Coldplay kiss-cam CEO shouldn't lose job - but made 1 crucial mistake

I'm sorry, but I cannot for the life of me understand why Andy Byron - the guy caught bang to rights in that kiss-cam happy snap - had to resign from his CEO job at an (ahem) thrusting AI startup company. All right. He went to a Coldplay concert with someone he shouldn't, i.e. Kristin Cabot, his company's chief "people" officer.

A roving audience camera caught them... well, caught them doing WHAT, exactly? Playing an enthusiastic game of tonsil tennis? Writhing naked on the floor in ecstasies? Hardly. They were having a little cuddle. Not even face-to-face, so no prospect of even an illicit peck on the lips. No: he had his arms around her waist and she had her hands resting lightly on his.

OK, it wasn't exactly platonic, but it was hardly lust in the dust. They looked happy and cosy.

Their mistake, of course, was to panic. If they'd kept their cool and simply waved cheerfully at the camera, no one would have thought anything of it and the roving lens would have moved on to more demonstrative action.

They don't call it kiss-cam for nothing. So diving for cover sealed their fate, because it was funny. Not outrageous or disgusting or shocking, but funny.

A middle-aged pair who clearly shouldn't have been there (at least not together). And as such delicious, caught-on-camera moments have a near-certainty of going viral these days, awkward conversations when Andy and Kristin got home to their respective spouses became pretty much guaranteed.

And that's where the consequences should have stayed... behind closed doors. We have no idea what the exact state of Byron's or Cabot's marriages are, or if that concert date has any real significance. In any case, it's none of our business.

But the puritanical, judgmental, near-hysterical condemnation of this (slightly) erring pair has been off the scale. Even the most prudish Victorian clergyman might have thought we were going just a tad over the top.

And now he has felt obliged to quit his job and, reportedly, she hers. Why? How on earth does enjoying a night at the opera (well, Coldplay) with your head of HR impact your ability to run a company?

If every CEO or managing director who had some kind of illicit date or dalliance with a colleague had to resign, capitalism as we know it would judder to a halt in about three seconds.

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When Nigel Farage talks about sending hardened British criminals to serve their jail time in El Salvador, many people are unsure exactly why he's suggesting this particular South American country. It's because of an institution called The Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism, El Salvador's flagship, $115million, 23-hectare prison, built to hold as many as 40,000 prisoners.

Along with El Salvador's new zero-approach to crime under President Nayib Bukele, the jail has had an utterly transformative effect on the country.

Until recently, it had the highest murder rate in the world, at the mercy of cartels and drug gangs. Today, El Salvador is probably the safest country in South America. That's largely because many former gang henchmen languish in the centre, under a totally uncompromising, super-strict prison regime. Lights are left on 24/7.

There is no communal eating: food is served through the bars of individual cells. Inmates are stripped to shorts and have their heads shaved. They sleep in metal bunks stacked four-high. There are no family visits. No workshops or recreational facilities.

No wonder crime is on the floor. Makes prisons here look like Pontins.

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I share general scepticism over reports that Sydney Sweeney is to be the next Bond girl. Why on earth would Sweeney want to play second fiddle to 007 or anyone else? She's a leading actress in her own right. Her agent would be mad to accept.

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The award for most marked expression of pained self-righteousness this week goes to Daniel Perry, the self-styled "queer dance artist" who unfurled a Palestinian flag on stage at the Royal Opera house during curtain calls for Verdi's Il Trovatore.

It's a splendid effort! Judges noted Daniel's "perfectly virtuous gaze into the middle-distance... communicating an almost untouchable high-mindedness and morality. This young person clearly takes themselves exceptionally seriously".