You might be forgiven a slight irritation when you hear that Lloyds Banking Group has sent a dozen of its top dogs to Champneys luxury spa to learn how to be "effective hunter-gatherers in the corporate jungle".

I'd never given the American pop star Jessica Simpson much thought before. Nice blond hair, reality TV show origins, some songs I can't remember. Until last week, when she became so fully gestational that all her famous friends started banging on about it. "Has Jessica Simpson had that baby yet?! I'm getting anxious," tweeted fellow pop star Katy Perry. TV presenter Chelsea Handler, recently voted one of the world's most influential people by Time magazine, asked much the same thing, only worse: "How has Jessica Simpson still not given birth to this baby? I'm getting frightened." At the risk of suggesting that a woman who hasn't had a baby might not know as much about the subject as one who has, it is clear that neither Perry nor Handler know what it is to be very, very pregnant.

My friend Wyndham – yes! He's a posho! – went on his inaugural visit to Tesco the other day and came back complaining that he didn't like it, horrible place, why would anyone in their right mind shop there, etc. After I sat him down and patiently explained that we can't all afford Fortnum's, dear, he said he vastly preferred Lidl.

The divorce of Katy Perry and Russell Brand is no bombshell. Brangelina, you'll have to do more than whip out a pasty leg at the Oscars if you wish to stay in our hearts and minds. For lo, there is a new power couple in town, and they've come for your crown. The rapper, producer, and all-round pop warrior Kanye West is stepping out with Kim Kardashian, the reality TV star whose celebrity marriage recently came to a tragic celebrity end after 72 long and hard celebrity days. Kanye and Kim, whose affair will be so intense that it's unlikely to last much beyond August, are the hottest couple of all time, ever. They've been papped eating in restaurants, staying at his apartment, going to the cinema, even going to a toy shop. He's written a song about falling in love with her! She says she likes it! Here's why you need to give a damn:

Pigs do not fly. The sun has not yet burnt out. The cloning of human beings remains more problematic than that of sheep. In short, we remain in a vaguely familiar universe, and yet I find myself looking at pictures of Prince Harry dancing the samba in Rio and experiencing great waves of fondness for him, and thinking that, if we must have a king, can't we skip both Charles and William and put the jewels straight on the ruddy little ginger brother?

So they're going to make mobile phones work in the Channel Tunnel, which is amusing, seeing as they barely work in Kent, or at least the bit of it you pass through on the Eurostar. In fact, mobile phone coverage is so notoriously patchy on most British train journeys that it will be quite spectacular if the only time it now works perfectly is under the sea in a massively reinforced tube.

Houston had the lungs of America. Her sheen appeared to fans intrinsic, permanent

We are in the middle of a craze for gypsies. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding is about to return for another series, having apparently given Channel 4 its highest viewing figures in years. Then there's Gypsy Blood, Channel 4's documentary last month about the bare-knuckle fighting culture. Paddy Doherty, a boxer, went on to win Celebrity Big Brother and get a spin-off programme of his own, shacking up with Sally Bercow, wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Meanwhile, the supermodel Kate Moss says she loves the gypsy weddings so much that they inspired her own. Then, in the news, we've seen the drawn-out evictions at the traveller site at Dale Farm, near Basildon. There are question marks over a traveller site near the Olympic area in east London. Disturbing reports are coming from Hungary of militias rounding up members of the Roma community.

The television drama Call the Midwife, with its Sunday night BBC1 slot and 10 million viewers, has become what they call A Surprise Hit. I am not sure why. Not why it is a hit as it's a brilliant bit of telly, but why it should be a surprise. I can see why a programme called "Call the Accountant" might not set the ratings alight, unless it was about getting raided in the Seventies for siphoning pop stars' earnings into offshore bank accounts and Quaaludes. "Call the Postal Worker" doesn't quite have that ring of emergency to it. And "Call the Information Resources Centre Strategy Consultant" is too long to trend on Twitter. But midwives, in this case, bicycling through the East End fog in the Fifties, are at the centre of the maddest action possible. People sprouting out of other people from between their legs, having grown suspended in liquid, now entering the world to get their first taste of the addictive drug that is air. Humans at both their smallest and their most impactful. Half-naked women, so tired, so strong. It's not exactly dull.