Appearance: Can we for once stop obsessing about the way that women look?  Hey, it’s just the rubric. Gotta stick to the rubric.  And what have you done to her surname?  Ah. Well, she was Amal Alamuddin, as you may know, but she just married George Clooney … I remember reading about it. He was “the movie star George Clooney”, whereas she was just “a lawyer” half the time, like she wasn’t important.  Tell me, which other lawyers’ weddings have you read about recently? That’s not the point. She’s a strong, independent woman, successful in her own right. Even now she’s advising the Greek government on how to secure the return of the Elgin marbles. She would never let herself be subsumed within a man’s identity.  Do you think you might be projecting your own values and expectations on to somebody you have never met? No.  OK. Besides, what makes you think she has changed her name?  Have a look on her page of the website for Doughty Street Chambers, where she works. It says “403 Forbidden”. That is a very cool name indeed! Weird, but cool. I approve.  I think that’s actually an error message. Probably thousands of people are staring at the page in disbelief. When it’s working, it now lists her as “Amal Clooney”. A typo maybe?  You’ve got to think that’s unlikely. It was thought she’d chosen “Amal Alamuddin Clooney” as her married name, and perhaps she has, but it now seems that the “Alamuddin” is at least optional. A sad day.  Maybe if they have children Mrs Clooney wants them all to share a surname? Like that matters.  Maybe Mrs Clooney agrees with you politically but just has a soft spot for tradition? Stop calling her that! It’s like Beyoncé touring as Mrs Carter. Or Cheryl Fernandez-Versini! You can’t say it without sounding sarcastic. She’ll always be Cheryl Cole to me.  You mean Cheryl Tweedy? Tweedy, yes. Sorry. Wor Cheryl Tweedy. That’s what she’ll always be.  Do say: “Et tu Amal …?”  Don’t say: “These foreigners! They come over here, marry our women, spreading their weird, foreign-sounding names … Wait a minute.”
She may be busy trying to get the Parthenon marbles returned to Greece, but what the world really wants to know is, will Amal Alamuddin change her passport details?