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Zeitgeist

No Bolly these days, sweetie darling

We’d talk ourselves out of making Absolutely Fabulous in 2021, says Jennifer Saunders in The Sun. “I think people do talk themselves out of stuff now because everything is sensitive.” Today’s “small-mindedness” spoils all the fun. “I remember jokes.” She has a point, says Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph. When Edina discovers that the father of Saffy’s baby is black, she delightedly brands mixed-race infants “the Chanel of babies”: the must-have accessory of the season. And don’t forget the running trans jokes – Eddie reveals that Patsy spent a year in the 1970s living as a man, until her male appendage “fell off”.

Watch the best moments from the series below 👇

Superhero sex? Keep your pants on

Why are superheroes all celibate, says Alyssa Rosenberg in The Washington Post. When the makers of a superhero TV series for grown-ups proposed a scene with Batman and Catwoman getting up to some hanky-panky, DC Comics declared: “Heroes don’t do that.” Marvel, too, goes to ridiculous lengths to keep their heroes in their pants – poor Thor gets trapped an entire dimension away from his “astrophysicist honey”. But why do these beautiful people with great jobs act “like nuns and monks” in their downtime? If superheroes can’t get it together, “what chance do we normies have?”.

Turning over a new leaf

Waitrose and Tesco are relabelling kaffir lime leaves as “makrut lime leaves”. In South Africa, “kaffir” is an offensive racial slur that is prohibited by law. The word derives from the Arabic kafir, meaning infidel or unbeliever: the connection to limes is unclear, but it appears to have arisen in Sri Lanka.