Here’s a lesson that Roman Polanski would do well to remember – never trust the ruddy Swiss.

Because the Swiss have done Roman Polanski in. Sure, they might look like the world’s friendliest people, what with their chocolate and precision-engineered watches and big fat red happy faces, but secretly none of them can wait to extradite you to America to face charges for fleeing sentencing for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl that you were arrested for three decades ago.

Still, this might be for the best. At least now Roman Polanski can’t make any more godawful Rush Hour cameos.

For as long as anybody can remember, Roman Polanski has been playing a perilous cat and mouse game with the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. In 1977, Polanski hoofed it out of America for a life in France before a court could sentence him for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. And that’s where he’s lived in exile ever since, only briefly surfacing to film stupid remakes of Oliver Twist where nobody even sings any happy songs about custard.

True, a few months ago it looked as if Roman Polanski might have wriggled off the hook when he briefly decided to ask the Los Angeles district attorney’s office for a dismissal of his charges so that he could return to America, but then he realised that he’d probably get arrested as soon as he stepped off the plane anyway so he bottled it.

And that was that – Roman Polanski resigned himself to spending the rest of his life in France, safe in the knowledge that the country’s unique combination of knotted female armpit hair and exaggerated nonchalance would keep the American authorities at bay.

But then it happened. Roman Polanski’s innate desire for either a) cuckoo clocks, b) jaunty feathered hats or c) Nazi gold got the better of him and he flew to Zurich where, surprise surprise, he was arrested by Swiss police at the request of the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. And while we all wait for him to be extradited, at least we’ve got the ensuing gigantic diplomatic poop-storm to keep us entertained. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

[French] Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand issued a statement saying he “profoundly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already known so many during his life.” Polanski also received public support from the foreign minister of Poland, where he moved as a toddler and avoided capture by the Nazis, who put his mother to death in a concentration camp.

So now we all just have to see who wins this weird tug-of-war over Roman Polanski. Honestly, this ordeal is just like the plot of one of his movies. Or at least it would be, if only it was much longer and not quite as good as everyone else says it is. And, you know, Roman Polanski pooed out the devil at the end of it. Or whatever.

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