A lovey-dovey act in public can hide all sorts of problems, so how can you recognise the clues to the marriages made in heaven?

HOW on earth do you prove you are happily married? Tricky one this, especially for the Beckhams. At a libel trial later this year, that's precisely what they're going to have to do. Goodness knows how.

The public face of most happy marriages is pretty indecipherable really. Most couples are more likely to play down their affection for each other rather than put it on public display. A look might say it. A gesture. Small signs rather than grand protestations.

Clinging lovey-dovey fashion to each other in public or singing each other's praises all the time always looks a bit dodgy. Most unnatural. So much so, that once you've seen a couple all over each other in public, you can virtually count the days to the announcement of the break up.

Did we ever see Sir Denis Thatcher pouring himself all over Margaret in public? No - yet if ever there was a rock solid supportive marriage, that was certainly it.

On the other hand, even if witnesses can come up with dates, times and details of rows, that won't prove much either. We've all had rows - wonderful, blazing, high decibel rows - that in the great scheme of things have meant absolutely nothing, except a chance to clear the air. No proof there then.

Show me a couple who have never had a row and I'll show you a couple who are either very boring, or a couple where one is a total doormat.

The Beckhams, of course, who are suing the News of the World, have more than a marriage to lose if they are discovered to be at each other's throats behind the happy family image. Brand Beckham is worth millions. Without the happy family image, they might have to scale down from ten cars to just eight, or however many they can struggle by with.

But there is perhaps one way to test a marriage. I once spent an excruciating lunchtime with friends who split up very soon afterwards. Which came as no surprise at all.

They hadn't argued or fought in front of us. They hadn't put on a sham of lovey doveyness. No. Throughout the entire meal they had been perfectly polite to each other. Icily polite. Polite as in talking to a total stranger.

No cheerful insults. No pet names. No withering looks. No impatience or annoyance. No passion, romantic or infuriated. Nothing at all apart from very polite indifference.

And as a sign that a marriage is on the rocks, that is the real give-away.

OH dear. Being a millionaire doesn't count for much these days. To live a millionaire lifestyle you apparently need around £3m, say Coutts, the Queen's bankers. A million, my dears, is nothing.

Still seems plenty to me.

YORK Councillor Ann Reid made sure her daughter got to the church in time for her wedding by arranging to have all the traffic lights turned green. Brilliant.

It was actually a test for a new system to clear the route for emergency vehicles. They apparently needed a convoy of vehicles to test the system properly. And what better than a convoy of wedding cars? Nice and distinctive, easy to track on camera and it certainly saved the use of council vehicles and their drivers.

So now we know it works, why not let other brides do the same? At a price, of course. Money's no object for many weddings sp it could bring in a few bob for the council coffers.

Then the people kept waiting at the lights could console themselves with the thought that their even longer than usual wait at the red lights was at least knocking a bit off their council tax.

And brides would have no excuse for being late.

CHILDREN of young parents are more likely to grow up to be violent, says a new study into violence in society, which says these children are locked into a cycle of aggression.

Parents under 16 years old have lower emotional maturity and fewer emotional reserves, making it much harder for them to be good parents, says the report.

Well yes. Children don't generally make good parents. Believe it or not, they are not grown-up enough.

That's why we are supposed to do our best to prevent them from becoming parents in the first place. But the number of under 16 pregnancies is on the increase again. And our laws on under-age sex seem to be increasingly ignored.

We're the grown-ups. It's time we stopped wittering and did something about it.