Only week one, but heaven knows how much more of the torrid Mel Brown/Stephen Belafonte marriage breakdown we can take.
Already there are enough sordid details to fuel a year’s worth of EastEnders plots, including alleged mutual perversions, bruises, domestic violence, sex tapes, blackmail, threesomes, wild accusations and even — here comes the double bill Christmas special — a possible nanny impregnation.
Sex with the nanny? How low can a man go?
The former Spice Girl has been granted a temporary restraining order against her estranged husband, a sometime Hollywood producer who apparently pretends that he is the son of entertainer Harry Belafonte, which he is not.
His criminal record, detailed in the court papers, includes a 2003 conviction for domestic violence against the mother of his first child. He’s a real catch, isn’t he?
Mel B claims that he repeatedly degraded her by treating their child’s glamorous German nanny like his wife, pointing out that Lorraine Gilles was also ‘younger and better looking’. If girl power ever really existed, it appears to have curled up and died right on the mat at Mel B’s front door. It would be magnificently ironic, were it not so sad.
When photographs emerged of Miss Gilles — whose sister denies she was ever sexually involved with either Brown or her husband — many wondered at the logic of employing such a va-voom bombshell to look after the children while skipping around the house in her Daisy Dukes. Surely it was asking for trouble?
Lorraine was 20, voluptuous, slim, tanned and blonde. Your basic nightmare.
Wise hands like to suggest the perfect, husband-proof nanny would be someone who didn’t mind 16-hour shifts, tantrums, clearing up geysers of kiddy vomit and — important detail! — who also looked like a cross between Mrs Doubtfire and a Transit van.
Nannies should have calf hairs poking through their 120 denier tights, a permanent scowl and chapped hands from bleaching nappies in the sluice room.
They should be crisp and efficient like Mary Poppins, and not complain about being forced to do all the ironing in their downtime.
On no account should they, like Lorraine, go hiking in a bikini or look like a freshly hatched goddess over the breakfast table every morning. That way your marriage will be safe.
Or will it?
Perhaps nannies should know better, but surely these young women are more sinned against than sinning? For I can’t help but think it is big bad daddy who is mostly at fault here.
The tempted are always more culpable than the tempting. So gentlemen, please take a tip from me.
A good rule of life is never to do anything Jude Law does, from wearing drop-crotch trousers and I’m-not-bald pork pie hats, to getting a Beatles lyric tattooed on your arm to yes, sleeping with the nanny when your hot fiancee Sienna Miller is not around and you feel slightly frisky. Back in 2005 Jude issued a public apology for having an affair with his children’s 26-year-old nanny Daisy Wright, but neither his relationship nor his reputation survived the affair.
Back in 2005 Jude issued a public apology for having an affair with his children’s 26-year-old nanny Daisy Wright. Picture: AP
I like to call this The Nanny’s Curse. It is what happens when rich, powerful and famous men use their status to sleep with the hired help in their own homes — and we never think so fondly of them again.
Ben Affleck, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ethan Hawke are three big-name actors whose status was forever diminished by reports they had sex with the help (although in Arnie’s case it was the housekeeper).
I can barely bring myself to look at The Voice judge Gavin Rossdale, who was kicked out by his pop star wife Gwen Stefani after an alleged three-year affair with the nanny of their three young sons in 2015.
There is a special place in hell for daddies who sleep with nannies — because daddies who sleep with nannies are bad, bad men.
Gavin Rossdale, who was kicked out by his pop star wife Gwen Stefani after an alleged three-year affair with the nanny of their three young sons in 2015. Picture: AP
It is awful enough that the brutes cheat on their wives or partners in the first place. Yet to be unfaithful with the nanny, the person charged with looking after the children in the heart of the family home, a position of trust and responsibility over those you love most dearly, well. What a double dagger into mummy’s heart.
Not only is she heartbroken, she feels stupid because it was happening all the time, right under her nose. The family nest has been fouled for ever, by those she thought she could trust.
Husbands sleeping with nannies? It is the biggest marital cliche in the book; lazy, selfish and self-indulgent. Whether they are famous or not, whether like Belafonte they are married to celebrities or not, whether the nanny is gorgeous or plain, their reputations never recover.
These men proved themselves to be so weak and so tacky, so needy and pathetic. Most need nannying themselves. Not in that way.
In the meantime we have to recalibrate our thoughts about Scary Spice, now feverishly rebranding herself as Scared Out Of Her Wits Spice — a woman trapped in a sex-drenched marriage-a-trois by an abusive husband she feared. It’s a stretch, but we are getting there.