"Well then, I don't believe BBC News either.

"It's August, the real reporters are on holiday.

"They're probably having it phoned in from the offices of Heat. I don't believe it. I shan't."*

So yeah, Peaches Geldof has got married.

Congratulations to the happy couple.

I must remember to send them a nice set of fruit dishes.

Or maybe treat them to a course of Relate workshops, just to save Sir Bob the bother.

More surprising than the news, however (it's a well-trod footpath on the Ordnance Survey map of Child-fame-dysfunction, along the A6 from Little Whingeing, just west of Rehabton, a few miles south of Head-shaving-and-eventual-burnout-ville), is the fact I was surprised.

In fact, I'm always a bit astounded by my unfailing capacity to be astounded by things.

I've been trying very hard to appear cynical and unfazed since the age of about five, when I told everyone in the playground Santa wasn't real, and still can't keep it up for any proper period of time before the mask slips and I accidentally get excited over Hollyoaks.

You'd think after 20 and a half years of being astounded by stuff on a fairly regular basis, I'd have learnt to save my enthusiastic shock reactions for occasions that have some tenuous bearing on my own life, like when the gas bill comes.

But instead, I use all my energy up in energetic gasping and gurning and hair-clutching and marching about saying "NO! NO!" in a voice like a mouse.

It's exhausting.


Celebrity relationships are probably my favourite thing to get disproportionately het up over.

With a brand of super-strength naïve hope I've honed over years of faithful Eurovision viewing, every time, without fail, I am genuinely shocked when they split up.

Billie Piper and Chris Evans!

But they had such lovely matching messy hair and went to the supermarket together… is that not the stuff true love art made of?

Liza Minelli and David Guest.

Were there ever two faces more clearly meant to spend eternity together, like a pair of matching doorstops at the entrance to the LA house of Horror (tagline: "Plastic doesn't always mean pretty")?

Cheryl and Ashley Cole.

If the tattoo will last forever, the love will, too!

I firmly believe if Richard and Judy ever hit the rocks, there'd be some kind of natural disaster by way of repercussion.

Maybe a second ice age.

But Peaches, Peaches I am furious over.

I don't want to waste my precious reaction-energy being surprised about Peaches "war is like, bad" Geldof!

Yet I already am, I'm using it up as I type this.

And I will almost certainly use up more when I go to the pub in half an hour and spend the night ranting with Hannah about the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

We will get red in the face screaming "one month!

I've had pairs of tights longer!" and then feel sick and guilty that we care at all.

Which we do.

We know why she's gone and done it, of course.

Any fool can see that it's a desperate ploy to steal a bit of limelight from Pixie, who in recent months has crept up the thermostat of cool (should that be crept down) and become without doubt the favoured Geldof sister.

Now, obviously being the favoured Geldof sister is a little like being the favoured strain of gastroenteritis, or the favoured member of the Krankies – You don't want either of them round for tea, but if you had to pick you'd rather it wasn't Janette — but it's still a rough deal on the elder Peaches, with all the valiant work she's done in raising awareness for stupidly named indie groupies everywhere, to watch the 17-year-old swoop in for the prize.

I almost, ALMOST, feel a bit of sympathy for the lass — this week anyway, as in the wake of A-level results day, I have to watch no.

One brother being all bright-eyed and bushy-haired and ready to embark on the uni adventure.

I watch from behind a pile of third-year bills and reading list and unwritten dissertation, as Peaches will from behind a pile of her new hubby's socks, and feel a pang of sisterly bitterness.

Which is ok, because he's far too cool to ever read this column.

Maybe I'll go and find someone to marry me, then I'll be entertained for weeks surprising myself into swooning fits every time I remember what I've done — as Peaches herself recently proclaimed; "creative people are allowed to make mistakes."

Or maybe I'll ease myself in gently, and start off my wild child journey by ignoring this gas bill.

*Actually, it being August and everything, this article was very nearly just a direct transcript of my Facebook wall conversation with Hannah, who broke the distressing news.

But that would have been lazy, self-indulgent journalism… and we don't like that, do we Peaches?

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