I have spent more than three decades pestering the vicitims of crime. I have intruded on the families of murder victims, interviewed the survivors of horriffic attacks, and demanded gory details from even kidnap victims.

Now I am a victim myself - a couple of thousand pounds has disappeared from my business bank account. My own theory is that my card was somehow cloned when I took £20 from a cash machine in Bournemouth - where I was covering the Lib Dem party conference - and the details were used in America, by the look of it, on the last day of the month when most people would be paid their hard-earned wages.

I will probably - HOPEFULLY - get the money back but why does this clinical impersonal crime make me feel so violated.

Those feelings at first made me also feel guilty for doorstepping all those other victims. But wait.

Many of them seemed to want to talk about it…. and, I suppose by writing this blog, so do I.

I feel better already.