Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are the latest A-listers to announce their relationship status online. But there are many ways to do it - from fancy dress to panicked deletions

As a mark of pure intent, going Instagram official has become a firmly entrenched dating marker. To post a picture of you and your new partner on Instagram – on the grid, mind you, not hiding behind the cowardice of a story – is to not only declare that you are in love, but also that you are confident enough in your future to share it with the world.

As such, Katy Perry’s decision to go Instagram official with Justin Trudeau is a classic of the genre. Long dogged by rumours that they might be together, Perry this week debuted a sanctioned image of them both. They are cheek to cheek. They are smiling, albeit in that slightly strained hurry-up-and-take-it way you do when someone decides to shoot a whole reel of photos. Katy Perry is pulling the exact same face she did when she stared into the camera that time she sort of went into space, which is how you know that it is really serious. Good luck to the pair of them.

The unlikely story of an English girl catapulted to French fame – and a relationship with Serge Gainsbourg that resembled a piece of deranged performance art

Boarding a flight in 1983, Jane Birkin found herself wrestling with the open straw basket into which she habitually crammed everything from playscripts to nappies. As she reached for the overhead locker the basket overturned, spilling the contents on her neighbour. He turned out to be the chief executive of Hermès, the French luxury goods company, and immediately offered to make her a bag with internal pockets and a secure closure. Birkin sketched what she wanted on a sick bag and “The Birkin” was born: a slouchy trapezoid in finest leather complete with its own little padlock. These days a Birkin bag starts at around £10,000 while the original, made for Birkin herself, was auctioned this summer for £7.4m.

It is a tale that gets endlessly repeated thanks to its neat compression of the main beats of the Jane Birkin story. First, there’s the insouciance, the fact that the Anglo-French singer and actor never seemed to go after anything; rather, it came to her. Then there’s her lack of mortification at having her whole life upended on a strange man’s lap, nappies and all. Finally, there’s her refusal to feel overawed by her bounty. Birkin famously did not treat her Hermès bag with especial reverence, enthusiastically festooning it with charms, beads, stickers and ribbons. The trend for personalising your handbag with bits of tat was ubiquitous this summer, part of a wider revival of the Birkin aesthetic, comprising flared mid-wash jeans, peasanty cheesecloth blouses and ballet flats. You couldn’t avoid it if you tried.

The 29-year-old star is getting his best reviews ever for the upcoming film Marty Supreme – but he’s also making waves with his idiosyncratic approach to celebrity and maintaining his status as the internet’s boyfriend

Everybody’s talking about Timothée! The gen-Z French-American heart-throb and original “internet boyfriend” is receiving the best reviews of his career for Josh Safdie’s frenetic ping-pong flick Marty Supreme, while also making waves for his idiosyncratic approach to celebrity in an age somewhat lacking in star power. He has even got Gwyneth Paltrow’s seal of approval. Here are seven reasons why “Chalamania” is back.

1. He seems a cert for an Oscar

She’s far from the only celebrity to have declared her intention to live outside the US. As with many others though, it looks like a reverse ferret could be in the works

I’m not some sort of secret Reform voter, OK? As a Brit (albeit a Brit abroad), I’ve got no problem with rich immigrants coming to the UK and taking all our mansions. I just think they really ought to integrate and not bring their funny foreign ideas with them.

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, I’m talking to you. The California couple arrived in the UK last year, just before Donald Trump won the election. As soon as the votes were in, they declared they weren’t going back, and would stay on the saner side of the Atlantic. I’m not sure how the immigration logistics worked, but it seems “one in, one out” schemes don’t apply to people coming in on big jets, only small boats. The pair bought a fancy pad in the Cotswolds and DeGeneres buttered up the locals during a public appearance in July by declaring “Everything here is just better.”

She made a short, and much-ridiculed, trip to space. She tried to buy a house and fell foul of public opinion. And she’s found love, apparently, with Justin Trudeau. Time to get up to speed before this singer next hits the headlines

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? No? Just Katy Perry then. Seven months since her sense-defying jaunt into space, life on planet Earth hasn’t let up for the embattled hitmaker. She’s back in the headlines this week, implied to be raiding the pockets of a “disabled veteran” while facing scrutiny for her somewhat inexplicable new romance with Justin Trudeau. Yes, that Justin Trudeau. Shall we?

1. Perry wins in court, but loses online
By one metric, such as “relative to the rest of 2025”, this might have been a good week for Katy Perry. Since 2020, she has been embroiled in a legal battle against Carl Westcott, who sold her an eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom mansion in Montecito for $15m. Westcott then attempted to renege on the deal, claiming to have been incapacitated by painkillers (prescribed after a back operation) when signing the paperwork. A judge ruled in Perry’s favour in May last year, finding that Westcott was sound of mind when the sale went through. This week, another judge ruled that Perry was owed $1.8m in damages. This sounds like a win, you might think – except Perry had pushed for Westcott to pay $4.7m, and it’s been widely written up as Perry money-grubbing from an “85-year-old disabled veteran”. To give military.com’s headline, from earlier in the dispute in 2023: “Katy Perry Is Fighting a Dying, Elderly Veteran to Force Him to Sell His Home.” It is true that Westcott served in the 101st Airborne Division, is 85 years old and seriously ill with incurable Huntington’s disease. But the insistent framing may say more about Perry’s unenviable position as pop culture’s preferred punching bag.

Agents claim it can increase their clients’ profile and show off their human side. Is that your final answer?

For Monty Panesar, it was answering that Germany played their home football matches in Athens. For David Lammy, it was saying Henry VIII’s heir was Henry VII. And for actor Amanda Henderson it was responding with the name Sharon to a question about Greta Thunberg.

Panesar’s disastrous appearance on Celebrity Mastermind six years ago was used to taunt him this week by Australia’s cricket captain Steve Smith.

As Wicked: For Good premieres in the UK, find out just how close its costars are, why so many of the cast are vegan and the truth about Grande’s move away from pop

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen the musical, have no interest in the film or are left cold by red carpets: Wicked season is here again, and you will be made to pay attention. After last year’s chaotic press tour for the first instalment, giving rise to some of 2025’s biggest and most bizarre pop culture moments, all eyes are now on the rollout of the sequel Wicked: For Good and the theatre-kid capers of its stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Here’s what you need to know.

1. They are still ‘holding space’ for one another …
Last year’s Wicked press tour was an infamous love-in for Grande and Erivo. Such was the intensity of their connection and mutual affection, both were frequently moved to tears in interviews. The enduring image was of Erivo stroking Grande’s index finger in response to a journalist’s unintelligible remark about people “holding space” with the song Defying Gravity. Grande poked fun at her and Erivo’s histrionics, declaring them “insufferable” and “the most annoying” – but their bond still appears unbreakable. At the New York premiere of Wicked: For Good on Monday, Erivo declined to give interviews to preserve her voice. Grande was reported to also be skipping press “in solidarity”, but couldn’t help plugging her costar’s forthcoming projects “as Erivo looked on smiling”, as CNN described the scene. Asked what they were feeling, ahead of the film’s final instalment, Grande spoke for them both: “overwhelming gratitude”. Late on Thursday, she tested positive for Covid.

A jeans ad made her notorious. Then she got cosy with Taylor Swift’s arch-nemesis. Time to get up to speed before the actor/model next hits the headlines …

Spare a thought for Sydney Sweeney! Yes, she is young, beautiful, rich and talented, but she has also been getting it from all sides this week. Her passion project has bombed at the box office; she is still paying for a jeans advertisement she did four months ago, and being called on to address charges of having joked about eugenics; and fellow members of the Hollywood elite are breaking ranks to express their disdain (in one case, with a vomiting emoji). And, as she found out this week, she can’t even enjoy a kiss with her controversial new boyfriend without being snapped by the callous paparazzi!

Here’s what you need to know when Sweeney’s name next crops up – which, if current trends continue, will be soon.

The Celebrity Traitors drew to a magnificent close this week – and proved that these lying double-crossers are of a far finer calibre than our MPs

• This article contains spoilers about the final episode of The Celebrity Traitors

The Celebrity Traitors final was so good that the TV moment of the year (Nick revealing he’d written Joe’s name on his slate) only held its crown for six minutes before the actual TV moment of the year (Alan revealing he’d been a traitor all along) completely stole it. Epic congratulations to Alan, a full-spectrum entertainment booking, who from the first minutes of this season catapulted himself to the status of high-value national treasure, while Joe Marler also leapfrogged 27 stardom categories in the public imagination and should now be made Duke of York. And look, it wasn’t all bad for historian and Guardian Scott Trust board member David Olusoga. Thanks to the deputy PM and justice secretary, he was only the second most spectacularly wrong David of the week.

But why am I bringing politics into it? After all, one of the most remarkable shifts I haven’t been able to help noticing during this epic first run of The Celebrity Traitors is that no senior politician has attempted to refer to the show as a way of currying public favour. They’d certainly get short shrift if they tried. But this represents a radical break with the past 20 years, where politicians and prime ministers became transfixed by the popularity of reality TV. In the first twisted heyday of the genre, politicians really thought it was the answer and they could steal its best bits to succeed in their own trade. Now I think that even they realise a show like The Celebrity Traitors is the thing people escape to in an age when none of our leaders have any answers.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar
On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at another extraordinary year, with special guests, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live