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I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin; I’ve been pretty and I’ve been plain – ugly, even. Throughout this, my self-esteem has stayed generally constant, as if you’re going to base it on something as ephemeral as physical beauty, you’re going to run out of road very quickly indeed. This objective attitude to my own appearance reminds me of a funny story from the infant days of the internet. Imagine my surprise one morning to receive a message from an unknown recipient informing me that they had film of me masturbating to online pornography which they would make available to a wider audience should I fail to pay a ransom. (Don’t judge – I was young-ish and frisky and it was all so new – I soon grew out of it.

Bonjour and bienvenue to the Clooneys. Gorgeous George, his wife Amal and their eight-year-old twins have been granted French citizenship. The Hollywood actor has long had a deep streak of Europhilia, owning luxury properties in Berkshire and Lake Como, Italy, as well as his pad in Provence. Located near the village of Brignoles, the Clooneys’ €9 million ($10.5 million) wine estate spans 425 acres, including an olive grove, swimming pool and tennis court. In an interview last month with a French radio station, 64-year-old Clooney declared (in English) that "I love the French culture, your language, even if I'm still bad at it after 400 days of courses." He also praised France’s privacy laws, citing them as the principal reason he and his wife want to raise their children there.

FIFA looks set to face its first major scandal of the 2026 World Cup – if you don’t count the exorbitant cost of the tickets, that is. The Egyptian FA has made a formal request for the cancellation of an LGBTQ+ celebration planned to take place at their Group G game against Iran on June 26 in Seattle. The game roughly coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The Seattle Pride match committee are planning to combine celebrations of the anniversary with the game.  A Pride match or Pride night is a tradition in American sports going back to around the year 2000 and is now embraced by most professional leagues. These events usually involve a particular game being dedicated to certain communities.

In the early 1970s, celebrity chef Jacques Pépin and his wife bought a dilapidated house in the Catskills so they could go skiing on the weekends. It was a real fixer-upper. Groups of friends would come up from New York City and pitch in on the renovation effort, and Pépin would serve dinner at the end of the day. These weekends were so much fun Pépin decided to memorialize them by hand-lettering and painting special menus. How Pépin convinced his friends to let him sit in the kitchen sketching petits poissons and heads of broccoli while they slaved away at framing and drywalling his winter getaway is, admittedly, mysterious.

Occasionally, a French person reveals – without any malice or superciliousness – that they run on an alternative operating system from us Brits. And on an entirely different motherboard from our American cousins. Over the years of gathering supporting anecdotes, a surprising theme has emerged: butter. Take my first visit to Paris, more than 30 years ago. I innocently asked for butter with my croissant. Simple answer: “Non.” Naturally, I remonstrated. The waiter retorted: “A croissant eeez butter!” And, in fairness, he had a point. Upon biting into said viennoiserie, I had to concede: it was nothing like the dry grocery store versions I was used to. Moments later, a small pot of raspberry confiture was graciously placed on my table.

New York People are too into politics. I used to be called gay for liking politics in school. They should go back to that. No one used to care about politics. Now everyone’s into it and it’s made people insane. I think it’s partly to do with social media in general. I don’t really care about social media – I wouldn’t have it if I didn’t need it for my job. It baffles me that there are so many people just screaming at, say, the Secretary of Agriculture all day. For no money. It’s probably because they don’t have jobs – the economy can’t absorb labor like it used to. Similarly, podcasts need to die. It should be a humiliation to admit publicly that you listen to one. I only listen to one podcast: Arsenal Vision, about the football team.