In London, They're Not Exactly Broken Up by Madonna's Split

LONDON, Oct. 15 -- Madonna and her husband, British filmmaker Guy Ritchie, intend to divorce after nearly eight years of marriage, her publicist announced Wednesday.

The main topic of conversation here wasn't whether the pop star would be happy with her newfound single life. It was what Madonna would do and where she would go next. Because with Madonna -- from Sean Penn to Dennis Rodman to her own faux crucifixion -- there's always a next, and it's never far off.

Would she stay in Britain, where she has a house in central London and an estate in the Wiltshire countryside? Would she hightail it back to the United States? Would anyone care?

"Everyone knows where she lives, where she goes out, where she goes to the gym, her friendship with Gwyneth," said Raphaelle Delauche, 24, a Frenchwoman who recently moved from Paris to London. Delauche joked that Madonna's divorce, combined with the global financial crisis that has claimed thousands of London bankers' jobs, would have a devastating effect on the city: "It's back to the old ages, the old London where there was less money, less glamour."

Londoner Carlos Lo, 32, said he woke at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and by the late afternoon, "all I've done is read about her divorce."

"If you don't know by now, you're in a cave," he said, adding that in London, Madonna, 50, is as famous as football, as soccer is known here. "People are very interested in her public and private life."

But watching and loving are not the same thing. Gordon Smart, editor of Bizarre, the Sun tabloid's popular showbiz column and one of the reporters who broke the divorce story in Wednesday's paper, said Madonna's departure would not cause anyone's bangers to mash in Britain. The pop queen may have been fascinating tabloid fodder, but she was never seen as truly belonging here, he said.

"British people didn't warm to her," Smart said. "British people like someone who is self-deprecating; she didn't seem to have that." Smart said the British were more likely to side with the London-born Ritchie, 40, after the divorce.

"He embodies British culture; he likes pints with his mates, he likes the simple things in life," Smart said.

Ever since Madonna's marriage to Ritchie in a castle in the Scottish Highlands in December 2000, the acid-tongued American's every move has been detailed by London's voracious tabloid newspapers. Photos show Madonna shopping. Madonna walking with pal Gwyneth Paltrow. Madonna going to the gym.

The tabloids speculated endlessly about whether Madonna had doctored photos of her hands to make them look younger. And it was big news in Britain a couple of years ago when Madge, as she is known here, fell off a horse in the English countryside and broke her collarbone, ribs and hand. Naturally, the tabloids feasted last summer on the rumors of an affair between Madonna and New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez, which surfaced after Rodriguez's wife cited Madonna in divorce papers. Madonna and A-Rod denied any affair. But that didn't stop the Sun from responding with the headline: "Madonna's Hanky Panky Yankee."

She started something close to a national debate in 2006 when she and Ritchie adopted a 13-month-old boy, David Banda, from Malawi. The couple have another son, Rocco, 7, and a daughter, Lourdes, 12, from Madonna's previous relationship with personal trainer Carlos Leon.

Her fans saw the African adoption as a noble thing, helping one child out of poverty and using her fame to highlight the plight of millions of African orphans. Her critics called it the act of a self-absorbed celebrity, collecting a child as casually as a new pair of shoes.

And now, of course, fans and critics are split again. Such is the cynicism about Madonna that some observers noted Wednesday that the breakup, which will attract massive publicity, comes while she is touring a new album ("Hard Candy") and making her directorial film debut ("Filth and Wisdom") and Ritchie is promoting a new movie ("RocknRolla"). Madonna was scheduled to play a sold-out concert in Boston Wednesday night.

Rumors that their marriage was troubled had been circulating for months, and culminated with the Sun's front-page story Wednesday saying that the split was "imminent." Liz Rosenberg, the pop star's publicist, confirmed the couple's divorce in a statement hours later, asking "that the media maintain respect for their family at this difficult time."

Smart, the editor, called Madonna a "master of reinvention" who had "gone through her English rose phase, and now wanted the New York 'Sex in the City' singleton phase."

"It's not like we're losing a key figure in society," he said.

Maybe not a key figure but a fascinating one to many Londoners. Lo summed up the ambivalence of fellow Londoners when he said that the nonstop Madonna news had been oddly addictive.

About Madge's divorce, he said: "I don't care, but I do care."

Special correspondent Karla Adam contributed to this story.