Hikers may be inadvertently damaging the environment and risking their own health by wearing clothes made waterproof with “forever chemicals”, according to research by Ethical Consumer.

The campaigning magazine examined 27 companies that make outdoor clothing such as fleeces, waterproof jackets, walking boots and rucksacks, and found 82% were still using per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

Some chemicals classed as PFAS have been linked to health problems including high cholesterol, fertility, immune system disorders and some cancers. They have been used in consumer products since the 1950s and can take hundreds of years to degrade, contaminating the soil and water supply.

The government said in February that it was considering restricting the use of PFAS in consumer products under the UK’s REACH chemical regulations on the basis that they may be hazardous. Yet there are alternatives. Páramo and Finisterre use no PFAS in their products, while Fjällräven, Alpkit, Lowe Alpine and Patagonia are mostly PFAS free. They and more than a dozen other firms say they will end their PFAS use next year.

But nearly half of the companies assessed by Ethical Consumer had no phase-out date for using PFAS.

Jane Turner, an Ethical Consumer writer and researcher, said: “The irreversible global contamination and extreme toxicity of ‘forever chemicals’ have been undisputed for years, but most outdoor clothing companies are still unnecessarily using them and adding to the PFAS pollution burden. That’s not acceptable, and companies must stop using them now. Consumers should only buy from the responsible companies that have stopped using PFAS.”

There are more than 10,000 PFAS chemicals, according to Fidra, an environmental charity aiming to reduce plastic waste and chemical pollution. Those used in outdoor gear help fabrics repel water, making the liquid slide off.

The process of weathering the material means that hikers wearing outdoor gear shed some of the chemicals into the environment, although most PFAS pollution occurs during the manufacture of the chemicals, when they are applied to fabric, and when a product is thrown away.

Hannah Evans, a project manager at Fidra, said: “PFAS have been found in rivers running through England, on the slopes of Mount Everest and in more than 600 wildlife species, from polar bears to bottlenose dolphins.

“In Europe alone there are at least 23,000 known contamination sites, 2,000 of which are considered PFAS ‘hotspots’ – areas where ­concentrations are deemed hazardous to health. PFAS are contributing to a global chemical pollution crisis.”

Páramo said it did not use PFAS in its products because its fabric, Nikwax, mimicked animal fur by pushing water outwards. But contamination from other companies using the chemicals can be a problem for firms trying to move away from PFAS.

“The biggest issue for us was not removing PFAS substances from our own processes but rather persuading the fabric mills we work with to do the same, guaranteeing PFAS-free fabrics,” a Páramo spokesperson said. “Since 2016, we have been able to guarantee that every single garment we make is PFAS-free.”

The attraction of using PFAS is that it can make fabrics stain resistant as well as water resistant. They are also used to make nonstick frying pans, fridges, jet engines and electrical devices. Choosing to remove a potential selling point can be a difficult decision for some companies to make. Keen, whose walking boots have been PFAS-free since 2018, said that it “just needed something that was effective at repelling water and dirt” rather than “stains, grease and motor oil”.

Fjällräven said that not making its jackets oil repellent was “a low price to pay. It’s easy to add functionality because it’s nice to have, but every function has a side-effect”.

The Royal Society of Chemistry has called on the next government to establish an agency to regulate the use of PFAS and other substances. After Brexit, the UK left the ECHA, the European chemicals agency, and chemical use is governed by the Health and Safety Executive with the support of the Environment Agency. The government under Theresa May promised in 2018 to create a chemicals strategy, yet nothing has been published.

The Princess of Wales watched the spectacle of the trooping the colour ceremony from the windows of the Major General’s office, along with her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, in her first public appearance since revealing her cancer diagnosis.

Catherine, who wore white with navy details, could be seen earlier smiling and talking to her children, who were dressed in navy and white, in their carriage before they arrived at Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall. The Princess of Wales, who is the regiment’s colonel, also wore an Irish guards regimental brooch. They were cheered by crowds in the Mall as they left Buckingham Palace.

King Charles and Queen Camilla were riding in a carriage in their royal procession ahead of the Princess of Wales.

The Princess of Wales was photographed prior to that arriving at Buckingham Palace by car before the parade.

Ahead of the event, Kate said in a statement: “I’m looking forward to attending the King’s birthday parade this weekend with my family and hope to join a few public engagements over the summer, but equally knowing I am not out of the woods yet.

“I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty. Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body and allowing myself to take this much needed time to heal.”

The Princess of Wales said she was making “good progress” but “there are good days and bad days”. “On those bad days you feel weak, tired and you have to give in to your body resting. But on the good days, when you feel stronger, you want to make the most of feeling well.” She added that her treatment will continue “for a few more months”.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “His Majesty is delighted that the princess is able to attend tomorrow’s events and is much looking forward to all elements of the day.”

The celebration has been held on the sovereign’s birthday for more than 260 years. At the event, Number 9 Company, Irish guards, a regiment Kate represents as colonel, will be trooping the king’s colour.

In a letter read to the regiment last week, the Princess of Wales, who is undergoing chemotherapy, wrote to the Irish guards to apologise for being unable to take the salute and wished them luck. Lt Gen Sir James Bucknall will take the salute on her behalf.

The king, who is also undergoing treatment for cancer, will not ride on horseback during the ceremony, but will instead review the parade from an Ascot landau carriage. He attended his first trooping at the age of three, riding in a carriage with his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

More than 1,250 soldiers and hundreds of Guardsmen assembled on the parade ground to be inspected by the King from his carriage with Queen Camilla, who is colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and accompanied by the mounted royal colonels.

The stands overlooking the parade ground were filled with about 8,000 family members and partners of the guardsmen and officers on parade.

Alaska’s capital city is to limit the numbers of cruise ship passengers arriving at the port amid concerns over tourism’s growing impact, but a leading critic of the industry has said further measures to protect Alaskans’ quality of life are needed.

Located on the Gastineau Channel in southern Alaska, Juneau has a population of 32,000 and last year received a record 1.65 million cruise ship passengers – a 23% increase from the previous high.

While many businesses encourage the bonanza of tourist dollars, other people are bothered by buzzing helicopters, crowded streets and hiking trails, and damage to the local environment.

Seeking to balance the economic benefits against the effects of high numbers of visitors, the city reached an agreement last week with the Cruise Lines International Association in Alaska that will limit daily cruise passenger arrivals to 16,000 from Sundays to Fridays and to 12,000 on Saturdays.

Juneau’s tourism manager, Alexandra Pierce, said: “The city’s position is that we do not have room for cruise growth with our current infrastructure and we have negotiated the daily passenger limits to bring down our busiest days.” The agreement aimed to hold cruise passenger numbers roughly steady while the city worked on improving infrastructure, she said.

“Cruise tourism is important for our local and regional economies and we need to be good neighbours while also finding the balance between concerned residents and the local livelihoods that depend on the visitor industry,” Pierce said.

A former gold-rush town set near an imposing glacier, amid lush rainforests, towering mountains and abutting a pristine waterway that is home to humpback whales, Juneau has become Alaska’s most popular port for cruise ships.

Karla Hart, a Juneau resident and longtime critic of the cruise industry, remains concerned that the daily visitors allowed under the new agreement could still see arrival records broken over the course of the 22-week cruise season.

“The city’s direction to the staff was to hold the number or somewhat reduce it, and yet we now have a negotiated agreement that, if you do the math, would let us have 2.5 million cruise-ship passengers,” she said.

Instead, Hart is backing a local referendum proposal for “ship-free Saturdays”, a policy that would prevent ships with more than 250 passengers stopping in Juneau one day a week.

“Our ballot initiative is really looking at providing some quality-of-life protection for the community that we can tangibly see and feel one day a week by not having the cruise ships in our port,” she said.

The cruise industry is booming after the pandemic, and the ships are getting bigger. Some vessels are now able to carry close to 6,000 passengers, with insiders saying the industry is still far from reaching the limits of how big they can get.

In January, the world’s largest cruise ship to date, Icon of the Seas, was launched. It towers 20 decks above sea level, carries more than 7,000 passengers and crew, and has the world’s largest waterpark on a ship.

Juneau is not the only city concerned about the growing social and environmental impacts of cruise ships. In 2021, Venice banned them from the city’s lagoon altogether, while Barcelona has restricted access and Amsterdam has introduced a day tax on passengers.

Hart said: “Air and water emissions from the cruise ships are a big concern, as well as ship strikes and climate change. The list goes on.”

Rebecca on Lars

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has been reelected by lawmakers for a second term, hours after his African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance (DA) agreed to form a coalition, setting aside their rivalry in a historic governance pact.

Ramaphosa won the late Friday vote against Julius Malema, leader of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, winning 283 votes to Malema’s 44.

Earlier in the day the pro-business DA said it would vote for Ramaphosa as part of an agreement with the former liberation movement to form a unity government.

Ramaphosa’s centrist preferences ultimately won out over more leftwing factions of the ANC which wanted to strike a deal with breakaway parties that back nationalisation and seizing land from white farmers. The deal was struck amid criticisms that the DA favours the interests of South Africa’s white minority, something it denies.

The ANC lost its parliamentary majority in the 29 May elections for the first time since it swept to power in 1994 at the end of apartheid. Its vote share collapsed from 57.5% in 2019 to 40.2%, as supporters defected to breakaway parties amid chronic unemployment and worsening public services.

The DA, which received almost 22% of the vote, will back Ramaphosa’s election by lawmakers for a second term, while its MPs will also vote for an ANC speaker of parliament in return for the position of deputy speaker, its leader, John Steenhuisen, told a press briefing.

“Today, the DA becomes a party of national government,” Steenhuisen said, after the legislators were sworn in at a convention centre in Cape Town, while the parliament buildings are still being renovated after a fire in 2022.

“Through their votes, the people have made it clear that they do not want any one party to dominate our society. The people have also told us that the time for finger-pointing is over and that the time for a new politics of collaboration and problem-solving has arrived.”

An ANC-DA coalition was favoured by large businesses and international investors, with Ramaphosa, 71, expected to continue to try pushing forward policies such as allowing the private sector to generate renewable energy, which has contributed to a fall in power cuts.

Negotiations will continue after Friday on policies and cabinet positions, Steenhuisen said, adding that the two-week period after election results that the constitution mandates for the election of a president was not long enough to reach a full coalition agreement.

A “statement of intent” signed by the ANC and DA includes a commitment to a “merit-based, nonpartisan and professional civil service”. The DA has long criticised the ANC appointment of its supporters to public sector positions, known in South Africa as “cadre deployment”, claiming it fosters corruption.

Two smaller parties, the Inkatha Freedom party (IFP), a Zulu nationalist party, and the Patriotic Alliance (PA), which wants to bring back the death penalty and deport illegal immigrants, have also said they will join the government.

The inclusion of the IFP, which received 3.8% of the vote, is viewed as a way to deflect criticism of the ANC for working with the white-led DA. The PA, led by the self-described reformed bank robber Gayton McKenzie, received 2% of the vote and has its support base in South Africa’s Coloured communities.

The ANC’s vote share collapsed in large part due to the new uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, named for the ANC’s armed wing during apartheid. It came a surprise third in the election with 14.6% of the vote, just six months after it was launched by the former president Jacob Zuma, who has feuded bitterly with Ramaphosa since being forced to resign the presidency in 2018.

The MK party, which wants to replace constitutional democracy with parliamentary supremacy, boycotted parliament’s opening, after a legal challenge to the election results was rejected by the country’s top court. It has said it would not work with the ANC while it is led by Ramaphosa, who said that potential coalition partners needed to respect the constitution.

Meanwhile, the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who were sworn in as MPs in their trademark red overalls, some wearing hard hats and rubber boots, were among the parties that turned down Ramaphosa’s call to join a Government of National Unity (GNU).

Malema, the EFF leader, who founded the Marxist party in 2013 after he was expelled by the ANC while its youth leader, said it would not join a government with the “neo-colonial” DA, which he labelled “our enemy”.

Some ANC politicians and supporters had favoured a coalition with either or both the EFF and MK, viewing them as political and ideological relatives.

Ramaphosa’s call for a GNU, however, was in keeping with his cautious political approach, some analysts said, and positioned the ANC as inclusive, with parties that didn’t join excluding themselves.

A pro-Palestinian student encampment at a prominent Canadian university has announced a “revolutionary youth summer program” with posts featuring photos of masked, armed guerrillas reading communist literature, drawing criticism from a Canadian Zionist organization decrying what it said was metastasizing antisemitism.

The student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) McGill called for students to sign up for “revolutionary” trainings to be held on the university campus this month. Since April SPHR McGill has been occupying part of the Montreal campus to protest against Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

“We pledge to educate the youth of Montreal and redefine McGill’s ‘elite’ institutional legacy by transforming its space into one of revolutionary education,” the group said in a post.

“The daily schedule will include physical activity, Arabic language instruction, cultural crafts, political discussions, historical and revolutionary lessons.”

The announcement was illustrated with photos of gunmen wearing keffiyeh scarves covering their faces reading from Chairman Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book. The photos of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were taken in Jordan in 1970, a time when the Chinese Communist party supported the Palestinian movement.

In a statement on Friday, the McGill president and vice-chancellor, Deep Saini, described the use of the image as “extremely alarming” and said the university had contacted law enforcement agencies.

“It should go without saying that imagery evoking violence is not a tool of peaceful expression or assembly. This worrying escalation is emblematic of the rising tensions on campuses across North America, where we have seen many incidents that go well beyond what universities are equipped to manage on their own,” he said.

Saini said the university had contacted “municipal, provincial and federal public safety authorities, flagging this social media post and other recent activities as matters of national security, and requesting all appropriate interventions to ensure the safety of our community”.

Montreal police say they have no plans to end the pro-Palestinian encampment.

SPHR did not respond to requests for comment but one McGill faculty member said that while the advertisement used deliberately provocative imagery, what was being proposed appeared to amount to a teach-in.

“I don’t see anything objectionable in providing history and context to the current movement,” said Barry Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill.

“Are you going to be outraged about a 50-year-old picture of a PLO guerrilla, or by hundreds of people in a refugee camp being slaughtered because the Israeli government doesn’t know how to negotiate and feels that they can kill any number of Palestinians to justify liberating a few hostages?” he asked.

This week SPHR rejected McGill’s latest offer aimed at securing an end to their protest.

The student group has been calling on the university to cut investments they say are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and to end relations with Israeli academic institutions.

The students rejected a proposal to offer clemency to protesting students and to review McGill’s investments in weapons manufacturers as “laughable” and “an immaterial response”.

The Canadian Zionist organisation the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) called on McGill to stop turning a blind eye to “hate and toxicity”.

“Authorities must act to dismantle the toxic encampment immediately, or the antisemitism, hate, intimidation & harassment will continue to metastasize,” it said in a statement.

“You have masked individuals with assault rifle weapons as the image representing what they hope to do, they’re calling it revolution,” Eta Yudin, CIJA vice-president for Québec, told the Guardian. “One has to ask what they have planned?”

Let’s rock! Germany’s players were clearly paying close and diligent attention to Julian Nagelsmann’s signoff at his pre-tournament press conference.

At the Munich Football Arena the hosts kicked off Euro 2024 with a kind of pomp-metal power surge, a first-half display that brought three goals, a red card for Ryan Porteous and evidence of how well Nagelsmann has rebalanced this talented German team.

The night ended in a 5-1 defeat for a persevering Scotland, but it was pretty much packed away in those 10 first-half minutes, with goals from Florian Wirtz and the impressive Jamal Musiala, plus a series of lovely supple passing moves fed through the ageing rhythm section Toni Kroos.

Scotland did at least win the pre- match, occupying Munich for the last two days, wallpapering the Aldstadt with wool-mix plaid. They almost had the last laugh too, pulling one back via an own goal from Antonio Rüdiger. But Emre Can added a fifth in stoppage time. At the end the home players took time to commune with the crowd, take in the ripples of the flag and parp of the horns. It was a near-perfect opening night.

The Munich Football Arena is a giant lighted doughnut dumped down on the wooded fringes of Munich. Hours before kick-off its ­concourses were blocked with heaving human flesh for a game that seems to have acted as a kind of bat-signal for the global Scottish diaspora.

Germany has been a little cool ahead of these Euros. As ever this kind of occasion trails its own fog of mild confusion over flags and emblems and optics. Exactly how German do we want to be here? And is that OK? In the event this turned out to be a gloriously full-throated occasion.

Before kick-off the pitch was concealed beneath miraculous white Uefa vinyl flooring, while joyful gnome-like figures of no discernible nationality gambolled and pranced to give a sense of inoffensive pageantry. The anthems were intense. This felt real, authentic, one of those occasions where memories of early tournament goals, the first eruption of the crowd, are minted and never quite forgotten.

Steve Clarke left Billy Gilmour on the bench, bringing in Callum McGregor. Germany were as expected. Nagelsmann only recently switched to the 4-2-3-1 that has seen this team begin to thrum up through the gears. And they were in with 55 seconds gone, Angus Gunn blocking Wirtz’s close-range shot. He was ­offside. But it felt like a moment. Wirtz’s direct, creative energy is key to how Germany hope to play.

Clarke has done an excellent job of organising this Scotland team, radiating both gloom and quiet optimism in just the right measures. But he will be frustrated by the way his players let Kroos have his own portable pocket of space here.

It was Kroos who made the pass that made the opener on 10 minutes. This was a lovely Germany move and a really poor defensive moment for Scotland, who offered no resistance, lulled by the flight of the ball as Kroos pinged his second howling dipping diagonal out to Joshua Kimmich on the right.

Kimmich was free to lay an easy pass across the empty channel of green at the edge of the Scottish area. Wirtz had time to essay a lovely running first-time shot that Gunn got a hand to, but could not keep out. It felt like a training ground goal, with cones for defenders, lovely geometry, the ball travelling in a perfect zigzag into the Scottish net.

At that point Kroos was running the game at a leisurely pace, like a man in a hammock idly completing a word search.

It was 2-0 on 19 minutes, made by another quick-slow passing move. Kroos slipped the ball to Ilkay Gündogan, who whipped around then threaded the perfect pass to Wirtz. He laid it back to Musiala, who chopped past McGregor and didn’t just shoot, but smashed the ball into the top corner, free to choose exactly how to decorate the moment, and drawing a delayed boom of celebration, the sense of a crowd completely inside the game, reading the goal before it happened.

It got harder for Scotland. Germany had a penalty moments later, awarded by Clément Turpin, then disallowed by VAR. But they got a real one on 43 minutes, this time for a two-footed ankle-lunge by Porteous on Gündogan, for which he was correctly shown a red card. Kai Havertz took the kick, sending Gunn the wrong way. A man down, 3-0 down, Scotland trudged to the break in a kind of daze.

Robert Andrich was off at half-time and Ché Adams replaced by Grant Hanley. The question at that point seemed to be: how cruel did Germany want to be?

The Euros demand a show, an absence of dead air. Musiala went through his scales on the left. Wirtz came off to a huge ovation, part of it reserved for his replacement as Germany went full Füllkrug.

On 68 minutes Niclas Füllkrug made it 4-0, taking a loose touch from Hanley and spanking the ball with thrilling power into the top corner. Scotland’s players tracked gamely to the end. Switzerland are five days away. They will require a full mental and physical reset before then.

This was a reminder of Germany’s talent, of Nagelsmann’s status as the most state-of-the-art coach here. And a reminder too for Scotland of the brutality of tournament football, to go with its many glories.

Italy’s far-right government has denied that it removed references to abortion and LGBTQ rights in the final declaration of the G7 summit in Puglia.

In the declaration, published late on Friday, a reference to the protection of the “gender identity and sexual orientation” of the LGBTQ community did not appear, although reference had been included in the final declaration of the G7 in Japan last year.

The word “abortion” was also left out of a broader commitment to “universal access to adequate, affordable, and quality health services for women, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights for all”.

In last year’s communique, G7 leaders had explicitly committed to addressing “access to safe and legal abortion”.

Bloomberg, which first reported on the removed LGBTQ passage, linked the removal to the involvement in the summit of Pope Francis, with whom the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has bonded over LGBTQ and abortion issues. It is the first time a pontiff has addressed a G7 meeting.

“The news published by Bloomberg, according to which any reference to the rights of LGBT people could be removed from the final G7 communique, is devoid of any foundation,” Meloni’s office said. “The Italian presidency [of the G7] categorically denies this reconstruction.”

The allegation followed a clash between Meloni and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after Italy was accused of diluting a reference to guaranteeing access to “safe and legal” abortions in the G7’s final text. The clause had also been agreed by the G7 members in Japan.

Sources in Meloni’s office denied that the reference had been removed, saying on Thursday that the declaration was still being negotiated and that “everything that will be included in the final document will be final points resulting from the negotiations”.

Macron told reporters on the sidelines of the event that he “regretted” the removal of the reference.

“You don’t have the same sensibilities in your country,” Macron said to an Italian journalist. “France has a vision of equality between women and men, but it’s not a vision shared by all the political spectrum.”

Meloni hit back by accusing Macron, who called a snap election after a surge by France’s far right in the European elections, of using the G7 for “electioneering”, according to reports in the Italian press.

Since taking power in October 2021, Meloni’s government has introduced policies against the LGBTQ community, such as a crackdown on same-sex parenting, and in April approved a law allowing anti-abortion activists to enter abortion clinics.

In early May, Meloni vehemently defended the Italian families minister, Eugenia Roccella, after she was heckled by student protesters over the government’s stance on abortion during a conference on how to reverse Italy’s declining birthrate.

Roccella initially tried to confront the protesters but decided to abandon her planned speech and left the stage. Meloni called the protest “disgraceful”, posting on social media: “It is time to say enough is enough.”

The Princess of Wales has said she is making “good progress” but is “not out of the woods yet” as she announced she intends to attend trooping the colour on Saturday, which would be the first time she has been seen in public since her cancer diagnosis was announced.

Sharing that she has “good days and bad days”, she also revealed her treatment would continue for “a few more months”.

In a personal written message, released on the couple’s social media accounts, along with a new photograph of her taken in Windsor this week, she said she and the Prince of Wales were “blown away” by kind messages of support.

She said: “I am making good progress, but as anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and bad days. On those bad days you feel weak, tired and you have to give in to your body resting. But on the good days, when you feel stronger, you want to make the most of feeling well.

“My treatment is ongoing and will be for a few more months. On the days I feel well enough, it is a joy to engage with school life, spend personal time on the things that give me energy and positivity, as well as starting to do a little work from home.”

The princess added: “I’m looking forward to attending the king’s birthday parade this weekend with my family and hope to join a few public engagements over the summer, but equally knowing I am not out of the woods yet.

“I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty. Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body, and allowing myself to take this much-needed time to heal. Thank you so much for your continued understanding, and to all of you who have so bravely shared your stories with me.”

Catherine is due to watch the parade from the major general’s office with her family and is expected to appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony, though plans may be amended at short notice depending on how she feels. Downing Street and the Cabinet Office have been informed of her decision to attend.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said on Friday: “His Majesty is delighted that the princess is able to attend tomorrow’s events, and is much looking forward to all elements of the day.”

The princess announced in March that she was undergoing a course of preventive chemotherapy, which she is still undergoing, and her attendance at trooping is said not to represent a return to a full schedule of public engagements. She will not attend the Order of the Garter or Royal Ascot next week.

She may decide to attend some events over the course of the summer, as and when she feels able to, with the support and guidance of her medical team, but is said to be prioritising her recovery. No decisions have been made on specific engagements over the coming months.

Catherine is said to have started working a little from home and both she and her medical team have made it clear that going about her normal life and doing some of the things she enjoys will be an integral part of her recovery, it is understood.

In addition to briefings from her team at Kensington Palace, the Royal Foundation and the Centre for Early Childhood, she is said to have started to undertake some meetings relating to her work and projects.

A Kensington Palace spokesperson said of her attendance at this weekend’s event: “As she has said, she is making good progress and is looking forward to joining the family.”

Of her treatment, the spokesperson said: “As she said in her message, and as anyone receiving chemotherapy will know, she has good days and bad days.”

Of Prince William, the spokesperson added: “The prince is pleased to see the princess starting to engage with the work and projects that are important to her. He will continue to focus his time on supporting his wife and children, while continuing to undertake his public duties.”

Aides are not putting a timeframe on when she will be able to resume full public duties, stressing it is important she is allowed time to heal and build her strength. Speculation over her condition has been extremely unhelpful and put extra pressure on her and her family, it is said.

This week I have seen more than one tweet from mortified people who thought it would be OK to watch the new batch of Bridgerton episodes on the train on their way to work. The reason they were mortified was the first new episode, in which a sex scene goes on and on. And on. And on.

According to people who know these things, the sex scene – between Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope Featherington and Luke Newton’s Colin Bridgerton – was the longest in the show’s history, clocking in at almost six minutes. It was so long, in fact, that Coughlan and Newton managed to break the furniture they were filming on.

Even more inexplicably, it’s a good sex scene, in that it’s absolutely vital to the storyline. It’s a key moment in the evolution of the characters, and an important part of the story. It’s romantic and tender, and also sexy enough to embarrass anyone who made the mistake of trying to watch it on public transport.

But is it the longest sex scene ever to be shown on television? The answer is no, not quite. Before I proceed, I’d like to point out that I was asked to do this and I really should have charged double for the irreparable damage this research has done to my internet search history, but on we go anyway.

Technically the longest sex scene ever shown on British television comes during episode four of Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble’s brilliant series I Hate Suzie. At the time of broadcast, many headlines declared that this was not only a wildly long sex scene, but a wildly long solo sex scene, lasting a full seven minutes and four seconds. Whether or not it counts is another matter entirely, since the masturbation is used as a framing device allowing Piper’s character to think about her entire life up until that point. Most of it is flashbacks. It’s very cleverly done – and, again, important to the story – but you suspect all the tabloid readers who watched because of a few lurid headlines probably left quite disappointed.

Netflix’s Sense8 – a show still mourned by a devoted few – never shied away from sex. There were rumours that the orgy in the sixth episode was one of the longest ever shot, but again that isn’t quite what it delivered. Although the scene is all meat, so to speak – with three guys and a girl going at it in a variety of positions and locations – it’s let down slightly by its length. Yes, by most standards it’s long, but at four minutes it’s hardly a record breaker. Worse, the whole thing is soundtracked by a Macy Gray song, so that’s something you’ll have to learn to cope with.

Also, it might be worth pointing out that length of individual sex scenes is not the only way to quantify a show’s sexiness. If you want to know which show has the most sex in total, the winner is likely to be Starz’s still-preposterous Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which notched up 79 minutes of sex in its 13-episode duration. Then again, in 2020 a company called UberKinky claimed that 19.25% of David Duchovny series Californication was made up of sex scenes. That seems high but, hey, who am I to argue with UberKinky?

Clearly, though, there’s only one winner here, and that’s the BBC Three adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Even though episodes were only half an hour long, there were two separate occasions in which sex scenes exceeded that of Bridgerton. In episode 11, one stretches on for six and a half minutes. Meanwhile, episode two features a sex scene that lasts for a full 10 minutes. Again, we might have to invoke the I Hate Suzie rule a little here, since a minute and a half of that is flashback. But even if we do, it’s a clear runaway winner. The moral of the story is that you definitely shouldn’t watch Normal People on a train.

Of course, I don’t possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of every sex scene ever filmed for television, so there’s a decent chance that I’m missing some whoppers here. If I am, please be sure to let everyone know. Alternatively, keep it to yourself, pervert. Either way, this is how I spent my morning. I look forward to making eye contact with people today.