Sometimes in life, but more often in divorce, £500m just won’t cut it. “I’m inclined,” says Sue Liburd, 42, taking a neat sip of herbal tea, “to wonder why it’s only five hundred million.”

We’re sitting in a chintzy lounge at her home near Bristol talking about the soon to be ex-Mrs Aga Khan, a woman likely to secure the most Croesian divorce settlement in history and to whom Liburd has recently written.

Divorce is, after all, Liburd’s business. She tells women how to do it, how to survive it, and (when all that lovely alimony comes in) how to spend it too. In short, she is Donald Trump’s living nightmare. “The man may be a billionaire, but women can still take 50% of his assets thank you very much,” she says conversationally, “50% plus extras in fact”.

Liburd, who has never married, has just launched Talaka (Swahili for divorce), the UK’s first exclusive membership network for divorced and divorcing women. She promises the club will not be an earth for vengeful vixens but a means for despairing dumpettes to rebuild their lives.

Their methods are faddish — clients spend equal time with psychologists and manicurists — but they are also tutored in wealth management and can get legal advice.

“The response has been overwhelming,” says Liburd. “When I mention the idea women try to get their chequebooks out on the spot.”

Catch is, one needs to have secured at least £1m from hubby in order to join, to say nothing of the £25,000 annual dues. Liburd insists it isn’t elitist though. “If you get the house and an allowance for the children you’re over the £1m mark pretty quickly these days. Divorce is basically like winning the lottery.”

Surely this is the sort of thing people say in Beverly Hills not Bristol? In fact the UK seems an unlikely place to set up a first wives club at all. “Two years ago the idea would not have resonated with the public,” says Liburd, who believes divorce is now sufficiently epidemic for her club to succeed.

It’s true that 3.7% more Britons divorce every year, with 166,700 untying the knot in 2003. Favourable legislation also makes the UK the ideal spot for trophy wives to turn out their husbands’ pockets.

Soraya Khashoggi stung her arms dealer husband, Adnan, for £500m here in the early 1980s, while more recent beneficiaries include Alisa Marks (£40m from French Connection founder, Stephen) and Karen Parlour (a piddly £250,000 in cash but £1m in property and, crucially, 37.5% of the future earnings of her footballing ex, Ray Parlour).

“Those big settlements have made divorce look less awful.” Well, who wouldn’t want a few million for staying home watching Garden Invaders? “Because they have money,” Liburd, a trained counsellor, corrects me, “people assume they can just get on with their lives and don’t need any help.

“In truth, divorced women of high net worth can need even more help than those of more modest means — who traditionally have stronger social networks.

“They run Brownie groups, they’re more involved in their children’s schools and, typically, they have a part-time job. Wealthier women have a greater sense of isolation.”

Her voice drops with feeling. “Their friends are mostly married and quite competitive and they don’t want an independently wealthy woman who’s just had a makeover hanging around their nest. So they sit alone in a six-bedroom house behind their big gates while their children are away at boarding school. Their lives are desperately sad.”

Not only sad, but apparently vulnerable. “They aren’t very savvy when it comes to wealth preservation.” Though they may have benefited enormously from a previous lack of one, Liburd vouches to “spend a lot of time educating them on the importance of the pre-nup”.

“Don’t get even,” Ivana Trump once snarled, “get everything.” “I would add, ‘And then quickly move on’,” asserts Liburd. “We have become too casual about divorce but I am here to pick up the pieces.” She pauses. “For a price.”