What does Jeff Bezos’ new fiancée see in the world’s third-richest man? Must be his huge philanthropy | Jeff Bezos

One wizard click, readers, because a mega wedding is in the offing. Congratulations to Mr. Jeff Bezos, Amazon kajillionaire, and Ms. Lauren Sanchez, bralette-wearing philanthropist/Immense Force of Nature. While news of the couple’s engagement trickled out this week after Lauren was spotted wearing a diamond ring in the south of France, Jeff has yet to make a formal announcement. So let’s just set one up for him: “Ladies and Gentlemen, she said Proceed to Checkout.”

Look now, you already know Jeff. The third richest man in the world. Went to space. It looks like he should appear above a TV caption that read, “I’m making £40 a month as a Vin Diesel escort and my fiance loves it!” But are you completely over Lauren? I’ll be honest: we haven’t met yet. But looking in from the outside, my nose pressed against the glass of Google Images, I just can’t get enough of this Nietzschean superwoman, the latest form of the East German silicone doping program, who has rocketed into my consciousness and captivates me. twice a week now with her carefreeness, her outfits, and her observations about how hard philanthropy is to do. Seriously: no one has ever thought better of how to help arms while sauntering around a Grand Prix compound with some sort of You Could Never Access All My Areas lanyard dangling from her belt loop. In some ways, I don’t think I’ve felt this amused by a picaresque heroine since I saw a photo of Jennifer Arcuri biting the head off a fondant-covered Boris Johnson figurine, from a Boris Johnson cake she made. Yes, customers who loved Jennifer also loved Lauren. Not so much a gal-over city as a gal-over planet.

Anyway, the now hooked up Bezos and Sanchez are currently touring Europe on Jeff’s new yacht, Koru, a 417ft three-master/three-peniser, the largest ship ever built. To put things in perspective, this yacht is so big that it has its own yacht – a 246ft “support craft”, lugging around boring little things like the helipad and allegedly some kind of personal submarine. And this week we saw the figurehead of Koru for the first time. Of course, ship figureheads have traditionally come in a variety of forms: mermaids, Neptunes, angels—and now Fox-News-anchor-in-transparent-singlet-with-erect-nipples. Suck it, history! Our century is the best. The figurehead of Bezos’ yacht is fingering a large necklace and appears to be about to say something. “Draw me as one of your French girls”? Anyway, the huge boat he graces has only recently left the shipyard, hopefully while some kid on the dock cackled, “Yeah, but you’ll never be cool, will you, Bezos – YOU’LL NEVER BE COOL!”

But will the Amazon boss ever really be a true philanthropist? We seem to be at the stage of human intellectual decay where anyone who is a multi-billionaire is also automatically described as a “philanthropist”, when in many cases “misanthrope” would be more supported by the evidence. For example, I always see the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed, described as a philanthropist. Is he the one who has had at least two of his children missing/kidnapped at any given time? Honestly, so what if he built a sanitation program? I should hope so.

But back to Lauren, who stated last year, “I delve into philanthropy and strategic giving.” That sounds a lot nicer than Amazon warehouse workers delving into strategic pee-in-bottles. Still, it turns out this stuff is hard. “You want to give money away,” Lauren claimed. “You want to know that it’s helping people and that it’s going to continue to help people, and that it’s going to the right places. you could be give it non-strategic. You can just give it away! But we take it seriously.” mm. It feels like they’ve thought of everything except Amazon pays taxes like normal companies.

The question of how much Bezos really wants to give away is a thorny one, as he once said, “The only way I can see putting that much financial resources to use is to turn my Amazon profits into space travel.” Or as Lauren puts it, “Jeff has always told me, ever since I’ve known him, that he’s going to give most of his money away to philanthropy.” I hope you like the supposed generality of that “to philanthropy”.

Still, maybe “I’m going to give most of my money away to philanthropy” is the kind of thing you say to have sex in the early stages of a relationship. I suddenly think of Anne Hathaway’s ex-boyfriend, who told the movie star that he was “the finance director of the Vatican.” “My friend is incredible,” Anne duly told the world. “But when it comes to his charity… one of the most unaffected aphrodisiacs in the world is charity work. Seriously, you want a girl to be impressed, vaccinate a few kids, build a house. Anne’s boyfriend would serve a four-and-a-half year prison sentence for fraud, with probably my favorite detail in the FBI files being that he kept fake monsignor robes in his and Anne’s wardrobe in front of their $37,500-a-month Trump Tower penthouse.

But see, it’s all a journey. And we’re so, so lucky that Jeff, still in the stage of pretending to throw something away with Lauren, takes a really long run-up to a miniscule percentage of “strategic giving” on his half-billion dollar boat. These fauxlanthropists may not be giving the world their taxes, but at least they’re having a little fun with us. Strategically, or else.

• In June, Marina Hyde will join fellow columnists at three Guardian Live events in Leeds, Brighton and London. Readers can attend these events in person and the London event will be streamed live