Melanie McDonagh

So, the Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has not been found guilty of the offences of attempted rape and coercive behaviour that he was accused of, but he’s still very sorry for unspecified behaviour that he did engage in.  Have you ever read anything more confusing than the following?  ‘In a statement, Greenwood accepted he had "made mistakes" and took his "share of responsibility", but added: "I did not do the things I was accused of”.’ ‘Today's decision has been part of a collaborative process between Manchester United, my family and me. The best decision for us all is for me to continue my football career away from Old Trafford, where my presence will not be a distraction for the club.

Let’s hear it for the Beano, 85 years old this week. Lucky readers can get a commemorative issue featuring Charles and Camilla, Dua Lipa and Lewis Hamilton. It’s also a chance for those who haven’t read it for decades to register how much it has changed. Lately, the Bash Street Kids welcomed five classmates: Harsha, Mandi, Khadija, Mahira and Stevie Starr. There’s a hijab alongside the stripy shirts and school caps, plus a scientist in a wheelchair. Fatty, the boy who ate all the pies, and Spotty, who had pustules and a long tie, have been renamed Freddy and Scotty to ensure young people who have freckles, weight problems or acne are not taunted by their peers. Censorship works best when it’s internalised.

Is rewilding, where nature is allowed to take its course, all it's cracked up to be? Alan Titchmarsh, the nation's joint favourite gardener along with Monty Don, appears to think not. In an intervention in the House of Lords' horticultural sector committee inquiry, Titchmarsh said that rewilded gardens are bad news for wildlife. 'With their greater plant diversity, domestic gardens offer sustenance and shelter to wildlife from March through to November,' he told peers. 'Nine months' of nourishment. A rewilded garden will offer nothing but straw and hay from August to March. A four-month flowering season is the norm.

All things considered, probably the least of George Osborne’s concerns on the occasion of his second marriage was being showered with orange confetti by a woman apparently sympathetic to the Just Stop Oil protestors. Bingo: a whole new form of protest came into being. What is the whole confetti thing about anyway? You used to be able to tell if there’d been a wedding at a church by the amount of pastel-coloured horseshoe and bell shapes ground into the pavement outside. It was sold in boxes decorated with wedding motifs. Nowadays, no eco-chic guest would throw paper confetti; dried flower petals are the way to go, available in tasteful cones and a useful way of recycling dead flowers. (Really, the protestor should just have thrown marigolds.

So, which country is putting health warnings and calorie counts on bottles of alcohol for the benefit of its citizens? Nope, not Canada or New Zealand. But you’re getting warm… It’s Ireland, the country that gave us Guinness, Jameson, Bushmills and, for those who like that kind of thing, Baileys. That’s right: a health warning just like for cigarettes. But instead of rotting lungs, presumably there’ll be a lovely picture of a liver with cirrhosis. What effect will it have on me? None, dear reader, none. I drink to forget this sort of thing. But that’s the way Ireland is going (actually has gone) for a generation: not so much the nanny state as the Miss Trunchbull state, one that would swing you round by your pigtails.

Disney’s latest remake of The Little Mermaid, out this week, has, it seems, a message for the royal family. When the prince wants to know the name of the mermaid, played by Halle Bailey, he tries to guess. ‘Diana?’ Nope. ‘Catherine?’ She pulls a face. Cue royal watchers identifying a snub of Kate, the Princess of Wales. Disney’s 1990 take on The Little Mermaid wasn’t quite the story that Hans Christian Andersen wrote – not having much to say about the mermaid’s quest for an immortal soul – but it did find one fan. As Meghan Markle observed in her interview with Oprah Winfrey: ‘Who as an adult really watches The Little Mermaid? But it came on… and I went “Oh my God, she falls in love with the prince and because of that loses her voice.”’ If only.