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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And now history has repeated itself. Following the revelation that Cheryl Cole's husband Ashley Cole loved nothing more than to dick a bunch of slappers while throwing up the contents of his guts all over them, Cheryl Cole's arch-nemesis Lily Allen has called a truce.

That's right – the ferocious Allen-Cole war is over. Maybe if politicians were more like Lily Allen the world would be a better place. Although if more politicians were like Lily Allen there'd be a lot more shambling amateurish BBC Three chat shows. Probably best that they're not, then.

We don't know what's going on with the world these days. Everyone's being so nice to each other. First Britney Spears gets less crazy and now Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole aren't at each other's throats all the time. It's bad for business, that's what it is. We're going to have to start sending famous people shoebox turds under the pretence that we're Charlotte Church or everything's going to get so unbearably lovely that we'll have nothing to report any more.

Because, come on, Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole? They're sworn enemies, for God's sake. Lily Allen wrote a sarcastic song about Cheryl Cole, then Cheryl called Lily a 'chick with a dick', then Lily called Cheryl a 'stupid bitch'. Things literally don't any more serious than that.

But now Lily Allen has extended the olive, and for once not so she can reach the higher up shelves at the supermarket. On hearing about Cheryl Cole's predicament with husband Ashley Cole – you know, the one where Ashley cheated on Cheryl by puking on another woman and then Cheryl left him and eventually took him back because she wouldn't be as famous without him – Lily Allen has extinguished their long-running feud by offering her sympathies to her.

Well, alright, not exactly offering her sympathies to her, as such, but telling some people on her awful chat show about it. And the 'sympathy' bit isn't entirely accurate either. Here's what Lily said, according to Marie Claire: 

The star told the audience on her chat show, Lily Allen and Friends: 'A couple of years ago, if I had read the stuff about Cheryl Cole, about her and Ashley, I’d probably have had a little laugh to myself. Now I actually feel sorry for her. I’m not a nasty person anymore.’ She also admitted that her contempt of Cole had arisen out of jealousy of her stunning looks, saying: ‘She’s beautiful, that’s why I hated her so much.’ 

Ah, the old 'transparent self-pity masquerading as forgiveness' tactic. We hear that's how Churchill beat Hitler too, you know. 

But now at least we can all sleep safe at night knowing that Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole are friends again. The world is a better place, especially for Cheryl Cole. After all, nothing makes up for the fact that your husband systematically cheated on you several times with a string of dodgy-looking women like a three-nippled munchkin half-apologising on a TV show that nobody watches.

Read more:

Lily Allen: 'I feel sorry for Cheryl Cole' - Marie Claire 

But that's exactly what has hap… no, we're only joking. Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck aren't fighting any more, but only because Rosie though to send Elisabeth's newborn some gifts.

Still, we had you with the sex thing, right? Right?

The View has always been about disagreements, and it always will be – whether it's a disagreement about how much Danny DeVito has had to drink or about if murdering dogs is really brilliant or just quite brilliant. But no disagreements on The View were ever like the splitscreen battle royale between Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck back in May. 

Founded on their inherent political differences – basically that one is a rightwing lunatic and the other is a paranoid conspiracy theorist – the Rosie O'Donnell/ Elisabeth Hasselbeck televised face-off was so vicious that we think it actually tore a hole in the space/time continuum. It'd explain a lot if it were true.

It would explain why Rosie O'Donnell left The View in a tantrum immediately and subsequently failed to find any other TV work, and it'd also explain why Elisabeth Hasselbeck got knocked up and gave birth to a baby boy pretty soon afterwards, even though we imagine that she thinks sex – even sex within a loving marriage – is filthy and wrong and will send you to hell and is something that only immigrants do.

But, despite keeping a tentative distance from each other since their on-air scrap, now it looks like Rosie and Elisabeth are ready to act like grown-ups around each other again. Apparently Rosie has decided that enough is enough, and that children are the future and that she and Rosie should teach them well and let them lead the way. Rosie's been speaking to People about her new softer relationship with Elisabeth:

"He's very, very cute. I saw him on TV, and I sent him a lovely gift, and [she and Hasselbeck] have been e-mailing each other. And peace prevails… We e-mail back and forth. She seems good. She looks like she adopted, like she didn't give birth. She looks perfectly fit and gorgeous already."

It's almost enough to bring a tear to the eye, isn't it? Not the fact that Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck are slowly becoming friends again – we couldn't give a stuff about that – but we're just overwhelmed to learn that Rosie O'Donnell doesn't speak in that ridiculous blog haiku-speak all the time. Truly, this is a time of goodwill on Earth.

Read more:

Rosie Sends Baby Gifts to Elisabeth Hasselbeck – People