The end of the (internet) affair

In three days’ time Matti Vanhanen, the Finnish prime minister, will know if he has won or lost the elections. It will at least end, or calm down, the cacophony of gossip about his private life which all but drowned out his campaign.

For Vanhanen is the latest, most public, casualty of love on the internet.

No one should be surprised that prime ministers, too, have fleshly needs. But one mystery is how did he find the time, under the intense, 24/7 pressure of Finland’s EU presidency last year, to click around internet dating chat rooms? It is a tribute to Finnish officialdom that they managed to keep the wheels soundlessly and efficiently turning while the boss went, well, fishing.

Within a few days he had a bite. Susan, a divorcee with three children who runs a small catering service, had swallowed the prime minister’s electro-nic bait. After exchanging a few SMS-messages she knew the identity of her anonymous new admirer. So, by the time the prime minister turned up for his first blind date, so did all Susan’s lady friends.

Then the fish, if we stick with the angling metaphor, started to maul the fishermen. He was only really interested in sex, she said. (Now there’s a surprise!) That Vanhanen had an eye for the ladies was well-known to political insiders. But when he’d dumped his former air-stewardess wife of 20 years a few months before, it came as a painful surprise to his chums in the Agrarian Party. Despite their closeness to nature and its powerful urges, Agrarians are keen on family values. It was all a bit unseemly. But at least Susan came after the split, not before.

Nor, it should be said, did the prime minister overdo things in a vulgar way during his sexual sortie. Thanks to the overwhelming media coverage and now Susan’s book on the affair, everyone knows there was no champagne being popped in the jacuzzi, no tell-tale corks bobbing in the foam. Vanhanen is a teetotaller: just apple juice and candles.

There were pizzas, however. Susan’s memoirs tell us in breathless detail that Vanhanen hates cheese, onion and ketch-up. The pizzas in the story were made to measure, unusually dry and crisp.

This culinary detail and the more lurid revelations transfixed the Finnish public right up to the all-too-predictable end of the affair. Susan had been anticipating a wedding sooner rather than later; instead she was dumped in the same way as she was seduced - by SMS. And the prime ministerial security service supplied their charge with a list of ladies who do kiss but don’t tell.

For good measure they also translated for him the old English saying: "You can say it in diamonds, you can say it in mink, but, for heaven’s sake, never say it in ink!"

But is that really the moral of this tawdry tale? Probably not. The prime minister’s popularity soared as more and more embarrassing details emerged; the affair may even clinch the election. And poor Susan got called nasty names, especially by other women.

In three days’ time Matti Vanhanen, the Finnish prime minister, will know if he has won or lost the elections. It will at least end, or calm down, the cacophony of gossip about his private life which all but drowned out his campaign.