SO THEN, how was Valentine’s for you? Did she swoon, palpitating, over the candlelit crate of Ferrero Rocher? Or had you plumped intead for the big bunch of vintage Krug knickers? Either way, surely your testeronic billet-doux in Monday’s T2 to the effect that Cyrano de Basingstoke would tonight be ready to pluck his mandoline by the light of the silv’ry moon for his own true Roxanipoo must have gone down a treat?

Unless, of course, she didn’t get as far as T2. Suppose she was brought up short in World News by the down-column snippet reporting that what King Mswati III of Swaziland had given his wife was a brand-new BMW? So what, you reply, the little woman is not like that, elle ne regrette rien, she only has eyes for me, but you do not know the tenth of it: for the king didn’t buy just one Beemer, he bought ten, because he has ten wives, and since he can have as many as he likes — his father King Sobhuza had 120 and counting — it may well be that your little woman is online even as we speak, trying to find out if easyJet flies to Mbabane.

I have been online, too, and discovered that what King Mswati III actually has, at the time of going to press, is 13 wives. I do not know what the other three woke up to on February 14, the website didn’t say, could have been three Lamborghinis if they’re a bit tasty, could have been three nothings if, for example, one of them always forgets to set the video, another suffers from headaches, and the third has complained to Martin Bashir that there are 14 of us in this marriage. There is also the possibility that they are too young to drive, since his latest, I read, was only 16 when he married her last September, His Majesty having selected her from all the other contestants for the Miss Teenage Swaziland title, during, wouldn’t you know it, the statutory bare-breasted round.

I would like to have done more research, but it’s tricky. When I rang the Swaziland High Commission in Buckingham Gate to ask which BMWs the King had bought, 3-series, 5-series, 7-series, sporty little Z3, whatever, they said they were not allowed to answer personal questions, I would have to ask the king himself. Ha, ha, I said, I don’t suppose you have his Swazi number, and they said yes, it’s 002685185208; but he hasn’t answered yet. Not much of a surprise, really: if you’ve invested all that money in women, you’ve got better things to do than sit around waiting for hacks to ring up to inquire whether being the only absolute monarch in Africa carries any perks.

Unless, two days on, he’s just having rows. In my experience, which is of course non-existent, giving ten new BMWs to ten wives is asking for trouble: what are the odds that a couple of them have picked up dents, a third has parked hers on a double yellow outside the gym and been towed, a fourth has dropped her fag and pokerworked her seat, and so on. To say nothing of the strong possibility that the one who always forgets to set the video has slashed 40 tyres in the night.

• FUNNY THING (with any luck), while I was online some kind of virus dumped an uninvited e-mail on my screen. It appears to have been sent by a tadpole. To whom it may concern: this is a cry for help. You will have seen today’s headline “Frogspawn At Risk From Early Spring”, and it is not wrong. Many of us in the jelly community are suffering from some mysterious and terrible disease: our tails have wasted away, our heads have begun to bulge horribly, and four peculiar growths have appeared at the corners of our bodies. Some of my older colleagues have started to hop about uncontrollably, and rumour is rife that if this brings us to the notice of the French, we shall get eaten. We do not know which way to turn — we never have, it is one of the perils of being gummed together — but word has come to us that the great Mayor of London has a pond in Cricklewood. However, though a deeply caring man prepared to do anything for the right minority, he is also a very busy one and may not have clocked what he would undoubtedly be the first to describe as the imminent holocaust, if only he knew about it; especially as he himself, we understand, has suffered a life of unremitting persecution and agony, having failed even to get on to Schindler’s B-list. We beg you to bring our plight to his gracious notice, before it is too late.