WARM, WITTY AND WISE

I HAVE no idea whether Ed Sheeran ripped off Marvin Gaye’s classic 1970s soul hit Let’s Get It On in the composition ofthinking Out Loud in 2014. Now that the copyright claim has ended up in the Manhattan Federal Court I don’t suppose the jury will have a clue either, unless they’re experts in music theory (harmony, melody, rhythm and so on). Sheeran’s lawyers protest that “the two songs share versions of a similar and unprotectable chord progression freely available to all songwriters”.

While trial by jury is a magnificent thing, there are some occasions – such as very complex fraud cases and this kind of copyright dispute – when it’s really hard for a jury to understand the details, especially after lunch when the eyes may droop a little. So while I’d be more than happy to sit in court listening to some funky Motown hits I’d never feel confident to make a judgment about anything... except to say that I rate Marvin Gaye an awful lot more than Ed Sheeran. Sorry fans.

THERE’S something rather disturbing about the chocolate King Charles, made out of 2,875 miniature bars of Snickers, Mars, Twix, Milky Way, Galaxy and Bounty. Is anybody actually going to eat it?will Camilla nibble an ear lobe?

One doesn’t like to think about chocolate Charles’s fate if the weather turns warm, his epaulettes melting down his front and his face drooping (though come to think of it, that happens to all of us through wear and tear).

Anyway, a very happy Coronation Day to you Sir, and indeed to all of us.

WHERE do you stand on weeds? If your answer is “right on top of them in big hobnail boots squirting a can of planet-poisoning glyphosate” then go to the back of the class.the Royal Horticultural Society now says we must be nice to weeds, welcome the little blighters to our back gardens as “heroes” with open arms, along with the slugs and snails. It’s part and parcel of the same advice that tells you not to mow your lawn because nature knows best.

This is all very well if you have rolling acres and a patch that you can consign to rewilding and show off about.

But most of us have modest gardens which would rapidly turn into impenetrable jungle if we did not maintain a regime of constant tidying, lopping, plucking, pruning and, yes, weeding. It’s what gardeners like doing – creating order out of chaos.

Making a garden is about artifice and cultivation. If a beautiful woman is said to have a “natural look” we all know, ladies, how much hard work goes into that.

It’s the same with horticulture.