What a frightful pest Richard Ratcliffe is being – so thoughtless, cluttering up the lovely posh pavement outside the Iranian embassy in Knightsbridge, with his protest against his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s wrongful imprisonment in Iran, where she is serving a five-year sentence for espionage. Another view might be: what else is Ratcliffe supposed to do, when the right to protest is all he has left?

Ratcliffe has joined his wife on a hunger strike, demanding, among other things, her immediate release. He’s just spent the week stationed outside the embassy and plans to stay until at least this weekend, perhaps longer. Ratcliffe has been visited by family members and supporters, including SNP MPs and Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson. One important person Ratcliffe didn’t manage to see, even on Father’s Day, was his young daughter, Gabrielle, who lives in Tehran with her grandparents in order to be able to visit her mum in prison. Lovely.

While the Iranian ambassador, Hamid Baeidinejad, seems not without compassion for Ratcliffe, he has labelled the protest “disruptive”, saying that it blocks the embassy entrance and that staff are being abused by supporters and filmed by the media’s cameras. Baeidinejad has taken up the issue with the Foreign Office, claiming the protest is in breach of the part of the Vienna convention that protects the daily running of embassies. There are also reports that some diplomatic protection for the British embassy in Tehran has been removed in reprisal for the protest.

So it’s a highly charged and delicate situation, but, I ask again, what choice does Ratcliffe have? Zaghari-Ratcliffe is doomed without pressure maintained on her case, a pressure at least partly powered by public and media attention. Nor could the couple be blamed if they have lost faith in the system. Their plight was worsened by the intervention of an incompetent, self-serving buffoon, masquerading at the time as foreign secretary, who inaccurately blurted about Zaghari-Ratcliffe “teaching journalism” (she was on holiday), thus making the situation worse. Bravo, Boris Johnson, who’s a tad busy right now, horse-fixing his way to becoming prime minister. Thank God there’s the new foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt! Oh hang on, Hunt is also busy right now – running against Johnson to be prime minister.

In fact, the entire government has been hyper-focused on the leadership race, arguably at the expense of all other business. Maybe it’s starting to become a little clearer why Ratcliffe decided that his only option was to starve himself on the pavement outside the Iranian embassy. Not because he enjoys attention, but because he and his wife and daughter need it. However inconvenient the embassy is finding the situation, depicting Ratcliffe as some kind of irresponsible, capricious protester would be unfair.

Ratcliffe and Zaghari-Ratcliffe have diligently used all the correct channels, but this doesn’t seem to have got them very far. These are the last-ditch efforts of a loving husband and father, the actions of a family man turning to protest in desperation.

What horrors lurked in Nicky Campbell’s teenage room?

Nicky Campbell: squeaky-clean past? Photograph: Roscoe & Rutter/BBC

When presenter Nicky Campbell mess-shamed his 18-year-old daughter by tweeting a photo of her chaotic bedroom, it turned out that she’d helped him photograph the worst bits. How did that exchange go, I wonder? “Dad, I think you missed the giant knotted ball of laddered opaque tights behind the scattered and trodden-on contents of my makeup bag.” That young woman has a sense of humour, if not any floor space to walk upon.

Nor was I surprised when other parents tweeted their own teen bedroom horrors. Many parents know what it’s like – you pop your head around your teenager’s door and it looks as though a bomb has gone off in the sorting room of a rundown charity shop.

However, what was Campbell’s teenage bedroom like? I’ve got to admit that mine was an airless, goth-themed rat’s nest – there were old apple cores under the bed that were probably mutating into what would later become a terrible virus. Even as an adult, I was so disorganised that I moved house with cutlery jammed into Wellington boots, while bras were transported hanging off the backs of kitchen chairs in full view of the new neighbours.

So, while I sympathise with Pa Campbell, I have to factor in parental hypocrisy. On the rather slim chance that untidiness is genetic, what’s his backstory?

True love or just an Instagram story… who can tell any more?

Marissa Casey Fuchs and her fiance, Gabriel Grossman: ah, what a lovely couple. Photograph: Instagram/@fashionambitionist

Apologies, I can’t be long, I need to buy a hat. A big, flouncy wedding hat to celebrate (from a discreet distance) the nuptials of “Instagram influencer” Marissa Casey Fuchs (193,000 followers) and her intrepid groom-to-be, Gabriel Grossman.

Intrepid because Grossman planned a surprise proposal, which would occur after a 48-hour multi-destination “scavenger hunt”, with suspense building about whether Fuchs would say “Yes!”, all playing out on their Instagram accounts.

So, a bit like the famous Ross and Rachel cliffhanger on Friends, if they’d been tragic and unable to stop photographing and filming themselves to well-known scenes:

Ross: “We were on a break! (crying emoji).”

Rachel: “Have you got an Instagram story of me agreeing to that or has it expired? (broken heart emoji).”

Unfortunately, for at least 193,001 people, the cliffhanger ending (would Marissa accept Gabriel?) was compromised by Fuchs knowing about the proposal all along. In fact, as revealed by US magazine, Atlantic, they’d planned the whole “surprise marriage proposal” itinerary together (on detailed spreadsheets), all the way to Fuchs’s joyous astonished acceptance, and had offered brands “the opportunity to align with this momentous occasion”. Excuse me, I think I’ve got something in my eye.Fuchs and Grossman aren’t the first couple to attempt to monetise a life event; the only surprise here is – who’s surprised? Perhaps all that’s needed is a subtle tweak of terminology. Time was, it was said, rather grandly, that people “curated” their lives on social media, but is that entirely accurate? “Curated” suggests museums – historical, artistic, cultural endeavours – and experiences that are frequently free. Instagram is all about the price tag.

• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist