EVERYTHING has a limited time in the spotlight. Fashions, stars, restaurants, cars and even, it would seem, breakups. Just a few weeks old, the TomKat split (the divorce of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) has been pushed off the front pages by the demise of the always questionable (by the magazines) partnership of Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.
''Kristen cheated'', Who, New Idea and Famous scream. ''More than once'', NW adds, promising a video inside. It's all very tawdry when you get down to the details. K-Stew had an affair with Rupert Sanders, her married director on Snow White and the Huntsman, R-Pattz found out and packed his bags, but it begs the question: why on earth would Kristen, as Famous puts it, ''Hook up with Rupert in her own easily recognisable car in broad daylight?'' And why would Robert move out of his own house? Would it be rude to suggest this is all just another engineered stunt to keep them in the headlines? Possibly, so we won't. We will, however, point out that even this split is already starting to lose interest, with Famous tipping it's own back-up breakup: Brangelina. ''Fights, secrets and now living separately - is this the end?'' They wish.
And then we get to what must be the most entertaining work of speculative fiction since Jules Verne hung up his quill: New Idea's baby diary for Kate Middleton. Despite the fact Kate has yet to announce that she's pregnant, the magazine's prognosticators have mapped out how ''the clucky couple'' will go, complete with some (hopefully unintentionally) hysterical moments. The birth ''will not be a relaxed process'', they reveal in news that will surprise no mother, but Kate is expected to bounce back quickly and ''would return to her royal duties - which are mounting by the month - as soon as possible''. One of her duties is mounting by the month? Those duties apparently already completed, the royal baby will be born on August 27, 2013. Possible godparents include people named Tiggy Legge-Bourke, Hugh van Cutsem and Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton and the child, if it's a boy, will most likely be circumcised ''in a royal tradition that goes back to Victorian times''. The mind boggles at that one … but not as much as it does at the thought of what we will have to suffer through when an actual pregnancy is confirmed. Or if, heaven forbid, Kate and Wills split up.