According to friends of Ruth Langsford, the TV star is dealing with her divorce from Eamonn Holmes by ‘partying through the pain’.

As everybody knows, Partying Through The Pain is code for ‘getting blackout drunk in order to numb yourself from the ­indignity of splitting up with the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with’.

‘Ruth is pretty shocked at Eamonn’s behaviour and how he’s moved on so fast,’ continued the friend, referring, perhaps, to the pictures of Holmes in Ibiza, looking like the cat that got the cream – or the ageing TV presenter who got the pneumatic blonde – as he smugly patted the behind of his new 42-year-old girlfriend, Katie Alexander.

‘It’s quite devastating,’ explained the pal, who paints a picture of Ruth so wretched that I wanted to fling myself on the floor in solidarity. ‘She’s just ­trying to get on with life,’ this ‘chum’ told OK! Magazine. ‘Keeping busy and being around friends, family and work is the only way she can get through it.’

Ruth Langsford’s recent online post of getting her hair done. Bryony writes: ‘She looks cock-a-hoop… a woman not so much ­devastated by her impending divorce, but transformed by it’

Eamonn Holmes in Ibiza ‘looking like the cat that got the cream – or the ageing TV presenter who got the pneumatic blonde – as he patted the behind of his new girlfriend,’ writes Bryony

But something doesn’t add up here. Because I’ve been perusing Ruth’s most recent pictures on Instagram, and far from looking like Miss Havisham forced to go on a night out with her friends to the Clapham Grand, she looks… absolutely delighted.

Cock-a-hoop, frankly, and ­completely and utterly gorgeous, to boot – ten years younger, a woman who is not so much ­devastated by her impending divorce, but transformed by it. Relieved, even. Indeed, if I may be so bold, I might suggest that instead of Partying Through The Pain, Ruth Langsford has been liberated by it.

Consider the evidence: those glorious shots of Ruth on a night out with 34-year old Rylan Clark, who is every woman’s dream ­dinner date (funny, handsome, and guaranteed not to try to feel you up after a few glasses of wine).

Maybe it’s something to do with her hair, cut into a new chic layered bob. Perhaps it’s the leopard print. It could even be the espresso martinis. Whatever it is, it’s working.

Any man worth his salt (and not just his salt and pepper hair, as is the case with her ex, Eamonn) would be lucky to find himself in the company of Ms Langsford who, at 64, has never looked better.

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Then there’s the triumphant return to Loose Women this week, after four months off. And we learned that Langsford has hired the ‘fearsome’ divorce ­lawyer, Catherine Costley, who was trained under the watchful eye of Baroness Fiona Shackleton, aka the ‘Steel Magnolia’.

All of which suggests a woman who is not so much grinning and bearing it, but newly empowered and whooping with delight.

It’s a glorious inversion of the boring tale we’ve heard, countless times. The one where some old dude gets together with a younger model. The man is often cast as something of a ­silver fox, while the nagging ex-wife is ­supposed to be pitied as she weeps at the back of a WI meeting.

Goodness knows, it seems Eamonn Holmes has done his best to spin this ­narrative, apparently showering his younger girlfriend with gifts and whisking her away on an ‘all-­expenses paid’ cruise to the ­Mediterranean. Except, now we learn that the expenses were paid by a travel company Eamonn is an ambassador for, a company that is apparently ­trying to target ‘older customers’.

And suddenly, it’s Katie we’re all pitying, not Ruth.

Ruth is part of a wider trend of so-called ‘silver vixens’: women refusing to go quietly into midlife, with only their HRT for company. Silver vixens are ladies in their 40s, 50s and 60s who have shed all those patriarchal self-­esteem issues, usually at the same time as their husbands, and quite often when their kids have flown the nest.

Instead of spending their later years crying into a plate of ­chocolate bourbons, you can find them at a Pilates class with a green juice, or a bar with a bottle of champagne. They are socialising more than they did in their 20s, and having way more fun, too, because the aim of the night is to have a laugh with their mates, rather than to find a man to settle down and have babies with.

This moment has been spearheaded by the bigwigs in Hollywood. Free from the toxic influence of men like disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, the industry is learning that women don’t end up on the scrapheap when they turn 25 – in fact, they just get better and better with age.

This summer has seen a glut of movies in which middle-aged women are cast as leading ladies romanced by younger men. ­Witness Nicole Kidman, 57, paired up with Zac Efron, 36, in Netflix film A Family Affair, and Laura Dern, also 57, who falls for a character played by 34-year-old Liam Hemsworth in the movie Lonely Planet.

Then there’s so-bad-it’s-good romantic comedy The Idea of You, where Anne Hathaway, 41, stars as a mum who is pursued by the lead singer of her teenage daughter’s favourite boyband.

It’s basically Harry Styles fan ­fiction, made all the more realistic by the former One Direction star’s penchant for an older lady.

Incredibly, Hollywood has even had the guts to send up its obsession with youth, via the horror movie The Substance, which comes out in the UK this week. It stars 61-year-old Demi Moore as an ageing actress and fitness guru who agrees to take a mysterious toxin in a bid to stay young and relevant and employable, with predictably gory results.

Moore is so good in it that she is tipped to win an Oscar, her career revived in her seventh decade.

It’s too early to say if times are changing. But for now, I’d like to celebrate Demi, and Ruth, and all the other women of a certain age who, far from partying through the pain, are showing us that even in your 60s, the best is yet to come.