AMANDA PLATELL: England football hero Paul Gascoigne was cleared by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman on a train after 'innocently' kissing her to make her feel better.

AMANDA PLATELL: Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge was told when she graduated from Rada to capitalise on her winsome aristocratic looks.

AMANDA PLATELL Those brave souls who risked their lives running towards the assassin were good, selfless people interested in only saving the lives of others.

AMANDA PLATELL: Standing defiant and alone on a rocky outcrop on the cover of Time Magazine, she looks out over a world in peril that she is seeking to save.

AMANDA PLATELL Was J.K. Rowling channelling her fearless hero Harry Potter when she took on the trans rights lobby?

AMANDA PLATELL: Of all the pictures published in this tumultuous week for the Royal Family, one stood out for me.

AMANDA PLATELL: Jennifer Aniston appears on a magazine cover wearing tiny Yves Saint Laurent leather hotpants a supermodel might struggle to get away with - and we gape in awe.

AMANDA PLATELL: I was struck by one thought after Carrie's Instagram announcement: I cannot imagine how Marina, his loyal wife of 27 years, must have been feeling, nor their four adult children.

PLATELL'S PEOPLE: Students had cancelled the event because of Ms Rudd's links to the Windrush scandal, in which Britons of Caribbean heritage were wrongly deported.

AMANDA PLATELL: One week ago, Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, 13, was at home with his mum, six brothers and sisters, doing what we're all doing, watching TV, isolating at home.

AMANDA PLATELL: Can it be only a few months ago that the Monarchy was facing down Megxit, in what appeared to be one of its worst existential crises since the abdication?

AMANDA PLATELL: We have always been a nation of curtain twitchers. But, who'd have thought nearly 200,000 people would report their neighbours for breaking lockdown rules?

ANDREW PIERCE: If Chuka Umunna lost in Streatham, which he represented since 2010, he would have been paid £33,500 redundancy with the first £30k tax-free.

ANDREW PIERCE: The Labour Party suspended Lord Lea of Crondall last week after the House of Lords' standards watchdog found he sexually harassed two women working in Parliament.

ANDREW PIERCE: How long before Dilyn the dog is standing in for Boris Johnson at Prime Minister's Questions? I ask because the Jack Russell-cross is back in the spotlight.

ANDREW PIERCE: As he plods painfully through his six questions, there is an embarrassed silence on the Labour benches. Some Labour MPs say there is a way out.

ANDREW PIERCE: John Bercow is reeling from allegations of foot-stamping bullying by David Leakey. His chances of a peerage 'are now zero', a senior Commons official has revealed.

Despite being repeatedly tipped as a 'prime minister-in-waiting' since entering the House of Commons less than five years ago, Rishi Sunak has always been better known in India than Britain.

ANDREW PIERCE: Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott yesterday ruled out serving in the Shadow Cabinet of the next Labour leader.

ANDREW PIERCE: In an interview with student newspaper Varsity in 2002, when he was chairman of the Labour group at Cambridge University, he backed the UK joining the euro.

ANDREW PIERCE: Sunak's bold measures to tackle the economic devastation threatened by the coronavirus has found him allies in unexpected places.

ANDREW PIERCE: Social media posts can be ever so revealing. Who is the unlikeliest fan of ­Labour's new leader Sir Keir Starmer?

ANDREW PIERCE - Trust rust is key when talking about ambitious ministers who might one day fancy a permanent shot at the top job. He may be wooden, but Dominic Raab has Boris Johnson's backing.

ANDREW PIERCE: As countries across Europe start to ease themselves out of lockdown, there is a growing recognition in Boris Johnson's Cabinet that it, too, will have to make some hard decisions

ANDREW PIERCE: Sir Keir Starmer managed to find a place in his Shadow Cabinet for onetime 'Continuity Corbyn' candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey.

Chris Froome has insisted he is 'on the road to recovery' following his horror crash which saw him lose four pints of blood and required six-hours of surgery, and has admitted he feels lucky to be alive.

DANIEL BENSON - EDITOR-IN-CHIEF FOR CYCLINGNEWS.COM: Last Wednesday Chris Froome and the Team Ineos squad arrived in the outskirts of the French commune of Roanne.

The Welshman came off his bike around 30 kilometres from the end of stage four and received medical attention at the side of the road. He provided a positive update on Wednesday morning.

Froome had been treated at the University Hospital of St Etienne, where he underwent a six-hour operation to repair a fractured right femur, broken hip, fractured elbow and fractured ribs.

Some 24 hours before Team INEOS announced that Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal would start the Tour de France as joint leaders, the cycling team offered their defending champion to the media.

In the same month that Milos Raonic and Felix Auger-Aliassime aim to elevate Canadian tennis to new heights, Michael Woods will ride across France in the hope of making history of his own

The 2019 Tour de France will roll away from the Place Royale in Brussels with the fallout over Mark Cavendish's non-selection by his Dimension Data team continuing to make headlines.

Chris Froome admitted he is 'relieved' to be back home and will be following the Tour de France from his bed following the horror crash that left him seriously injured.

CHRIS MURPHY IN BRUSSELS: Geraint Thomas and his Ineos team-mates were beaten in a tense finish to Saturday's second stage of the Tour de France, a 27.6-kilometre time trial.

Geraint Thomas survived the first day of racing through the climbs of the 2019 Tour de France but then suggested that team-mate Egan Bernal is favourite for the first summit finish on stage six.

Geraint Thomas took back control of the Tour de France on Thursday, with a surge of power taking him clear of his main rivals on the backbreaking finish to stage six in the Vosges mountains.

South African Daryl Impey added an individual stage win to his Tour de France happy memories when he prevailed at the end of a long breakaway from St Etienne on Sunday.

Geraint Thomas and Ineos team-mate Egan Bernal profited hugely as French rival Thibaut Pinot was caught in a group who lost 100 seconds on the 217.5km stage from Saint-Flour to Albi.

Valentin Anouilh, 21, spent six months training for the stunt which saw him soar over the heads of the elite riders as they sprinted through a valley near Saint Flour, Auvergne.

The Australian rider pulled out of the race with about 80 kilometers left on Thursday before the two big climbs in Stage 12 following reports of clashes with team officials.

MATT LAWTON IN BAGNERES-DE-BIGORRE: The race for the big prize might have failed to ignite here on the first day in the Pyrenees but there was no shortage of fireworks

Thibaut Pinot led a French one-two ahead of overall leader Julian Alaphilippe to win the 14th stage of the Tour de France, a 117.5-km mountain trek from Tarbes on Saturday.

MATT LAWTON ON THE COL DU TOURMALET: Owner of Ineos Jim Ratcliffe must have sat in the team car on Saturday afternoon and wondered if he had just bought a cycling team in decline.

Thomas has blamed a 'minor fuelling issue' on his seventh-placed finish during the Pyrenean stages over the weekend, which saw him twice left behind by his rivals.

MATT LAWTON IN NIMES: The tone was one of defiance; the message that Team Ineos are not dead yet. As Sir Dave Brailsford was quick to point out, they sit second and fifth.

MATT LAWTON IN NIMES: There is a reluctance in France to imagine how the scenes on the Champs-Elysees might compare to the night of the 1998 World Cup final.

MATT LAWTON IN VALLOIRE: To some extent it felt like normal service had been resumed here in the Alps, the sight of five Team Ineos riders leading the yellow jersey group up the final climb.

Thibaut Pinot's dream of becoming the first French winner of the Tour de France for 34 years is over after the Groupama-FDJ rider was forced to abandon early on stage 19 to Tignes.

MATT LAWTON IN VALLOIRE: Thibaut Pinot abandoned the race in tears and Julian Alaphilippe lost the yellow jersey on the brutal ascent of the highest paved pass in Europe.

MATT LAWTON IN VAL THORENS: The 22-year-old Colombian held on to the yellow jersey in stage 20, and is set to be crowned the youngest Tour winner in 110 years.