Did Gwyneth Paltrow ski into a retired optometrist? I couldn’t care less, but the farce is unmissable | Marina Hyde

A starstruck lawyer, a neutrals-clad wellness guru - this has to be the lowest stakes court battle of all time

To Park City, Utah, currently scene of one of the great pleasures of modern life: a court battle that you'd be relaxed for either side to lose. Yes, it's the Gwyneth Paltrow ski massacre trial. Take your seats for a preposterously camp battle between a well-to-do retired optometrist who said the high priestess of fanny-steaming skied into him - and Her Vajesty herself, who says he skied into her. Why is this not happening at The Hague? Sorry, but NO sense of occasion.

Before we go any further I want to make a deeply serious point. Something happened that day. Something happened on that mountain in that luxury ski resort, up there in God's cathedral - and, like anyone who has watched either the plaintiff or the defendant on the stand at any length ... I literally could not care less what it was. I mean, this is as low stakes as it gets. Asked about what had been taken from her by the events on the Deer Valley slopes, Paltrow delivered the sociopathically straight-to-meme line: Well, I lost half a day of skiing." (Bear in mind this is a woman who claims that water has feelings.) For his part, Terry Sanderson's lawyer put things into perspective by declaring: After the crash, he's no longer charming."

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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