MADONNA: THE 5 FOOT TALL DOMESTIC TYRANT

THE gossips at Cannes were agog this year to learn that Madonna had installed twin treadmills in her hotel suite, apparently so she and Guy Ritchie could work out side by side.

It was reasoned that things in the world's most talked-about marriage must not be so bad if they were continuing to share a passion for exercise.

But that second treadmill was for personal trainer Tracy Anderson who for the past year has been living in Madonna's London home and playing a much bigger role in her life than her soon-to-be former husband.

Guy 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 $1270-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 air-freighted Canadian blueberries.

Guy, then, has allegedly had to endure a life married to a 162cm 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 last year's Christmas meal was minus chipolata sausages because she would not hear of processed meat crossing the threshold.

He had to drink his tea every day with rice milk, as dairy was banned.

Meat was only occasionally present on the menu. The only exception to that was at their country estate, Ashcombe House, in Wiltshire, where Guy was allowed to serve a full breakfast to shooting parties, even including such fatty items as steak and kidney pie.

Madonna thought that kind of food so foul that she would leave the room in disgust when it arrived.

Guy apparently used to complain that she was giving her children an unhealthy attitude towards food: she banned sugar, which made biscuits, ice creams and cakes objects of almost otherworldly fascination for her daughter, Lourdes, and their son Rocco. She also banned cheese, cream, salt and preservatives.

One person in Guy's camp suggested to me 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 - in the final two years of the relationship, it was one of the few activities they shared - Madonna would generally refuse to eat anything.

One associate said she doesn't "trust" the kitchens, even in exclusive London restaurants such as Claridge's and Nobu, to prepare food to her exacting standards.

"If you were to use the word controlling, you would not even be coming close to describing the way she is about food."

So she would sit with a glass of water as Guy wolfed down his meal. The topic of discussion, chosen by Madonna, was generally the Kabbalah, or an earnest exposition about President Bush. It wasn't fun.

No wonder Guy bought himself a pub in February.

And, sources insist, the food was not even the worst of Guy'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 to spend almost four hours honing her body. She worked out on her 50th birthday and on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Guy'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 to an $800 million fortune, regards "being Madonna" as equivalent to running a multi-national company. And she thinks her extraordinary body is its main asset.

For that reason Tracy Anderson, who has helped her to build muscles with her variant on aerobics and Pilates, probably sees more of Madonna than anyone else.

After breakfast, Madonna would spend a short time at her computer before going to the $15 million property next door, which houses her gym, and working out with Tracy, a pint-sized American blonde whose sweet smile masks a formidable drive.

Madonna started working out obsessively during the Blond Ambition tour in 1990. She met Carlos Leon, the father of Lourdes, while jogging in 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, Madonna 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. For a time, she tried a brutal looking wooden rack known as Gyrotonic expansion, designed to stretch and tone muscles.

AS a result of all the exercise, she has recurring back and knee problems and tours with a chiropractor and physiotherapist. In concert in the US last week, she sported two enormous bandages on her knees.

"People talk about Kabbalah, but her one fanatical devotion is to her body," said an associate.

Interestingly, in 2005, she took up judo in an effort to boost the marriage. Ritchie is a black belt and she went to his unpretentious gym in London. At that point, 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 Guy - 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 and we all know how that turned out.

Now on tour, she looks exhausted and grey-faced. Her knee is strapped up between dates. Some plastic surgery is unpleasantly obvious. And because she is so very thin - 10kg lighter than when she had her first hit 25 years ago - downy hair is growing on her face.

No wonder Madonna is feeling uncharacteristically fragile.

As she approached her 50th birthday this year, she turned from chemical peels and Botox to full-scale cosmetic surgery. Ritchie seems to have greeted her changing face with blank incomprehension.

In the end, of course, something had to give. And Madonna was not going to give up her gym.

Now, you can bet, Guy Ritchie is looking forward to openly eating his first sausage roll in almost a decade.

- Daily Mail