The Fool on Herne Hill

As Dulwich's foremost expert on divorce (as you know, I am actually the only person in Dulwich who is divorced, the rest of the place being stuffed with ridiculously happy couples) I expect you have all been waiting for my pronouncement on the recent McCartney split.

In fact, I find it quite hard to be sympathetic to either side. Poor Sir Paul seems to be fulfilling a reasonably useful function as a one-man demonstration of the truth of a whole raft of cliches - there's no fool like an old fool, a fool and his money are soon parted, the fool on the hill, oh no, that's not one - while I suppose Heather is doing her best to be even more of a cautionary tale than me. Uppity blonde decides to dump man and gets more than she bargained for? Crime doesn't pay, except that, whoops, it actually pays £24 million? Hell hath no fury like a woman who has to cook too many chops?

Well, one thing is clear - Heather has been fleeced. She won't get many meals in Pizza Express for little Beatrice with that paltry sum, and that's without even calculating the cost of birthday parties at All Fired Up for the next ten years or so. Worse still, there is unlikely to be a succession of eager millionaires trooping their way to her door, keen to be the next ex-Mr Mills. Particularly not ones with dyed hair and a drug problem.

Looking like a woman out of control is very unattractive, and I should know. Part of the point of lovely Heather was that we could gaze on her beautiful face, and think how wonderful she was and how she had refused to let her disability get in her way. Now we are all too well aware of the struggle she goes through and it's just too much like watching the swan's legs - sorry Heather -paddling madly away, when all we want to see is that pretty white creature gliding through the water.

There is just no easy way to be a divorced woman, or a woman at all, come to that. I think the truth is that we all deserve £24 million, and I'd like mine in a combination of Louis Vuitton vouchers, Neuhaus pralines and Armani separates, please.