Unexpectedly last week, a 42-year-old BBC Two vox pop featuring an East End woman in a red raincoat broke the internet. We don’t know her name, but this unassuming star has been watched by millions, decades after stopping to talk to a reporter on a London street. She trounced all the social media competition, including Kylie Minogue performing Do The Locomotion on a miniature railway in Scarborough.

The clip was filmed for a 1977 BBC Two series of 28 programmes marking the Queen’s silver jubilee. It was intended for a show called Thanks for the Memory, then billed as the BBC’s biggest vox pop to date, that would ask citizens, “from crofters to judges”, for their views on TV of the previous 25 years. Tweeted by the BBC Archive last week for a contemporary audience, there was one standout star.

In her headscarf and raincoat, she resembles the social stereotypes that Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie lampooned in the vox pop sections of their sketch show. But those characters held reactionary views, couldn’t stop looking down the lens and offered non sequiturs such as: “They’ve got hotter pavements, I know that.” However, this woman was a natural communicator, displaying a witty, easy eloquence. What she delivered was more of a social and historical soliloquy that included asides about “highbrow” plays and bad acting. If you haven’t seen it, just watch. A star is born, albeit 42 years after the event. Today, she’d be signed up for Gogglebox.

It’s remarkable because no one did this well in a vox pop before. Used as a device to democratise news, their use is on the rise, especially in broadcast news. But the BBC in particular has received complaints that it has used them to propagate false balance over Brexit and they can be something of an unsuccessful TV trope.

A University of Antwerp study asked what reporters make of the vox pop and concluded that most of us dislike them. As a vox veteran, I can confirm that trudging along a high street in February, waving a fluffy mic and begging people to stop and give you a soundbite as the light fades is challenging.

Every reporter has stories. My favourite is when I jumped out from behind a pillar box to ask an elderly couple: “What’s your favourite scary movie?” “My dear,” one replied witheringly, “we are Islington intellectuals, we don’t watch scary movies.” But this one, well it works and is probably the only example endorsed by the vox populi.

Jia Tolentino, raising the barre on working out

The writer Jia Tolentino is exceptionally good at decoding these febrile times. She has been described as the new Joan Didion and in a period when the centre doesn’t feel to be holding at all well, her new collection of essays, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, offers a welcome intervention.

However, don’t expect go-get-’em affirmations and tips on optimising your time à la Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. Tolentino’s central conceit is that women “are genuinely trapped at the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy” and the “hard labour of self-optimisation” is part of that.

So, while you might imagine you’re doing great work on your abs and socking it to The Man by visiting boutique exercise studios and becoming physically strong, she reveals you to be a patsy in expensive sportswear. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

If, like me, you have succumbed to a barre-based exercise system at a boutique gym, it’s time to face your “pragmatic self-delusion”. The original barre system, based on the strength and flexibility training that dancers endure, was devised by the late Lotte Berk. But barre-based exercise has recently experienced a surge in popularity, partly due to its perceived effectiveness; classes are described by Tolentino as “a manic and ritualised activity”.

Classes are certainly not for the fainthearted. Then there’s the accessories – mesh-panelled leggings and kale smoothies – all of which bump up the cost while simultaneously exposing you as an agent of late-stage capitalism. As a precaution, I’m taking the rest of the summer off.

Renée Tirado, no more fashion faux pas?

Best of luck to Renée E Tirado, who joins luxury fashion house Gucci as the brand’s first ever head of diversity, equity and inclusion.

She joins fashion from baseball, which I’m sure has its own complexities, but at least there aren’t design teams immortalising their prejudice by turning it into a luxury good and offering it up on a plinth in a major retail space.

The recent output of some of the world’s biggest brands includes Gucci’s own $890 (£689) balaclava jumper, which was accused of transposing blackface to knitwear (naturally, it was released during Black History Month in the US) and Prada’s $550 handbag keychain, described as “Sambo-esque” by critics. Most recently, Gucci sent a $790 turban down the runway on a white model.

Objectively, it’s hard to comprehend how these items went into production, never mind into shops. This isn’t just one lone designer and a secret sketchpad. Entire committees review designs to make sure they are on trend enough, samples get made and checked, press teams decide how to message new launches. But no one noticed?

Tirado’s appointment is welcome, but there’s definitely work to be done.

• Lucy Siegle is a journalist who writes about ethical living