One wonders what kind of party Irina Abramovich had been planning to throw for her husband Roman to mark his reaching 40 years of age a week tomorrow.
A soiree in the private room at Cipriani, the Mayfair restaurant which is the favourite of so many haute coutured wives of the expat Russian super-rich? Perhaps a little too public for her notoriously retiring and security concious oligarch husband.
More likely was a special dinner at Fyning Hill, the Abramovichs’ £18 million Sussex estate in the company of a select group of intimates, with helicopters, rather than carriages, to whisk them away at dawn.
Alas, whatever lavish plans had been laid thus far, they would now appear to be on hold, at best. Indeed, it seems more likely that Roman Abramovich, the 11th richest man in the world, who numbers Chelsea football club among his many executive toys, will be receiving divorce papers, rather than a birthday card, from his wife of 15 years and the mother of his five children.
Forty is a dangerous age for the Alpha Male. Ego and libido often demand some kind of reassurance of youth that a wife – even a trophy one like Irina – cannot provide.
