If ever there were five words serving as both a headline and a punch line, here they are:

Hugh Hefner files for divorce

The headline aspect of it reports the fact; the punch line aspect bespeaks the bizarre.

Hugh Hefner got married? Why?

To people under 30, Hefner may merely be that old guy on a TV reality show who lolls around in satiny sleepwear with his three airheaded, blond girlfriends, whose next multisyllable word will be their first.

But to others he is — or was — the iconic essence of all that is cool and hip and sexually libertine.

He also was a cultural iconoclast, pushing for social change, railing against discrimination and speaking out against the war in Vietnam.

All the while swigging his beloved Pepsis and swinging with an endless nest of bunnies.

Hefner was the game-changing kind of guy men envied and wanted to be — even men who didn’t like girls, which gives you some idea of his scope.

He was relevant for his time, but now his relevance has been reduced to cartoonish pap on a cable channel.

The 83-year-old founder of Playboy magazine has evolved into a parody of a parody of himself.

As a younger man, Hefner’s penchant for laying around his well-bimboed bachelor pad in his pajamas was looked upon as way cool.

Now, he just comes across as some geezer with the flu.

In his reality show, one gets the impression that his three live-in girlfriends aren’t so much his harem as his nurses in-waiting.

The show’s new season features three new girlfriends — also blondes; how shocking is that? — two of whom are 19-year-old twins. Nineteen? Hefner has ingrown toenails older than that.