Archive for April, 2008

The news that Superman has longed to hear has finally happened, General Zod has divorced.

Well, maybe not General Zod himself, more the actor who played him, Terrence Stamp. He’s been granted a quickie, no need to show up luvy, divorce from his wife Elizabeth O’Rourke.

London Judge Redgrave granted Stamp a decree nisi from his wife, where neither party was required to turn up. Stamp, 69 years old, married his 33 year old wife (get in son) on New Year’s Eve in 2002.

As with all divorces these days the reason given was ‘unreasonable behaviour’.

Unreasonable? General Zod? Maybe his bride wouldn’t kneel before him.

Clive Bellmore

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Everyone’s favourite ironic (sorry, iconic) symbol from the early Eighties, Gary Coleman, is to divorce on live TV, in an episode of Divorce Court.

Coleman, now 40 but still looking like a 12 year old, became famous in the TV series Diff’rent Strokes. He married his wife, 22 year old Shannon Price, in August 2007. Divorce Court is a US TV show where a judge has the authority to grant divorces and rule over the division of assets.

According to Price, Gary Coleman used to have childish tantrums when he didn’t get his own way, and he had no friends. Mind you, when you’re a 40 year old with the body of a child… unless Michael Jackson needs some mates.

Shannon said about Gary:

If he doesn’t get his way, he throws a temper tantrum like a five-year-old does. He like stomps the floor and yells, ‘Meehhhh,’ and starts throwing stuff around.

Gary Coleman responded in a typical childish manner.

I don’t have any friends and don’t have any intention of making any.

People will stab you in the back, mistreat you, talk about me behind your back, steal from you. And they’re not really your friends. [They are] only there because you’re a celebrity or because they want to get something from you.

It’s not her fault. I always feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders every day I get up… There are days I don’t even want to get up.

Gary sounds like a troubled man.

Clive Bellmore

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Chris Townsend, who worked on BBC’s Casualty programme as a set designer, has killed himself in home after becoming embroiled in a bitter divorce and custody battle. His six year old son also died in the fire.

The six year old was recovered from the fire by medics, still wearing his pyjamas, but he died in hospital. Little six year old Charlie-Bob suffered severe smoke inhalation.

Chris Townsend was embroiled in a bitter divorce with his wife Paula, who also worked on Casualty as a wardrobe mistress.

Chris was in court earlier that day over custody of her older son. The hearing went badly which apparently devastated Chris.

His wife Paula said:

I was divorcing my husband. He was unhinged. Now my six-year-old boy has died and my husband has died.

I have just spent the whole day with his body.

I have given him his favourite toys, his teddy bear and the birthday present he was going to get.

Nigel Blake, landlord of the local pub ‘The Bird in Hand’ said that Chris went straight there after the court hearing.

This is what divorce can do to people. Now a father and son have died, devastating a family.

Clive Bellmore

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With divorce becoming not only more and more accepted, but more and more common in the UK, it’s worth looking at the divorce statistics for England and Wales to see just how prevalent divorce is in the UK.

Incredibly the rates of divorce declined in 2006 when compared to the total of the married population. The divorce rate is now at its lowest in the UK since 1984, which is very surprising.

I wouldn’t start rejoicing just yet though as one in five people who divorced in 2006 had already been divorced in the past. The rate of recurring divorcees has doubled in the past twenty five years.

69% of divorces were at the request of the wife, with the most common reason of course being the ‘easy way out’ clause of unreasonable behaviour.

The divorce rate is now 1 in 3, with a total of 132,562 divorced in 2006 within England and Wales.

It’s good news for some people though as 3,831 law firms now deal with divorce in the UK. That’s a lot of money taken from couples for no reason. If only they could work this out between them.

I personally paid over £3,000 for my divorce. I know my ex-wife’s legal fees were around the £2,000 mark. If everyone who got divorced in the UK in 2006 had a similar fee to pay their solicitors then a total of £662,810,000 was paid out by couples to solicitors in 2006 just to get divorced.

That’s an awful statistic. £662.8 Million pounds was paid to solicitors for divorces in 2006.

Clive Bellmore

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If you got married in church, and resent the very day you said ‘I do’, you can go back to the same church to say ‘hang on there, actually, I don’t’.

At least if you live in Switzerland.

Apparently Swiss couples are so keen to end their marriages in the same place where they started that moves are now being made to allow them to get divorced in church, with an official divorce ceremony.

Frank Worbs, a Pastor from Zurich, is working on an official liturgy. He said:

A ritual or symbolic process includes meetings with the priest beforehand in the same way that married couples have a meeting.

It helps divorced people to get over the separation and achieve definite closure. Sometimes there is no other solution but to separate.

In such situations it is important to make the divorce as amicable as possible for the couple so that they can begin a new chapter in their lives. Other members of the family can also take part and come to terms with things more easily.

This will be great if it comes off because there are so many people opposed to the whole concept of divorce on religious grounds that getting divorced in church will really annoy them.

I’m all for that.

Clive Bellmore

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As if forking out for an engagement ring and a wedding ring wasn’t bad enough, now women are buying divorce rings. At least the husband doesn’t have to pay for this one, though depending on the size of the settlement he may end up paying anyway.

The idea is that women buy the divorce ring to signify their divorce. The ring has a split in the middle, to represent the ’split’ in the marriage. It also has three bands, one for the date when she met her ex, one to signify the date of the marriage and of course one for the divorce.

Apparently some women even had the date of their decree absolute engraved in the inside of the ring.

As you can imagine, traditionally (if you can say that with regards to a new fad) women wear the rings on their middle fingers. Wonder why?

Clive Bellmore

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John Cleese, one of the funniest men in the history of comedy has proven once again that comedians make lousy husbands. The star of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers is divorcing his wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger and had originally announced that it was an amicable divorce.

When is a divorce ever amicable?

His wife has come up with a series of ludicrous demands on Cleese’ personal fortune, including two houses, £900,000 per year alimony and half of his earnings since 1992.

Luckily Cleese hasn’t been in anything decent since A Fish Called Wanda, so his earnings since this, his third marriage, wouldn’t be that impressive.

His wife says she needs the money to continue in the life in which she has become accustomed, including chefs and private jets.

Cleese has naturally said ’stop it, this is getting silly’… I may have paraphrased that, but the gist is accurate.

You can read the full story here.

Clive Bellmore

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This is one of those stories that gets filed squarely under the ‘you couldn’t make it up’ category. A man jailed in 1989 for smashing someone’s skull in with a hammer, who then married his wife while behind bars, was let out recently to visit her, escaped, and had an affair with his cousin.

All sounds perfectly normal to me.

Now the wife won’t grant him a divorce.

Peter Connelly (37) escaped from his wife’s house while the prison guards were having a cuppa with his wife (how British) in order to pop round to see his 23 year old cousin, Katherine Hutchinson. He was apprehended two days later when the incredibly stupid Katherine phoned the police to tell them that Peter wasn’t at her house.

errr, OK love. Whatever you say.

Peter’s wife, 54 year old Phyliss Connelly is now refusing to give him a divorce.

A few things strike me as odd here. Firstly, why would anyone in their right mind marry someone who is serving a life sentence for vicious murder where he’d smashed someone’s skull in with a hammer? Secondly, why would the prison guards let him out, let alone leave him unguarded? Thirdly why would 23 year old Katherine Hutchinson have an affair with her murderous cousin? Finally, why would she then be so stupid as to phone the police to say he was NOT at her house?

I guess, when you’re stupid enough to sleep with your own cousin after he’d escaped police custody, you’re probably stupid enough to phone them and say he’s not with you. That type of inbreeding brings that type of stupidity.

Now of course Phylis is refusing to give him a divorce, which is just as stupid as marrying the killer in the first place.

My head is like mashed tattie.

I’m so ashamed about everything that’s happened. I’m scared to show my face in public because I’m so embarrassed.

I haven’t slept for two days. My house has rats running around it and now there’s all this with Peter as well.

‘Mashed tattie’? Clearly this woman is unmistakeably stupid. She’s ashamed that her murderous husband has slept with his cousin, yet she wasn’t ashamed to marry a man who was behind bars for murder in the first place?

Listen love, divorce the guy, get some self respect and hire a pest control company to get rid of the rats.

Clive Bellmore

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After battling to win the right to marry, gay couples are now struggling to win the right to divorce. It seems incredible that this should be just as much of a battle, but alas it is.

Cassandra Ormiston from Rhode Island is splitting from her wife, Margaret Chambers. She said:

We all know people who have gone through divorces. At the end of that long and unhappy period, they have been able to breathe a sigh of relief, but I do not see that on my horizon, that sigh of relief that it’s over.

This is something I find quite staggering, yet maybe I shouldn’t. For years it was hard to even get a divorce for a heterosexual couple, as religious groups baulked at the idea claiming it was an act against god. They’d insist that couples should stay married, no matter what. Whether they were happy together was irrelevant. What is someone’s happiness when it comes to not offending some Christians?

Then religious groups stood in the way of gay marriage. That’s an act against god as well. Why do we bother about offending these idiots?

Now it’s an act against god for gay couples to divorce. Quite frankly who gives a toss about offending Christians? Personally, I’m all for offending Christians and any religious groups I can. If I were gay I’d get married, then divorced just to annoy the religious people.

I’m not gay, so I had to settle for a heterosexual marriage and subsequent divorce. It wasn’t just to annoy the religious, that was an added bonus.

Good luck to Cassandra and her efforts to get divorced.

via

Clive Bellmore

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Following on from the post last week where Tricia Walsh-Smith aired her dirty laundry in public, by public we mean the most public place of all in YouTube, Fox news have picked up the story. In a complete 360, the Fox news story has also made its way onto YouTube (naturally).

This must be extremely embarrassing for the husband as the whole World now knows his secrets and terms of his pre-nup.

Hell hath no fury remember!

Clive Bellmore

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