I am sure Joshua will have something revealing to say about the arrest in Switzerland of the fugitive film director Roman Polanski in conjunction with a request from the authorities in California.

Clearly outraged by the possibility that Mr Polanski may have to go to jail for statutory rape of a minor (involving apparently drugging her prior to anal and oral sex) because a few 'little people' don't see it their way, his various defenders have sprung into action.

So far I've read Harvey Weinstein and Ronald Harwood, both associates of Mr Polanski in the 'motion picture industry', as well as Mr Polanski's lawyers who I caught on the wireless. Only the Mail and Dominic Lawson in the Independent have robustly contradicted the slippery line being peddled by Polanski's apologists.

Apparently antisemitism is at the root of Mr Polanski's tribulations, although there is also a brief nod to the fate of his wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Mansons. This has also been rolled out in the cases of Robert Maxwell, the Guinness defendants, and Bernard Madoff. It invariably fails to cut any ice. 

As a Holocaust survivor Polanski is really one of life's victims, although I fail to see what that has to do with what he admitted he did at Jack Nicholson's house. Some of his defenders have even tried to indirectly smear the original trial judge — who is dead — on the grounds that he belonged to a golf club which allegedly did not have Jewish members. I belong to a club which does not admit women; this does not make me or my co-clubbers a misogynist. This sets the scene for the claim that Polanski committed no crime at all; it was all just a moment of madness typical of that era. Maybe Charles Manson should have essayed that line at his trial? But then Manson was not a major creative artist.