ALEXANDRA SHULMAN

Who else sleeps naked?

BANKS used to be havens for our cash – or at least regarded as somewhere safer than under the mattress. But these days our accounts have become depositaries of insecurity and paranoia.

Just recently, a close friend of mine was targeted by scammers. They telephoned claiming £20,000 had been stolen from her savings and asked her to remove a further £6,000 from her account and take it home where it could be inspected in order to check whether her bank was dealing in fake notes.

Fortunately, she was pretty sure it was a scam and refused to do any such thing. But she still made several phone calls to check it out: to the police and to her bank, or so she thought.

It turned out that each time she was still connected to the villains who played the parts of police officers and bank officials utterly convincingly.

The same week, my son found his bank account compromised with a series of payments to mobile phone companies. Alerted by letter about an account he had never set up, it took him hours of fear and frustration to get the bottom of the attempted fraud.

Another highly intelligent friend lost £70,000 by failing to recognise a complex con requesting him to transfer funds from one account to another.

The combination of increasingly sophisticated scamming and the mass closure of bank branches where you can actually speak to someone face to face has meant that attempts to discover which communications are genuine and which are fraudulent take place in an endless Hall of Mirrors, each step distorting our certainty further. William Burroughs once wrote: ‘A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on.’ Looks like he’s got a point.

Who else sleeps nude?

NIGHT- TIME t emperatures have plummeted and our bedroom is freezing. It’s too early to turn on the heating but the justadd- another- layer- of- clothesi n- bed s ol uti on s eems s o unbearably middle-aged. What other people wear in bed, along with how often they have sex or change their underwear, is one of life’s great unknowns. I have slept naked since I escaped my childhood pyjamas. I thought most people did. But the random poll among women I’ve just conducted shows I’m in the minority. Shorts, knickers and old Tshirts are the sleepwear of choice. Pyjamas at a push. What a sad state of affairs. Where’s the glamour in that? I s ay bri ng back t he satin nightdress – and while we’re about it, how about a l acetrimmed peignoir?

Hit the right note, PM

RATHER

than flying across the Atlantic to shake hands with Donald Trump, Theresa May should have used every second of the last week to polish up her public speaking in advance of the Tory Party conference.

Jeremy Corbyn has turned himself into a master of performance with an aptitude for slick on-stage delivery that rivals Sir Ian McKellen in full soliloquy. In contrast, Mrs May sounds, in turn, hesitant, robotic, forgetful and unconvinced. You find yourself hoping she won’t burst into tears.

Women’s voices traditionally have a problem in striking the right note. Too easily demeaned as whining or bossy, they are subject to a degree of criticism that is rarely applied to men. Margaret Thatcher famously had elocution lessons to lower the tone of her voice, and although I have little time for much of what she said, she certainly learned how to say it in a well-modulated and emphatic way.

People listened rather than going into snooze mode.

When she delivers her leader’s speech, Mrs May must at the least sound like a person who can get us through Brexit. There are a lot of people who don’t listen to what is said, but the way it is said.

She needs to pull off an Oscarwinning performance.

Bodyguard’s big f law

MANY

of us will tonight be missing our fix of Bodyguard which provided the thrilling, escapist tension to distract from that Sunday evening feeling.

However, in reality Richard Madden’s jaw- clenching bodyguard would never have reached the highest echelons of his profession. He was way too conspicuous.

The Royal Family are the biggest target in the country and they understandably have the best security detail in the business.

Their personal protection officers merge into the background, move with stealth and look like normal members of the public.

On the occasions I lunched with the late Princess of Wales in London restaurants, you were never aware of her bodyguards, and in my couple of dealings with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, their visible security was lighter than Naomi Campbell’s.

Contrast this with the shavenhaired, black- suited, sunglasswearing hulks who accompany every B-list celeb on their nights out. Nobody is likely to make an attempt on their lives but a tanklike bodyguard who nobody can miss has become as much of a celebrity accessory as a Louis Vuitton handbag.

Walk of pain

DETERMINED

not to become a sloth now I’m no longer editorin-chief of Vogue, on Thursday I walked home from where I was working. Four miles, since you ask. And no, I don’t know how many steps since my phone ran out of juice en route.

My reward? Two huge ruby-red blisters that have consigned me to flip-flops all weekend.

This isn’t equality

JUST

seen a cinema ad for Veet For Men hair removal cream, which I found plain weird. I thought all of us enlightened folk were supposed to be encouraging women into a greater degree of acceptance of our bodies in their natural state.

Recent adverts for female razors actually dare to show the odd hair on the leg.

Now it is men who are being exposed to the messy stench of the depilatory cream. Is that considered equal opportunity?