The first editor I worked for was a wise old man. When we cub reporters handed him a story, he would look at us over the top of his half-moon spectacles and ask: "Should I be interested?" I found myself asking the same question when confronted with Angus MacNeil's three-on-a-bed fumble with two girls half his age, while his wife was heavily pregnant.

The first editor I worked for was a wise old man. When we cub reporters handed him a story, he would look at us over the top of his half-moon spectacles and ask: "Should I be interested?" I found myself asking the same question when confronted with Angus MacNeil's three-on-a-bed fumble with two girls half his age, while his wife was heavily pregnant.

When I saw the story, I had just been reading about newscaster Fiona Bruce modelling for picture stories in Jackie while she was a schoolgirl. She said of her real-life teenage experiences: "There was a numbers code. One was a chaste kiss; two, a snog; three, hands under the jumper and so on." I found myself wondering whether passion and alcohol had fuelled the honourable member for the Western Isles to number four (since he assures us he didn't get to five). Then I caught myself. Should I be interested? Absolutely not.

Quite apart from the sense of rummaging through someone else's grubby laundry, the story read like a tired old repeat - with MacNeil as the repressed Presbyterians' answer to Alan Clark and his infamous "coven".

As revelation follows upon exposure, it grows ever harder to be shocked by political scandal. We have waded through the confessions and indiscretions of John Major, Paddy Ashdown, Jack McConnell, Boris Johnson, Robin Cook, John Prescott, David Blunkett, Michael Portillo, David Mellor, Tim Yeo, Cecil Parkinson - how far back should I go - Lloyd George?

I have probably omitted as many as I have remembered, for their number seems legion. These are just the British ones and they seem tame set against Bill Clinton's shenanigans in the Oval Office, which in turn are no match for the relentless cavortings of Jack Kennedy. Didn't Kennedy allegedly confide to a bemused Harold Macmillan that if he didn't have a woman every day he got a headache?

Since I can't imagine that Angus MacNeil will be the last MP to break the 11th commandment - Don't get caught - I have decided the only way to approach the polling booth from now on is to assume that every candidate (with the exception of the famously innocent Tommy Sheridan) has a grubby little sexual secret, and to ignore it.

As far as I can see, the politicians accused of scandal often earn a certain cachet. They are Jack the Lad, a bit of a Sly Dog. Just look at the infamous Clark. What we remember about him is less the detail and variety of his physical gymnastics than the stylishness of his response to an accusatory and judgmental press. It could be summed up in a word: "So?" Meanwhile, his wife was throwing crockery at his head.

For it is the politicians' wives who really suffer. They are left emotionally stripped in the spotlight. It is these private individuals who have their attractions examined and compared with those of the mistress, the boyfriend or the one-night-stand. It is they who have to confront betrayal with a long lens focused on their pain. How often have we seen them standing by their man, like David Mellor's wife, blank-eyed, with a fixed smile? How can they really appraise their marriage while exposed, centre stage?

The "other women" don't fare much better, as MacNeil's teenage "fiddlers" are about to discover. What benefit will it be to music students Judie Morrison and Catriona Watt to bring the opprobrium of the Western Isles down on Angus MacNeil, when in the process they show themselves as drunk and willing participants in his late-night frolicks?

Judie Morrison's father is a Church of Scotland minister and chaplain to the Queen. He won't welcome this publicity. Nor, I doubt, will Catriona Watt's family. The girls were fresh out of school when they canoodled with the then 34-year-old MP but technically, at 17 and 18, they were consenting adults. They have been seduced once by a politician and a second time by the press.

What of their revelations? Should we be concerned about what our elected representatives get up to in bed, so long as it is legal? Does it stop them doing their day job properly? The evidence would suggest the answers are no and no again. Angus MacNeil may have behaved like a duplicitous creep, but he was still sharp enough to spot that selling peerages is against the law.

This revelation about his private life may call into question whether he is a nice man, or whether he was a nice man on that one night, in that snapshot in time. One look at his pretty, unsuspecting wife would suggest not. But how can we weigh his character in the balance when we know so little else about him?

Most of us know only this sorry tale and his precocious David and Goliath sling-shot at the heart of government. It, too, might have been a reckless act. It was, however, an effective one. It was also important for a wider constituency than the one he directly represents. There is another level of scandal that does and should take our attention; and he has highlighted a possible instance of it.

If a politician is involved in sexual activity with someone underage or unwilling, their careers should be finished. If they are caught taking cash for questions, with their hand in the till, illegally representing a vested interest, setting fire to a hotel, committing perjury, creating a deliberately dodgy dossier or selling peerages, they don't deserve a cross against their name come polling day. That kind of impropriety is inconsistent with public office.

There are many who will contend that a man who cheats on his wife cannot be called honest. Actually, I think that in a broader sense he can be. In most men - and in most women - there is a divide between sexuality and honesty. There are thousands of people who in a moment of emotional vulnerability will have cheated on their partner but who would never under any circumstances steal or defraud. We might prefer our elected representatives to be virtuous men and women who are as honest in the sexual arena as they are in the financial one. The evidence suggests that we have Hobson's choice.

But while we retain our avid interest in what politicians do between the sheets, there is an increasing danger for people in public life.

Hidden scandals were once used to blackmail some into a greater public betrayal. It was called the honey trap. Now MPs are more likely to be targeted deliberately by ambitious young women or men in search of publicity, or cash for a kiss and tell, or both. It is the threat of this sort of embarrassment that keeps many bright and able people from putting themselves forward for public office. If they have lived anything other than a monkish existence and they value their privacy, they steer clear. We are all the losers.

If the electorate takes a view that sexual indiscretion with a willing adult is a private matter, the kiss and tell market will shrivel and the pool of would-be politicians should expand. It might even do us voters some good, for it is seldom genuine outrage that sells papers when this sort of story breaks. If the media's function is to inform and entertain, I would argue that sexual scandal usually falls into the latter category. We aren't a high-minded readership saddened and outraged by a two-faced representative. Aren't we really just relishing a lip-smacking scandal and a glorious excuse for self-righteous complacency? If so, should we be interested?

You tell me.