No sooner has Richard Curtis’s Love Actually reunion been announced than a rival emerges to its thermonuclear romantic charms. It is the burgeoning closeness between Ms Pamela Anderson, latterly of the beaches of Los Angeles County, and Mr Julian Assange, currently of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

By way of a recap, the association first came to light last October, when the Baywatch legend was photographed arriving at the embassy to visit the Wikileaks founder, carrying what she said was a vegan meal. Very shortly after, some hokey-cokey over Assange’s internet access being cut (by Ecuador, as it turned out) prompted some of his supporters to speculate that he was dead. “If he’s dead,” shrieked confirmed inadequate Roosh V, “I’d have that food tested.” Some fingered Pamela as a possible Hillary Clinton agent, with the various theories doing the rounds including the suggestion that she had given him a poisoned vegan sausage.

And yet – if we may pose the question indelicately – was the passing of the sausage in the other direction? Over to our two principals, who can’t wait to be stagily coy about their relationship, and at considerable length.

First up is Pamela, who speaks to Grazia, with the magazine allowing her to explain why she “demurred from answering whether she was in a relationship with Julian”. “It’s very difficult to talk about when you’re under surveillance,” explained Pamela, hinting she has more viewers at Langley than she has had since being voted off in round one of Dancing on Ice in 2013 (after a series of stumbles, Keith Chegwin would eliminate her in the skate-off).

As she took Grazia into her confidence, Pamela was keeping under the radar at a party for a lingerie brand at Annabel’s nightclub. Right out of the Salman Rushdie “hidden years” playbook, that one. Though looking at the transparent lace dress she turned up in, I need hardly tell you Who Wore It Better. “He’s a great guy,” she went on, of Julian. “I don’t want to say anything about whether there’s a romance. So, let’s say we’re just good friends.”

Grazia goes a bit further, alleging they “have had a series of dates at the Ecuadorian embassy”. I’m not sure where else they would have dates, unless for their sixth anniversary he’s planning to show her the inside of a police van, followed by dinner at the Heathrow detention area. After all, if it’s not old hat to mention, nearly five years into his monstrous pussy-out, Julian is still wanted in Sweden to answer sexual assault allegations.

But what does the man himself have to add on the romance/showmance? Plenty, if his subsequent interview with an Australian radio show is anything to go by. “I mean, I like her, she’s great,” he says of Pamela. Are they in love? “I’m not going to go into the private details.” Come, come. “She’s an attractive person with an attractive personality.” And furthermore: “She’s no idiot at all – she’s psychologically very savvy.”

Note the well-placed “psychologically”. I love how Julian manages to make even a compliment sound proprietorially undermining. Other people think you’re a moron, Pamela – ONLY I SEE THE REAL YOU. But there’s more. “You’ve got people like Pamela Anderson who are independent because they kind of manage their own career,” the Putin stooge judges. “She can’t really be squeezed by, you know, a TV executive.” All right, all right – I think she gets it now, Julian. She’s not on the telly any more.

In some ways, none of this should be a surprise – confinement can be a turn-on. I imagine Julian has all sorts of unfortunate cases writing to him as penpals; he may even be engaged to six or seven of them. Since he has been inside, the Yorkshire Ripper has had more girlfriends than Mick Jagger, so it seems reasonable to assume that a whole spectrum of notorious incarcerations can be an aphrodisiac. (Unless we’re putting the Ripper’s appeal down to the rapes and hammer murders.) Only this week, Britain’s Most Dangerous Prisoner™, Charles Bronson, got engaged again, this time to a former soap opera bit-part player, who told the Mirror: “I used to think he was a violent thug, but from the moment I read one of his books, I just had to write to him – he was the inspiration I have been waiting for all my life.”

(Incidentally, to all those Assange bros now planning to write very silly 4,000-word blogs claiming I am literally equating Julian Assange with Peter Sutcliffe and Charles Bronson: you go right ahead and break ground on those bad boys, my darlinks. If it falls to me to keep you off the streets for an afternoon, so be it.)

As for Pamela, she does seem far too nice to be mixed up in all this. “It’s so rare that he has someone to come and visit him and bring him things,” she says, of Julian. “So I want to be able to do that for him.”

Of course, his social life wasn’t always so sparse. Time was Julian had a constant stream of famous visitors at the Knightsbridge-based embassy, who always stopped off at the nearest grocer (Harrods) to pick up something yummy for him. Their significant funds coupled with their significant lack of imagination meant this was almost always a hamper. I was told by one who saw it that his room ended up almost wicker-walled, with Julian always able to produce a potted stilton or some whisky marmalade for Kathy Lette, John Pilger, Yoko Ono or whoever was on the afternoon shift. (Never mind those stories of Barney the Purple Dinosaur being played on a deafening loop at Guantanamo. In some ways, you have to concede that the Assange celebrity guestlist was the most sophisticated psychological torture ever conceived.)

Some years on, and ... well, it’s true that you can safely ignore the best-before dates on a lot of those foodstuffs. But I would imagine Julian’s tinned pâté stocks are nearing dangerously low levels. Indeed, the welcome attentions of the strictly vegan Pamela means Julian’s latest batch of documents from the Kremlin is only the second most-guarded secret in that room, bumped out of its hiding place by his now uber-sensitive supply of foie gras.

“Wikileaks is one of the only reliable news stories because it’s just the truth,” concludes Pamela, bravely resisting getting bogged down in The Obvious. “I really believe history will look back on him as such an important person.”

So do I, old stick. For now, there is a distinct spring in Julian’s step. On Valentine’s Day, he reactivated his five-years dormant Twitter account (yes, yes – there goes the neighbourhood) with a flourish, announcing: “Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated (in a curious plot)”. But of course – in what else? Clearly, this is all heading for a headline-grabbing two-shot on the embassy’s Juliet balcony, and I urge our lovebirds to proceed to it without delay.