Name: #PillowChallenge.
Age: A couple of weeks, tops.
Appearance: In most cases, oddly flattering.
What’s the challenge? It’s just something that influencers, celebrities, members of the public and a few pets are doing to pass the time during lockdown.
Are they making their own pillows or something? It’s rather less challenging than that.
What do you do? You take a picture of yourself wearing nothing except a pillow lashed to your front with a belt.
You mean otherwise naked? Some people accessorise with handbags, high heels or sunglasses, but yes – basically naked.
Then what? Then you post the result on Instagram with the accompanying hashtag #pillowchallenge, or #quarantinepillowchallenge, or some lesser variant in which the word “challenge” is misspelled.
And you say celebrities are getting involved? Yes – Halle Berry has posed with a pillow, as has Loose Women’s Nadia Sawalha and Gordon Ramsay’s daughter Holly.
Why? Honestly, I have no idea. I guess it’s just a way to stop yourself going crazy in isolation.
It doesn’t sound as if it’s working. And it’s by no means the only thing celebrities are doing to occupy themselves while in quarantine. There is also the handstand challenge.
The what now? Originally, as demonstrated by Jake Gyllenhall and Tom Holland, among others, the challenge involved putting on a shirt while in a handstand with your toes against the wall.
Sounds difficult enough. But the game was raised significantly when the gymnast Simone Biles took her tracksuit bottoms off while doing a handstand – no wall involved.
What else are they doing? Lizzo has posted a couple of half-hour meditations featuring incense, crystals and flute-playing. Steve Martin is playing the banjo. The actor Stephen Graham filmed himself getting his head shaved by his son.
So celebrities are still managing to make the global pandemic all about them? It may have felt that way at the beginning, with Madonna lecturing us from her bathtub, but now it seems more akin to an outreach programme.
Like a public service, you mean? Almost. Laura Marling is offering guitar tutorials. Stanley Tucci gave a masterclass in creating the perfect negroni. It’s all rather soothing.
And you get to see inside their kitchens. There is that.
Do say: “Try again, mate – I don’t think the pillow is supposed to be on the back.”
Don’t say: “I strapped the pillow on while doing a handstand after a couple of negronis, and that is why I’m now naked in A&E.”
