Just a few hours ago, Madonna and Guy Ritchie formally finalised their divorce once and for all, putting an end to almost eight years of happy marriage, unhappy marriage, rumoured affairs and possibly the most offensively inaccurate adopted British accent in the history of time itself.

While Madonna apparently reacted to news of her divorce by sticking her middle fingers up at her audience during a concert, Guy Ritchie is said to have merely sighed “Thank God.” But that’s not important now – the important thing is that Madonna won’t be involved in any of Guy Ritchie’s films any more, which should elevate them to ‘merely unwatchable’ from their previous status as ‘flesh-clawing suicidal thought-inducers’.

The world you’re in now is completely different to the one you woke up to this morning. It’s a world where, if you’re a boy, you run the risk of being accosted by a little old lady in an ill-fitting gynotard who’ll brainwash you into having sex with her. And, if you’re a girl, you run the risk of being accosted by a little old lady in an ill-fitting gynotard who’ll force her tongue down your throat, but only if enough people are watching.

That’s correct – Madonna’s on the loose again.

Yesterday we warned you that it was coming, but today it finally happened – at 10am, Madonna and Guy Ritchie finalised their divorce at the High Court in a quickie hearing that neither star attended. The hearing marked the end of divorce proceedings between Madonna and Guy Ritchie that were quite nasty, but not as nasty as people would have liked.

True, Madonna may have forced Gwyneth Paltrow to take sides, and someone may have mentioned something about gristle, but that’s about as intense as it got. Nobody accused anybody of stabbing them with a wineglass like in Paul McCartney’s divorce, there weren’t any weird mentions of dead prostitutes like in Charlie Sheen’s divorce – there was just a brief settlement, a quickie divorce, a profound sense of emotional detachment and that was that.

But how did Madonna and Guy Ritchie take the news that their marriage was officially over? Metro has more:

The pop star welcomed single life with open arms at last night’s Sticky & Sweet Tour concert in Philadelphia with a middle finger salute to her failed marriage… Meanwhile, a relaxed and happy looking Guy ushered sons Rocco and David into a waiting car outside La Vina restaurant in Liverpool. He told a newspaper: ‘Thank God! It dragged on much too long. It was never about money – never about her bloody art collection.’

Maybe we shouldn’t read too much into Madonna’s reaction – in the past she’s used her middle finger for everything from a hamfisted attempt at sexual provocation in her Sex book to an expression of her mild disgruntlement at third world poverty during Live 8. And since in those cases it neither put an end to poverty or made anyone feel even the briefest glimmer of sexual arousal, it’s probably best that we ignore it.

It’s Guy Ritchie who’s done best from the divorce – alongside his dignified response, all the big-money settlement offers that he allegedly turned down in favour of increased access to his children have almost made him seem like quite a nice man.

Weird. We wonder how else the Madonna/ Guy Ritchie divorce will destroy our preconceptions about the couple? Will Madonna start being sexy again? Will Guy Ritchie stop talking in his preposterous cockney accent? Will Madonna make a film that doesn’t make us want to hurl ourselves down a concrete staircase? We’re scared.

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Which is to say that the divorce between Madonna and Guy Ritchie has been nothing but solid non-stop hilarity from start to finish. So laugh it up while you can, because it looks as though the divorce between Madonna and Guy Ritchie is going to be finalised at the High Court tomorrow.

The news comes after the revelation that Madonna and Guy Ritchie have quietly worked out a settlement. That’s likely to be kept a secret, but we assume there’ll be a fair split in terms of custody and ownership of property, and Madonna will get to keep the leotards. No! Guy Ritchie will keep the leotards! No! Madonna! No! Guy! No! Oh, we don’t know which outcome would make us feel queasier.

We don’t know about you, but it feels like the end of an era. A slightly improbable era where the world’s biggest female celebrity fell in love with the man behind the Channel Five hidden camera gameshow Swag. An era that led to one of the worst fake British accents that has ever been spoken. An era that, when we tried to imagine the act of physical love being performed by the two principle figureheads, made us dry-heave into a plastic bin like a cat with a hairball for 45 minutes at a time. But the end of an era nonetheless.

Madonna and Guy Ritchie – didn’t you almost have it all? Obviously by ‘it all’ we mean ‘a big house, a brown baby that wasn’t yours and the ability to brainwash athletes into sleeping with you‘, but that’s all by the by now. Because Madonna and Guy Ritchie are finalising their divorce tomorrow.

It seems like forever ago that Guy Ritchie and Madonna announced their divorce plans, but maybe that’s because divorce rumours had plagued them since almost the day they got married. And since the announcement we’ve been deluged with a tidalwave of new stories about divorce lawyers and friends taking sides and gristle, all of which might have given some of you the impression that the Madonna/ Guy Ritchie divorce was going to stretch off into the horizon like the interminable Paul McCartney divorce.

But that’s not going to happen. Quietly, in private and with a level of dignity that’s left us feeling slightly incredulous, Madonna and Guy Ritchie have hammered out a divorce settlement and this time tomorrow it’ll all be over. BBC News reports:

Pop star Madonna and her film director husband Guy Ritchie are to be divorced at the High Court in London on Friday, according to court lists A notice of the couple’s decree nisi will be posted at the Registry of the Family Division. The couple are registered for the divorce hearing under the names Ciccione M and Ritchie GS. It will be heard before the High Court’s Family Division at 1000 GMT.

While details of the divorce settlement are being kept private, it’s thought that Madonna will keep the bulk of her fortune and the couple’s two children Rocco and David will split time equally between her and Guy Ritchie. The divorce itself will only take a couple on minutes, and neither party are expected to attend.

It’s all a very cold and clinical ending to the marriage, with no extremes of emotion being shown by anyone. Maybe that’s because both Madonna and Guy Ritchie are both rumoured to have moved on romantically since the split, but still, for a marriage between such huge personalities to squeak to a close like this is one of the saddest things imaginable.

Actually, no, we take that back. One of the saddest things would be if Madonna and Guy Ritchie both decided to attend the hearing tomorrow, realised that they were still in love and ended up humping each other on the steps to the High Court in front of all the news cameras. That would just be unbearably sad.

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