Don't imitate celeb marriages: Top divorce court judge

High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge said that the lavish ceremonies splashed across the pages of celebrity magazines such as Hello! have little to do with the reality of lifelong commitment.

A research from the Marriage Foundation, the charity Sir Paul launched this year, also found that Celebs are also twice as likely to end in divorce over ten years.

Forty per cent of stars' marriages end within a decade compared to just 20 per cent of ordinary couples, the study found.

"The worrying feature of these statistics is the picture they paint to those who regard the celebrity lifestyle as something to be admired and copied for its own sake," the Daily mail quoted Sir Paul as saying.

Sir Paul, a senior family court judge, said real life has nothing to do with the stars' love stories played out in celebrity magazines and on TV.

"There is a disconnect between the nature of real long-term relationships and the dramatised and apparently more exciting versions portrayed on screen or imagined for them by the rest of us," he asserted.

"This is surely exacerbated by huge, expensive fairytale weddings attended by the icons of the day," he added.

He pointed to the 55-hour marriage between Britney Spears and Jason Alexander and said, "few non-celebs can match that kind of relaxed attitude to their marriage".

Others whose marriages barely made a year include Russell Brand and Katy Perry, and Kim Kardashian.

Sir Paul said that while most celebrities crave for a stable marriage like anyone else, their fame made it harder to find.

"They pay the price by being even less able to sustain long-term healthy relationships than the rest of us," he said.

But the report does bring into light some starry happy endings - Kirk Douglas has been married to wife Anne for 58 years while Barry and Linda Gibb have notched up 40 years.