Sometimes in life, you just have to throw in the towel and say, Okay, lady, you win!

Because at 53, that’s exactly what Lauren Sanchez is. A winner. Big time. She saw it, went for it, and managed to get him to put a ring on it.

Yes, she’s the former C-list TV personality who has traded up from mistress to fiancée. Yes, she’s full to the brim of plastic and pump, with the kind of boobs that seemingly enter a room a good five minutes before the rest of her (how on Earth she manages to stay upright is a miracle of science). Yes, her dirty laundry has been washed and aired so often, she’s practically the cover girl for Maytag.

And you know what? Don’t we all want to be her right now?

Because she’s only gone and bagged a b-zillionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, once the richest man in the world, an accolade he first acquired in 2018 and held for four years. And, as she flashed that F**k You sparkler on her soon-to-be-hubby’s $5000m yacht this week, you know she doesn’t give two carats what the rest of us think. Because she’s won. She knows it. We know it. Everything about her screams numero uno and I have absolutely no shame in outing my own seething jealousy.

‘It Should Have Been Me’, I sob, belting out the 1976 Yvonne Fair hit as I try to work out how I’m going to pay this month’s credit card bills.

You have to admire the brazenness of it all. This is a woman who not only knows the game but how to play it big time. Giggling away as her hand throbs beneath the weight of the 20 carat, $2.5m ring, her tiny waist the supporting act – literally and metaphorically – we lesser mortals can only gawk in awe. Because she’s laughing at us. And why shouldn’t she?

Not for her the Amazon Moissanite Halo engagement ring – a snip at $1,689, should you be interested. And certainly no longer for her, the ex-husband and top talent agent Patrick Whitesell who, in 2021, was reported to have landed a $480m stake in Endeavor when it went public. Good grief! The man’s practically a pauper.

True, he’s a very handsome pauper, but if the price you have to pay for the upgrade is sleeping with a garden gnome, so be it.

Lauren’s story is one of the triumph of the Other Woman. She’s Queen Camilla, but a darn sight richer, and likely to savor many more years enjoying her crown.

She’s the woman we wish we were right now. We women have all fantasized at some point about what it’s like to be her. Looking at her life trajectory with our feet struggling on the bottom rungs of life’s great ladder, we can only gaze longingly at the hem of one of her tiny skirts disappearing ahead of us, one rung at a time.

It’s like the way people talk about what it would be like to win the lottery. We know it will never happen, but it’s nice for a moment to imagine that it might.

So, let’s just imagine…you’re a part time presenter and helicopter pilot, you meet Bezos at a party through the husband you’ll later ditch, bring about the end of Bezos’s 17-year marriage (although it is claimed they hooked up only after Bezos’s separation), get him to buy you a $165-odd million Californian mansion previously owned by Warner (the most expensive acquisition ever in the state), plus other property in Hawaii and elsewhere.

Then, he steps back from his beloved Amazon to spend more time with you, buys you a $500m yacht, and now, the proposal. Is there no end to it? How much icing on the cake does one girl need? It’s a veritable Titanic iceberg.

And let’s remember that Lauren’s a post-menopausal 53, not some 20-something model Bezos could cherry pick off any runway. Let that sink in.

Of course, it might not be the gilded social climbing ladder for everyone. The scenario has meant that Lauren has very publicly had to end two marriages, and there are children on both sides to consider. It’s been very messy, with Bezos taking Lauren’s brother Michael to court for unpaid legal fees after he lost a defamation case against Bezos. There was also the tawdry leak of intimate text messages between the loved-up couple. Revealing pictures of Bezos’s Amazon package proved to be false. For that, we can all be grateful. There is a God.

But for a woman like Lauren, ambitious both professionally and socially, that was always going to be par for the course. We’ve all encountered women like her, and they’re as tough as the silicon in their boobs.

So I’m sitting here, nursing my glass of cheap Prosecco and saying Good on you, girl! You did it.

And should you be looking to emulate Lauren’s success story, the current richest man in the world is Bernard Arnault, CEO and Chairman of LVMH of France and he’s worth $237 billion. I’m already brushing up on my conjugations.

And Jeff, Jeff, Jeff…You really didn’t have to do the houses, the yacht, the ring. I’d have settled for an annual Amazon Prime subscription.