Ever since Madonna took her child-catching cart to Malawi to tempt its children into moving in with her with a variety of brightly-coloured lollipops, her husband Guy Ritchie has managed to studiously avoid any kind of limelight whatsoever.
Not that anybody was especially upset about not hearing Guy Ritchie's side of the story – it is Guy Ritchie after all – and it was mostly assumed that he was too busy shooting ramblers or writing another turd-brained gangster movie that nobody will go and see to comment on Madonna's adoption of little David Banda. However, there might be something more serious going on between Madonna and Guy Ritchie; reports are suggesting that Madonna and Guy Ritchie have hired a marriage counsellor to try and fix up their knackered marriage.
In January we offered betting odds on Madonna and Guy Richie divorcing in 2006, and you'd have got 16/1 back then. Now we'd assume that the Madonna/ Guy Ritchie divorce betting odds are a lot shorter now, since reports are coming in saying that the couple have hired a marriage counsellor to try and save their ailing marriage. It seems that the stories about Guy Ritchie not liking Madonna's adoption of David Banda may have had some truth to them, as a source told The People:
"The marriage is near rock-bottom. They've been putting on a united front in public but behind closed doors their marriage has come under strain. The publicity surrounding the adoption has created a difficult atmosphere in their London home. But they are determined to make the marriage work and after a long heart-to-heart they both decided to seek the help of a marriage guidance specialist."
Of course, we've been here before. Back in April Guy Ritchie's Dad confessed to a magazine that his son and Madonna had been having a "bumpy time" and Madonna was often seen not wearing her wedding ring. But following that little incident we assumed that Madonna and Guy Ritchie had solved all of their marriage problems – after all, a strong marriage is needed if the wife wants to tit about on a cross around the world every night – but things seem to have got even worse now, with one nanny quitting because of all the apparent tension between the couple. But, hey, the good news is that it looks like Guy Ritchie is still learning proper cockney-talk from his Italian Job soundtrack album, as The People reported that he actually used this line during one argument with Madonna:
"I'll get on my bike if you want me to."
Madonna and Guy Ritchie have always had a strangely lopsided marriage – she's the female with the biggest-grossing tour ever and he's the tosser who once made a film that not a single person enjoyed – but the adoption of David Banda from Malawi seems to have strained relations even further, and it's hoped that marriage counsellor Tricia Barnes will pull things back together again. Tricia Barnes is probably most famous for her self-help video A Woman's Guide To Loving Sex which – having seen the 1992 erotic thriller Body Of Evidence – Madonna is desperately in need of watching.
Maybe we're jumping to conclusions here, though – the point of a marriage counsellor is to fix a broken marriage, not destroy it completely. After all, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe had marriage counselling and they… um… OK, bad example.
Read more: