Entertained by the misery of two sick stars

By Deborah Orr, Columnist of the Year

In recovery circles, it's known as "doing a geographical". You believe that the reason you cannot stop taking drink and drugs, even though they are damaging your life, is simply because they're so easily available. So you absent yourself from temptation, and turn over a new leaf. Recovering addicts are generally cynical about such a step. If you're an addict, you need to take 12 steps, not one.

In recovery circles, it's known as "doing a geographical". You believe that the reason you cannot stop taking drink and drugs, even though they are damaging your life, is simply because they're so easily available. So you absent yourself from temptation, and turn over a new leaf. Recovering addicts are generally cynical about such a step. If you're an addict, you need to take 12 steps, not one.

For Noel Gallagher, we are led to believe, the geographical has worked. Fed up with his lifestyle at "Supernova Heights", his luxury crash-pad in London, he ups sticks and moves to the country. Time passes, and he's still hanging in there, washing up while listening to Radio 4, and enjoying it. If all this is true, then he is a very lucky man. The fight against addiction is a terrible one. To drink as much and to take as many drugs as he has, and then to discover that it really was "just a phase", is fairly unusual.

He, if his publicity is to be believed, is something akin to a man who has plunged from the sky in his helicopter, and walked unscathed from the wreckage. Unfortunately, for him and for all concerned, others remain trapped in the smash.

His wife, Meg Matthews, is gently cited as "the problem" in this "amicable" split, while his eight-month-old daughter, Anaïs, is the prize (worth estimated by her father at £500,000) to be won in a threatened war of attrition. Apparently, Ms Matthews had never wanted to move to the country, was loath to give up her party lifestyle.

This, we are told, is called "drifting apart". It is supposedly an amusing twist that, in this particular rocky rock marriage, it is the new mother who fights for her right to party. When all's said and done, what we have here is just another cliché - a high-life marriage gone pear-shaped. Sure, it's a little topsy-turvy. After all, nobody was surprised about Liam and Patsy - we all saw that one coming - but while Noel and Meg's break-up was a little less easy to predict, it's not exactly earth-shattering, either.

Except that I'm finding it a little difficult to buy the Good Noel, Bad Meg line we're being fed here. Bad Meg certainly appears to have a lot of problems and only a little sense to guide her through them. But if Noel's so Good, why is he prepared to do so very little to help the mother of his daughter? Why does he imagine that throwing money around might be a suitable way of securing his daughter's happy future? And what made him imagine for a moment that carting his wife off to his country fastness against her will was ever going to work?

I'm in no position to diagnose Noel Gallagher, or even to diagnose people whom I've actually met, but I do understand that it is far from easy to suddenly switch from a life of unapologetic hedonism to a reformed life of gentle abstinence. Often, people think that this is exactly what they have managed, when, in fact, they are instead displaying the frightening behaviour of the classic dry drunk.

Judgmental, controlling and bad-tempered, the dry drunk has found no way of coming to terms with his addiction and takes out his frustrations on others. The worst frustration is that the geographical can never be remote enough. If only all traces of alcohol could be wiped from the face of the earth, then it would be so much easier for the victim, doing his best against tremendous odds. Instead, even those closest cannot even be bothered to cut themselves off from the font of his ills. No point in telling the dry drunk that he's so impossible to live with that the brickwork itself is taking to the bottle. Dry drunks are so stunningly self-righteous that they actually believe that, as long as they aren't actually drunk, then they're perfect.

Not that all this is really their fault. It is hard to kick the bottle alone, and most people seeking to do so find that they need support. However, that sort of support is unlikely to be provided by the abstainer's inner circle, who doubtless became bonded in the first place by their attachment to oblivion.

Bad Meg's attachment to oblivion seems very strong. This is not surprising. It's not so surprising, either, that she has been having more difficulty than her husband in grasping that, with the arrival of a child, this has got to change.

Most women find it difficult to adjust to having a baby, particularly in dealing with the impact such an event has on the woman's career. When your "career" actually is partying, getting out of it, and seeing and being seen, then loss of identity, loss of social life and loss of validation are all rolled into one. There is little doubt that Ms Matthews is no moral giant, and that she must be in something of a state. This sad woman is in desperate need of support, rather than being expected to offer it herself.

Certainly, it is possible that Noel Gallagher might simply have sobered up and noticed that his wife was, in fact, a shallow and vain woman who cared for nothing more than nice clothes, glamorous friends and vulgar public display. It's equally possible that Ms Matthews is so solipsistic that in no fibre of her being does she carry the knowledge that she might have to change. But what seems most likely is that she needs some understanding and self-knowledge, and that her husband is in no position to give her these things.

Why should we care? These stereotypical people, who for years have chased celebrity - Meg's more empty even than Noel's - are paying the traditional price. For the celebrity-watching swathe of the nation, this ending is the happiest possible. "Take what you want," says the proverb, "then pay for it." It is in the celebrity rulebook that such is the bargain.

So we can all have fun running through the lists of similar break-ups, and once again vicariously enjoy the mess that some people can make of their lives. Instead, there is every possibility that what is entertaining us is the spectacle of two people who are very ill indeed, while we feel perfectly justified in sniggering and deciding that they brought it on themselves. Maybe they have. But now they're bringing it on an eight-month-old baby, too. Meanwhile, Liam Gallagher has found another woman idiotic enough to step out with him. Maybe one day, he and Nicole Appleton will gift the world with a child as well. God knows it wouldn't surprise the newspaper-reading public.

Meanwhile, there is little doubt that the person who risks paying the highest price for her parents' ill-starred marriage is baby Anaïs. Already her foolish parents are preparing for a battle to decide which of them should care for her, while it appears that neither of them is presently capable of caring for themselves or each other, let alone a child.

Both of them would do well at this point to think hard about the kind of parents they want for their child, whether together or apart, and to start asking themselves whether, in their present state, they are really able to offer her what she needs. Above all, they ought to try to get their heads round the fact that they will always be a family, whether an estranged one or not, and that damage limitation now has to be the order of the day. Otherwise, the maelstrom of vicarious attention will engulf all three of them. Celebrity culture cheered this messed-up couple all the way along their collision course. Now they've hit the Wonderwall at great speed, and all those who have looked on are looking forward to looting the debris.

d.orr@independent.co.uk