Bob Dylan turned 80 this week, but even as a 20-year-old he was a grumpy old man, says Dorian Lynskey in UnHerd. Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, he left his tight-knit Jewish home in Minnesota for Manhattan in the 1960s and changed his name to Bob Dylan. He dismissed rumours that the rebrand was a nod to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in typically cutting style: “Dylan Thomas’s poetry is for people that aren’t really satisfied in their bed… I’ve done more for Dylan Thomas than he’s ever done for me.”

Much like Fanny’s mother in The Pursuit of Love, my mother, Jocasta Innes, “bolted”, says Daisy Goodwin in the Mail. She ditched my father, five-year-old me, my three-year-old brother and our lovely house in south London for a younger man and a bedsit in Islington. “I just woke up one morning and she wasn’t there.” We were sent to my grandmother’s in the New Forest for a while: when my mother left at the end of one visit, I remember her having to prise my brother’s fingers off her leg, “one by one”.

William Shatner is 90, but looks 60 and pretends he’s 55, says Hadley Freeman in The Guardian. “What you know at 90 is: take it easy, nothing matters in the end,” he says. “What goes up must come down” –although, if “I’d known that at 20, I wouldn’t have done anything”. There is a website dedicated to Shatner’s toupee, but his youthful appearance goes much further than impressive hair. Has he had some serious work done? “No. Have you?” he shoots back.

Navy blue sheets are the warning sign of a useless man, says Logan Mahan in InsideHook. Yes, it turns out the colour of someone’s bed sheets tells you all you need to know about the potential for romance. And if he has navy sheets, “run”.