LIZA CODY

Last week my friend joined the likes of TE Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway when he lost two crucial chapters of the book he's writing.

This concerns me because I was helping with rewrites and editing. In my clumsy way I take a hard copy and on it write in pencil all my corrections, suggestions and lyrical pensées. Pencil notes can be erased and ignored but if they're lost they're gone forever. No copy exists, no carbon, no electronic trace on a memory stick.

You'd think, in the electronic age, that this kind of incident was a thing of the past. Read More 

Today I had another email from Haggerty James which began, 'Hello my victim' and ended 'Think twice.'

Apparently I have been filmed masturbating to porn. My blackmailer will send the video to everyone on my hacked contact list tomorrow unless I pay $290 US using bitcoins. There are detailed instructions about how to mine bitcoins.

As scams go, I think this might be quite a good one. I like the idea of pornography being made using the customers of pornography as its subjects. And I like the idea that there might be a few people around ashamed enough to pay up.

Porn isn't a victimless crime.

All the movies I've seen in the past few months have been women led: Hidden Numbers, The Florida Project, Molly's Game, Three Billboards in Ebbing Missouri, Lady Bird, and I, Tonya. These are not all art house movies. They may not be big budget La-La-Land fare, but they're American and Hollywood-ish. There's a lot to applaud. And a lot more to hope for. Although I have to say I felt that I, Tonya was a true American tragedy, played for laughs.

I'm so impressed with two older actors: Frances McDormand and Laurie Metcalf – absolutely riveting, bad hair and all.