Take Two

Is it just me or do these pictures look similar? Brad looking down, as if vowing obedience and devotion to someone he's ultimately going to dump. The one with Jolie, from The Good Shepherd premiere last night, has all the hallmarks of a couple in love but then so does the one with Aniston. Ange and Jen might be on opposite sides of the Brad divide now but, a few years down the line, they may well have something to talk about.

For the time being, Ange has extended what she sees as an olive branch to Aniston, saying that she'd be willing to meet her but "that would be her decision, and I would welcome it." For the dumped wife, I'm not sure 'olive branch' would be the best way to describe it. Maybe a 'slap in the face' or 'a way for the adulteress to assuage her guilt' would be? Because peace is surely the last thing you'll get from meeting your ex-husband's new partner, the glamorous, edgy, big-breasted one he left you for and had a baby with.

And I'm sure that Ange's interview in the January issue of Vogue is also not bringing much peace and love to Ms Aniston's festive season. Despite saying that Brad was clearly with "his best friend, someone he loves and respects" when he and Ange first met in 2003, the two developed a "strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened. I think a few months in I realized, 'God, I can't wait to get to work.' … Anything we had to do with each other, we just found a lot of joy in it together and a lot of real teamwork. We just became kind of a pair."

By the end of shooting Mr & Mrs Smith, though, their loins had started to itch or, as Ange puts it, "it took until, really, the end of the shoot for us, I think, to realize that it might mean something more than we'd earlier allowed ourselves to believe. And both knowing that the reality of that was a big thing, something that was going to take a lot of serious consideration."

So they entered that phase of being "very, very good friends" (don't you just love the euphemism?) from the time the movie wrapped in 2004 until after Pitt and Aniston split in January 2005.

It's a lovely story, particularly at this time of year; it fits right in with all the other Yuletide fables and myths. And the ending has 'Christmas tale' written all over it. One day, says Ange, Maddox "just out of the blue called him Dad. It was amazing. We were playing with cars on the floor of a hotel room, and we both heard it and didn't say anything and just looked at each other. So that was probably the most defining moment, when he decided that we would all be a family." Aah, now there's a story to warm your cockles on a cold winter's evening. Or, alternatively, a crock of shit to change the public perception of Ange and Brad from adulterers to caring parents. Good humanitarian work, and a sanitised version of your relationship, doesn't cancel out your other misdeeds.