Hitchcock would have loved COVID. It’s proving his point about fear: deep down, people actually enjoy it. ‘A mother,’ said the great director, ‘has in her arms a three-month-old baby…and she goes “boo!”, immediately causing the baby to get hiccups, and the child nearly cries and doesn’t — it begins to laugh.’ When the child reaches the age of five or six, it ‘goes on a swing. And what does it do? It goes higher and higher, until it scares itself by going too high and stops.’ Older children, and adults too, ‘pay money to go into the haunted house and come out giggling. They pay money to go on the rollercoaster and scream with fear.’