Gilding The Lily…

A Strictly Come Dancing contestant feared being attacked like Jill Dando after falling victim to an internet stalker.

Quite, because Jill Dando received 'vile and grotesque abuse' and threats over the internet from a stalker before she was ki…

Oh, wait, that’s not right.

OK, start again: Yes, because Rav Wilding is a single, slightly built female wh…

Oh, wait, that’s not right either. He’s a strapping ex-policeman.

Mr Wilding, who was appearing on the BBC1 show Strictly Come Dancing at the time, told magistrates yesterday: 'The messages made me feel threatened because of the religious extremist views.'

But you’d met her. You knew who she was.

In a reference to Miss Dando, who was gunned down on her doorstep in Fulham, West London in April 1999, he added: 'Obviously in the nature of my work on Crimewatch and my predecessor being murdered in her job, I have to take security very, very seriously.

'I had to be careful using public transport and the BBC had to increase security for me.'

Oh, good grief!

Yes, his stalker was a loon, but not a cross between The Joker and Hannibal Lector.

Why does every trial these days seem to encourage wildly overblown rhetoric about how vulnerable and threatened the victims felt? This arms race between defence and prosecution to 'prove' the damaging effects is only going to throw up more and more odd looking juxtapositions between victim and villain…

Or perhaps, in a world where postmen can avoid doing their job because of a 19 year old cat, and schoolchildren putting on a play are 'devastated' when an audience member falls asleep, we have become a nation of weaklings?