As revealed in his book The Moral Animal, Robert Wright observes that the themes of the tales we’re most gripped by – “who is sleeping with whom, who is angry at whom, who cheated whom”, and so on – tend to line up “with the sorts of information conducive to fitness”.

And psychologist Dr Hamira Riaz, who specialises in the concept of success, agrees. “We learn lessons about the human condition through storytelling, and [Jolie and Pitt’s] is one of the biggest stories of our time,” she previously told Stylist. “It has all the elements of myth-making, of a fairy tale: the most beautiful man marrying the most beautiful woman.”

Consultant psychologist Nadine Field has also determined that some people find it reassuring when celebrities ‘fail’, as it reminds us that nobody’s life is perfect – despite how it might have been presented in the press. When a celebrity relationship comes to an end, then, it almost functions as a “de-mystifier… [It provides] a frame of reference for when things go wrong. People think, ‘Well, that can happen even to people like that’.”

This is all well and good, we suppose, but we have the likes of EastEnders, Game of Thrones and Big Little Lies for that. Can’t we focus our attention on fictional scandals rather than the semi-fictional scandals dreamed up by the tabloids about actual people?

Image: Matthew Shave

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