PLATELL’S PEOPLE: Jamie and Jools know the real value of marriage 

This is a tale of two couples. First, there’s Jamie Oliver and wife Jools, who marked their 18th wedding anniversary this week by posting loving messages online.

Some found them slightly toe curling. Other romantics like me thought they were rather charming.

They described each other as ‘soul mates’, and Jools ended by saying: ‘You would do anything for us and most of all you make me feel safe.’ They’re the personification of a happy marriage, supportive, loving and raising five children together.

Chef Jamie Oliver and wife Jools, marked their 18th wedding anniversary this week

Compare the Olivers with cohabiting academics Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, who this week won a long battle at the Supreme Court to give heterosexual couples the right to civil partnerships (which became legal for gay couples in 2004).

Why do they want this right when they could simply get married in a register office using words of their choice? Because they view marriage as a patriarchal tradition that demeans women. Of course they do!

The Keidsteins (they use a ‘fused family name’) describe marriage as ‘a union in which women were exploited for their domestic and sexual services’ for centuries. Their barrister told the court her clients had ‘deep-rooted and genuine ideological objections to marriage’ because it was ‘historically heteronormative and patriarchal’. So there.

But who’s really living in the dark ages here? The modern world’s full of married couples where women work — or are the main breadwinner — and would be appalled to be described as subjugated.

Of course, all marriages are not happy. Mine wasn’t, but I have never given up hope of being a bride again. I still refer to my ex as my ‘first husband’. Despite going through a divorce, I believe passionately in marriage, as do most of my friends.

A poll earlier this year revealed that an astonishing 78 per cent of teenagers want to get married. However much the Left sneers at marriage, the evidence proves it’s still the most stable way to raise children. One in three cohabiting couples split before their child’s fifth birthday, compared to one in ten married couples.

Look, I’m sure the Keidsteins are a loving couple who want to do their best for their two children, and it’s true that civil partnerships could offer extra legal protections for millions of cohabiting couples.

But do they have to sanctimoniously traduce marriage in the process? Whatever you think of Jamie and Jools, I know which of these two couples I think’s got it right.

I feel sorry for all the young girls watching Love Island, growing up thinking all men are hairless, have 16-packs and orange coloured skin that suggests they’ve grown up next to a nuclear reactor. Or that women should speak in sentences such as: ‘Like I kinda fink I like you and like, is it for real that you’ve like sh****d like 200 girls?’

Or that it’s normal for girls’ lips to be so engorged by fillers they can’t get them around the rim of a glass without dribbling or even, sadder still, feel the tender kiss of a faithful man.

The Number One World Cup WAG has to be Rebekah Vardy. I can’t mention who her husband is, since she insists she’s a person in her own right and will not be defined by him.

The very independent Mrs Vardy is a former nightclub events manager but presumably feels she would have become famous even if she’d never married an England striker. Since hitching her wagon to the multi-millionaire I mustn’t name, she’s shown the full range of her talents by eating animal testicles in the I’m A Celebrity jungle.

Actually, that’s not her only talent — she has the ability to spend money like water, too. She blew many thousands chartering a private jet to ferry her, the nanny and her four children — by three different fathers — around Russia.

And she packed her kids’ clothes for the trip all by herself, ‘about 30 suitcases because I didn’t know what they’d need’.

Right on, sister. Emmeline Pank-hurst would be proud.

History of a kind was made this week when Labour’s Danielle Rowley apologised for being late for a debate. She told fellow MPs she had her period.

Lord alive, is this what Parliament has been reduced to?

It’s not enough that we’ve had MPs sobbing over Universal Credit benefits, their abortions and alcoholic dads — now we have to listen to a woman telling the world it’s that time of the month.

She made the comment during a debate about what’s been dubbed ‘period poverty’ — claiming the average annual cost of sanitary products is £500. The Government is under pressure to offer such products free to women on low incomes.

England’s chief medical officer has already called for women to have time off for the menopause. It’s a funny old world. On the one hand women want, rightly, to be treated as equals. On the other, they want special concessions. Work that one out.

The Queen had to pull out of a ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral because of a cold. Could another reason for her absence be that she couldn’t face shaking hands with that right-on, self-appointed Queen of Caring, Angelina Jolie?

Makes a change for Theresa May to raise the England flag over No 10 as she’s spent the past year hoisting the white flag of surrender to her Remainer Cabinet colleagues.

On Radio 4’s Today programme, Tony Blair — who has clearly lost his marbles — said it was a myth that he deliberately opened Britain’s borders to mass migration. Funnily enough, he wasn’t back on the radio yesterday to explain why, on his watch, Britain was up to its neck in the illegal rendition and torture of suspected terrorists at the behest of his chum George W. Bush. 

John Major claims Lady Thatcher’s criticism of him after she was deposed was due to her dementia — which did not, for the record, surface until years later. A dreadful cheap shot from the Europhile Major, who’s always believed anyone who doesn’t want to wrap themselves in the EU flag is mad.

Johnny Depp’s (pictured) son Jack, 16, was reported this week to be suffering from a mystery illness

Johnny Depp’s (pictured) son Jack, 16, was reported this week to be suffering from a mystery illness

Johnny Depp’s son Jack, 16, was reported this week to be suffering from a mystery illness. The boy’s mother, actress Vanessa Paradis, skipped the premiere of her new movie and Depp rushed to the lad’s bedside.

In his forthcoming memoir, Depp says he reached rock bottom following his 2017 divorce from actress Amber Heard.

‘I poured myself a vodka in the morning and started writing until the tears filled my eyes. I kept trying to figure out what I’d done to deserve this.’

He dumped Vanessa, his stunning partner of 14 years, abandoned their two teenage children, and ran off with an airhead blonde who cost him millions amid charges of alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence. What’s not to deserve, Johnny? You need to see a doctor about such narcissism.

 They were engaged for six months, and have been married for one, yet Prince Harry has still not met his bride’s father. In all that time, Thomas Markle hasn’t even clapped eyes on his beloved daughter, except on TV. This sad rift is beginning to cast a pall over Meghan’s proclamations of being a campaigning humanitarian. What kind of daughter freezes out her father — who I’d humbly suggest is not a well man — while embracing strangers?

What a pity profligate Prince Charles’s £1 million travel bill last year was revealed just before the charity event for his Prince’s Trust, attended by Cheryl Tweedy (left).

Created more than 40 years ago, it is now the UK’s leading youth charity and has helped nearly a million young people get their lives on track. Yes Prince Charles is pompous. But he’s principled.



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