This Christmas, spare a thought for poor old Roman Polanski. Things haven’t been going his way at all lately.

He’s going to have a rubbish Christmas. And considering that he’s spent at least the last 30 Christmases on the lam in Europe after being convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old girl, that means it’s going to be incredibly rubbish. You see, an American court has just decided not to dismiss Roman Polanski’s unlawful sex case, despite him asking really nicely.

Worse, he’s still under house arrest. And you wouldn’t want to spend your Christmas trapped in a luxurious snow-covered alpine chalet surrounded by your wife and two children, do you? That’s basically the dictionary definition of the word torture.

This whole Roman Polanski thing has edged towards something approximating a conclusion. And by ‘conclusion’ we mean ‘Roman Polanski’s death from old age’ because the whole affair seems to be brimming with people determined to stall it. But here are the big updates for any fans of Roman Polanski or alleged unlawful sex with minors out there:

1 – Roman Polanski has lost his appeal to have the case against him dismissed. This is a particular surprise, because US appeal courts usually give in after the 150th time an usually short film director gets his lawyers to whine at them.

2 - The court doesn’t seem to want Roman Polanski to go to jail anyway. In its ruling it suggested that if, Polanski agreed to be sentenced in absentia, he could argue his case of official misconduct and possibly get off that way. Or, even if that plan went up, the judge could rule that he’d already served his jail time in 1978 before he legged it to France.

It’s hard to know what to make of the last point. Although it sounds like the court just wants to bring the Roman Polanski case to a conclusion, it might all just be a way to draw him into a trial where he can be hit with the full force of a jail sentence. Or, by pointing out that he might have already served his jail sentence, it could be mocking him for spending 30 years in manky old France eating slabs of undercooked horse when he could have spent the whole time in his massive LA mansion making films that people actually watch instead.

But still, while this continues to play out – or until he’s extradited back to America next year – Roman Polanski will have to remain under house arrest. And that must be awful. Sure he lives in a breathtaking alpine mansion with his family under better conditions that many of us could ever dream of experiencing, but remember – it’s a breathtaking alpine mansion in Switzerland. What’s he going to do if his neighbours Shania Twain or Tina Turner unexpectedly come to visit? He can’t jump out of the back window like a normal person would – he’d set off his electronic tag.

Truly, Roman Polanski is living the worst kind of nightmare.

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