AMANDA PLATELL: Cruel Eamonn Holmes’s shameless love parade could cost him everything. I hope it does

Less than five months ago, Eamonn Holmes was playing the victim, saying he was devastated and taken aback after his wife Ruth Langsford announced they were divorcing. And yet in recent days he’s been pictured enjoying a romantic Mediterranean holiday with his new, much younger beau Katie Alexander, in one shot tenderly caressing her bottom as they head off for a night in Ibiza.

In some of the pictures of them in the sunshine, Katie wears a £315 black feather minidress, an £850 Loewe handbag and totes around in sky-high £655 Christian Louboutin stilettos. While those claims that he was the wronged party after he and Ruth split are still fresh in their minds.

Sorry Eamonn, but the game is up. I fear these photos will cost you dearly – not least in the eyes of the viewing public.

Eamonn is still married and is seen wearing his wedding ring

How can a man so quickly move from a 27-year love affair to a woman half his age walking around Ibiza?

It takes a special kind of cruelty for the burly Eamonn to show off his young lover, knowing that his wife Ruth, also a celebrity, will see every photo.

Eamonn isn’t divorced. He’s still married. Just like he was when the busty blonde divorced mother of three from Yorkshire contacted him online in 2015 and swooned over him, telling him he was her George Clooney.

He was married when he reportedly began seeing Katie regularly after her own marriage broke up in 2022. He got married while she was reportedly staying in a hotel in Surrey, just ten minutes away from where Eamonn and Ruth lived in Weybridge.

And Ruth, understandably, has had enough. As Eamonn triumphantly strutted around Ibiza with his lover, with a friend waxing lyrical ‘Katie is living the dream’, we hear Ruth has enlisted the help of one of the country’s fiercest divorce lawyers, Catherine Costley.

Eamonn and Katie’s dream could turn into a nightmare when Mrs Costley hits the road.

The £400-an-hour divorce lawyer is known as ‘fierce and methodical’. She learned her skills from her former boss and mentor Baroness Shackleton, who assisted then-Prince Charles in his divorce from Diana. She has been nicknamed Steel Magnolia for the charm and determination with which she pursues her prey.

She was so ruthlessly effective when representing Sir Paul McCartney in his divorce from Heather Mills, his wife of four years, that Mills angrily poured a glass of water over Shackleton’s head after she left court with a £24 million settlement instead of the £125 million she had demanded.

There is little doubt that Ruth’s appointment of Mrs Costley, one of the country’s top five divorce lawyers, will come as a cold shower to Eamonn’s shameless lovemaking.

That is no less than he deserves. If he had conducted this affair with any dignity and respect for Ruth, kept it quiet and under the media radar and been honest with her that he had fallen in love with someone else, it could have been a quiet divorce between two people who had been married for 13 years and raised a son together.

But given his recent behavior, his self-pitying outbursts when they part ways ring rather hollow.

As for TV fat guy Eamonn’s claims that he hoped he and Ruth could remain friends, there’s no chance of that happening. I can’t even imagine Ruth’s anger – and soon Eamonn will be shaking in his electric wheelchair.

Ms Costley advises women considering or expecting divorce to protect themselves and their finances and create a secret fund of their own in case they need to leave the relationship quickly.

“My biggest piece of advice,” she says, “is that everyone should have a go bag. No matter how much or how little money you have, always make sure you have [have]…own savings’.

That adds an extra layer of intrigue to the Holmes v. Langsford divorce.

Did Ruth see it coming? Did she keep her powder dry before making the shocking announcement of their split until she had her go bag ready?

I wonder because figures released in February this year for her company Hey Ho Ltd revealed she earned £2.3m last year from her television work, including Loose Women and her lucrative shopping show Ruth Langsford Fashion on QVC.

Although Eamonn’s salary at GB News is estimated to be around £1million, there are unlikely to be many bigger TV offers for him.

How could he do that to Ruth, who had stood by him for years despite his constant illnesses?

Eamonn is said to be so smitten that he has showered Katie and her children with expensive gifts, which might explain the £4,200 Alhambra bracelet she was wearing in those Ibiza photos. On her modest income as a relationship therapist specialising in ‘affairs and betrayals’ of £45 for a 50-minute session, she probably doesn’t pay. She now drives a £50,000 Mercedes.

The thing is, Eamonn knows what he’s doing, letting his new love blossom in this way. He’s been a TV star for decades. He knows all about publicity. After Ruth threw him out, he knew he’d be an interesting person wherever he went.

He knew all too well when he boarded his luxury Mediterranean cruise with Katie on the aptly named Scarlet Lady ship that every move he made would be recorded by his fellow passengers and that they would be photographed together in public places.

I wonder how he could do something like that to Ruth, when she had been by his side for years despite his ongoing illnesses: a double hip replacement, back surgery, and then a fall down the stairs in the house where they lived, after which he could no longer even walk.

For betrayed women everywhere, I hope Ruth helps her cheating husband to the ground. And with the skills of her terrifying divorce lawyer, she leaves him high and dry.

And let’s see how irresistible the adoring Katie finds her financially challenged 64-year-old sugar daddy in a wheelchair.