Legendary American beauty Marilyn Monroe would have been 85 years old this week. No one can tell what she would have looked like today, but her iconic image still lives worldwide.

On her birthday, I turned to Rick Wayne, a world famous, world-class bodybuilding legend from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia who now publishes his own newspaper back home – and who probably knows everything there is to know about "the blonde bomb".

He told me, "Her real name was Norma Jean. She had an affair with Albert Einstein and was married to Arthur Miller.

"Norman Mailer called her the Stradivarius – legendary violinist – of sex. It was widely accepted that she had affairs with both Jack (President John F) and Bobby (Robert) Kennedy and the persistent word is that the Mob wiped her out to keep the latter's name clean when he ran for Attorney General (of the USA).

"Marilyn was supposed to be writing her memoirs when she allegedly overdosed on prescription drugs."

But Marilyn Monroe was not the only hot flame to run a head of state off track. There are countless world examples of secret affairs with women that have derailed Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers and other public persons in high places.

Perhaps the gravest revelations in modern times were the serial incidents of abuse of young men by Catholic priests around the world, over several decades. So damning and costly have they been that Pope Benedict XVI has ruled that any and all such allegations should now first be reported to the police.

Britain has had its own long list of messy royal marriages. In the first half of the last century, King George gave up his crown to be able to marry the woman he loved – an American photographer. Prince Charles forfeited his wife Diana Princess of Wales to marry the woman he really loved, Camilla Parker-Bowles. And Diana died in Paris with a man the royal household did not necessarily like, but to whom she had given her heart – the son of Mohammed Al Fayed, the Egyptian billionaire owner of Harrod's, one of Britain's most popular imperial stores.

In South Africa, all that Winnie Mandela stood for in the struggle against Apartheid almost disappeared when her secret sexual liaison was revealed, leading to Nelson Mandela's eventual announcement of his decision to divorce her.

A former Israeli President was recently found guilty by a court of law and jailed for sexual assaults against women while in office.

Europe has had its fair share of scandals involving sex and power. Max Mosley, 71, former head of the Formula One international car racing body, fell from grace after a London tabloid, News of the World, revealed that he took part in "a sadomasochistic orgy" with five prostitutes. Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi was the best-known European leader seen or portrayed as being led by his libido – until ex-IMF head Dominic Strauss-Kahn's sexual assault case in America knocked everything else off the world headlines.

In the USA, after John F. Kennedy died, his popular wife, Jackie, married billionaire Geek oil tycoon Aristotle Onassis. In the case of his brother Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, a young woman drowned when he was out of his car and it rolled into the Chappaquidick River. President Bill Clinton's White House escapades with Monica Lewinski led to his impeachment. Arnold Schwartznegger, the former Governor of California, fell out of grace with his movie star wife Maria Shriver (also of the Kennedy clan) after she got to know, only recently, that her husband was the father of their former Guatemalan housemaid's ten-year-old son.

Opinions vary widely on all of these high-profile cases.

Many insist persons in high or respected public office – especially politicians and priests – should be guided and judged by ethics and morals higher than would be applied to the average citizen. But the holders of public office abhor the extension of demands of transparency and accountability to their bedrooms – or, in some cases, to their "home away from home".

Many insist that individuals should be given a right of reply before damaging allegations are published, but opponents say that would only lead to legal injunctions to prevent the information from being published.

After being awarded US$120,000 in a British court for invasion of his privacy, Max Mosley argued in a European court that persons like himself should be forewarned in advance of publication of information about their private lives that can have consequences for their family life.

However, the European court ruled in favor of "the people's right to know", with its supporters arguing it was important "to find the right balance" between "individual rights of privacy" and "the right to freedom of expression" and "transparency of official information"

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

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