[London, April 14. Image via WENN]

The Brits are dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Now only the French remain, and we all know how hopeless they are. [The Times]

View Sienna Miller's breasts here, if you remotely care. NSFW, duh. [The Sun]

Naomi Campbell plagued by an imposter. Throws phone at her. [Daily Mirror]

A blogging mum has scored a book deal. We're setting up the remainder bins as we type. [The Times]

Boorish, crass, Nazi-impersonating Prince Harry is off to Iraq. Temporarily, alas. [The Guardian]

Let's say you finally got that no good pulse-with-a-penis you've been living with the last ten years to agree to marry you. How would you feel if he then decided to ask your father's permission? Would you feel all warmy and gooey because you're a girly girl and you have ten stuffed animals on your bed at the age of 35? Or would you be disgusted at the patriarchial assumptions and implied ownership of an outdated ritual? Personally, we'd be so delighted not to grow old and die alone and have our corpse feasted upon by our 30 cats, that we wouldn't give a toss if he asked the milkman's permission.

Still, over at The Guardian this morning, there's an interesting and quite amusing article on the issue. We like the quote from the writer's dad the best:

"I would refuse permission to any bloke who is wimpish enough to feel he has to ask me," he says. "And if he took any notice of me I'd think even worse of him."

archaic ritual or fluffy and pink? [The Guardian]

We can't decide if 'super papa' Jurgen Hass is a saint, a madman or a creep.

"Spanish is not Jürgen Hass's strong point. But he has his ice-breaker almost down to a T. "Estoy loco, soy alckolico y impotente," ("I'm crazy, an alcoholic and impotent") he scribbles on a piece of paper in dodgy Spanish. In the shantytowns of Paraguay, he says, it is the first line he uses when trying to convince women to let him father their children.

It works. Hass, 56, does not have sex with the women he meets, but he is now legally father to 350 boys and girls from three continents, and aiming to make it 1,000. Because he is German, the children he recognises automatically gain rights to child benefits and citizenship in his homeland. It is a form of social work, he says, a crusade to rescue youngsters from the developing world from poverty. The Paraguayan media have dubbed him "Superpapá".

Forget Paraguay, we should book him on the Maury show. He could claim fatherhood for all those 13-year-old girls who turn up six episodes in a row, burning through 30 different candidates for their babydaddy. As the last paternally exonerated statutory rapist is led cheering from the stage, we wheel out Jurgen, make the baby a German and everyone's happy.

Yoga has always been something I've filed along with menstrual cups and wheatgerm, under the heading Just Not Interested, Thanks.

I'm sure it's all very nice and restful and would ameliorate the effects of all that pizza I've shoved down my gullet in America which is probably still lodging in my colon, explaining why my arse has tripled in size over the years, but then, so would colonic irrigation and lipo, and I'm not going there either. And anyway, people who do yoga wear sandals and have beards. That's my opinion and I will not be moved.

And today, my anti-yoga stance is gloriously vindicated. Yoga makes you fart, according to the British Yoga Teachers Association.

"When you are working on the manipura chakra, which is aligned with the navel, where the intestinal area is.....people do tend to break wind, and burp too. Holding certain postures and working slowly massages the organs and has a releasing effect. It is about changing the flow of energy - prana - and detoxifying the body. Part of that is expelling unwanted gases."

As I am sadly afflicted by the "slient but deadly" more often than the "loud odorless raspberry" I can even feel a sense of self-sacrifice in my continuing yoga boycott.

I did it for you, people.