Is nothing private anymore?

The 'freelance journalist' I spoke to last week rang again today.

He must read this blog because he left the following message on voicemail:

"I had a chat with you last Tuesday. You weren't very happy and I wasn't very happy, but what is puzzling me is our conversation has actually gone on to the Internet on the Forest website [sic]. I just wondered, a private conversation between two people, you on your mobile and I [sic] on my mobile, and suddenly it's on the Internet for everybody to read, a conversation between me being a journalist and a smoker and all that. So I was concerned about how our private conversation came to be on the Internet."

In response I sent the following text:

Happy to chat if you tell me your name and who you write (or have written) for. You will appreciate that I do not respond to anonymous callers. Kind regards.

That was at 10.03. I am still waiting for a reply. In the meantime I have entered his number into my phonebook alongside the name 'Stalker'.

PS. Writing in the current issue of The Spectator, Charles Moore (former editor of the Daily Telegraph) describes a private phone conversation with an unnamed journalist.

If it's good enough for Mr Moore (Margaret Thatcher's official biographer) it's good enough for me!