LIZ JONES: I feel no sympathy for Millie Mackintosh after her split

You have just parted ways with your husband of seven years. You’ve two young daughters. You’re staring 40 in the face, alone! Most mortals – myself included when I divorced – would barely be able to get out of bed, get dressed, wash, eat. We would question our self-worth: where did we go wrong, why does no one love me, what will happen to the house, was it all a lie?

But this is not the case for ex-Made In Chelsea star and influencer Millie Mackintosh, or almost anyone in the glossy, deceptive, manipulative, delusional world of Instagram. Millie, instead, was posting selfies from a wellness retreat in India, eye masks in situ, terry turban fashioned deftly, brows curated, talons polished.

And herein lies a huge issue.

In case you have real-life problems and are unfamiliar with the world of Millie Mackintosh and her ilk, let me enlighten you, because this isn’t as frivolous a story as you might think.

Millie, 36, an heiress, and her second husband, Hugo Taylor, 39, met as teenagers and rose to ‘fame’ on the reality TV series Made In Chelsea. So far, so predictably awful. In 2013, she married rapper Professor Green, now 42, but they divorced in 2016, the same year she rekindled her relationship with Hugo. They married two years later and welcomed their first daughter, Sienna, in 2020, followed by Aurelia in 2021.

To celebrate their first year of marriage, Hugo wrote Millie a love letter, which she framed and, inevitably, shared on Instagram. He penned: ‘I am so proud of you...’ On and on it went, the couple’s first treacherous teeter down the slope that is over-sharing – presenting a glossy persona on social media that turned out to be not quite what it seemed.

I’m sorry to learn of another broken family, but I can’t help but wonder: did the kids tag along to the retreat, shattered as they must be by Mummy and Daddy no longer being together? The problem with building fame (and a good income) from ‘influencing’ is that you will be peddling the fiction that you are serene, polished and able to write inspirational messages such as this one Millie posted from her spa: ‘No matter what you are working towards, I hope you can always remember that finding peace in the present moment is just as important as the path ahead’ – when you should be crawling under a rock, sobbing.

Millie’s young fans, on the other hand, hoovering up her every post while perhaps facing unemployment, living in mould-infested rentals and being plagued by cheating partners and screaming toddlers, will experience waves of self-hatred, envy, doubt: why am I not as strong as she is, as Molly-Mae is (another reality TV hoodwinker, grown rich on peddling perfection, despite an on-off engagement to on-off drinker Tommy Fury)? Why can’t I comb my eyebrows, meditate, possess the glossy complexion of someone who uses Korean skincare daily?

Young women perhaps don’t realise the Indian retreat is doubtless a freebie, as is the skincare. That Millie quite possibly dissolves in a puddle off camera.

Likewise, we watch women trilling on Instagram (and I do it for time-wasting aeons!), ‘Join me as I renovate my 18th-century cottage’ – which is, of course, perfect and filled with candles lit in less than two minutes. I look around and think, "Why am I useless? Why is decorating so hard? Why can’t I change a light bulb?" And we give up and keep scrolling because we’re unfit for much else.

Because that’s what the disingenuous – and I would say dishonest - posts on social media end up doing (after selling us stuff – almost every post these days is a seductive ad).

All Millie Mackintosh is doing – and she probably doesn’t realise it herself – is getting us to waste time and money, and to feel bad about ourselves. Social media posts like hers are worse than the clearly fabricated TV shows such as Love Island, Made In Chelsea, The Only Way Is Essex et al because of their brevity, their intimacy: they are there, in the palm of our hands.

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There are exceptions, of course. And to her credit, Millie has written about overcoming her alcohol addiction. But remember: influencers are paid by brands and given shedloads of freebies to peddle perfection, to triumph over adversity. Brands don’t shell out for a hot mess!

The social media posts have taken the baton from glossy magazine shoots and interviews and interior design spreads where all the detritus of life has been secreted away. Nobody lives like that. 

And, as a writer who has shared my misfortunes, divorce, homelessness and all-too-brief moments of gloss in the pages of the Mail for 26 years, I know how thin-skinned the men in our lives turn out to be. I wager Hugo the husband, like many men before him, including Prince Harry, detested being the cameraman, the human selfie stick on the sidelines.

We all knew it would end in tears for Millie but, come on, where are the red, puffy eyes? Show us, Millie! You’d get far more sympathy if you revealed the hard, unpalatable truth.