Oh Lord, how awful for Tini Owens, the woman the Supreme Court has ruled must remain hitched to her somewhat traditional husband, Hugh Owens, for at least two more years. What a total shower.

The details are well known: they married in 1978, have two grown-up children, she had an affair and has been desperate to divorce for ages, but the poor love is padlocked into wedlock because there are three of us in every marriage: husband, wife, and state. You can’t marry – or divorce – without the state’s permission. You can only divorce if you can establish adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion, or you’ve lived apart for two years and both of you agree. If one of you contests, you have to live apart for five years to unseal the deal.

This is not to say that divorce isn’t always awful – the bloody separation of conjoined lives, with shared children, property, even friends – but the legal system makes it so much worse.

Oh Lord, how awful for Tini Owens, the woman the Supreme Court has ruled must remain hitched to her somewhat traditional husband, Hugh Owens, for at least two more years

Hugh Owens, 80, has contested, and Tini, 12 years his junior, has failed to prove the marriage has irretrievably broken down.

Wifey must therefore remain trapped in her ‘loveless’ and ‘broken’ (her words) union to this coldest of fishes for at least 500 more sleeps. The Handmaid’s Tale of Tini Owens is so awful that it has led to widespread calls for Parliament to update marriage and divorce for the modern age.

Her story confirms that the ‘honourable estate’ of holy matrimony is, in fact, an oppressive and, yes, still patriarchal medieval institution that effortlessly perpetuates state-sponsored suffering when it goes wrong (the divorce rate stands at about 40 per cent).

Even the lawyers are complaining, saying they only ‘administer’ the law, it’s up to MPs to change it. After l’affaire Owens, further reform to statute, which hasn’t budged since the Divorce Reform Act 1969, must be inevitable.

MPS must accept that divorce-on-demand is long overdue, and they must also provide some emergency statutory cover for cohabiting couples, the fastest-growing category of households, who have barely any legal rights at all. Hurry up and get on with it.

But I have an even more radical solution to advance, bearing in mind the following.

The marriage vows still used today (‘till death us do part… so long as we both shall live…’ etc) were first published in 1549 in the Book Of Common Prayer. The average life expectancy then was about 30 and most marriages lasted around a decade. These days life is long and marriage is even longer – it really is from here to eternity.

(Relevant example: Tini has already been married to Hugh for FORTY of her 68 years.)

This is no longer Tudor England, and these days most women swerve the opportunity to promise to ‘serve and obey’ the groom. As I tell my son when he asks me what’s for lunch, ‘slavery is over, darling’.

Steamy Exmoor: The naked truth Summer of ’76. The river in our Exe Valley had dried to a stream. Water had stopped coming off the hill and out of our taps. We had to wash in the Exe, laundry was a distant dream, it was hot hot hot… so my father’s solution was to suggest to the au pair girls (we always had two, for when one ran away) that they took all their clothes off. Nobody batted an eyelid, though a friend did send a postcard after a picnic by the Exe attended by the two naked nymphs – one short, dark and French, the other a lush English blonde – saying just four words: ‘Thanks for the mammaries.’ It was far away and long ago, and so free, compared to now. The past really is a foreign country. Advertisement

And neither wives nor husbands should ever be locked in marriage against their will by the state.

I therefore propose that every ten years, you have to renew your marriage online (this could be as easy as doing your car insurance).

Before you renew, you have a chance to MOT your relationship, look under the bonnet, and decide whether the old banger’s roadworthy or not.

But after 25 years, say (and after widespread consultation, of course), there comes the automatic dissolution of marriage.

You get a medal, in a joyous ceremony surrounded by your ‘loved ones’ patting you on the back and saying jolly well done as if you’ve completed a marathon, and a telegram of congrats from the Queen.

At that stage, you can either call it quits with honour and dignity, and without acrimony, or you can hang in there. In other words, when you come to a fork in the road, as the saying goes, you can take it.

If I say so myself, my proposal is brilliant – but comes far too late to Free the Tini One, I fear.

The reason I unplugged Instagram

During the heatwave, I took precautions to stay cool by remaining far, far away from sunny Instagram, with its millions of daily reminders that Amanda Holden, Liz Hurley (below), Blue Ivy Carter, six – even my neighbour’s dogs – have far better lives than me.

During the heatwave, I took precautions to stay cool by remaining far, far away from sunny Instagram, with its millions of daily reminders that Amanda Holden, Liz Hurley (pictured), Blue Ivy Carter, six – even my neighbour’s dogs – have far better lives than me.

Having a baby takes two years off your life? Come off it, boffins. Don’t give me the science part about ‘accelerated cellular ageing’. Childbirth turns you into your mother overnight. Then you start saying ‘you can’t wear that’, and ‘if you’re well enough to go out you’re well enough to go to school’. Parenthood ages you by at least 25 years.

Ads for plastic surgery during Love Island make me even angrier than wraparound ads for betting during sports on telly.

The sun-sex-sangria show has sucked in 40 per cent of the 16-24 audience. Many of them women – even girls – who must be all too conscious they do not conform to impossible, whitened, lifted, lasered, augmented Love Island standards.

ITV is hosting ads designed to target and hook young women into a lifetime of expensive, invasive, unnecessary ‘procedures’.

It’s blood money, ITV. Don’t take it.