NEWSPAPER message boards and forums are crammed with comments about Gordon Ramsey’s alleged affair with "mistress expert" Sarah Symonds.

He told an audience on Thursday: “I didn’t do it.”

And most of the forum comments say: “I hope it’s not true.”

They say this because, at heart, we want people to succeed; we want to believe you can get married, have kids, and live happily ever after.

For these reasons I would like Sarah Symonds’ allegations not to be true.

I don’t really like to think that while Tana Ramsey was rustling up tea, making sure the kids did their homework and running round ensuring the house looked OK for when the old man came home, HE may, as is alleged, have been knocking off a woman who’s been around the block more times than the municipal dustcart.

All those happy family photos, picture-spreads and interviews about their wonderful home-life together...

But while I have enor-mous sympathy for Tana Ramsey, I can’t pity her.

She’s the one with the four beautiful children, the Georgian mansion, the luxury car and the status as the wife of a mega-celeb.

She’s the person who’ll get the invitations to the film premieres, the store openings and the automatic upgrades wherever she travels. She has described herself as blessed because she is.

Compare what Tana’s got to Symonds, who is hard-faced, childless and earns her crust from a book she has written entitled Having an Affair? A Handbook for the Other Woman.

It’s a life – but not the one I bet she aspired to as a little girl. “When I grow up I want to be a mistress”? Nah, it’s not a great game-plan.

She’s the one who has to appear toned, tanned and permanently available for whatever kind of sex the married man she’s knocking off happens to fancy.

And she seems to give the same interview to everyone who asks, along the lines of: “Blah blah blah, sexy underwear, blah blah blah, empower women, blah blah blah, no regrets at all.”

Well, what else can she say? Women like her are obsessed with their sex life because they don’t have a proper life.

Saying things like the above is far less embarrassing than the awful truth; that for all your lingerie, stilettos, champagne on ice and willingness to literally bend over backwards for a quick one whenever someone else’s old man fancies it, that bloke STILL won’t leave his wife for you.

According to Sarah, she’s got the handle on what married men want.

“At least with the MM’s (married men) we knew what they wanted (sex), and what drove them and stimulated them (sex), and when they would be available to make plans and meet up with us (for sex).”

Yes, dear. What married men want, especially the kind who have affairs, is to have their gateau and eat it.

With all her experience you’d think it would have sunk in by now.

So don’t pity Tana Ramsey, pity Sarah Symonds. No husband or kids or career AND living in Newport in Wales, for goodness sake.

No wonder Tana’s smiling.