I received an email from someone named Sunday Diko, who touched my heart with her story about how her family was in a refugee camp in Ghana. The Dikos could achieve their freedom only if I would take US$15,000 to an agent in Amsterdam, who would then give the money to a bank that would release the safe-deposit box containing the Diko family fortune. For this I would be rewarded handsomely, and the Dikos would be free from the refugee camp, where inmates subsist on little more than insects and easy access to the internet.

For more than a month, I corresponded with Sunday Diko, patiently explaining how I was raising the funds for her freedom by secretly selling my wife’s fake jewellery to a defrocked gemmologist, then funnelling the funds to a bookie who would place bets for me on an underground ferret race in Cuba. With those winnings, I would have enough gas money to drive from my home in America to Amsterdam, assuming I could get a visa.

As the correspondence dragged on, I perceived a certain impatience on Sunday’s part, culminating in her pledge never to write to me again.

I realise many of you may not be as amiable or as chatty as I am. You may not be willing to engage persons in lengthy correspondence, or to respond to companies promising enlargement of certain of your body’s organs by sending them photographs of organs that are already absurdly impressive.

But outlaw spam? I think it’s best just to ignore it. That seems to be working for Sunday.