When it comes to the lives of the rich and famous, there seems to be no limit to the amount of bonkers behaviour that money can buy. The latest? The ‘no-split divorce’.
Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported that England footballer Kyle Walker’s wife has filed for divorce. This is neither unexpected nor unreasonable since he has fathered two children by the ‘influencer’ Lauryn Goodman.
Quite why any man would want to swap his rather soignee wife for this trashy rival is beyond me.
Especially since the latter’s recent financial demands (including a hydro-pool, a £28-per-hour gardener, a new car worth up to £70,000 every three years and air-conditioning costing around £33,000) mark her in my opinion as a shameless gold-digger. It’s like swapping a Bentley for a clapped-out Ford Cortina.
It appears that Walker, who has four children with his childhood sweetheart wife Annie, is desperately trying to persuade her to take him back and is willing to do whatever is necessary.
Kyle Walker and his wife Annie’s ‘no-split divorce’ means the couple will formally end their marriage but continue living together as man and wife while co-parenting their children
One option is this novel and contradictory-sounding idea of a ‘no-split divorce’. In essence, it means the couple would formally end their marriage, with Kyle giving a large chunk of his estimated £27 million fortune to Annie, but they would continue living together as man and wife while co-parenting their children.
The logic is that Annie would have the financial independence to walk away at any stage she wants – and Kyle gets to live with the woman he insists he doesn’t want to give up. Their children, meanwhile, remain in their family home with minimal disruption with both parents under the same roof.
It’s an intriguing concept and one that probably only works for a multi-millionaire footballer with a mansion in Cheshire and a long-suffering wife who loves him despite his being a total ass.
Such an arrangement might not be so practical in a two-up, two-down terrace in Bolton. But, strange as it may seem, it’s not the first time I’ve encountered this sort of set-up.
A friend mentioned that mutual acquaintances had split but, instead of selling the family home and establishing separate residences, they operate a kind of parental timeshare. The children stay in situ, while their parents come and go and spend family time together. They are free to pursue other partners but the family unit remains intact.
The British-made anchovy paste Gentleman’s Relish
Gentleman’s Relish – the anchovy paste first made in 1828, which I mention elsewhere in this column – declares itself to be ‘delicious on hot toast’. But isn’t everything delicious on hot toast? My favourite is mashed banana, with a squeeze of lime. Yours?
We’ve seen unusual solutions to thorny relationship problems before. There was, of course, the ‘conscious uncoupling’ of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Thingummy of Coldplay, described by its inventor, the therapist Katherine Woodward Thomas, as ‘a kind and compassionate way to overcome break-up grief and use it to transform and enrich your entire life’. In other words, instead of throwing things at each other, you sit down together, have a few grown-up conversations – and agree not to tear chunks out of each other.
The idea of a ‘no-split divorce’, though, is slightly more testing. I know this because I tried it myself for a while, with my ex, Michael Gove, with whom I remain on very good terms. Even so, living under the same roof while not a couple was very challenging – and also rather depressing.
He, I think, found it less so. But perhaps this was because the arrangement was rather more advantageous for him, as I was still making sure the house didn’t run out of loo paper and doing the weekly shop. (One of our children’s main complaints after we eventually moved into separate homes was that all they could ever find in his fridge was wine, mouldy cheese and pots of Gentleman’s Relish, aka the Garrick Club diet.)
The other issue was that our house wasn’t big enough, nor was our box room. Sharing a bathroom with a teenage daughter was a challenge I had not anticipated.
But, however progressive such approaches may seem, they’re not new. Aristocrats and royals have been doing this sort of thing for centuries. Generations of estranged toffs have lived under one roof, neither wishing to part company formally since to do so would diminish the family estate. Divorce is out of the question.
That’s why toffs are generally a) so cavalier about morality (one must protect one’s inheritance, but this mustn’t get in the way of having a good time) and b) so buttoned up and good at being polite to one another, even amid the mutual loathing.
Toffs specialise in the art of frosty civility for the simple reason that, without it, having to sit opposite each other while shooting daggers across the polished mahogany in the ancestral pile becomes too tiresome.
Emotions, as Downton’s Violet Crawley might have said, are for commoners. It will be interesting to see if Kyle and Annie have the dispassion required to make it work.
A young female footballer, who faces a ban for asking an adult transgender opponent ‘Are you a man?’, is being defended on the basis that she has autism. Why? Neurodivergent or not, her question was legitimate to put to anyone presenting as a male taking part in female sport.
My fashion buzz
Marks & Spencer and designer Bella Freud have released a new clothing collection
Trying to bag something from Bella Freud’s new collection at Marks & Spencer, I found myself in the human, middle-class equivalent of a plague of locusts. Nevertheless, I managed to buy a fluorescent yellow jumper and a striped woollen scarf that reaches my ankles. I think I look frightfully chic. My children tell me I look like a giant bumblebee.
If a 41-year-old childminder is jailed for two years and seven months for posting online a vile and incendiary message just after three children were killed in Southport, could someone explain why three women (Heba Alhayek, Pauline Ankunda and Noimutu Olayinka Taiwo) convicted earlier this year of a terrorist offence for brandishing photos of paragliders in the wake of the October 7 attacks got off scot-free?
You’re beautiful, James!
James Blunt said that if the 20th-anniversary edition of his debut album got to No 1, he’d change his name to ‘Blunty McBluntface’. Pictured on Good Morning Britain on Wednesday
OK, I’ll say it: I love James Blunt. He’s a brilliant songwriter, funny and self-deprecating – a quality sadly lacking in the music world. His latest wheeze was to say that if the 20th-anniversary edition of his debut album got to No 1, he’d change his name to ‘Blunty McBluntface’. It’s at No 7. Come on, Blunt fans: we can do this.
- Under terms of Labour’s planned imposition of VAT on public schools, Eton College is to get a £4.8 million rebate from the Treasury for VAT paid in the past on capital expenditure. Proof, if necessary, that this Government is thick as well as spiteful.
- Yet again, last week, Sir Keir Starmer referred to Rishi Sunak as ‘the Prime Minister’. Was this a slip of the tongue or a case of wishful thinking? As an opinion poll today shows, Starmer’s approval rating is at a record low, down two points to minus 31 per cent. He must long for the days when there was someone else to blame for the mess…
- There is something chilling about that footage of the Israeli drone that pursued the architect of the October 7 massacre into a bombed-out building before killing him. Yes, he was a very bad man, but the video is like a dystopian sci-fi movie. It was unwise to release it.
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