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Heroes and villains

Eilish | Bannon | Stars and Stripes

Hero

Billie Eilish, 19, who has stopped Oscar de la Renta from selling fur. The fashion house wanted the pop star to wear one of its dresses to the Met Gala, but Eilish – a staunch vegan – refused for as long as they sold fur. De La Renta promptly banned their furry products forever and Eilish went to the ball.

Villain

Dr Ryan Dougherty from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, who has found the more telly you watch in middle age, the smaller your brain. Dr Dougherty observed the viewing habits of 599 American adults between 1990 and 2011 and found those who watched an above average amount of television showed reduced volume in their frontal cortex and entorhinal cortex. The good doctor suggests board games instead.

Villain

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who reportedly gave Jeffrey Epstein a spot of media training. He helpfully advised the sex offender “not to share his racist theories on how black people learn”, and to “stick to his message, which is that he is not a paedophile”, says The New York Times.

Hero

The Stars and Stripes, which saved a Florida cat’s life. The black-and-white mog made it to the upper deck of the Hard Rock stadium in Miami, slipped, and fell 50-feet to gasps from the fans below. But a quick-thinking season ticket holder used the American flag and “gym-class parachute skills” to break its fall, says The Independent.

Villains

The Brighton marathon organisers, who made their course 568m too long. Almost 7,500 unassuming athletes were duped into running the elongated race last weekend, which planners say was the result of “human error”. Measuring is not their forte – in 2017, it was revealed their 21.097km half marathon course had been 146m too short for years.

Villain

Valeria Udalova, who raided a Russian cryo-storage lab and made off with its frozen inhabitants. Udalova, 59, claims she’d been unfairly ousted from her husband’s cryo-business, and tried to pinch the stored brains and bodies of people who had paid him thousands to be “brought back to life in the future”. Her plan was to start a rival business. But the liquid nitrogen used to keep them at –179 degrees slopped everywhere, defrosting the unfortunate remains of several helpless residents.