When Ray and Karen Parlour divorced in 2002 he offered to pay her £120,000 ($350,230) a year in maintenance - a large sum to most people, but he was earning a fortune as a football star for Arsenal and England.

So a judge branded his offer “thoroughly mean and unfair” and awarded Karen Parlour £1 million in cash and property, an income of £250,000 a year for herself and thousands more in maintenance for their three children.

But Karen Parlour was as sick as a parrot about the deal, and last week her lawyers told the Court of Appeal why. Ray owed his glittering career to his wife, they argued.

The couple had met when he was only a 17-year-old apprentice and she ws an optician’s assistant.

Once married, she rescued him from the brink of self-destructive alcoholism that would have put him out of the game - and she also cared for his kids. Then Ray Parlour admitted adultery and they divorced.

That was why Karen Parlour wanted full financial recognition of her contribution in the form of half his earnings - not just during his lucrative playing career, but for life.