That would be the theory posited in a Vanity Fair article coming out next month about poor old Conrad Black's legal troubles. (H/T to Charles Bury via CAJ-L)

An excerpt from the Independent story:

Assailed by lawsuits and criminal charges and still brooding on the loss of a media empire that was once the third largest in the world, Lord Black of Crossharbour has now to contend with a public attack on his marriage by several of his most senior former lieutenants at the Daily Telegraph.

The Telegraph's former editor Charles Moore, and chief executive Jeremy Deedes are among those who help trace the peer's downfall to his 1992 marriage to Barbara Amiel, the columnist who drew him deeper into a rich-list world of celebrity and influence. Their comments, in interviews for the forthcoming issue of Vanity Fair, come only two months before Lord Black goes to trial to fight charges that he used his network of media companies to fund a lavish lifestyle in the US, the UK and Canada.

Mr Deedes tells the magazine that he used to call Ms Amiel "the distraction". He said: "Barbara is a five-star girl and she needs five-star maintenance. He was willing to do whatever she wanted, it would appear."

Charles Moore comments: "She led him away from the company of journalists to the company of the super-rich." Whereas an ideal evening for Mr Black prior to his marriage in 1992 might have been dinner with a right-wing politician or columnist, favoured guests soon became the likes of Donald Trump, Princess Michael of Kent, the Duchess of York and Joan Collins.

"He did want society's acceptance. I could never quite figure out whose," said Mr Moore. Of Ms Amiel, he added: "One day she is kind, warm, helpful. Then she'll turn her head around and barely look at you. In social relations, she was definitely giving orders to him - it was not the other way around."

Babs, of course, is the person who once told Vogue magazine: "I have an extravagance that knows no bounds."

I found this a bit sad:

The forthcoming criminal trial, set for 5 March, is sure to be a media circus with a defiant Lord Black promising "vindication" before returning to "a quieter life". According to a gossip columnist at Lord Black's former paper the Chicago Sun-Times, the peer was handing out T-shirts to his friends as Christmas presents emblazoned with the slogan "Conrad Will Win". No one has yet been photographed in one.

Well, it doesn't sound like a going-out kind of shirt for Conrad's crowd.

Anyway, the story touched on how many of Black's former socialite friends have grown distant. One of Black's former cocktail party guests and Hollinger board members was Henry Kissinger, the one-time U.S. secretary of state. One story I remember about Mr. Kissinger was how someone once assailed him with this: "The problem with you, Henry, is you've forgotten all your old friends."

Kissinger's purported reply? That forgetting all his old friends was the secret to his success.

Black understands those sorts of rules and those sorts of people. Unfortunately, he's on the loser side of the equation at this time.

Ah, the emphemeral nature of "friendship." :)

Addendum

Some have remarked that the Vanity Fair article is late to the party on this one. For example, Tom Bower's book on Babs and Conrad entitled Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, covered much of this ground when it came out in the fall.

Some excerpts from the CTV.ca story:

The author reserves harsh words for Barbara Amiel Black, a prominent journalist in her own right and Black's second wife.

Bower claims in the book that she married her way to the top, yet wanted more.

He writes that staff at the Blacks' mansion in London used to joke about landing lights on the roof for Madame and her broom. The Blacks have had to sell that mansion. ...

"I blame the two of them for outrageous greed, wanting much more than they could afford, and that's what brought them down," Bower said. ...

Black has countered that  the new book is "a malodorous pot-boiler," adding, "His key-hole, smut-mongering side-piece portrayal of my wife as a man-eating sex maniac prior to her marriage to me is disgusting."