It’s a good week for ... students

Pay attention everyone: the best way to keep students interested in lectures is to use humour. According to Stirling University academic Cate Wilson, lecturers should learn the skills of stand-up on the basis that students are more likely to remember details from lectures that contain humour. We wish the lecturers of Advanced Statistical Learning Theory and its Applications good luck with that one.

It’s also been a good week for Shakespeare fans. Is this a First Folio I see before me? In a library on Bute? It would seem so and after being discovered sitting on a bookshelf in Mount Stuart House on the island, the plan now is that it will go on public display later in the year. As we prepare to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, it is about as close as you can get to the great man himself.

It’s been a bad week for ... bees

As if they don’t have enough to worry about, what with the catastrophic decline in their population, bees now have to keep looking over their shoulders (if bees have shoulders) for celebrities keen to use them in the latest beauty fads.

And by “celebrities”, we mean Gwyneth Paltrow. The actress has revealed to the New York Times that she has been stung by bees in the name of beauty. “People use it to get rid of inflammation and scarring,” she said. “It’s actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it’s painful.” Not painful enough, we think.

It’s also been a bad week for red trousers. Red trousers do make it so much easier to spot people you want to avoid, but it seems their sales are in decline. According to the tailors Volpe, red trousers are struggling to sell because they have become associated with a certain type of person.

And by “certain type of person”, we mean Michael Portillo, although it hasn’t helped that a shade of trouser so closely associated with toffs has also been adopted by bearded men with man buns. No-one wants to look like a toff, but at least it’s not as bad as looking like a hipster.