Hero
Lily-Rose Depp, who says she finds filming sex scenes quite fun. The 24-year-old actress (and daughter of Johnny Depp) has a lead role in The Idol, a high-profile HBO drama which features a lot of sex, says Rebecca Reid in the I newspaper. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying that kind of work,” she said of the programme’s endless bonking. Most actors and actresses feel duty-bound to describe this kind of thing as “awkward and unsexy”, so it’s refreshing to hear someone admit that acting “isn’t exactly coal mining”.
Hero
A teacher who has been named Italy’s worst employee – no mean feat, given stereotypes about the country’s work ethic. Cinzia Paolina De Lio used sick days, holiday time and allowances to attend conferences and to get out of teaching literature and philosophy lessons at a secondary school near Venice. Overall, she was only present for about four years of her 24-year teaching career. When contacted by La Repubblica about her attendance record, she declined to talk, saying: “Sorry, but right now I’m at the beach.”
Hero
Jonny Bairstow, who brisky dealt with a Just Stop Oil activist at Lord’s by picking him up and carrying him off the pitch. The England cricketer has “earned his place in history”, whatever happens in the Ashes, says Tom Slater in The Spectator. Give the man a knighthood.
Villain
Mhairi Black, who takes a rather selective view of Scotland’s role in the British Empire. The SNP MP recently made a speech in parliament declaring that since 1939, “62 countries have gained independence from Westminster”, implying Scotland is next in line. The only problem, says Micheal Deacon in The Daily Telegraph, is that Scotland “played a major part in both establishing and ruling” the Empire. In fact, the pro-independence Scottish newspaper The National ran a piece just a few years ago entitled: “The British Empire – and the story of how Scots helped to start it.”