LIZ JONES'S DIARY: It's not as though I'm Katie Price. I have always tried to do the right thing...

Published: 08:00 BST, 24 August 2024 | Updated: 13:20 BST, 24 August 2024

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I texted David to tell him I had met someone else and that it was going really well. At first he was happy for me. He was sorry he couldn’t make me happy but wished me well. I replied he was my first proper love, after David Cassidy.

He then replied it was a shame my writing never reflected that. And then we were off, the old familiar arguments.

In the end I said, ‘Enough, please don’t text me back.’

A second week of feverish texting between me and the handsome German. My phone came up with my screen time: 15 hours a day. I am the only woman he fantasises about. He wants to take me on safari.

We can stay in a tent, our naked bodies together. We will go on to Tuscany, then Paris. We planned our weekend. I ordered a Tesco delivery of man things. He even sent me a video from the balcony of his apartment overlooking the Thames. He said that I will love it there, the only thing missing is me, but that we will find our own place. I kept playing it. His voice is beautiful.

Then, on Sunday, a couple of short texts. I felt an impending sense of doom. As I had texted last, I didn’t message again: them’s the rules! Monday, Tuesday came and went. On Wednesday, I went to York to get my hair done, a wax, pedicure, threading. I bought a sheer navy grey linen long-sleeved tee. Oh, and a mid-century Danish sofa, but let’s gloss over that. Still nothing. Odd, as we’d had sex so many times on our night together, and his texts had been so effusive.

He told me I am beautiful, that I could have any man, any. I told him I am unsuccessful with men. How true that statement would turn out to be is laughable.

Come Friday afternoon, as I write this, I have still heard nothing. I confide in my friend Andrea. She says he was love-bombing me. But for a man approaching 60 to do that is ridiculous. She says maybe he got cold feet. Better to find out now.

I had warned him who I am. I told him about the facelift, the writing, the fact I was almost destroyed by my family. It’s not like I was hiding anything. But there has been the fear in my starved stomach (I can’t eat or sleep) that he would read something that put him off. You can’t blame him. But I had also promised him I would never hurt him with my writing, that I respected him too much.

LIZ JONES: In which he kept waking me up all night for sex

It is not as though I am Katie Price or Angelina Jolie, with their heavy baggage. I have always tried to do the right thing. I’ve never taken a penny from a man. I had thought I’d bought my house just at the right time, not in terms of interest rates, but because now I could share it with someone worthy of me. Because I am worth a lot. I am funny and interesting. He said my success is a magnet. What is it now, repellent?

Nic told me to cancel the man items on my delivery, which as I go through them now show how deluded I am. As does the fact on Thursday I applied fake tan, something I haven’t bothered to do for years. I have been singing the Morrissey song ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’. This lyric stands out: ‘Good times for a change…’

I thought I had found my match after decades alone. Someone I looked up to and fancied. He would never get on my nerves. I joked to Andrea that I could tweet his texts; the thread would go viral. ‘Beware this man! He will have sex with you and flatter you for 15 hours a day and fill your dreams and make you order Tesco (I’m sure the man in the store, as he removed my items from the basket, muttered, ‘Oh dear. Liz has been stood up again. Hold the Fever-Tree and the lemons!’) and then ghost you.’ Also, p*** off a Mail on Sunday columnist? Are you insane?

But I won’t do that. My career, my lack of fear in self-flagellation and exposure, is what did for us. I am now grieving in my beautiful house, not knowing how to pick myself up. Especially as it is all my fault.

Oh, and to top it all I told David I had met someone else! Spoke way too soon…