As the great Meat Loaf once said: ‘I would do anything for love – but I won’t do that’.

Of course, in your case, reader, ‘that’ is very much ‘read the news’.

How do we know? Because here you are again, clinging onto the weekend life raft that is the ICYMI pre-pub round-up.

We know what’s going on. You’re getting ready go out, Scooter is blaring on the CD player, the VKs are flowing.

And then panic grips you. You’re going out with grown up types, the sort that watch the news.

What if they realise you’re basically a moron? Metro.co.uk won’t allow it, reader – not on our watch.

Get sped up below and then get yourself out there.

Waiting for Sue Gray

Forget Wordle, a new craze is sweeping the nation that has everybody hooked: guessing when Sue Gray will hit send and put us all out of our misery.

Sue the Gray – presumably soon to be Sue the White – has left the nation hanging on the most tedious of tenterhooks all week.

We don’t know about you, reader, but here at Metro.co.uk, we’re ready to wriggle free and do something else with our lives.

The latest edition of THE FALL OF BORIS JOHNSON got under way with claims Metropolitan Police officers stationed outside Downing Street had given damning evidence to the Cabinet Office inquiry into lockdown parties.

Only too happy to cooperate with the mysterious Sue Gray, we’re told – well, wouldn’t you be if your job was standing in the cold and nodding politely at whoever is in the cabinet these days?

Then on Tuesday came the frankly stunning news that the Met had decided to dust off the old detective outfit and launch an actual police investigation.

Staggering, we know.

To be clear, that is extraordinary. Number 10 being under police investigation is not normal and, no matter how much you try to overthink it, this is not ‘good news, in a way’ for the PM.

There’s a chance he’s on course to become the first PM ever to be interviewed under caution. That, lads and lasses, looks less than excellent.

What followed from the Met’s announcement is what could be described as a burning hell-pit of claim, counterclaim, briefing and misery.

The top and bottom of it: the Met doesn’t want parts of the Sue Gray report published right now while they’re investigating; no one really knows how much of the report Sue Gray wants to publish; the government says it will publish the whole report but no one believes them.

We’re told various government lawyers, human resources officials and other assorted Very Important Mandarins are looking it over.

Will it be published on Monday? Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t worry about it, drink your drink.

OH, WE ALMOST FORGOT – Boris Johnson may or may not have intervened to help a man evacuate his dogs from Afghanistan at a time desperate people were fighting to get their families evacuated to safety as the murderous gunmen of the Taliban circled Kabul.

So there’s that too.

TL;DR: You are all on Sue Gray’s time and that’s just how the world is now.

Ukraine’s slow-moving tragedy

A moment of uncharacteristic sombreness from the ICYMI team: what the people of Ukraine are experiencing right now, the long wait to discover whether or not an obsessed autocrat will give the order for their homeland to be taken by force, is a form of torture.

Another week has passed and the world still doesn’t know if Putin intends to give his soldiers instructions to cross the border.

His tanks have not moved but the diplomatic situation has, although it’s unclear in which direction right now.

The US has formally responded to Russia’s demands on Nato – most significantly, on the guarantee Ukraine is not permitted membership and that military presence in Eastern Europe and in the Baltics is scaled back to mid-90s levels.

In short, it’s a big fat nope on the big things – it was always going to be – but a ‘let’s keep talking’ on the smaller stuff.

It’s a glimmer of hope that bloodshed on both side can be avoided through diplomacy.

The government has confirmed it is boosting the number of troops on the UK-led operation in Estonia and we’ve seen pictures of Ukrainian soldiers training with British weapons. 

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Nato could send even more troops to Nato allies near Russia to deter any more adventurism – although it’s unclear what good if would do the people of Ukraine right now.

The UK ambassador who had a front row seat to watch Putin’s rise in Moscow in the late 90s has confirmed what seems rather obvious now: he seemed like a wrong’un from the outset.

No one knows where the situation will be next week but we do know where Ukraine will be: right where it has been since 1991 and surrounded on all sides.

TL;DR: Diplomats talk, Ukrainians wait.

A royal mess (cont)

Prince Andrew’s miserable legal saga continues and this week we got a significant formal update from his camp.

Legal documents set out what looks like the skeleton of their approach to defending the civil lawsuit launched in the US by Virginia Giuffre.

She alleges she was sexually assaulted by the prince aged 17 while the victim of a trafficking ring. Prince Andrew strenuously denies this.

Documents submitted to the New York court continued to outline reasons why the Duke of York’s lawyers believe the case should be thrown out, as well as beginning to flesh out their denials to the accusations.

The line that got everyone’s attention was that his team have dramatically demanded a trial by jury.

You don’t have to be lawyer to know they were rather stating the obvious.

Unless Andrew settles – which he still could – there will be a jury trial by default. In fact, that’s precisely what Ms Giuffre wants.

What would a jury trial look like? Long, messy and potentially embarrassing – and a real mood killer for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee year.

TL:DR: The trial of the century may or may not be very much on.

Plan B ditched

Farewell Plan B, we hardly knew ye.

Six weeks after the government endured its biggest parliamentary rebellion yet to force through tighter measures, they’ve already scrapped them.

Mandatory mask rules, working from home orders, vaccine passports – all gone.

By March, you might not even have to stay in if you have Covid -19 and travel rules have been torn up. 

Imagine reading that sentence just a few months ago.

Cases are still high, although there are signs things are going in the right direction, and new findings have laid bare the reality of the January wave.

One in 23 of us had Covid-19 in January, according to research, and two thirds of those people had previously been infected.

But it does look like we’re out of the woods for now – although it’s anyone’s guess if that will remain the case for long.

TL;DR: Covid-19 measures have been scrapped for the last time again.

And finally…knob tossing

Reader, here’s how it works.

We get you all sped up on the four biggest stories and then we throw you a funny story at the end as a sort of little treat.

This week, that story is the strange tale of Dorset’s knob tossers – and the fact they’ve had to cancel their glorious festival.

Basically, every year, countryside types get together to enjoy a range of competitions revolving around the throwing of knobs – traditional biscuits produced in the area.

It’s all very charming, very English and obviously very hilarious.

Your correspondent will then try and tie this quirky tale in with the first story, constructing a frankly brilliant callback gag to round the whole thing ICYMI round-up off nicely.

The problem is, yer man has left it a bit late this week and is writing it on the train.

As we speak, he’s 30 minutes from London, on the cans and at the end of his tether.

Your correspondent may well have ventured something along the lines of ‘as Tory MPs weigh up whether or not to chuck Boris, a different sort of knob tossing quandary was playing out in Dorset’.

If only there was time, reader. If only.

TL;DR: No.

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