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Since 2021, I’ve had one of the most brilliantly nosy jobs in journalism. Writing Saturday magazine’s You be the judge column has let me into the interior lives of others, lifting the lid on the everyday irritations that grind people’s gears in their closest relationships. It’s the pettiness that gets people going. I’ve interviewed couples at war over alarms and dishcloths, girlfriends disagreeing about dog care, and sisters who cohabit and argue about their sex lives.

With interviews conducted online and in person, I’ve accumulated domestic disputes from every corner of the globe which have also sparked heated debates online. Part small-claims court, part sociological experiment, You be the judge turns low-stakes grievances into battles that somehow feel life-or-death, and it’s fascinating to see which minor injustices ignite the fiercest debates.

Now, nearly five years in, I thought it would be good to revisit some of our most controversial couples, to see what they have been up to since we last spoke and whether the court of public opinion has led to more friction – or caused them to change their ways.

Two interviewees who gained online virality are Leanne and Wes, whose water-bladder dispute of 2025 sent readers into a tizzy. Leanne wrote in after “a couple of drinks” to settle a bedroom disagreement involving Wes and a plastic water bladder that had been sipped from during an intimate moment, prompting an immediate sexual shutdown and a string of tricky conversations afterwards. So did the incident change the flow of their relationship at all? “We resolved it quickly, as we are good at discussing our disagreements, but I think I’m quite a pest by nature,” Wes tells me with a wry smile on Zoom. “That wasn’t the intention of using the water bladder at that moment, of course. I just thought it would be a funny moment, but seeing how Leanne reacted, I immediately knew I’d messed up.” Leanne says they were open with their friends and it quickly became a running joke in their group, which she didn’t mind. “We had a friend come over for dinner and threaten to bring their water bladder.”

I first spoke to Leanne and Wes weeks after the bedroom incident and mere hours before we were all, coincidentally, headed to Glastonbury festival. Leanne informed me that the water bladder was due to make a return solely for hydration purposes, although she claimed this would also give her “the ick”. I didn’t spot them at Worthy Farm but I wanted to know: did she cave and use the contraption that haunted her? “Yes,” she confesses. “I was stubborn at first, but as soon as it got to the first night and I was thirsty, I drank from it.” The ground rules were simple. “I stipulated that the bladder wasn’t to go in the tent or hang from inside, which Wes did stick to. It’s useful for its original purpose, but it’s still banned from the bedroom.” Even though the bladder was a one-off unexpected third party in the bedroom, its impact was far-reaching. “It was still quite raw at Glastonbury,” Wes laughs. “We didn’t dress it up for the column. It was a touchy subject. I was amused by the comments, though; most people said I was the villain, although some incel types said Leanne was too controlling because it wasn’t her house, which I don’t agree with. Someone also said I reminded them of a hamster drinking from a bottle.” Wes has now stuffed his water bladder in a drawer until the summer.

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Readers can cast their vote for or against the “prosecution” via a poll at the end of each column, as well as weigh in through the comments. Derren and Margy, who wrote about Derren’s inability to double-knot his laces, experienced both the ire and the unexpected benefits of the comments section. “Some people took it so seriously,” Derren says. “One even weighed up the sunk-cost fallacy of our relationship. People said we should break up; that we were insufferable.” Yet the anonymous wisdom of strangers proved unexpectedly useful. After reading through the comments, Derren realised he’d been tying his laces incorrectly his entire life. “I learned I was using a granny knot, which loosens easily, instead of a reef knot, which is much more secure,” he explains. “The key difference is the direction of the ties: a granny knot twists because you alternate directions, while a reef knot goes the same way both times.” Retraining muscle memory took time, but after a few months the switch stuck and it paid off. “My shoes never come loose now. It’s an exciting development.”

“We haven’t had one incident since he changed his lace-tying technique,” Margy adds. “Before, we’d miss trains and buses because Derren slowed us down. I’d turn around mid-conversation and he’d be on the floor. Now we’ve gained time together. We can have more meditative moments together as we walk.”

City-slickers Lars and Lily were locked in a low-level war over Lily’s fondness for taking plant cuttings in public. Back in 2024, when Lily was pregnant, Lars was mortified by what he saw as his wife’s horticultural thefts, worried their future child might grow up to be a societal disruptor – and two years later, Lily has changed her views. “People sided with Lars, which instilled in me a bigger sense of self-restraint; and also my baby, Benji, has made me think twice,” she says over email. “I’ve realised that whatever I do, he copies. I haven’t snapped any cuttings in front of him, but I do let him touch plants in public.” Perhaps the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. “Sometimes Benji ends up snapping off a leaf or a flower, which isn’t ideal,” she says. “But I won’t forbid him to touch plants completely. Lars probably does more to stop him than me. It illustrates our different attitudes as parents. I am more free and want to satisfy Benji’s needs, but Lars has a clear idea of limits that should be respected in society.” Even though the court of public opinion influenced Lily’s behaviour, she’s less preoccupied with plants these days. “Because of childcare, I don’t really have as much time to think about cuttings, anyway.”

In January 2026, a parking ticket disagreement drove a wedge between mother and daughter. Margaret, 64, dropped Georgia, 32, off at the airport for her holiday, with her partner Bill in the driving seat of Georgia’s car. When Georgia returned home, she found herself the recipient of an airport drop-off ticket that had already doubled, to £100. Margaret offered to pay half, but Georgia wasn’t happy. The outcome, however, worked in favour of them both. “I appealed and won,” Georgia grins when I meet her for a coffee. “There’s a Reddit thread which goes into detail about how, if Gatwick airport can’t prove who was driving, you can appeal it and win, based on some land laws. It was very handy. I copied it verbatim and won. Mum had, very kindly, already sent me the total fine, which was £100. But I sent it back straight away and then, later, told her of the outcome.”

Did she agree with the consensus that, at 32, she should have driven herself to the airport, and she was entitled and bratty? Georgia shrugs. “I don’t care,” she says. “They don’t know the intricacies of our relationship, which has been testing, emotionally, over the years. I stand by what I said. I thanked her at the time. It’s nice for someone to do you a favour, but there’s nothing worse than it turning out worse than if you’d just done it yourself. I wasn’t responsible for the fine because I wasn’t driving.” When I catch up with Margaret, she’s over it. “I’m just glad it’s sorted,” she says. “£100 is a lot of money, so as long as Georgia has managed to get out of it, I’m happy. I didn’t read the comments.”

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For some, the mere fact of being written about online is galling. Ella had to come to terms with appearing in the column after her friend Aleesha wrote in. “I felt like I had no choice, because it was all arranged, and I didn’t want to look bothered because I had overreacted at the time.” When we spoke in 2023, Aleesha was amused that her best friend of 15 years had reacted with horror at her buying a similar top without warning and debuting it at Glastonbury with the idea that they could match.

For her part, Ella was irritated about having to discuss it again: “I know it was silly but I had already parked it, then I felt I had to dig up my feelings again. And then once more, when we read the comments online.” And now, I ask? “It’s fine. I’m over it.”

“Her reaction was quite funny to me, but we got over it within five minutes,” Aleesha says now. “Ella doesn’t like people copying her style, but it was one item and it wasn’t even identical. We look very different and we live in different countries – we’re never going to turn up wearing the same thing. It was never that deep.” Ella concedes she “just had a moment” and, three years on, barely remembers the offending top. “I don’t even know where it is now,” she says. “I’m pregnant anyway, so I probably won’t wear that style of clothing again.”

Edward and Alice were delighted to revisit a personal hygiene dispute that centred on Edward secretly hiding his toothbrush whenever he stayed at his wife’s family home in the country, where the household policy was, controversially, toothbrush sharing. “I’m absolutely thrilled to be giving an update on toothbrush-gate,” Edward says on WhatsApp, his glee unmistakable. “I felt very vindicated by how firmly everyone sided with me.” His tone softens when he recalls the fallout. “The real casualty was Alice’s mum: she was absolutely mortified when she read about it. She kept saying, ‘Oh my God, I hope you don’t feel we overstepped the mark.’ Honestly, I’m relaxed about the whole thing and think it’s funny. But Alice’s siblings – who also share toothbrushes – were like, ‘Why are you making such a big deal out of it?’ Luckily, I could point to the comments as proof that it wasn’t just me being difficult.” The public verdict proved useful leverage. “It was great ammo for behaviour change,” Edward says. “Alice’s whole family are much more careful about toothbrushes now and her elder sister doesn’t share at all any more.”

Toothbrush-gate has since entered family lore. “The column came up at my sister’s wedding last year,” Alice says. “It made it into the groom’s speech, which brought fresh shame on our family, but was very funny.” She admits most readers were unforgiving. “Everyone said we were disgusting, that our family wasn’t real. But growing up I always thought sharing toothbrushes was cute. It’s just how we were brought up.” Still the legacy endures. Alice notes that her brother-in-law now hides his toothbrush whenever he visits. “Our children have their own toothbrushes, though,” she adds. “They won’t grow up like I did.”

Edward says marrying into Alice’s family has softened his own hygiene standards in other ways. “They also share towels at the house,” he says. “I come from a family where towels were named and kept separate. But now I share them when I’m there.” Has he resolved to hide his toothbrush for eternity? Not quite. “I think Alice’s family have become better with having their own when I come to stay, but I don’t check or ask if they still use mine. I just don’t care as much.”

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Not everyone remains on good terms, post-column. When I reach out to Lani and Wendy, housemates who disagreed over subletting best practice back in 2023, I find they no longer live together – or speak. “Lani preventing me from subletting was the final straw for me,” Wendy tells me via Zoom. “It was all power moves with her. I felt she was chipping away at my rights even though I paid rent, too. I didn’t want to keep begging her to let my friends stay over whenever I travelled to claw back a bit of money. It wasn’t fair.”

Lani sees it differently. “I don’t mind the odd mate staying instead of Wendy if they were cool,” she tells me. “But she would go away for a week and expect me to live with a total stranger. And I wasn’t paying all that rent to live with people I didn’t know; she was being unreasonable.” Wendy moved out shortly after her attempt to sublet for 10 days was rejected by Lani. “We had a big blow-out and when I got back from my trip to Paris I decided to look for somewhere else.” Wendy feels sad about the situation. “We made up before she left but it wasn’t really the same.” She now lives with “a normal boring male room-mate” who has enough money that he doesn’t have to sublet “10 times a year”.

But for housemates Jason and Jamal, domestic bliss is very much the order of the day. Jason, who is of Irish and British descent, had complained that, when it was Jamal’s turn to cook in their shared house, the food was calibrated to Jamal’s spice tolerance rather than his own (Jamal is Nigerian). “I love Jamal’s cooking, but my stomach is weak,” Jason says. “I just can’t handle the heat and it was impacting my week. We had a cooking schedule and, if I ate Jamal’s food, the next day I would be suffering.” These days, they’ve reached a compromise: Jamal cooks with a gentler hand, keeping dishes mild at the base, while adding chilli, sauces or extra spice to his own portion at the end. “It’s much fairer,” Jason says. “I still get great food and Jamal still gets the fire. He’s also taught me a bit about cooking differently, which I like. My meals are just a lot more exciting in general now.” Jamal and Jason have lived together for almost three years. “I think he’s improved a lot,” Jamal says. “If we’re going to cook for each other during the week, we both have to enjoy the food.”

Of course, compromise is the desired outcome. And it’s satisfying to see how You be the judge can help iron out so many of our shared frustrations – it’s practically a public service at this point.

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