Terence Blue arrived, not in a chauffeur-driven car, not in his red BMW from which he was banned, but in an ordinary London taxi. Bedlam reigned as the press suddenly realised: Terence Blue, who had seemed to disappear off the face of the earth, was actually here; photographers pressed forward, saw that one of Terence’s arms was in a sling, slipped in the snow in their excitement to get near. Show business journalists who had known Terence for years, had drunk with him in bars all over the world late into the night, crowded around him, pushing out the crime reporters and the serious press, Hi Terry! Did you do it Terry? Where’ve you been Terry? and even, seeing the sling, remembering the stabbing, You all right Tel boy? How’re you feeling?

He stopped only for a moment, more gaunt and paler than people remembered, his attention caught by another taxi stopping, disgorging Elvira Pugh the crime-writer, one of his ex-wives; the journalists saw him raise his right hand in greeting. Just at that moment a group of women arrived on the other side of the road waving a banner and chanting RAPIST RAPIST and a rather muddy snowball suddenly hit him on the shoulder. That would have been the photograph, the one that travelled round the world in seconds, the image of the Famous Film Star brought low.

But Terence Blue understood that. He was a Star. There had to be a better photograph. After the split second of stillness when he was hit, he bent down and scooped up some snow with his right hand and threw it back at the women with the banner. So it was that picture, the picture of Terence Blue on trial for rape but throwing a snowball, the other arm in a white sling, that was syndicated all over the world: to Berlin and Paris and Cape Town and Bangkok and Auckland and Delhi and Dublin. It became a very famous photograph. A photographer had caught the expression on his face: a kind of wry half-smile as if to say, give us a break, you don’t know I’m a rapist yet.

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