Rashid Razaq: Have I got trueish news for you? Alas, quite a lot

It’s a story that had all the right ingredients — an attractive female cyclist pitted against boorish white van men on the streets of London and deliciously sweet revenge for some appallingly sexist behaviour. The only problem is it might not be true, only trueish.

Digital marketing company Jungle Creations has denied being the creator of fake news but admitted that the video that went viral on Wednesday (seen by more than 10 million people and reported by news organisations as far away as New Zealand) may be “factually incorrect”.

Bored Macedonian teenagers usually get the blame for churning out suspect clickbait but Shoreditch-based Jungle Creations bills itself as the “sixth-biggest media company in the world” — bigger in reach than Disney — with 36 employees and a £2.5 million turnover.

Impressive stuff, considering co-founder Jamie Bolding, 25, only thought up the idea in between playing Fifa in his mum’s spare room in Surrey three years ago. It’s a success story that hasn’t gone unnoticed, and in an interview for the Digital Innovators’ Summit, in Berlin next month, Mr Bolding shares some of the secrets behind his firm’s meteoric rise.

The entrepreneur told the event’s website: “We have grown so quickly because we know what the audience want to watch and we give it to them.”

He also reveals that it only takes him three seconds. That’s all he needs to grab your attention to make it count as a “view” and for him to make money.

In the old days fake news just used to be called plain old lies. Now, if it’s not quite fake and not quite true, it ends up in the realm of trueish.

Trueish, because cyclists getting into spats with motorists is the kind of thing that happens every day. And trueish because women getting harassed by men in the street is the kind of thing we’ve sadly come to expect. In fact, the only unexpected bit was when the female cyclist gives chase and thrillingly rips off the van’s wing mirror before pedalling away in victory.

If I was being über-critical I’d say the workmen’s dialogue about being “on periods” was a little too on the nose, and the “scumbag” line from the rather hammy, middle-class motorcyclist could have been cut. Yet two parts ordinary to one part extraordinary is the perfect mix to get the punters clicking.

The news cycle moves so fast that three seconds later people have already moved on to the next viral video. And if it does subsequently turn out to be untrue, who cares? If you’re the type of person who thinks all cyclists are a menace or all white van men are sexist, then a mere news story — true or false — isn’t going to change your mind.

We all have a tendency to seek news and opinions that confirm what we already believe, and to discount what doesn’t fit our world view. The truth just isn’t as satisfying as trueish.

Typewriter-mad Tom Hanks: an uncommon type of man

Nothing dates you faster than your technology. This maxim is borne out in everything from a man’s choice of razor blade to his writing machine.

Tom Hanks’s forthcoming debut book, Uncommon Type: Some Stories, is inspired by his love affair with typewriters. The Oscar-winning actor owns more than 100 of them.

But although he wrote notes and a “few pages” on an actual typewriter, he says it was far easier to do the rest on a laptop rather than lug around one of the heavy, impractical machines around film sets.

Personally, I can’t wait for the next leap in technology that means I won’t even have to lift a finge...

When there’s genuine truth in real drama

Authenticity is a question that pops up again in See Me Now at the Young Vic. Getting real-life sex workers to share their own experiences of the trade gives the production an unimpeachable honesty, if not quite the same emotional truth that comes from effective drama.

It’s perhaps worth bearing in mind that until relatively recently, acting and prostitution were seen as two interchangeable careers, with pretty much the same social standing.

If the show were fictional, more humour and pathos would surely have been wrought out of the woman who worked in a brothel to support her habit as a theatre actress. Last time I checked, the Equity minimum wage was a lot less than £500 a day.

It wasn’t all white on the night, Katy

Pity the poor backing dancer. You’ve told all your friends to watch, and called your mum to remind her to record it, and then you suffer the indignity of falling offstage during your big moment with Katy Perry at the Brits.

Luckily, the weird white-house outfits saved the unknown dancer’s blushes on national TV. But Perry must take her share of the blame — unless her not so subtle political message with the dancing Donald Trump and Theresa May skeletons was actually a very subtle point about the moribund awards ceremony itself and the prevalence of dead prize-winners?