous husbands and several dozen of their wives, trying to identify the motivations, mindsets, and moralities of the unfaithful.

The results have been turned into a two-man comedy show, Why Men Cheat, in which de Burca and his co-star Briane O'Gibne re-enact the tales they have been told, from the small-town soldier falling for the leggy women he met on tour to the big-city banker who got his kicks by setting up swinging sessions. It's a unusual way to spend time - particularly as de Burca has not been married that long himself. This, though, was part of his inspiration.

"It had been on my mind a lot because there was a history of the males in my family straying," he said. "I suppose I was a little bit worried about what I might do."

De Burca began with friends and family and worked his way out. Before he knew it, he was booking train tickets left, right and centre, visiting casinos, nightclubs and swingers' groups, and listening to the stories of jilted wives and regretful husbands.

"I thought I would maybe talk to 10 or 12 people about it. I would go and hang around with them and get them beers and win their confidence; suddenly they opened up and just started blowing out all these stories. I couldn't stop them."

Throughout his research, de Burca encountered only one instance of what could properly be termed a love affair. Unlike any other interviewees, the pair in question ended up leaving their spouses and marrying one another. The woman was older, too - more than 10 years older than her new husband. It's the exception which, he said, proved the rule.

"The men would go for a kind of wife-lite, as it were. The women they would sleep with would look like their wives but be more ... on display."

It's an intriguing finding, since it would suggest - as spectators of the unedifying dalliances of Ashley Cole, Tiger Woods et al have long suspected - that men who cheat are not simply motivated by their mistresses' superior allure. Overwhelmingly, says de Burca, they are looking for compensation, not for their wives' failings, but for their own.

"That was the big thing. These men were very insecure, needy men. There was something lacking in them. A lot of them were quite athletic, wealthy, successful men - cops and doctors and politicians. But you felt deep down that they were wanting something - adulation, people to like them. It was very strange."

The older the man, the more this motive of compensation came into play. The young men de Burca interviewed spoke of lust, hormones and the suspicion their girlfriends were just as unfaithful. But the older men would cite a break from routine, the illusion of excitement or the sensation of adventure. One man interviewed for the play claimed he felt like he was "in his own personal movie ... full of excitement and clandestine meetings".

Much of the fault, says de Burca, lies with society's emphasis on the smooth, suave sexually successful philanderers that tend to become cultural heroes: the James Bonds, the George Bests, the Jack Nicholsons that populate our screens and stages.

And yet, for all their desire to live the high life, to escape impending old age, to be the Northeast's answer to James Bond, or Tiger Woods, the men that he interviewed were without exception fundamentally deluded.

"There was one guy who was a top banker, a very wealthy guy who had absolutely everything at his fingertips. His big thing was swinging sessions. One woman wasn't enough - he had about eight women on the go at the time."

When de Burca went with him to one of his meet-ups, he was greeted with a scene less Magnum, PI than an X-rated Archers.

"I imagined a big house with a swimming pool or something. The Playboy mansion. In fact, it was a farmer's shed in the middle of nowhere. He would go out to the countryside and meet the others in this barn. It was the most unglamorous thing. You could hear the animals in the background."

In Why Men Cheat, we hear the sorry confessions of one multimillionaire businessman whose attempts to emulate Dallas womaniser J.R. Ewing cost him his entire livelihood:

"He had a house in Spain and a family home in Ireland. When I met him he was living in a bedsit. He had lost it all by cheating. His wife had taken everything in the divorce."

Of all the men he met, not one left de Burca concerned about his own chances of fidelity.

"These guys would be going out drinking late, hanging out in casinos and stuff. Things that I wouldn't do, you know? There was something so seedy about the whole thing. I'd be driving back home after meeting them and feeling terrible. I would feeling like I needed to go and have a shower because these guys ... well, they're just so pathetic."

- Independent