I’m going to be annoying now: I’m going to tell you half a story and refuse to reveal the rest. But it’s only a small thing, and I’m just bursting to tell you how huge it is.

There’s this writer, okay, someone whose work I’ve admired pretty much forever: he’s cropped up in the Radio Times On This Day malarky more times than I can count, I can be fairly certain you rate him too. Mr Anonymous has just read a script of mine and so has his wife, who’ll have to be Ms Anonymous, and I spoke to them both a second ago.

Their quick, overall summary: “Worthy of Patricia Highsmith.”

If you don’t know her work, I honestly think you’re missing out: Strangers on a Train? The Ripley books?

And here’s a thing. I’ve been re-reading a lot of Anthony Minghella’s scripts lately and in his introduction to one, he recounts how this very same Mr Anonymous had once described a work of his as having shades of Patricia Highsmith. Minghella had never heard of her before, but thought he’d best check her out. And you see what that led to? The Talented Mr Ripley.

‘Course, I’ll get notes and all the buts/ands/howevers presently but just for tonight I’m rocked.

William