Now that Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin have 'consciously uncoupled', how might other celebrities avoid the dreaded d-word?

This is just a vodka-based domestic realignment, okay?

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay singer Chris Martin, pictured at a charity event in January (Getty Images)

The world awoke this morning to the shocking news that Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin are to separate after 10 years of marriage. Gwyneth and Chris! The most fragrant and wholesome celebrity couple in the stardust galaxy! They announced on Gwyneth’s Goop website that they’ve been semi-detached for a year and are going to “remain separate.” The sad news has plunged the Twittersphere into a predictable ferment of sorrow and sarcasm – but most of the attention has been on the way the couple described their split. “We have always conducted our relationship privately,” read their announcement, “and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner.”

Conscious uncoupling! Is that even a thing? Is that divorce or something else? Does "uncoupling" mean "not having sex," or is it more to do with two train carriages getting "un-hitched"? Whatever. I wonder, though, if famous divorcing couples in history had their own idiosyncratic ways of announcing it?

Julius Caesar and Pompeia

"I do not see it as a divorce," Mrs Caesar told the O Tempora! newspaper on the Ides of February, "more a platonic restructuring of our relationship as something to build on for the future. I hope you aren't going to ask me about the transvestite who crashed my party and brought about this unhappy state of affairs. It's all been a misunderstanding. But Julius and I are, in some ways, closer than ever. We want the same things. He wants me to be under suspicion. I want him to be under six feet of Colonna marble."

Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon

"No no, 'tis not divorce," laughed Queen Catherine, when interviewed by the Windsor Gazette yesternight. "My Lord Henry and I are having more of a psychic sundering, in which the synergy of our marriage can find outlets in creative ways, perhaps by having children with other people. Family is very important to both of us. No, my Lord is not downcast. He hath retired to the Royal Bedchamber where e'en now he composeth a new lute ballad called "Paradise" with a big stadium chorus that goeth, "Oh oh oh oh Oh, uh-oh Oh..."

Peter the Great and Eudoxia Lopukhina

"Please don't use that word, tovarich," the Tsaritsa told the Petrograd Gazeta at the weekend. "There is no question of divorce. This is more the divine disjointing of a very devoted couple. We simply feel that the anima of our marriage needs time and space to grow in alternative ways. He needs to be away starting wars, crushing rebellions and torturing mutineers. I need to be at Winter Palace with the children and Igor, the handsome Kazakh nanny person..."

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

"Thizzzzzz not a fuckindivorce," Ms Taylor explained to Variety magazine, Tuesday. "Such an ugly word. Ug- leee. Richard and I just find that being apart from each other leads to fewer breakages - you know, vases, decanters, legs and so forth -- and fewer instances of losing bloody expensive emeralds and diamonds down the waste-disposal unit. Talk about waste... Sorry, I get upset sometimes. I just need a little drinkie and a bit of a lie-down. But this is not about divorce okay. This is just a vodka-based domestic realignment, okay? Every couple goes through its ups and downs. It's just that I'm downing a few more than he is.

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills

"We are not, repeat not, going through a divorce, okay?" grated Heather Mills, when questioned by the Daily Mail on Friday. "What we're having here is simply a neurolinguistic re-programming until Paul realises that I am, essentially, the creative one in this relationship and he is more my astral amanuensis. I am the major chords, he is merely the twiddly bits in B-minor-7 that nobody can actually hear. If a marriage is a song, then I am the brilliantly clever verses, where he is just the stupid chorus where he goes "na na na na-na-na-na" over and over..."

The last of the writers – real ones at least

It was pleasing to hear that Joanna Trollope, the bestselling novelist and great-great-something of Anthony Trollope, the Barsetshire chronicler, has donated her writing archive to the Bodleian Library. Nice to hear there’s one British writer who hasn’t handed over their life’s work, letters, journals, drafts, research notes and the rest to University of Austin, Texas, which pays authors a fortune to house their stuff.

But I suddenly realised there was a rather bittersweet reason for celebrating. Ms Trollope is (I’m assuming) one of the last novelists to write all her books by hand. Her early drafts are those ancient things, actual manuscripts, complete with blotches, crossings-out and marginal additions – rather than digitally generated letters on a screen in Cambria 12-point. Soon there won’t be any manuscripts at all. Oxford’s gain isn’t just an archive. It’s an endangered species.

Fashion God? More like funnyman

Karl Lagerfeld, the faintly sinister German fashion god, popped over this week to celebrate the arrival of his first fashion store, Karl Lagerfeld on Regent Street. I was intrigued to find that I could also buy Karl accessories to make me look exactly like him: fingerless leather gloves, sunglasses and those enormous white collars he’s so fond of. Should I do it? It would certainly cut a dash in my local pub. I already have Karl’s white hair, patrician manner and mildly arthritic walk. This could really work!

Oh no it couldn’t. It’s the huge white collars. I can hear the shouts of “Oi! Harry Hill!”