Hands off my boyfriend, Mum!

(From Irish Independent)

Relationships: Regina Lavelle on the irresistible charms of the older woman

Bringing home the boyfriend for the first time is a relationship milestone which gives most women anxiety attacks. You worry they won't like him, he won't like them, they won't have anything in common, or worse, they'll have too much in common and your mother will recount that 'hilarious' incident when you were four and you snogged your cousin.

But whatever our worries, they are almost certainly eclipsed by those of Rumer Willis. Then again, any daughter would be reticent bringing her new beau home if her mother happened to be Demi Moore - a woman who at 42 seems to defy the laws of ageing.

Certainly, Demi's month-old marriage to 27-year-old Ashton Kutcher shows no chinks in its armour. Despite already having three children - Rumer, 17, Scout, 14, and Tallulah, 11 - Demi has said that she wants a family with her third husband.

Initially, the relationship seemed like a sophisticated publicity stunt, coinciding as it did with her star turn in the Charlie's Angels movie and her emergence from semi-retirement with a taut new physique. But more than two years on, it's the critics who have been silenced. What's more, the trend for younger men going out with older women is only increasing.

The 15-year-age gap is hardly extraordinary when compared to the 19 years between the quintessential English actress Francesca Annis and her Oscar-nominated partner Ralph Fiennes.