MY pal says he would always recommend separation over divorce; it gives you time to hide the cash.

This is the voice of experience, if not expertise. Every day for him is the dawn of a new error.

My pal has been hitched so many times his marriage licence is now stamped: To Whom It May Concern.

He split from wife No 1 for religious reasons. She worshipped money and he didn't have any.

The little he did have was tied up in their house, and she took that. He said it didn't matter, because after a night on the tiles he could never find it, anyway.

He was happy to see the back of wife No 2 because she was always wanting to talk to him during sex. He said the final straw was when she phoned him one night from a motel.

Wife No 3 loved the simple things in life, but she didn't realise she had married one of them. I'm convinced her mistake was in allowing his mind to wander - it's much too little to be out on its own.

SO, as a three-time loser, did he have any observations to pass on? Read them and weep.

•The secret of success in marriage is not to be at home too much.

•When you see what some girls marry, you realise how much they must hate to work for a living.

•Exercise will help your mother-in-law burn off calories. A flamethrower is quicker.

•When a married couple walk down the street, the one a few steps ahead is the one who is mad.

•The definition of panic is when your wife and your girlfriend and your mortgage are all 30 days late at the same time.

• would advise you to take with a large pinch of salt any advice tendered by my pal. This is, after all, the man whose fourth and most recent rendition of "I do" claimed the hand of The Wicked Witch of the East.

A match made in heaven it is not. It was six months before they could leave Cambuslang on honeymoon because of her electronic tag. And, as for the diamond ring, well, there never was a more appropriate gift for TWWE than the hardest thing known to man.

"How's life treating you?" I asked my pal last week.

"Like it caught me sleeping with its wife," said he.

TWWE inherited her nickname not just for her looks; rumour has it her family had their own coven.

Her parents were always fighting, and the old man would warn his wife: "When I die, I'll dig my way up out of the grave and come back and haunt you forever."

When he did pop his clogs, there was obvious concern from TWWE for her mother's safety in the face of that curse, but she needn't have worried.

"Let the old creep dig," said her mother. "I had him buried upside down."

Rather extreme, you might think, but there's nowt as queer as folk.

Take, for instance, New York couple Chana and Simon Taub, both 57, who have been arguing in the divorce courts for two years. Neither is prepared to give up their Brooklyn home - so the judge ordered a wall to be built through the heart of the house to keep them apart.

You couldn't make it up, and TWWE was saying exactly that yesterday.

Saturday was their first anniversary and she made a special effort. She filled the bath with champagne, and she and my pal spent a sensual evening soaking in the tub by candlelight.

Later, not wanting that expensive bubbly to go to waste, she carefully refilled the empty bottles.

She wants a wee' word with my pal - to explain how she comes to have half a bottle extra.