These days, the response – or not – to a social media post can be highly revealing about interpersonal relations.
So what to make of Eamonn Holmes ‘liking’ a photo of his soon-to-be ex mother-in-law taken this week by his soon-to-be ex wife Ruth Langsford?
Ruth’s elderly mother is currently in hospital after a fall in which she fractured her hip.
It was the latest twist in the saga of Ruth and Eamonn’s break-up, coming days after he was pictured in Paris with his new girlfriend Katie Alexander, who was wearing a large diamond sparkler on the third finger of her left hand.
This inevitably sparked rumours that the pair were engaged and that Eamonn and Ruth are getting a ‘quickie’ divorce to facilitate the nuptials. So are wedding bells imminent for Eamonn and Katie? Have he and Ruth had a rapprochement?
Even more confusingly, Eamonn and Ruth have still been wearing their wedding rings.
Certainly, the TV presenter and his new, much younger girlfriend looked happy in Paris, even if they make an unlikely couple.
Holmes, 65, is in a wheelchair due to chronic back pain and mobility issues. He is grey-haired and wears zip up jumpers. Bling plays no role in his personal style.
Eamonn Holmes and glamorous girlfriend Katie Alexander on a break in Ibiza in September
Blonde Katie, 43, favours dresses which are tight and short, a slash of bright lipstick and towering high heels. The mother of three also has a taste for designer handbags.
As a friend of Eamonn’s observed to me, the contrast between them is astonishing: ‘The first time I saw Katie I thought: ‘What! Is this for real?’
But nobody needs to pick out a hat just yet as another friend of Eamonn’s says that he is ‘categorically’ not engaged to Katie – not yet anyway. ‘They are both very serious about each other and about the romance. It seems to be heading for marriage, but they are definitely not engaged,’ I am told.
So what’s holding things up? Ruth and Eamonn started legally unpicking their union several weeks before the announcement on May 25 which ran, starkly: ‘Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes have confirmed their marriage is over and they are in the process of divorcing.’
It is now almost exactly seven months since that statement, which is, by coincidence, pretty much the average time it takes to get a divorce in the UK.
There doesn’t seem to be any major disagreement over any particular issue. Ruth, for instance, would like to keep the former marital house in Weybridge and will buy him out of the property – but it’s still taking time. By mutual agreement Ruth will also keep their dog, Maggie, as Eamonn isn’t well enough physically to walk her.
While there have been reports that Ruth deliberately removed the stairlift at the home just before Eamonn went on his first holiday with Katie in September – a cruise around the Mediterranean – making it hard for her estranged husband to pick up his belongings, friends of Ruth’s say that this is simply untrue.
The stairlift had been taken out months previously and Eamonn had been warned well in advance. Also, he never actually turned up to the house to fetch belongings before his holiday.
‘If you know who Ruth is as a person you would know this is wrong – it’s not who she is,’ says one. Eamonn said in June that he hoped he and ‘Ruthie’ could remain friends. And while he might have ‘liked’ her post about her mother and she in turn liked an Instagram post of Eamonn and a colleague, Ruth’s friends don’t think it is likely that anything amounting to a friendship will remain.
They believe she has been hurt too deeply for that. Is it possible that she’s still wearing her wedding ring to signal that the divorce was not her choosing?
Her friend Coleen Nolan, who appears on Loose Women with Ruth, said: ‘I’ve never met anyone that has handled something with so much dignity and pride. She’s just such a lady – more of a lady than I’ll ever be. I would’ve spilled my guts right now. She’s been absolutely amazing, she really has.’
Loved-up Eamonn and Katie earlier this month. Blonde Katie, 43, favours dresses which are tight and short, a slash of bright lipstick and towering high heels, writes Alison Boshoff
Coleen, who has weathered two divorces, continued: ‘I’ll send her messages about staying strong and a text asking how is she today. I just love her and I’m in awe of how she’s handled everything. She’s so elegant and fabulous.’
It has been reported that Ruth was devastated when she found messages on a laptop which indicated that Eamonn, her companion of 28 years, had developed a friendship with another woman.
The depth of her hurt is evident in her long break from Loose Women – she had two months off to catch her breath again.
Friends say she is not interested in any way at all in dating – unlike Eamonn. ‘She has absolutely no interest in a new romantic partner,’ I’m told. ‘Zero.’
Again, that says it all about how badly hurt she was by Eamonn, who used to present This Morning with her on a Friday. While Eamonn will spend Christmas with Katie, Ruth won’t be alone. Jack, the son she shares with Eamonn, will be with her.
And her focus will naturally be on her mother Joan, 93, who may well still be in hospital for the festive season. A friend said: ‘Ruth and her mother are everything to each other. ‘Every Sunday they peel veg together for lunch and have a glass of sweet sherry.’
Ruth’s sister Julia died by suicide in 2019 after being ‘tortured’ by depression for years. Ruth later said that she could have cried every day of the year that followed and that it was her hardest time. So perhaps the travails of getting divorced pale in comparison to such a tragedy.
Ruth has hired £480-an-hour lawyer Catherine Costley, who worked under top divorce brief Baroness Fiona Shackleton, known as Steel Magnolia.
All sides are apparently frustrated by the slow pace and some old friends of Eamonn’s believe his Roman Catholic upbringing could be playing a part – which is the most likely reason he’s still wearing his wedding ring. His split from first wife Gabrielle – with whom he had three children in the mid 1990s – was the cause of genuine mental anguish.
When the news of the end of the marriage eventually became public, he found it more painful still. ‘I was being pilloried as the man who had just upped and left his wife and kids, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
‘Riddled with Catholic guilt and feeling extremely vulnerable and depressed, I told myself I wouldn’t go through this misery again and I believed I could never have a relationship with anyone else.’
Waiting in the wings though was sparky local TV reporter, Ruth Langsford. They had been introduced by a mutual friend when he was unofficially separated from Gabrielle and eventually the connection turned serious.
Confusingly, Eamonn and Ruth Langsford have still been wearing their wedding rings
He said: ‘Ruth turned out to be my knight in shining armour. At first, just by being a friend, her emotional support, which later developed into a deep love, gave me belief in my own happiness again.’
He and Ruth welcomed Jack in 2002 and were married in 2010. Note that he couldn’t have been happier with Ruth, but it still took many years for him to be ready to say ‘I do’ again.
Last month it emerged that in 2012, just two years after the wedding, he and Katie first exchanged messages. She and her then husband George chatted with Eamonn on Twitter – now X. The star enjoys talking to people he doesn’t know on social media.
At one point the businessman even joked to Eamonn: ‘Think she’s flirting with you.’ George, a diehard Manchester United fan like Eamonn, added: ‘Good job we’re both Red.’
George, 53, and therapist Katie divorced in 2022 after 12 years together. It emerged that Eamonn had been showering gifts and treats on Katie in the months before his marriage ended.
Last October, eight months before his split from Ruth, Eamonn travelled up to Yorkshire to host a charity event linked to Katie’s work. Quite an undertaking for someone in such poor health.
‘I have a lot of sympathy for Ruth,’ George has said. ‘I had my heart broken when my marriage to Katie ended. It took me a couple of years to recover. I know how distraught Ruth must be feeling [but] Katie has a heart so she will feel bad about Ruth.’
But there’s no doubt Eamonn and Katie are now both smitten. Katie, who lives with her children in Yorkshire, spends all the time she can at Eamonn’s beautiful apartment in Kingston, Surrey.
One friend told a newspaper: ‘He has been talking openly about his plans to marry Katie and made it clear he wants to spend the rest of his life with her.
‘They are living together now and he knows it feels right. They have a strong connection. She’s given him a real lust for life.’
There is a sense though that this personal happiness is his one ray of light, as in recent years Eamonn has been beset by problems big and small.
For a start there is turbulence at GB News, where it has just been announced that his friend and co-anchor Isabel Webster is moving on.
And his physical limitations have not – despite every effort – improved. He had hoped that a double hip replacement in 2016 would free him from chronic pain.
He then had surgery on a slipped disc in 2022 but has not been able to walk unaided since then.
In January this year he conceded that he may never be able to do so again.
Eamonn is also still furious about having lost a five-year battle with HMRC over his tax status. That cost him ‘hundreds of thousands’ of pounds in legal fees and a £250,000 tax bill when his appeal was finally denied last year.
He said the ruling had been ‘the most stressful [situation] outside of losing my father’, adding: ‘I was like a lamb to the slaughter. It was the most stressful, humiliating experience… it’s like they have taken away everything I ever worked for.’
Eamonn, whose career was well established before his relationship with Ruth started, will also likely lose some more money in a settlement.
Some believe that the complexities of his financial situation due to his HMRC fight are in part to blame for how slowly things are moving in this respect.
What’s for certain is that with no ‘quickie’ divorce, there will likely be more twists and turns before Eamonn and Ruth are finally, legally separated.
