Like Victoria Beckham and her son Brooklyn, us mums have to back off when our kids leave home

WHEN thirtysomething Simon Randles told his mother Pauline he was moving in with his new girlfriend, it’s fair to say that she didn’t take the news well.

In what’s been described as an extreme case of “empty nest syndrome”, she physically attacked him in the street, bombarded him with nasty messages and threatened to take an overdose if he failed to attend to her needs “immediately”.

She has now been fined £120, ordered to complete a 12-month community service order and is banned from contacting Simon, a police officer from Warrington, Cheshire, for 18 months.

Extreme, indeed.

The majority of parents wouldn’t dream of acting this way towards their offspring, but we can perhaps sympathise with the sentiment of struggling to accept that the child you have nurtured from gurgling baby, through testy teens and on to adulthood is flying the coop to start their own life without you.

Now that it’s September, parents across the country will be bracing themselves for their own empty nest syndrome as kids leave home and head off to university.

My youngest is moving out next week and it makes me feel tearful to even write those words.

But, as in the case of Pauline Randles, those same feelings can also rise up when one of your adult children meets a new partner who becomes the centre of their world instead of you.

Just ask Victoria Beckham, who is reportedly struggling to adjust to the fact that she hasn’t seen much of her eldest son Brooklyn, now 23, since he married 27-year-old American Nicola Peltz in April.

The Beckhams have always been the epitome of family unity, regularly posting photographs of their six-strong posse on luxury holidays or simply cuddling up at home in front of the TV.

But this summer, Brooklyn was conspicuously absent from a family holiday to the South of France, and one report described his mother as “deeply saddened” he wasn’t there.

There are also rumours of trouble between her and Nicola who, according to sources close to the couple, very much wears the designer trousers in her marriage to the younger, affable Brooklyn.

It is claimed that any tension here between mother and daughter-in-law followed a misunderstanding over whether the bride would wear one of Victoria’s designs as a wedding dress or not, and that Nicola feels her first dance with Brooklyn was “hijacked” by a mother-and-son dedication.

Whether the rumours are true or not, Brooklyn now has another woman in his life and it’s only natural that a period of readjustment will follow as Victoria and David get used to being occasional consultants in their son’s life rather than full-time parents.

Factor in the old saying of, “A son is a son until he gets a wife, a daughter’s a daughter for life”, and one can perhaps sympathise more with the parents of boys when it comes to taking a step back in our children’s lives.

But either way, step back we must. Otherwise, just like Pauline Randles, we might find ourselves permanently out in the cold.

BOTH of the South Africans involved in the 2019 London premiere of The Lion King have zero recollection of telling Meghan Markle that, as a milestone event, her marriage to Prince Harry was up there with Nelson Mandela’a release after 27 years of incarceration.

One of the men says he wasn’t there and has never met Meghan, while the other says they chatted briefly but he has no memory of saying it.

She’s a funny fish, isn’t she?

If the comparison was made by someone, then repeating it for public consumption shows a lack of humility.

If it wasn’t said, surely she now has enough experience of the media to know that the first thing we’ll do is to check if it’s true.

Or whether, just like some of Meghan’s wild claims in the Oprah Winfrey interview, at best “recollections may vary”, and at worst they’re just big, fat porkies.

WHO ATE, ER, NO PIES, KATE?

ACTRESS Kate Beckinsale has paid homage to our famous pie shop by posing in this £8 Greggs-branded cossie from Primark.

Though with a figure like that, one suspects the last time the 49-year-old ate a carb was a Farley’s rusk circa 1975.

EXCITING news that The Osbournes is returning, this time to the BBC.

The original fly-on-the-wall series started 20 years ago and paved the way for the Kardashians and various “Real Housewives” around the world.

Having spent two weeks living with them when I was ghost-writing Sharon’s third book, I can reliably confirm that absolutely none of the hugely entertaining goings-on were for dramatic effect.

To steal Sharon’s favourite phrase, it’s going to be “FABulous, daaah-ling”.

YOGA teacher and sex guru Karolin Tsarski says she can orgasm using only her mind.

Can’t she just do it like everyone else?

I KNOW A WICK FIX TOM

PUBS and restaurants will struggle to survive this winter thanks to soaring energy bills.

Chef Tom Kerridge says one of his eateries is facing an eye-watering 600 per cent hike.

Anyone my age will remember doing their homework by candlelight during the miners’ strike in the 1970s, when most of the UK’s electricity came from coal.

We were ordered to limit heating to one room and TV channels had to stop broadcasting at 10.30pm each night.

So here’s a thought: Perhaps it’s time for us all to eat out (and drink) by candlelight too?

It would help our pubs and restaurants to stay open and, win, win, bring a little romantic ambience to all of our lives too.

RUMOURS are abounding that Adele has married Rich Paul.

Just like Heather Mills many years before her.

UK ON READ ALERT

NEARLY 175,000 children are about to start secondary school unable to read properly.

National curriculum tests for 11-year-olds have shown that 26 per cent are failing to reach the expected “basic” standard.

Like so many other failings of the past couple of years, this has been thrown into the “because of Covid” basket, thanks to school closures and patchy online learning.

All that certainly plays its part but, aside from the statistical few who have literacy issues, if an 11-year-old is struggling to read then the parents have to take their share of the blame too.

After all, it costs nothing to find a few minutes in each day to teach them the basics.

But what’s the betting that many took the path of least resistance and just let them sit gaming all day?

DO NOT JUDGE WIN YET

THE band Arcade Fire have lost the support act on their world tour and scores of fans are also reportedly demanding ticket refunds.

Why? Because frontman Win Butler is facing allegations of sexual misconduct.

Butler’s wife and bandmate Regine Chassagne says: “He has never, and would never, touch a woman without her consent.”

But support act Feist, a Canadian singer, has pulled out.

She says: “To stay on tour would symbolise I was either defending or ignoring the harm caused by Win Butler. And to leave would imply I was the judge and jury.”

No. Staying on the tour would have symbolised that she believes in the legal principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

GWYN ‘N’ BARE OK FOR HER

GWYNETH PALTROW, 50, says: “I don’t think there are rules around when you stop wearing certain kinds of clothes, at a particular age.

“I wore the shortest skirt I’d worn in ten years just the other day.

“People should wear what they feel good in.”

And herein lies the thigh rub.

If I looked like Gwyneth, who spends thousands of hours – and dollars – on looking good, I’d happily pop to Tesco in just my pants and a couple of bottle-tops for modesty.

But back in the real world, my knees now resemble the Mitchell brothers (the middle-aged years) and, consequently, are rarely allowed out.