Your weekly news review a round_up of seven days of despair, tabloid chaos, and existential drizzle .

It has been, by any reasonable standard, an absolutely vintage week for the great British pastime of staring at the news and muttering, “Oh for f*’s sake.” If you were hoping for calm, clarity, or even a single day where a public figure didn’t embarrass themselves in a way that makes you want to live in a shed, then I regret to inform you that the last seven days have been a write‑off.

Let’s begin, inevitably, with the Epstein Files, which have exploded across the news cycle like a cursed piñata stuffed with lawyers, regret, and grainy photographs. Every few hours another headline emerges, each one somehow more deranged than the last. We’ve had legal letters claiming  Andrew Mountbaten and Epstein had a threesome with a stripper , new footage from Epstein’s prison cell because apparently that’s a thing we all needed to see now , and a steady drip of revelations that feel like the world’s worst advent calendar. Even Richard Branson has been dragged into the mess, discussing Epstein bringing his “harem” to meetings, which is exactly the sort of sentence that makes you want to lie face‑down on the carpet until the century ends .

Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell has popped up again like a cursed jack‑in‑the‑box, this time admitting that the infamous photo of Prince Andrew with his arm around Virginia Giuffre is real a revelation greeted by the public with the same shock as discovering that water is, in fact, wet . Andrew himself has reportedly been spotted moving house, with removal trucks leaving Royal Lodge for Sandringham, presumably because even the furniture has had enough and demanded a transfer .

And then there’s Keir Starmer, who has spent the week looking like a man who ordered a perfectly sensible sandwich only to discover it contains a live scorpion. He now “regrets” appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US after discovering that Mandelson had been, shall we say, economical with the truth about his Epstein‑related communications . MPs have forced Starmer to publish files about Mandelson’s appointment, because nothing says “functioning democracy” like a Prime Minister being repeatedly blindsided by his own personnel choices .

Elsewhere in the UK, the news has been a delightful carousel of chaos. A Russian ship captain has been found guilty of killing a crew member after crashing into a tanker, because apparently maritime homicide is now part of the weekly rota . GAME  the last refuge of people who still buy physical discs  is closing all standalone stores after entering administration, marking the end of an era in which teenagers loitered indoors rather than outside Greggs . And in a story that feels like it was generated by a bored AI, a man turned up at hospital with a WWI bomb stuck up his backside, proving once again that humanity is not ready for the responsibilities of opposable thumbs .

But the international news has been no less deranged. In the US, the disappearance of News anchor (That's Newsreader to we British) Savannah Guthrie’s mother has dominated headlines, with police suspecting a possible abduction and former FBI agents analysing the case like it’s the season finale of a prestige drama . It’s the sort of story that makes you realise British scandals, for all their sleaze and idiocy, at least tend to involve fewer kidnappings and more people saying, “I have no recollection of that event.”

And just to round things off, House Republicans are once again trying to end a partial government shutdown, because American politics is essentially a long‑running performance art piece about the dangers of letting people have meetings unsupervised .

So what have we learned from this week? That the powerful remain bafflingly incapable of behaving like adults. That the news cycle is now a form of psychological endurance training. That every time you think, “Surely it can’t get any worse,” the universe responds, “Hold my pint.” And that somewhere, deep in a bunker beneath the BBC, a weary journalist is typing the words “new Epstein revelations” for the 400th time and wondering if it’s too late to retrain as a gardener.

In conclusion: the last seven days have been a rich tapestry of scandal, incompetence, and stories that make you question whether civilisation is overrated. Tune in next week, when the headlines will almost certainly involve another royal, another scandal, and another reason to consider moving to a remote Scottish island and befriending a goat.