"I'm not going to slow down, get off this ride, stay home and get fat...
There are no short cuts to being Madonna.''
I WONDER IF ANY OF THIS IS TRUE?.....THE gossips at Cannes were agog at news that Madonna had installed twin treadmills in her hotel suite so she and hubby Guy Ritchie could work out side-by-side.
Life in the world's most talked about marriage, it was reasoned, couldn't be too bad if they were at least continuing to share a passion for gym.
But that second treadmill was in fact for personal trainer Tracy Anderson who, for the past year, has been living in Madonna's London home and playing far more of a role in her life than her soon-to-be-ex-husband.
Ritchie and Madonna slept in separate rooms on that break, as had become usual, and were by then communicating only via their personal assistants. The treadmills are a neat metaphor for the way Ritchie has been excluded from Madonna's life.
Her irrational food fads and increasingly bizarre attempts to hold back time _ via surgery, exercise and every therapy going _ certainly helped to doom their marriage.
How could anyone expect Ritchie, a macho man who is fond of the pub and likes to shoot pheasant, to dine contentedly every night on quinoa grains and organic vegetable dumplings?
And how was he supposed to react when his wife took to retiring at night slathered in 500 pounds-a-pot cream and covered in a plastic body suit to hold back the signs of ageing?
It now emerges that every aspect of life at the Ritchie residence in London was dictated by the lady of the house. Madonna, who embraced a macrobiotic diet in the early 1990s, told her chefs what was permitted: she chose the precise blend of Colombian coffee and tutted over the exact provenance of airfreighted Canadian blueberries.
Ritchie has allegedly had to endure a life married to a 160cm domestic tyrant whose rules apparently included no TV, no newspapers and no welcome for his London friends _ sustained on a diet that would make a Hollywood starlet feel faint.
For instance, gossips claim his Christmas meal was minus chipolata sausages last year because she would not hear of processed meat crossing the threshold.
He had to drink his tea every day with rice milk, as dairy is banned.
Meat is only very occasionally on the menu. The only exception to this was at their country estate, Ashcombe House, in Wiltshire, where Ritchie was allowed to serve a full breakfast to shooting parties _ even including such fat-filled items as steak-and-kidney pie. (Madonna thought this kind of food so foul that she would leave the room in disgust when it arrived and sip reproachfully at her bowl of Japanese miso soup.)
Ritchie apparently used to complain she was giving her children an unhealthy attitude towards food: she banned sugar entirely, which made biscuits, ice creams and cakes objects of almost fascination for her daughter Lourdes and their son Rocco. She also banned cheese, cream, salt and preservatives. One of Ritchie's friends suggested that Her Madgeness had to be talked into permitting Rocco to have a birthday cake last year.
Even when the pair went out for ``romantic'' meals _ and in the final two years of the relationship this was one of the few activities they shared _ Madonna would generally refuse to eat anything.
One associate said she didn't ``trust'' the kitchens to prepare food to her exacting standards.
wife who sleeps alone in a plastic suit for Mr MadgeSo she would sit with a glass of water as Ritchie wolfed down his meal. The topic of discussion, chosen by Madonna, was generally Kabbalah, or an earnest exposition about George Bush. It wasn't fun.
No wonder Ritchie bought himself a pub in February. And, sources insist, the food was not even the worst of Ritchie's daily miseries as Mr Madonna.
Her exercise routine, never less than two hours a day, six days a week, rules her life. She went to the gym the day her adopted son David Banda arrived from Malawi, and spent nearly four hours honing her body. She worked out on her birthday this summer, and on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Ritchie's entreaties to her to do less, and spend some time with him and the children, were ignored.
``I'm not going to slow down, get off this ride, stay home and get fat,'' she told a magazine. ``There are no short cuts to being Madonna.''
The star, whose ambitions have propelled her from obscurity to fame and a 315 million-pound (about $A800 million) fortune, regards ``being Madonna'' as roughly equivalent to running a multi-national company. And she thinks her extraordinary body is its main asset.
For this reason, Ms Anderson, who has helped her to build muscles with her own variant on aerobics and Pilates, probably sees more of Madonna than anyone else.
After breakfast in London, Madonna would spend a short time at her computer before going to the six million-pound property next door that houses her gym and working out with Ms Anderson, a pint-sized American blonde whose sweet smile masks a formidable drive.
Madonna started working out properly around the time of her Blond Ambition tour in 1990. She met Carlos Leon, the father of Lourdes, while jogging around Central Park. As a fitness instructor, that meant they always had something _ apart from sex _ in common, and they remain close friends.
While pregnant with Lourdes, she would do 45 minutes on a Stairmaster every day. Pilates was her next enthusiasm, then the more vigorous Ashtanga yoga.
She also jogs, pumps iron and swims, and for a period tried a brutal-looking wooden rack known as ``Gyrotonic expansion'' designed to stretch and tone muscles.
As a result of all this she has recurring back and knee problems, and tours with a chiropractor and physiotherapist. In concert in the US this week, she sported two enormous plasters on her knees.
``People talk about Kabbalah, but her one fanatical devotion is to her body,'' said an associate.
Interestingly, she did try, back in 2005, to boost the marriage by taking up judo. Ritchie is a black belt and she went to his unpretentious gym in Fulham, and for a while seemed keen on learning her moves. At the time, they had been trying for two years to conceive a brother or sister for Rocco.
Despite visits to fertility clinics and following Kabbalah teachings to help them, she failed to become pregnant.
It was a source of deep disappointment to them both and brought Madonna's insecurities about her age (and the 10-year gap between her and Ritchie) to the fore.
But, within months, Madonna abandoned Ritchie to his martial arts and went back to yoga and Pilates. A plan slowly took hold to adopt a child instead _ and we all know how that turned out.
Now she is on tour, she looks exhausted and grey-faced. Her knee is strapped up between dates.
Some plastic surgery _ allegedly done this summer, though she denies it _ is unpleasantly obvious. And because she is so very thin downy hair is growing on her face.
No wonder Madonna is feeling uncharacteristically fragile. And she turned 50 this year - article from PerthNOW.
Life in the world's most talked about marriage, it was reasoned, couldn't be too bad if they were at least continuing to share a passion for gym.
But that second treadmill was in fact for personal trainer Tracy Anderson who, for the past year, has been living in Madonna's London home and playing far more of a role in her life than her soon-to-be-ex-husband.
Ritchie and Madonna slept in separate rooms on that break, as had become usual, and were by then communicating only via their personal assistants. The treadmills are a neat metaphor for the way Ritchie has been excluded from Madonna's life.
Her irrational food fads and increasingly bizarre attempts to hold back time _ via surgery, exercise and every therapy going _ certainly helped to doom their marriage.
How could anyone expect Ritchie, a macho man who is fond of the pub and likes to shoot pheasant, to dine contentedly every night on quinoa grains and organic vegetable dumplings?
And how was he supposed to react when his wife took to retiring at night slathered in 500 pounds-a-pot cream and covered in a plastic body suit to hold back the signs of ageing?
It now emerges that every aspect of life at the Ritchie residence in London was dictated by the lady of the house. Madonna, who embraced a macrobiotic diet in the early 1990s, told her chefs what was permitted: she chose the precise blend of Colombian coffee and tutted over the exact provenance of airfreighted Canadian blueberries.
Ritchie has allegedly had to endure a life married to a 160cm domestic tyrant whose rules apparently included no TV, no newspapers and no welcome for his London friends _ sustained on a diet that would make a Hollywood starlet feel faint.
For instance, gossips claim his Christmas meal was minus chipolata sausages last year because she would not hear of processed meat crossing the threshold.
He had to drink his tea every day with rice milk, as dairy is banned.
Meat is only very occasionally on the menu. The only exception to this was at their country estate, Ashcombe House, in Wiltshire, where Ritchie was allowed to serve a full breakfast to shooting parties _ even including such fat-filled items as steak-and-kidney pie. (Madonna thought this kind of food so foul that she would leave the room in disgust when it arrived and sip reproachfully at her bowl of Japanese miso soup.)
Ritchie apparently used to complain she was giving her children an unhealthy attitude towards food: she banned sugar entirely, which made biscuits, ice creams and cakes objects of almost fascination for her daughter Lourdes and their son Rocco. She also banned cheese, cream, salt and preservatives. One of Ritchie's friends suggested that Her Madgeness had to be talked into permitting Rocco to have a birthday cake last year.
Even when the pair went out for ``romantic'' meals _ and in the final two years of the relationship this was one of the few activities they shared _ Madonna would generally refuse to eat anything.
One associate said she didn't ``trust'' the kitchens to prepare food to her exacting standards.
wife who sleeps alone in a plastic suit for Mr MadgeSo she would sit with a glass of water as Ritchie wolfed down his meal. The topic of discussion, chosen by Madonna, was generally Kabbalah, or an earnest exposition about George Bush. It wasn't fun.
No wonder Ritchie bought himself a pub in February. And, sources insist, the food was not even the worst of Ritchie's daily miseries as Mr Madonna.
Her exercise routine, never less than two hours a day, six days a week, rules her life. She went to the gym the day her adopted son David Banda arrived from Malawi, and spent nearly four hours honing her body. She worked out on her birthday this summer, and on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Ritchie's entreaties to her to do less, and spend some time with him and the children, were ignored.
``I'm not going to slow down, get off this ride, stay home and get fat,'' she told a magazine. ``There are no short cuts to being Madonna.''
The star, whose ambitions have propelled her from obscurity to fame and a 315 million-pound (about $A800 million) fortune, regards ``being Madonna'' as roughly equivalent to running a multi-national company. And she thinks her extraordinary body is its main asset.
For this reason, Ms Anderson, who has helped her to build muscles with her own variant on aerobics and Pilates, probably sees more of Madonna than anyone else.
After breakfast in London, Madonna would spend a short time at her computer before going to the six million-pound property next door that houses her gym and working out with Ms Anderson, a pint-sized American blonde whose sweet smile masks a formidable drive.
Madonna started working out properly around the time of her Blond Ambition tour in 1990. She met Carlos Leon, the father of Lourdes, while jogging around Central Park. As a fitness instructor, that meant they always had something _ apart from sex _ in common, and they remain close friends.
While pregnant with Lourdes, she would do 45 minutes on a Stairmaster every day. Pilates was her next enthusiasm, then the more vigorous Ashtanga yoga.
She also jogs, pumps iron and swims, and for a period tried a brutal-looking wooden rack known as ``Gyrotonic expansion'' designed to stretch and tone muscles.
As a result of all this she has recurring back and knee problems, and tours with a chiropractor and physiotherapist. In concert in the US this week, she sported two enormous plasters on her knees.
``People talk about Kabbalah, but her one fanatical devotion is to her body,'' said an associate.
Interestingly, she did try, back in 2005, to boost the marriage by taking up judo. Ritchie is a black belt and she went to his unpretentious gym in Fulham, and for a while seemed keen on learning her moves. At the time, they had been trying for two years to conceive a brother or sister for Rocco.
Despite visits to fertility clinics and following Kabbalah teachings to help them, she failed to become pregnant.
It was a source of deep disappointment to them both and brought Madonna's insecurities about her age (and the 10-year gap between her and Ritchie) to the fore.
But, within months, Madonna abandoned Ritchie to his martial arts and went back to yoga and Pilates. A plan slowly took hold to adopt a child instead _ and we all know how that turned out.
Now she is on tour, she looks exhausted and grey-faced. Her knee is strapped up between dates.
Some plastic surgery _ allegedly done this summer, though she denies it _ is unpleasantly obvious. And because she is so very thin downy hair is growing on her face.
No wonder Madonna is feeling uncharacteristically fragile. And she turned 50 this year - article from PerthNOW.
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