Demi loves Ashton - as long as he doesn't touch, or speak

Demi Moore's husband is gorgeous, loyal as a puppy, and 15 years her junior. So who cares if he can't fix a shelf?

I read a recent interview with Ashton Kutcher (30), aka Mr Demi Moore (45), and in between reaching for the Kleenex to mop away my tears - of joy, of envy, of self-pity, of a sparkling multifaceted myriad things, really - I found a moment to wonder: is he, like, really for real?

Here, for example, is The World's Most Perfect Husband on his undeniably fragrant wife: 'She looks fantastic. And even if she didn't, I would still love her. The age difference makes no difference. I never think about it.'

And if that weren't reason enough to adore him utterly and completely, for all eternity, how about this fascinating insight into the couple's dynamic: 'I'll start talking about something that happened during my wild bachelor days and Demi will put her hand over my lips and say: "That's BD [Before Demi] - you don't talk about that... it's only us and now that matters."'


For most comparably control-freaky alpha females, the rest of their forties would disappear in a blur of Sudoku or founding an animal shelter or learning an extremely sweaty form of yoga or converting to Scientology - whatever, in short, it took to distract themselves from being a middle-aged singleton whose mere existence sent 96.3 per cent of all theoretically available males running screaming for the metaphorical hills... where, of course, they would be fortunate enough to stumble across a selection of monosyllabic teenage blondes wearing itsy-bitsy gingham bikinis and chewing hayseeds while plucking banjos.

But Demi isn't most middle-aged alpha females: she's one of the leaders of the pack - a woman who can make the rest of us feel like losers simply because we know that our 45th birthday is less likely to be spent indulging in a shagathon with a hot man 15 years our junior who doesn't merely have a MILF fetish but actually worships the ground we walk on, as it will be yet another quiet night sewing name tags into gym kits or working our way through the Reader's Digest Book of Man's Work... For Women

Yes, I find it is useful to accept that, in the absence of an Ashton to do it for us, any grown-up single woman who hasn't appeared naked on the cover of Vanity Fair should acquaint herself with fuse boxes and, er, stuff. I have tried being a 'refusenik', assuming I'd always be able to bat lashes and persuade a passing male to do it for me, but this no longer seems to be an option, especially if you live in a cul-de-sac in St Leonards on Sea.

And when the kids start saying, 'Muuuummmmmy, why can't you make the Sky+ work?', it is not only uncool to sigh and say: 'Because I never thought I'd be the one to have to make it work, sweetheart' but also pathetically self-pitying. Even though so many single middle-aged women grew up assuming there would always be somebody around who would be handier with a drill than we were, articulating it sends out completely the wrong message to 21st-century kids of either gender. (And though I am, obviously, writing about this subject ever-so-slightly objectively, I'd like you to know that I am still pleased about mending my waste disposal without help from anybody male - if one discounts whoever wrote the stuff on the InSinkErator website.)

But I digress: one of the joys of being Ashton and Demi is that they don't need to change fuses, and who cares if Ashton is rubbish at putting up shelves? Mr and Mrs K doubtless get a man in, though it wouldn't surprise me if Demi was awesome with a Black & Decker.

As far as I can tell, the greatest thing about being rich is that it allows you to escape all that passion-killing domesticity and just get on with the fun stuff. I'd even go as far as to suggest that it's precisely because they are unlikely ever to have had a conversation about ironing that Ashton either hasn't noticed (or has and doesn't care) that he married a terrifying control freak.

'I love women. All women,' says Kutcher. 'Demi knows that. She doesn't mind at all - as long as I look but don't touch. And these days I do as I'm told because otherwise there's too much to lose...'

Too perfect. Obviously it can't last.

Today's best video

Today in pictures