Why wasn't I invited to sip espresso martinis at Lauren Sánchez's hen do?

Another dream dies hard. I was not invited to Lauren Sánchez's hen do, and Jeff Bezos's bride-to-be and her gang of close personal brunettes are now returned from their £500,000 jaunt and recovering - I imagine in solid gold flotation tanks - without me.

- Lucy Mangan

Monday They took a champagne boat ride down the Seine (or possibly up the Seine - are you going to make me admit again that I wasn't there?), drank espresso martinis at Lafayette's restaurant and documented every moment on Instagram so the rest of us could gaze in awe and wonder if hen partying as a billionaire's fiancée's friend is any less hateful than doing it the normal way.

It is, I suppose, likely that if you are a Kardashian or an Eva Longoria or a Katy Perry, as so many of the guests were, you are more extrovert and naturally gregarious than average, but it remains a pleasure to imagine that when the gilded invitation dropped through the letterbox the girls' reaction was the universal one: "WTF does Bridezilla want now?", a resentful locating of a wheelie suitcase, some mid-tier underwear and a vow never to agree to this kind of thing ever again.

Tuesday There is another hoo-ha about Gwyneth Paltrow's hoo-ha. Her most (in)famous piece of Goop merch, a candle launched on her website in 2020 under the name This Smells Like My Vagina for the not inconsiderable sum of $75, is now selling on eBay for an even more not inconsiderable $400. And all my questions of five years ago come flooding back, including but not limited to: does the name mean that the candle smells like GP's own? Or is it meant to evoke the essence of all? Is there an essential vagina smell, is it the one we hear all the jokes about and if so, why would you want to perfume your house with that?