Words: Anhedonia, n.

IN HIS book Woody Allen, John Baxter thanks somebody for the loan of a New York apartment, which "gave me the chance to live and work at the heart of Woody Allen's milieu". Uh? Not only does he relocate the Carlyle but describes that splendid singer and pianist Bobby Short as "chubby" in the same paragraph. Will Baxter be as lithe - and working - at his age?

The sour biography induces anhedonia - the inability to feel pleasure, from Greek and Latin, via French, first used by T.A. Ribot in 1896, who said: "if I may coin a counter-designation to analgesia". William James picked it up - and thought sea-sickness a cause. Wider currency would have come - or would it? - if Allen had not chosen a new title, Annie Hall, three weeks before opening.