LIZ JONES: I discovered the identity of my secret admirer – and my blood ran cold

After much hesitation and advice from Nic to ignore the email from the man who claimed he worshipped me from afar and wanted to take me to dinner at Simpson’s In The Strand, I sent a polite reply.

I apologised for not waving when he noticed me in Soho House; I was sorry to read of his terrible divorce; and I’d be happy to meet for lunch. I did warn him I’m meeting a millionaire at Estelle Manor next week, told him his name sounded ‘like a James Bond villain’ and, ‘are you sure you’re not catfishing?’ I planned to have him vetted by my friends in the Met (I learned my lesson with Neil) and, me being me, I would have inevitably got cold feet and cancelled.

I’m always polite when corresponding with readers: 99 times out of 100 they are sweet, concerned and caring. I was recently asked by a man in his 90s to post a birthday card to his elderly friend to make his day, which I duly did. This time, something was off. How did this one get my email and who uses these words to describe his ex: ‘shameless succubus’?

The next morning I received a short email saying he hadn’t been sure I would reply, I had made his year and he would look into securing a table. But he wasn’t as clever as he thought: there, hidden in the email address, was his real name. My blood ran cold. This was the reader I had met at Tate Modern who was so enraged I thought him short (though he’d been the one to ask my height; I couldn’t care less; I was in love with Prince). Enraged I wasn’t interested, he then emailed to tell me I should have gone ahead and committed suicide and sent a nasty package in the post, which the office forwarded to me (now they open everything before sending on).

I ignored this latest email, merely wondering how on earth people have time to draft several thousand words to someone they don’t know, and went about my busy day.

That evening, obviously aware he’d made a mistake, uncloaking himself (it’s like an episode of Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler), he sent this: ‘Just kidding. Sorry Liz if I got you all excited. I was just practising my writing [!] when I experienced an irritating flashback to my puerile little interaction with facile minor old celebrity therapy f**kwit you. The phoney Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw. You answered that absurd email, proof you have hit rock bottom. [A famous female columnist] is in stitches, helpless with laughter. She thinks you escaped from Madame Tussauds; bet me a tenner you would never answer an email that ludicrous. She wrote: “Even old lobotomy Jones can’t be that desperate, surely.”’ (I alerted my fellow journalist to the fact a possibly dangerous reader was taking her name in vain. ‘I have never been in communication with him,’ she shot back. ‘He sent me an incredibly long letter about you two years ago, which was clearly mental and I put it in the bin. All my love and respect to a colleague. xxx.’)

Anyway, he continued: ‘Everything will worsen in the twilight of your decline. In the meantime, double up on the citalopram and pray that one day it works.’

He must know I’ve only just lost Mini Puppy. The famous columnist said that, ‘It’s so awful this is sometimes part of our job.’ But I don’t think we, or anyone, should put up with it. A racist comment can get you sacked, cancelled. Why can’t a man who sent me a package with ‘Burn in hell’ written in blood be exposed?! We all know bad behaviour escalates.

I could have put him in my virtual bin, but I feel writing about stalking and abuse (as well as reporting him to the police) might alert a woman about to meet a man she met online. I knew, from my marriage, that some men hate us but had no idea the rage that lurks behind the front doors of strangers.

I keep thinking about Ann Widdecombe: a feisty woman, she would have fought back. I’m deleting social media and not opening any emails or packages from anyone I don’t know. Sod optimism, hello self-preservation.

JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK

• Only a few weeks since purchasing my classic Range Rover, I was alerted to traction failure, airbag failure, brake failure and a warning saying, ‘Do not drive above 35 mph.’ Oh, and the knocking noise I’d been ignoring means the exhaust pipe leaks…