Gary McKinnon: humanity wins out over spooks In their heavy-handed pursuit of Mr McKinnon through numerous courts and over many years, however, the US authorities have arguably demonstrated even less common sense than their quarry. In the end, extradition has been halted by Mrs May on the grounds of the accused man's fragile mental health and high suicide risk. This is based on the assessments of eminent British psychiatrists, and it is justifiable. But Britain also didn't want to extradite McKinnon for more profound reasons. The McKinnon case has fed into a wider public anxiety about Britain's relationship with the US. During the Blair years, many British people who broadly like and respect the US, including me, none the less felt that our government had grown embarrassingly eager to do its bidding. The notorious "Yo, Blair!" exchange between George W Bush and Tony Blair merely illustrated the extent to which our prime minister had become overly eager to please a more powerful political cousin in the White House. The 2003 Extradition Treaty, which is widely perceived as imbalanced in favour of extraditing British citizens to the US - and not the other way round - was part of that rather craven attitude and era. It is perhaps worth remembering that during the bleak days of the Northern Ireland Troubles, when Britain was beset by IRA terrorism, the American courts repeatedly rejected or delayed numerous British government extradition requests for the return of suspected or convicted IRA fugitives. The justification often given was that the motivation of the IRA members was "political." The IRA, among other things, attempted to assassinate the entire Cabinet with the Brighton bomb, and murdered and injured innumerable British soldiers and civilians. Can you imagine, if a terrorist group repeatedly performed similar actions on American soil, the reaction of the US government to a country that sheltered its members or escaped convicts on the grounds that their actions were "political"? I can, and it looks rather like what happened to the Taliban government in Afghanistan. The containment of terrorism requires strong international co-operation, and the memory of those dark days should not make us churlish in response. But we need to make sure that the terms of the Special Relationship do not include an inbuilt double standard. And in the meantime, no one in Britain should feel guilty for refusing to hand over a non-violent British computer hacker with serious psychiatric problems to the retribution of the US courts. Pitt's perfume ad: it's a stinker Time has artfully weathered Brad Pitt, who has transcended his early reputation as a pretty boy to prove himself an extremely good actor. So it is a shock to see him in the latest Chanel No 5 advertisement with an uncertain blankness in the eyes that calls to mind the flickering comprehension of Derek Zoolander, the male model played by Ben Stiller in Zoolander, his relentlessly funny film satire of the fashion world. No one could blame Pitt for looking secretly appalled, because he has the most terrible lines, piped full of gaseous faux-profundity: "It's not a journey, every journey ends... but we go on. The world turns and we turn with it, and plans disappear, dreams take over... Tonally, it sits close to Zoolander's body lotion advertisement in which he flipped about in a merman costume before saying in a reverentially hushed voice: "Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty." Years ago, I was asked to Chanel's London HQ with my film critic's hat on, to review another glossily ludicrous Chanel No 5 "film," this time by the Australian director Baz Luhrmann, which featured Nicole Kidman in Paris intoning the much-parodied words: "I'm a dancer, I love to dance!" Once I escaped from the scented cocoon of the Chanel building, I said that it was quite clearly an advertisement, albeit one handsomely made by a film director. But when it comes to selling us stuff, I still think real admen do it better. My hot pants were really quite cool We hear, simultaneously, that leather trousers are back, and that they top the list of 15 clothes purchases most regretted by women. The other poor choices include thigh-high boots, ponchos, shell suits, hot pants, clogs and flared trousers. I have owned a fair few best-forgotten items - I remember, as an 11-year-old, lobbying my mother for a sky-blue velour leisure suit with the aspirational word "jogging" emblazoned across it - but have always had just enough sense to forgo the stuffed car-seat look of leather trousers. None the less, the list may be a little prescriptive. I still like to think that my combination of hot pants and black opaque tights was a good look as a student, although it might not work on the school run today. And Frida and Agnetha from Abba managed to exude a kind of fearless Seventies sex appeal while boldly wearing almost every single forbidden item on the list. While allowing that too much good taste can be dreary, the real talent is to glimpse the likelihood of regret even as the siren voices of fashion are whispering powerfully in your ear. Which is why, this year, I am keeping well away from floral-patterned leggings and large peplums.