No 10’s most closely guarded secret

Hero
Theo James, for doing his bit to bring budgie smugglers back into fashion. Recent pictures of the 39-year-old actor wearing tighty-whities for a new Dolce & Gabbana advert “broke the internet”, says Richard Gray in The Sunday Times. ASOS has reported “significant year-on-year growth in sales of Speedos”, while the global fashion search platform Lyst says requests for the lunchbox-hugging swimwear are up 89%. “What with porn star moustaches, the return of the mullet and now, seemingly, every boy at school with an Eighties perm, what was once considered eye-rollingly naff suddenly looks really cool.”

Villain
ITV, according to the Police Federation of England and Wales, for naming its new series about trainee police officers Piglets. The organisation said the “highly offensive” name would put officers at increased risk of violence, presumably from angry sitcom viewers. ITV defended the title, calling it a “comedic and endearing play on words to emphasise the innocence and youth of our young trainees”.

Hero
A man who boldly tried to smuggle 104 live snakes into China by stuffing them into his trousers. The unnamed and presumably extremely uncomfortable traveller was stopped by officials as he tried to leave Hong Kong.

“The mother of all weddings”

Days-long wedding events are common in many cultures, says Leah Dolan in CNN. But Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, the scions of two of India’s richest families, have taken things to another level with a months-long marathon of parties and ceremonies dubbed “the mother of all weddings”. It started relatively tamely, with a “low-key” proposal last December, before things kicked off in March at the “pre-wedding” party in the city of Jamnagar. The 1,200 guests, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates among them, were treated to a feast of 500 different dishes cooked by around 100 chefs; choreographed Bollywood-style dancing; and a rare private performance by Rihanna. The hosts also laid on a communal dinner for more than 50,000 locals.

In May, the happy couple continued the celebrations with a four-day luxury Mediterranean cruise. There were on-deck concerts from the Backstreet Boys and David Guetta, a masquerade ball in Cannes featuring a performance by Katy Perry, and a cocktail party which shut Portofino’s main square to the public and saw guests serenaded by Andrea Bocelli. Earlier this month, the families hosted a mass wedding for more than 50 underprivileged couples – giving them all gold ornaments and a year’s worth of groceries – before a night of traditional music and dance, along with a performance from Justin Bieber. The “wedding proper” began yesterday at a 16,000-capacity venue in Mumbai, and will continue until tomorrow night. The internet is awash with rumours about who’s providing the entertainment, but with the whole she-bang estimated to cost upwards of $600m, one thing is certain: “there will be no expense spared”.

Album: Hit Me Hard and Soft by Billie Eilish
Instant streaming has turned music into a pick ’n’ mix of songs from which we pluck only the “tastiest morsels”, says Sarah Ditum in The Critic, driving artists to create as many catchy singles as possible and heralding the “death of the album”. But Billie Eilish’s latest LP Hit Me Hard and Soft is a different proposition: at 10 songs in just under 45 minutes, it’s the perfect length for listening from start to finish. The tracks “merge tantalisingly into each other”, creating a work best consumed whole rather than “atomised” into its individual parts. 10 songs, 44 minutes.

TV: Sunny
On paper, Sunny looks like “a perfect example of the crap habitually shovelled into the summer schedules”, says Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. But this “robot-fuelled comedy thriller” from Apple TV is actually excellent. The series follows a grief-stricken woman in near-future Japan (Rashida Jones) who joins forces with a robot called Sunny to unravel the mysterious disappearance of her son and husband in a plane crash. It’s a “gently unpredictable and genre-spanning show – enough to keep you on your toes, never enough to make you roll your eyes”. 10 episodes (two available so far), 35 minutes each.

Kevin Bacon has often dreamed of “walking through life as a regular, non-famous person”, says Julie Miller in Vanity Fair. So he decided to give it a go. Knowing a simple hat-and-glasses disguise wouldn’t cut it, the 66-year-old actor commissioned a special-effects makeup artist to create a prosthetic disguise. After being kitted out with fake teeth, a slightly different nose, and – yes – glasses, he went for a stroll in a tourist-filled shopping mall in Los Angeles. Nobody recognised him, and initially he was thrilled. But then he discovered the unfamiliar feeling of being invisible. “People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice,” he says. “Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.’”