The ex-husband humiliated by Jeff Bezos just pulled off a Hollywood masterclass in revenge. His timing was flawless… It must be the talk of that trashy wedding!

Oh, to be a paparazzi drone hovering over Venice this weekend.

Not to admire the canals, or the picturesque architecture steeped in Italian history, but to get the money shot of what is unfolding as the gaudiest spectacle of the century: the $20million (!) wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.

I hate to admit it, but part of me marvels at the glamour, the wealth, the dresses – particularly Lauren’s stunningly tight and ludicrously expensive gold corset – but I’m also sniggering at the circus it has become.

And that’s not my turn of phrase either. Furious locals are said to be calling it ‘il circo’.

While the rest of humanity is googling ‘how to survive WWIII’, the geeky bookseller who became the world’s third-richest man and his space cowgirl are saying ‘I do’ in a wedding so spectacularly tone-deaf that it almost feels like performance art.

If you read my columns, you’ll know I like Lauren. She’s got balls, she’s fierce and – as someone who is no stranger to the surgeon’s knife – I think that, at 55, she looks banging hot. She’s probably also quite a nice woman – I mean, Jeff loves her. But this ‘circo’? Jeez. Come on, Lauren, even your biggest fan over here is cringing.

Let’s start with the foam party – because there is nothing quite as classy and romantic as sliding about in shared bath water filled to the brim with Fairy liquid. Then the invitations that some remarked looked like they’d been knocked together by a sixth-grader using Canva for a school project.

While the guest list reads like Hollywood royalty (hello, Kim Kardashian and a single-and-ready-to-mingle Orlando Bloom), there is one man who has managed to outshine and, quite frankly, outclass the whole ridiculous spectacle: Patrick Whitesell.

Remember him? Maybe not, as he does like to keep out of the media glare. He used to be married to Lauren, before Jeff took one look at her and decided, ‘She’s mine.’

These days, 60-year-old Pat prefers to chill at home in his $57million Bel-Air mansion – far, far away from foam parties, creased linen shirts and loafers that have only ever touched the floorboards of multimillion-dollar superyachts.

He’s known as the ‘super agent’ of Hollywood. As the executive chairman of Endeavor – once a talent agency, now a mega-company that owns everything from IMG to UFC – he has represented the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman and Ben Affleck.

Yet the most impressive thing about Pat is his stunning Australian wife, Pia Whitesell.

We knew her as Pia Miller back in the day when she was married to a local footballer. She is also – probably – the most beautiful woman to come from the Southern Hemisphere.

But long before he set his sights on Pia, 41, Pat was married to Lauren and one day made the rookie error of introducing his wife to a friend who was far, far richer than him: Jeff. It was an introduction that detonated his marriage.

Poor Patrick, for all his wealth and success, was left looking like a prized turnip when Lauren and Jeff’s affair was later splashed across the tabloids.

Reports at the time indicated he was ‘blindsided’ by the affair. In contrast, sources close to Jeff and his then-wife MacKenzie Scott insisted they had separated before he began dating Sanchez.

It was all quite a mess – a very public and embarrassing one, and particularly for Patrick, who is used to going into damage control for his celebrity clients, not himself.

But Patrick didn’t get mad – he got even.

After his wife left him, he bagged a beautiful woman almost two decades his junior. They got engaged, then married. He flew to Sydney to charm her family. Now Pia and her two sons from previous relationships are living the dream at Pat’s LA mansion.

I’m sure Jeff and Lauren are happy as Larry in Venice right now, but every break-up needs a winner, and it’s clear as day who the winners are here.

Because amid the madness, the circus, the drones and diamonds, Pia sent a message days before the wedding that everyone seems to have missed.

She posted the most deliciously icy comeback on Instagram. Kicking back in the pool at her Bel-Air home – with not a paparazzo or cowboy boot in sight – she took a snap and captioned it: ‘How’s the serenity.’

It was a perfectly coded message for her fellow Aussies back home: A quote from a beloved film, The Castle, uttered by a man admiring the modest view from his holiday caravan, completely unfazed by the nearby power lines and airport blare.

The meaning was clear: Forget the noise. We’re perfectly happy right here.

Well played, Pia. I can just picture Patrick out of shot, sipping a martini next to you.

It was cheeky, it was understated, and it was flawlessly timed. Bravo to the Whitesells. If this was a game – and isn’t love a game? – then I crown you the winners.

No need for screaming headlines or public displays of tacky wealth. Just a slightly smug silence that says to the rest of the world: ‘Keep the madness – we’ll have the peace.’

Patrick chose happiness over bitterness – and that truly is the best kind of revenge. Indeed, he even beat his ex-wife down the aisle, marrying Pia in 2021.

Now, I may have picked a side here – but I would still like to extend my congratulations to Lauren and Jeff on their wedding weekend. Yes, it looks tacky, but some people like that! I hope the cake is nice, don’t slip in the bubble bath, and hopefully that corset didn’t crush any internal organs.

While I offer a hand to the happy couple, I doff my hat to the ex-husband.

There are few things in life more satisfying than the cuckold’s revenge, and he pulled it off with true Hollywood flair. I’m sure he was the talk of the wedding the moment Jeff and Lauren were out of earshot.

Why wouldn’t he be? He was humiliated by one of the wealthiest people on Earth, but emerged the richer man.