IT’S always hard to break up with a loved-one …

We’ve all seen, and in many cases been in, those relationships whereby everyone but the individual in question knows that they’re on a one-way trip to deceit, destitution and/or misery.

Yet to point it out is anathema and invariably leads to rifts on both sides.

The quandary therefore, when things inevitably go hideously, irrevocably wrong, is which individual to side with, if any, and whether to take the exalted higher ground or spell out some desperately needed home truths.

Happily this is not the case this week, when both spurned lovers are as loathsome as each other and mutually assured destruction is the best option for the planet.

No, I’m not talking about George Osborne and Google, who would never let a tiny thing like billions of pounds in tax avoidance get in the way of their cosy relationship.

I refer of course, to the rift betwixt Donald Trump and Fox News.

Let us just sit back and enjoy that for a moment …

Even the most favourably starred relationships hit their rocky periods. And none more so than when Trump is involved.

The presidential candidate for the lacking in thought has recently taken the “News” station to task and pulled out of a scheduled debate, complaining that its female anchor was disrespectful and biased … I know! This is Fox News we’re talking about!

The problem, apparently, was that he believes they were biased AGAINST him for a change.

The row ensued after said female anchor raised the use of “pig,” “dog” and several less than chivalrous epithets by Trump during the course of his presidential campaign to attack his female opponents for the Republican candidacy.

Now as we all know, politics is a filthy business and if you want to get involved you had best grow a thick skin and hold your nose, but even by the usual standards of vicious back-biting, slanderous misrepresentation and virulent personal abuse Trump has sunk to new depths.

When this issue was aired in a recent live debate by Fox host Megyn Kelly, who asked quite reasonably if this was the kind of language a wannabe president should be using, Trump spluttered and backtracked before saying off-air that: “She had blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her whatever.”

This has widely been perceived as an attempt to claim that Kelly was menstruating and therefore, in Trump’s view, hormonally imbalanced.

Crass and pathetic as this claim is it is highly instructive and tells us two things.

Not only is Trump so patently emotionally and intellectually stunted that he is unable to say the word “vagina” but he has also apparently confused natural bodily changes coinciding with the cycle of the moon with the Ebola virus.

He also, hilariously, claimed that all Fox was interested in was getting money from his appearances, which is no doubt true but coming from the rapaciously capitalistic Trump went right off the end of the irony scale.

Fox went in to bat for their beleaguered anchor, because it’s all right for them to denigrate women and minorities but not when it comes back at them.

A Network spokesman said, and I quote, “We can’t give into terrorisations of any of our employees.”

Showing that he was a total stranger not just to the English language but also its concept.

“Capitulating to politicians’ ultimatums about a debate moderator (Kelly) violates all journalistic standards,” he added.

Which raises a number of questions, but principally, since when did Fox ever adhere to “journalistic standards?”

It never stopped them in the past when they were spoon-feeding made up shit to a gullible public in support of the ongoing “War on Terror” which was largely in their heads.

Lying through their scarily perfect teeth to back up a lame duck president who had no clue what he was doing and led the world into disaster was, likewise, apparently not a problem for their much-vaunted, newly discovered “journalistic standards.”

That’s fine, as long as he’s not black.

Basically the Fox statement can be read: “Say what you want about the Muslims, immigrants and Mexicans but criticise one of us and you’re spoiling for a fight.”

Sadly this spat will not last, so I for one am determined to make the most out of it while I can.

Ah, schadenfreude! It truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

The only way it could get any better is if Tony Blair decided to act as peace maker and he probably will — if the price is right.