This week George Galloway took to his video blog, the apparently unironically named Good Night with George Galloway, to defend Assange. - Hadley Freeman

Next time Hadley Freeman comes to one of our parties she should relax, loosen up, have a glass of champagne and be sure to stay the whole night and really, truly … enjoy herself.

Do musicians who play private concerts for dictators and tour countries where homosexuality is illegal have a "nasty stain" on their albums?
Or just the ones whose concerns about medicalising children are in line with NHS policy? Asking for me.

The relationship between Britain and America, from Britain's perspective, has always reminded me of the one between Frasier Crane and his brother Niles: there's the big, brassy, embarrassing, famous and attention-seeking brother who hogs the spotlight, and then there's the smaller, sharper, more self-aware and overly self-conscious brother who is both scornful of his sibling's shallow fame but also faintly jealous of it and hides the latter beneath snarky jibes. Of course I get it: having lived in America and Britain I can see all too well how America's cheerful, unabashed tendencies towards arrogance, superficiality and shameless ambition grate against Britain's preference for self-effacement, awkwardness and grim failure. What I don't get is why folk in Britain bother getting wound up about it. Any hint of an American tradition coming to Britain – high-school proms, Daily Show-a-like nightly talkshow, will.i.am – and Radio 4 programmes and newspaper articles sprout up most self-righteously debating whether America is "taking over British culture". Come on, Britain, you're better than this. Make like Niles and take out your handkerchief, wipe away the germs and walk on past. It'll probably go away soon.