SARAH VINE: This is why I am defending the Coldplay cuddle couple. The world has gone mad... this hysterical outcry is out of order
I can't be the only one who thinks that the hysterical global response to the Coldplay 'kiss cam' couple has been completely disproportionate.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps breaks Marvel's box office slump with a $218 million global debut
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4 hours ago
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Vagina eggs, naked cooking, KissCam gags: what's next for Gwyneth Paltrow?
So Gwyneth Paltrow has filmed a tongue-in-cheek advert for … guess who? Astronomer, the company you had never heard of before two of the tech company's senior employees were caught cheating, on kiss cam, at a Coldplay concert 12 days ago. Media coverage of this event has put it up there with the moon landings on the unforgettable 'Did you see?' chart. It's a cultural happening so we should have predicted that sooner or later Paltrow — the ultimate cultural influencer, not to mention the ex-wife of Coldplay's frontman, Chris Martin — would pop up to put her spin on things. In the spoof ad Paltrow appears alongside the caption 'Temporary Spokesperson' supposedly to answer some of the 'many questions Astronomer has been getting in recent days' (starting with 'What the actual f ***?'). It's not really funny (don't bother googling), but it demonstrates the power of Gwyneth's reach. Like it or not, we live in a world where roughly once a month Paltrow makes some intervention, posts a picture or gives an interview that confirms her position as Woman With Her Finger on the Zeitgeist. In April she was on the cover of Vanity Fair talking about her wellness brand Goop and supposed rivalry with the new lifestyle peddler Meghan Markle, taking care to wish her well in the spirit of David Attenborough endorsing the efforts of a fourth form biology class. In June she posted on Instagram a video of herself standing in front of a cooker naked but for a pair of boxer shorts, rustling up her trademark 'boyfriend breakfast' (and we've only just stopped talking about whether shorts PJs work on fiftysomethings). This week brings an unusually big Paltrow dump as Amy Odell's (unauthorised) biography hits the shelves on Tuesday and while we've definitely heard a lot of it before, everyone's craning for titbits. I don't like it, as it happens, and I try not to look. I am very much in the category of low maintenance women who think: Gwyneth Paltrow, who cares? Quite good in Emma, lost it around the time of the vagina egg, got the unshakeable American confidence that they love on chat shows (does anyone remember the time she called her grandmother 'a real c***' in a Chelsea Handler interview?) but that makes our toes curl. She's hard to love, let's face it, but she's got the can't look away factor. We want to know more and added to that we're keen to pick up some conclusive dirt to justify our suspicions that behind the wholesome image Gwynnie might be a mean girl. • How Gwyneth Paltrow rescued Astronomer over Coldplay scandal Ideally, I'd like to hear that she had a hair-pulling fight with Jennifer Aniston; wears gloves and a surgical balaclava in bed; fired four nannies in the space of four months — that sort of thing. This is a fat biography, which has been serialised in the Mail, so surely the bumper muck rake we've been hoping for. Top of the shock revelations is that Paltrow's nickname for her ex-friend Winona Ryder was 'Vagina Ryder'. She smoked! Until Madonna told her not to. When she was going out with Brad Pitt in the mid-Nineties she was irked by his lack of sophistication and complained that when ordering caviar she had to explain 'This is beluga, this is oscietra' (hate that). She told Aerin Lauder years after their break up that 'he's dumber than a sack of s***' and there was a rumour that people thought she may have cheated on him with John Hannah while making Sliding Doors. Hmm. Bit harsh, but so far not a lot to go on if you're trying to work up some good old-fashioned celebrity loathing. She was just 22 when she was dating Pitt, and I've interviewed him and can confirm that while he's very charming and easy on the eye you wouldn't want him doing the map reading. There is some evidence of a lack of empathy and GSOH, however. Her father once told her she was turning into a bit of an arsehole, and there was that stuff about how she would rather die than let her kids eat cup-a-soup (what next? Angel Delight? Dairylea?). • What the Coldplay kiss cam couple tells us about the rich Likewise, you cannot warm to a boss who finds pee on the loo seat in the ladies at work and feels moved to write 'someone tinkled' in the company Slack channel, as Gwynnie did. Goop's chief content officer, now retired, has talked about developing a 'critical and punishing attitude' to her body while working for Paltrow's company and you don't have to be a vaginal egg refusenik to know that's legally checked speak for Paltrow can be a difficult perfectionist. What else would you expect from the 52-year-old pioneer of Big Wellness? But she can be funny. We're reminded in the book of the Utah ski accident trial in 2023 — which Paltrow attended wearing a stealth-wealth wardrobe that sold out every day, looking bored and haughty — that she managed to charm the jury. No one at home didn't smile when she explained, deadpan, that she had suffered because, 'Well, I lost half a day of skiing.' Odder still, by the end of the trial the details of her family holiday (the resort bill came to $9,000) seemed normal for not normals and everyone was willing her to win so she could get back to being unashamedly rich, successful, hoity toity and in control. The jury's still out as to whether we like or don't like her. We've sort of agreed to admire her.
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
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Astronomer HR exec Kristin Cabot's 'party girl' past revealed: Friends in shock over her glow-up… but hidden clue proves Coldplay kiss cam saga isn't over
Former Astronomer exec Kristin Cabot may have ditched her wedding ring, but she's still wearing her heart around her neck amid the Coldplay kiss cam fallout, the Daily Mail can reveal. The erstwhile ex head of people was spotted for the first time since the scandal in the same layered necklaces that she wore during her infamous concert appearance with married boss Andy Byron.
