Is Beyoncé’s marriage on the rocks, or is it just good business? That was the question pop fans were asking last week after noticing the theme of her latest album, Lemonade: cheating lovers. Beyoncé, 34, is married to the rapper Jay Z. He’s been linked to the fashion designer Rachel Roy, who denies any affair, and the singer Rita Ora, who first fuelled the rumours and then denied it all, the tease. Born in Texas in 1981, Beyoncé Knowles started her musical career in Destiny’s Child, an all-girl band managed by her father, Matthew. Now she’s worth an estimated $300m (£200m). It has been suggested that the supposed rift between her and her husband is just a cynical publicity stunt. If it is, it’s certainly worked.
“When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you”
But start to like them back and they soon lose interest, Beyoncé once observed
Emma Thompson
Muck ado about fracking
The actress Emma Thompson narrowly avoided a shower of slurry in Lancashire last week after a farmer turned his muckspreader on protesters who had invaded a field earmarked for fracking. Emma and her sister, Sophie, were taking part in an anti-fracking parody of the Great British Bake Off (the BBC’s copyright people may have something to say about this). Is this what Emma meant when she described Britain as “cake-filled”? The farmer’s action was outrageous: for a flourishing crop of Thompsons, a sprinkling of blood and bonemeal fertiliser combined with regular watering is quite enough.
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Tom Daley
Diver’s briefs encounter with the Olympic kit
There are now just 96 days until the Olympic Games in Rio — hurrah! — and last week the diver Tom Daley helped model the new Team GB kit. So how do you think sports fans reacted: did we assess his chances in the 10 metre platform synchronised event? Were we optimistic about breaking the dominance of the Chinese? No, instead we rose up as one and shrieked: “OMG! OMG! Just look at the size of those trunks!! Could they be, like, any smaller?? LOL.” How small are they? Well, you’ve heard of budgie smugglers. Let’s just say that the male divers and swimmers of Team GB won’t be smuggling so much as a bee hummingbird chick into Brazil.