Why it’s important to report on celebrity marriage and relationship break-ups

Reactions from the public show that high-profile splits have an effect on people on a personal level

It’s a subject that echoes around office water coolers, through train carriages and in the homes of countless Britons.

Whether it was the tumultuous marriage of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the Sixties, Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s relationship breakdown in the Nineties, or Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie’s divorce earlier this year (with a legal settlement estimated to be in the billions of dollars), we’ve always enjoyed discussing celebrity couple break-ups in detail – as if they were living through it themselves.

For some, talk of this might be described as superficial – mindless fodder for the tabloids that further highlight society’s insatiable thirst for gossip, regardless of the ongoing emotional turmoil.