So powerful, so dictatorial, so reclusive, so pudgy, so downright strange is North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il that, when a new titbit about him comes our way, we cannot help but to pour over it feverishly.
My pulse was therefore quickening on Sunday, when the news flash crossed my path that the Darling Man - or whatever title of adoration his countrypeople have been indoctrinated to use - had taken a new wife.
'Aha', said I excitedly, having read previously of Mr Kim's appetite for actresses, dancers, singers and beauty queens. 'Perhaps this time his beloved will be from another branch of the entertainment industry, such as journalism?'
I read on, but found that Kim Ok, 42, was nothing so exciting: she is his long-time private secretary. Worse, she is not drop-dead gorgeous like all his previous wives or girlfriends. Rather, as the South Korean government source who revealed the news observed, she was merely 'cute'. He even went so far as to refer to her as 'wise and clever'.
This is distressing, to say the least.
Since Mr Kim, 64, started the North's communist dynasty by taking over from his father, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, he has been the talk of the world's jet-set juntas. No other dictator can claim to be so wild and wacky, yet so evil.
Had he discarded his playboy image - awash with fast cars and women and fine food, with the occasional kidnapping of South Korean film directors and actresses thrown in for added glitz?
