We must beware “hostile foreign actors”, warned the chancellor of the exchequer. Sound advice. Russell Crowe could pick a fight in an empty room and you don’t want to cross Gérard Depardieu when he’s had a bladderful of wine on an aircraft.
So wary is Philip Hammond of tetchy thespians that he is going to spend £1.9 billion on keeping them at bay. It would have been cheaper just to tell Monsieur Depardieu to visit the loo before boarding.
The actors he is most worried about, though, have not been to drama school; they are enemy agents who want to cause chaos by exploiting security weaknesses in our online lives. The chancellor did not name Russia, perhaps for fear of being bugged, but it was