Marina Hyde

Even his Maga pals are questioning the lavish gift. Don’t they know not to look a wooden gift horse in the mouth?

If you’re familiar with your folklore, you’ll know the story of The Emperor’s New Plane, in which some barely-even-wily out-of-towners turn up with an offer to give a vain and selfish leader a new $400m Boeing 747-8. The merits of accepting this “flying palace” are invisible only to those who are stupid or incompetent, which means the emperor would literally be an idiot not to take it, right?

Finally, a British prime minister has landed a trade agreement with the US. It’s just a shame it’s not a very good one

A huge day in import-export yesterday, as even Rome’s billion-per-cent tariff on American popes was lifted. The much bigger news, though, concerned the partial easing of recently imposed import taxes on British goods in the form of a starter UK-US trade deal, leaving the biggest little country in the world basking in the glow of an achievement our own prime minister seemed to hint had something of VE Day to it. In Britain, we have an old saying about dejection – “you look like you’ve lost a pound and found a sixpence” – but this was an entirely new spin on that scenario, given we were mostly celebrating being back to paying 10% more tariffs than we were subject to a few weeks ago. Yessss! A sixpence! Good times.

One of the prince’s well-heeled friends should give our foremost podcaster a lesson on when to keep schtum

Prince Harry wanted a completely new life and he has got one. He is no longer a working royal, but a rich person. His Rich Highness. This involves a change of mindset in a mind that is somewhat hard to describe as quick on the uptake.

Being rich is all well and good, of course, and the duke certainly moaned enough about money when he was still within the confines of royal duty, to hear insiders tell it. But the reason you don’t see Beyoncé out there on the talkshow circuit whining about how much money she has to spend on security – easily eight figures a year – is that she, a very rich person, seems to understand that regrettably it goes with the territory, and that you have to pay for it out of your riches.