The horrors of eating in bed eclipse even the trials of a ghastly house guest

Anyone who has ever shared a living space with a teenaged boy (or a millennial man) will understand the relief of the Ecuadorian embassy staff at Julian Assange’s recent departure. But the feral domestic habits of the grizzled man-boy may not have been the only reason why his hosts wanted him to go. The president of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno, has accused Assange of leaking private correspondence and photographs, including one of the president in bed in a hotel room, with a platter of lobster on his bedside table.

Being photographed in bed, cosying up to a whopping crustacean, is not a good look for a politician who has recently imposed a range of austerity measures. But there are reasons other than the

political why the image is a shocker. There is a common belief that eating in bed is “indulgent”. Breakfast in bed, especially, is a “treat” traditionally inflicted on mothers by families keen to express their affection in edible form. The bed is a fine and private place, scene of those delicious and necessary human occupations – sex, sleep and reading. But eating there is another matter.

The mechanics are so uncomfortable, for a start: legs stuck out in front, or cocked into a wobbly perch for a tray? The semi-recumbent position adopted by the president looks impractical for plying the fancy cutlery with which his table is laid. And then the squalid aftermath: the smear of butter on the pillowcase, the lurking shards of lobster shell. The hotel chambermaids will have ensured that Moreno was untroubled by these; but, for the rest of us, the price of eating in bed is endless laundry.

Bobby Ewing, Dirty Den

– over the years, a surprisingly large number of soap stars have recovered from the generally terminal malaise of death. And now Nigel Pargetter, late of Ambridge, is to join the roster of the resurrected. Technically, it’s not Nigel who is back, but Graham Seed, the actor who played him for three decades, until his untimely plummet from the roof of the ancestral home. Graham is to host an Archers-themed podcast, designed to lure the older Archers listeners (that is, most of them) away from the BBC iplayer to the new (and generally unfancied) Sounds app.

Ingenious, I’m sure. But why stop there? Nigel’s widow, Elizabeth, has surely suffered enough since his demise, what with her drug-dealing son’s incarceration and her wince-making fling with Roy Tucker, Ambridge’s most inexplicable Lothario. Time for Nigel’s long-lost twin, Bruce Pargetter, to return from his lengthy sheep-farming sojourn in Australia and bring a little joy into the bleak existence of the chatelaine of Lower Loxley.

Invertebrates are not, perhaps, the best-loved of our native fauna. But a project named Mission Invertebrate plans to change that, celebrating the 4,720-odd species of creepy-crawlies that inhabit our urban spaces. They include the London Underground mosquito, the Bushy gnat and the Tower Hamlets spider which, with beady little eyes and a coat of beige fur, is as endearing as any creature with so many legs could possibly be.

And then the squalid aftermath: the smear of butter on the pillow, the lurking shards of shell