We in the trades often snipe at the gutter press – Who actually cares about Kate and Jon Gosselin, Brangelina’s tribulations, Heidi Montag’s plastic surgery addiction or the cast of Jersey Shore, anyway? – but it’s at least partly out of jealousy. Rarely does a story come along that’s plump and juicy with the seamy underside of human nature that you can sneak by an editor as relevant to our reading audience.

So forgive our Schadenfreude as a Tiger Woodsian drama plays out in the C-suites of Oracle Corp.

Oracle president Charles Phillips is renowned for being cool and unflappable. But even his demeanour must have been shaken some after an eight-and-a-half-year relationship with a woman other than the one to whom he was legally betrothed was revealed on billboards in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta.

According to reports, YaVaughnie Wilkins and Phillips had been paramours since 2001. Wilkins ended the relationship last October, upon discovering that the divorce Phillips claimed freed him from matrimonial obligation in 2003 hadn’t even been filed for until 2008. According to reports. Not our reports. Can’t stress that enough.

The presumable aggrieved Wilkins allegedly took out billboards in the U.S. cities with photos of the pair canoodling and the message, “You are my soulmate forever,” attributed to one C.E.P.

A statement from the firm handling Philips’s personal PR issued a statement (according to reports) admitting the “serious relationship” with Wilkins. “The relationship with Ms. Wilkins has since ended and we both wish each other well,” the statement concludes.

That would explain the billboards – she just wanted to wish him well.

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