DANDY DIVORCÉ

Brian regrets his divorce, but he has made an accommodation with his conscience: he and Helen both know that they settled down before they were really ready. They’re on good terms — well, good-ish. Helen doesn’t like Margie and Flora to be around what she acidly calls ‘your little girlfriends’ (Brian is 42 and is currently dating a 25-year-old). When she finds someone herself she’ll find that part of it easier — and he’s always encouraging her, in a nice way, to go and put herself out there a bit. Only last month he offered to take the girls on a weeknight so she could go out — though unfortunately that thing came up so he had to raincheck. Work takes him on long interesting trips to the Middle East, and he has a swishy two-bed bachelor pad in a new development in Bermondsey. Not for him the miserable Sunday afternoon handover in a bleak McDonald’s. Not for him, as he puts it to his mates, being one of those sad sacks who dresses up in a Batman suit and climbs a crane. This is the 21st century and, with a little goodwill and maturity, a divorced couple can be every bit as good a pair of parents as those grim couples who stay together in a sexless marriage for the sake