Linda Smith
This is terrible. I just went on to the Comedy Forum and saw the thread "Linda Smith dies." I followed the link to the BBC news page and there it was. Linda Smith has died, of ovarian cancer, aged just 48. Obviously her close friends will have known she was ill, but I didn't know her that well. This didn't stop a cold chill entering my bones when I read the news story. Poor Linda. I worked with her a few times on the radio, and bumped into her on many an occasion once we'd been introduced (I think by my agent Kate). When 6 Music was starting up, my producer Frank and I had hoped to enlist Linda as a regular guest on my Teatime show. She was really keen, and came in to pilot a session. In the end, she was too busy to commit. And no wonder, the amount of stuff she did. Prior to that, I'd interviewed her for a pilot version of what became My Life In CD on 6 Music (eventually under the aegis of Tracey MacLeod). It was Desert Island Discs, basically, and Linda and I spent a happy hour or so chatting through her life and favourite records. The thing that makes it doubly memorable is that I know the exact date: September 11, 2001. Once we'd finished, in a pokey studio in Western House, we were told that a plane had crashed into a building in New York. We went into a nearby office and watched the second plane crash into the second of the Twin Towers. A day etched on everybody's memory, and now one that I can't help but recall (not the last time I saw her, but the longest amount of quality time I spent with her). I wish to remember Linda as she was: full of life, a really warm and witty person to be around, even on days of international incident. I'm sad that she is gone. Those who knew her better than I did will be even sadder. And anyone who saw her on TV or heard her on the radio will be sad in a different way.

When routine bites hard
Now that I go to the office every day, my mornings have atrophied into exactly the kind of routine I went freelance to avoid. How ironic. It's only temporary, while Lee and I finish the sitcom, but it's potentially depressing. Unless, that is, you allow the odd little marker flags of routine to stimulate your imagination.

I leave the house, Reggie Perrin style, at 8.40am, walk up let's-call-it Coleridge Close, turn right into Tennyson Avenue and then across the common onto Wordsworth Drive, at which point, if it's really cold, as it is at present, I start to warm up - is that something to do with "the burn" that people who run get? Anyway, the first reassuring marker is the slightly odd-looking schoolgirl whom I pass walking in the other direction (presumably, to school) at the dip of Tennyson Avenue. It's initially quite alarming to pass the same person at the same point at the same time, but it certainly saves wondering what time it is. Then, as I proceed in an easterly direction down let's-call-it Wordsworth Drive in the direction of Redhill, I pass a young mum with a toddler in a pushchair at precisely the same point. What slaves we all are to routine. From men to women to schoolchildren. You have to assume that both of these otherwise random residents of Reigate and Redhill, the girl and the mum, recognise that they pass the same man in a long coat with a hat on listening to a portable music player every day and at the same point. Perhaps this gives them pause about the routine nature of their own lives. Do they perhaps wonder who I am and where I'm going? Actually, it's an easy guess that I'm walking towards Redhill to catch a train, but do they fill in other details using their imagination? Do they think I'm a kind-looking man, or treat me, like all unattended men of a certain age (and certainly those in long coats cutting across commons) as a potential child-killer?

On my way down the hill, I pass a residential street along which, my powers of deduction tell me, a junior school is situated. Young mums pour out of there at about 8.50, some on foot, most in road-hogging cars. As I cross this road, I am always struck (although not actually struck) by how reckless and in a hurry these mums in cars are, once they've dropped off the kids at school. Or perhaps they are just distracted by the million and one things they have left to do. Either way, it sometimes feel as if they are trying to run me down.

My next routine marker now comes as I approach Redhill Station just before 9.10am, as passengers from a very busy train trickle into Redhill itself across the pelican crossing. It is here that I have started to notice a rotund man, who may only be in his late 20s or early 30s, and he's always smiling to himself. The first time I saw him I thought perhaps he had just thought of something funny. The second time it struck me as a not unpleasant trait (after all, what is there to smile about if you are commuting into and not out of Redhill?) - some may find it creepy or odd that he is always so amused, but not me. I like it. He has a Hawaiian look about him. Is that why he is so preternaturally happy? Because he comes from the land of hula skirts and Elvis Presley? It's good that this happy-go-lucky nature travels so well.

I am one of those people who catches the same train and thus stands at the exact same spot on Platform 2 so that I can get on the foremost carriage at the same place and hopefully get one of the non-table seats facing backwards, platform-side. If it's a window seat, as it must be, I get a hook to hang my overcoat on. On the platform I always see the same man on his way to work (slightly later than the commuter herd, like me), also in an overcoat but never in a hat, despite his bald head. He looks quite hard but quite smart. He reminds me of the fairly obscure American screen actor Elias Koteas. Anyway he gets on at the first set of doors, not the second, so I never see him in transit. But I have seen him in London, on the platform of the Underground, Victoria Line, heading North, like me. We have so much in common, and yet, so little.

Incidentally, on Friday, when approaching Victoria Station on my usual train in my usual seat, as I was putting on my overcoat, I accidentally brushed the head of the man sitting in front of me with my sleeve. He was quite old and had a bald head with some wispy hair on it, which he immediately brushed flat, as if perhaps he thought a ghost had ruffled his hair. I don't think he realised I had done it, so no apology was necessary. I just sat down and hoped he wasn't too spooked.

Well, I saw that very same man today, on the same train, in the same seat. He's as bad as the rest of us with his routine. I almost felt like brushing his wispy head again with my sleeve but held back. You shouldn't mess with people's heads, but one morning last week, I had forgotten my Travelcard and when I was just about to pass the schoolgirl in the dip of let's-call-it Tennyson Avenue, I remembered and turned round and went back in the other direction. That must have freaked her out. She was probably put off thinking about her homework for a second there.

The year God made me
This is the cover of my 1980 diary, from which we gather that the fourteen-to-fifteen year old me was into: the punk rock group 999, the Elephant Man, Marilyn Monroe (or at least the iconic image thereof), Gene Hackman, the Undertones and the NCFE Film Society. I reproduce it here simply because I am writing a diary again in 2006. It just happens not to have a collage on the cover. After a false start in 1972, I began writing diaries in earnest in 1973 and continued pretty much until 1993, which I wrote on my old Apple Mac Classic II and thus can no longer access, as I password-protected it and wrote it in WordPerfect. If nothing else, these diaries give a vivid picture of what I watched on television between the ages of seven and twenty seven.


To keep up the tradition: last night, I watched ER. I know I should just let it go, but I can't. They are so stuck for stories now they've put Abby and Luka back in bed together ("Do you still like ketchup on your eggs?") and crashed a plane on Chicago so that Neela could save a child from a burning building whilst on ambulance duty. We've been here before. However, they haven't lost the old magic completely. A patient whose heart had stopped was being kept alive by Pratt and Ray physically thumping his chest so that his family could be gathered around him to say their last goodbyes. I had something in my eye, I don't mind telling you.

Footballers Wives (which, according to the title cards, doesn't have an apostrophe, so it would be wrong of me to force one on it)


The new series began on ITV1 tonight with a 90-minute indulgo-special, and, even though it has the advantage of no Conrad (shot in the chest with a rifle at the end of the last run), it still has way too much of the hysterical Amber. It's a shadow of its former self, I'm afraid, and after an hour, we switched over. Another one bites the dust. It would be silly to say that Footballers Wives has jumped the shark, as it did this when Chardonnay's breast implants caught fire in something like episode two of the first series - that's not the point - but in constantly trying to out-do and out-camp itself, it has hit something of a rut. The Pride & Prejudice wedding vows sequence was a good attempt at topping previous excesses, and had one great line (a new, militant black player turned up dressed as a slave, saying, "It ain't about pride for us, it's about prejudice") but the rest was just a bit desperate. Not enough Gillian Taylforth or Nicholas Ball, the old timers. And if I hear one more character say something insulting, then apologise with, "I was out of order," I may have to, well, go back through my old EastEnders scripts to make sure I never wrote it. Which I daresay I did.

Anyway, nice to have one less long-running drama series to watch.

Haircut!
First full day out of the house with radical new haircut. I have allowed it to grow without interference for some months now, as ever enjoying the early thrill of seeing it appear behind my ears, then indulging in being able to run my hands through it at moments of concentration, and - finally - watching it "settle" at that precise moment when it moves from neglect to intent, and no longer just looks as if I need a haircut. First, it starts to curl at the sides and "flicks" follow me around for a few weeks so that I look like Madonna, then the flicks get too heavy and fall down of their own accord, only to - eek! - curl up again as they reach the second bend, as it were. It is at this point, when two palmfuls of shampoo is no longer enough to achieve full coverage and my The Word photo looks like it's of someone else, I start to luxuriate in what actually passes as long hair.

I've gone through this cycle approximately five times in my post-Goth adult life. In 1993, I grew it past bob length (sorry about the beard) . . .


. . . and it went past my shoulders in '94 . . .


. . . only to be shorn when I became the editor of Empire and felt the need to gain the respect and trust of my new colleagues. (I know.) My most recent adventure was in 2003, as seen in this 6 Music snap with Siouxsie and Budgie, who are literally giants of Goth rock.


The latest attempt was curtailed yesterday at Toni & Guy in Reigate.

It was Mel who had the honour of lopping it off. I asked for short at the back and sides, spiky on top and a fuller fringe. She said, without meaning to be judgemental, "Yeah, a lot of the indie bands have it like that." I didn't know what to say. She's right. They do. But I didn't want her to think that I was trying to look like an indie band, did I?

Actually, catching my new, 1940s House self in train window and lift mirror during the day, I thought I could probably pass myself off as one of The Rakes.


Whose new single, All Too Human, is, by the way, spectacularly good, as is the accompanying video, currently never off MTV2, which is based on Dogville and must be viewed to the very end, when the camera pans up. Their official site is here but don't expect a useful biog or lyrics.

SPOILER ALERT! [if you don't want to know who was fired on The Apprentice, read no further]

The Apprentice returns
I'm hardly out on a limb here finding The Apprentice compulsive viewing. The interesting thing is that I missed the first few episodes of the first series last year, and, after a confident recommendation from my producer Leona, I caught up with it at about the third "You're fired." I was hooked. So there's a lot riding on the second series, which started tonight on BBC2. First up, they haven't done anything rash like change it. Good. It's still Sir Alan, looking like he's been created by CGI and playing up to his image of irascible East End boy-done-good who does not suffer women gladly, flanked by Margaret and Nick, who've been by his side for 25 years, you know. Anyway: 14 business hopefuls who range from appalling to teeth-grindingly appalling. Jo, 35, made redundant from MG Rover, has already crowned herself the new Saira. She keeps whooping and punching the air as if to prove to herself that she's still "got it" and was the only one to burst into tears in the boardroom when accused of being a woman.

Tonight's boys-vs-girls task - buy fruit and veg, sell it, make profit - gave early clues as the most venal of the apprentices. (Actually, the pre-task task showed the boys up to be po-faced, by-the-manual, flipchart automatons as they brainstormed what to call the team, while the girls were soppy but at least decisive.) Syed, 31, would definitely sell his own grandmother to make it. I found myself laughing out loud at his pronouncements - how upset was he that nobody else liked his suggestion of being called the A-Team? Every time he suggested it (they eneded up being called fucking Invicta), I laughed. Then, while winding up Sir Alan in the death, he was challenged to say what he'd do for Amstrad, in the unlikely event that he win, and he said, with a straight face (his only face), "Add value."

Anyway, the girls managed to get a vanload of rotten fruit for free and sell it at a profit of something like £1,100. Sir Alan accused them of buying "toot" and using their womanly charms, as if this was against the rules. (Hey, he made it by being an ugly man, he doesn't see why non-ugly women she have any advantage over His Struggle.)However, they won, and the boys' team leader, Ben Stanberry, an IT consultant who'd apparently "beaten" cancer that was diagnosed in 2001, was rounded upon by his team and got fired. He deserved to be fired. He was weak and reasonable. He wouldn't last five minutes. Also, despite his heroic efforts, the chemotherapy seems to have left him tired. He should use this opportunity to go home and get some real rest.

Syed's card has been marked. He will be happier when a few more people have been fired and he can be an A-Team all on his own.

My favourite is the only one yet to annoy me: Paul, 25. He's not necessarily my tip, but he's my favourite. He auctioned off an apple for £5. That's business acumen. But he seems less of a self-aggrandising prick than the others.

Glad to have you back, Sir Alan. You help to confirm that I hate business people with a passion.

Old Seinfelds update
Got back into watching old Seinfelds on DVD: The Cafe and The Tape from Season 3. Just for the record. Preferred the former, in which George sits an IQ test for his girlfriend and Elaine does it for him - something that, guess what, actually happened to one of the writers who wrote it. This show is a documentary. Episode-stealing Kramer moment: when he is handed the hot towel in the cafe and reacts accordingly.

Feeder news
Readers of my old blog will know that I maintain a network of bird feeders in the back garden. I buy my seed, premium sunflower hearts, in bulk from these nice people (see how easily I fall into the trap of imagining that because a company sells good things they must be nice people! God bless me). Once a month I order four 10kg sacks of the stuff, with a stock-up of peanuts when needed. (I have two wire-mesh peanut feeders, which go down much less quickly than the four Conqueror seed feeders in die-cast powder-coated zinc and strong polycarbonate tubing: two medium, with 10 ports, and one large, with 12 ports.) Because the seed people deliver two working days after you order, I fucked up this time and ordered my usual 40kg on Friday. The shipment arrived too late yesterday for me to go out and replenish, so I did it this morning. In the interim, all three seed feeders had run down to the bottom. I felt bad, as all my lovely birds - blue tits, coal tits, great tits, greenfinches, goldfinches, chaffinches, nuthatches and robin - were coming down and finding the cupboards bare. It was cold and wet when I went out in my wellies to fill them up this morning, so that was my penance for letting the birds down.

All feeders are now filled to the brim and I promise I won't go on about this any more, but the reward always comes when I am mid-replenish. A blue tit will perch at the top of the apple tree with me working underneath and call out to the other birds. I imagine he is saying, "At last! The man is topping them up! Come on down!" The bravest ones don't even wait until I've finished before flying down and tucking in. This is my Francis of Assissi moment.

Proof that the seed people are nice: I keep the bulk seed in 10kg plastic tubs in my delapidated shed, and the delivery man doesn't even bother ringing the doorbell when he comes now - he just puts the seed straight in the shed for me. It's like he's the seed fairy.

Oh, by the way, I'm having a day off work today. My first since February 9. Who would begrudge me that?

Syriana
A rare treat: we attended an advance film screening this evening. Happens much less than you might think for the Film Editor of the Radio Times, mainly because film screenings happen in London and I don't live in London. However, at the moment, I do work in London, seven days a week, so I exploited that fact and did what I used to do all the time when I lived in the capital. It was at the headquarters of Warner Bros, which means a very nice screening room indeed, with lovely seats, luxurious legroom (you can actually move along the rows without anyone getting up or treading on their toes) and, I can only imagine, state-of-the-art projection and sound. I bumped into the comedian Lucy Porter in the bar, who was reviewing it for Giles Coren's new film programme on Five. She said she didn't know anything about films. I reminded her that most newspaper film critics don't know anything about films either. She also said she fancies George Clooney. I told her that in a funny sort of way, so do I.

The film, written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, and very much in the multi-stranded style of Traffic, which he also wrote, is to oil and the Middle East what Crash was to race and Los Angeles. If I am the gallery, Syriana is playing to me. If I am the choir, it is preaching to me. It presents Texan oilmen and a venal US government as the baddies. Centred around an unnamed, oil-rich Middle Eastern country whose Emir is on his way out and succession could send relations with the US either way, Clooney plays a wild card CIA rebel with a beard and a belly and a beige suit, but his is just one of the strands; we also get Jeffrey Wright's dogged and seemingly principled lawyer investigating an oil merger; Matt Damon's eight-year-old energy trader working in Geneva; Chris Cooper's oilman who appears to have zebras on his Texas ranch for the armchair big-game hunting thereof; and Shahid Ahmed's young, disillusioned Pakistani immigrant who loses his job after a Chinese takeover and finds solace at the local madrassa, and we all know what happens to disillusioned young men who find solace at the local madrassa in this kind of story. You will see the ending coming. Maybe that's the point. As Matt Damon says, "It's running out. This is a fight to the death."

It's a terrific, intelligent, demanding, provocative film. Great credit to all concerned for getting this uncomfortable story funded and backed and told. Neocons will view it as join-the-dots liberal porn. That's my favourite kind. It reminded me, in style and scope, of the great political films of the 70s, Parallax View, All The President's Men etc. And there's a really gruesome torture scene. Look away now.

And all that legroom. Syriana is released on March 3.

As for Clooney's spare tyre, well, he does have to appear stripped to the waist in the torture scene, and the gaffer tape make him look even bulgier, but he didn't have to pile on the pounds. He could have worn an Eddie Murphy-style fatsuit. But I admire him, as a hunk, for doing it. His character has, after all, gone to seed a bit.

Bafta 2006: The winners
For a full list of winners from the rain-lashed Odeon Leicester Square go here. But the big ones were:

Best film
Brokeback Mountain
Had to be. There is such a momentum behind this film now. I sometimes find myself taking it for granted, having got used to it being around, but try to remember what cinema was like before it came along. It's not that long ago.

Best British film
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit
A real surprise - and we must cherish those on a night like this. Up against The Constant Gardener and Pride & Prejudice, Nick Park and co can hardly have written a speech. All hail the unfashionable choice.

Best actor in a leading role
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Capote
Haven't seen it, like 99.9% of the British public, thus making the usual mockery of the Baftas. I can't wait to do so, and Hoffman looks like the man to beat at the Oscars, but why must we include so many American films that aren't yet on release in the UK, just to make us look good? It's such a transparent con.

Best actress in a leading role
Reese Witherspoon - Walk The Line
Well deserved. And at least it's out at the pictures.

Best actor in a supporting role
Jake Gyllenhaal - Brokeback Mountain
Why this is a supporting role and Heath Ledger's is not is beyond me. Surely this film is a two-hander. Pah! We quibble over technicalities! A good show by someone who was unknown just a couple of years ago.

Best actress in a supporting role
Thandie Newton - Crash
Well, at least this gave us a weeping winner, and every internationally syndicated awards show needs one. Clearly not a bad performance in a film that's chockful of them, but the very best of a category that included Brenda Blethyn, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener and Frances McDormand? I suspect she got it because her character is sexually assaulted and that makes the male members of the Academy feel guilty by gender association (I expect some of them are male), and thus extra sympathetic for Newton. We're a funny bunch, aren't we? And it must be noted, with some alarm, that Thandie Newton is getting thinner and thinner. She was thin enough when she was in ER as John's whiny girlfriend, but that was obviously before she went on the diet.

Original screenplay
Crash - Paul Haggis/Bobby Moresco
Correct. A brilliantly drawn piece, with many different stories to tie up. This is the very essence of a great original screenplay. It never once felt like a book or a play that had been squeezed into film shape.

Adapted screenplay
Brokeback Mountain - Larry McMurtry/Diana Ossana
Get all that out of a short story; win an award.

The David Lean Award for achievement in direction
Ang Lee - Brokeback Mountain
A shame George Clooney wasn't honoured, but I have come to the conclusion that Good Night, And Good Luck (I love a film with punctuation!) is going to be one of those nominated films. It's appreciated, but not loved.

The Carl Foreman Award for special achievement by a British Director/Producer or Writer in their first feature film
Joe Wright (Director) - Pride & Prejudice
Excellent choice. You'd never know it was his first film. And he's a very scruffy man, which is good.

Sound
Walk the Line
Of the "technical awards" this is worth noting - I thought the sound in Walk The Line was superb. The opening shot where we approach Folsom Prison and the sound of the Tennesse Three playing to a hallful of cheering, stamping prisoners gradually reveals itself as such from a dull thudding dirge is a defintive modern movie sound moment.

Academy Fellowship
David Puttnam
Hard to believe he isn't a Fellow already, so not much a surprise, but Best Speech of the night, by a long chalk. Puttnam managed to provide all the expected genuflection and luvvyism whilst making his citation utterly personal with a tale of his deceased father and the final scene from The Sixth Sense. Honestly, I know actors will go moist-eyed at anything when a camera's nearby (and Duncan Kenworthy was crying for most of the evening), but the shots around the auditorium during the climax of this speech revealed what I suspect was a real emotional reaction. Statuettes all round!

I am no expert on the UK Grime scene. All I know is that over the past year I have found myself enjoying more and more of it, finding its beats and frenetic rapping an invigorating change from white, angular rock bands. Roll Deep, Lethal B and now Sway, whose first official album This Is My Demo has gone to number one on the 6 Music Chart. His real name is Derek, a fact he acknowledges and makes fun of on tracks like Little Derek ("Little Derek's doing OK/Little Derek's doing fine/Little Derek's doing cool etc."). I am particularly partial to the track Download, on which he bemoans the fact that although he's tipped for the top he doesn't sell any records, as everybody's downloading the tunes. This seems to be borne out by the fact that he is number one in our chart, and not the Official UK Chart (where his album went in at 45 and dropped this week to something like 72). And after the reams of broadsheet and specialist press coverage he's enjoyed, usually wearing a bandana over his face to increase da mystique, you might think mainstream success would be his. But no.

Sway should be glad. Look at how unhappy and shifty success has made my favourite band Arctic Monkeys. (I am not selling the album pictured above, by the way, even though it has a price tag on it.)

I don't know if Plan B is Grime. I like him very much as well.

Some of the corpsing is amusing
Each Sunday, Richard Herring comes in to my radio show and we talk about what's in the Sunday papers. If it goes well, we laugh a lot. Today, we laughed too much. It is known in the trade as "corpsing" - that is, being unable to speak due to laughter. It is not rare than one of us laughs a lot; it is rare that neither of us is able to speak. We had attempted to cover the story in the News Of The World about some rugby players filming themselves "roasting" a young lady in a kitchen. It's not important what we actually said, only that it was Richard's fault that we both descended into tearful, choking laughter - which I can only hope was a joyful sound on the radio. I had to play the next record early to restore normal service. The moral of this tale is: you can make light of serial killers and bird flu and the news in the Mail On Sunday that all cabinet ministers are to be given Jaguar cars (all tax issues at the end of the day), but there is no way, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday to satisfactorily interrogate the concept of "roasting", despite it being featured often in newspapers that are available to buy by small children, without conjuring images that you don't wish to have in your mind.

Is there a worst surprise than a bad nut? I was happily scoffing some organic, roasted hazelnuts this afternnon and I had a bad one. The only thing to do is keep eating to get the taste out.

I really like Maximo Park's keyboard player, Lukas Wooller, partly because he reminds me of my friend Adam Smith, but mostly because of his crazy, robotic, air-chopping stagecraft. I borrowed this pic from their official website and was taken by Josef Massinger in Munich.

I would post a picture of Arctic Monkeys from last night (you can usually rely on a fan to stick some photos up), but the band's official forum is becoming impenetrable, as you will see, with multiple threads and, frankly, too many users. Hint: don't try and get on there during school hours.

Every day is a day at the office. This is our office. It is on Oxford Street, which makes it very handy for sandwich shops and Cockneys wearing headset microphones selling what looks like genuine top-brand perfume. Lee usually comes in on his motorbike, unless - as today - he is doing a gig out of town, in which case he drives here in his car. Tonight's gig was in Runcorn.

The office space itself is not much to write home about (which is ironic, as I am literally writing home about it now). It is a room with two desks, one computer, two filing cabinets (unused) and a sort of shelf unit, which Lee lies on for inspiration. There is a window which, thankfully, opens, as it is very hot and stuffy. Although we have turned the radiator off, there is still a pipe running through the room which stays boiling hot. There is a kitchenette, where we might bump into Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade out of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, who are writing a new series for Channel 4 and have an even tighter deadline than us. However, they laugh a lot at what they've written and it carries, dispiritingly, through the wall. It's nice to be able to compare notes with other comedy writers. We told them one joke we'd written and they told us one they'd written. It's a bonding thing. (We joke that this building is like a rubbish version of the old Victorian townhouse where Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan and Galton & Simpson used to write.)

The kitchenette is not a kitchenette. It is called a Tea Point.

Yesterday, I counted it up, Lee and I wrote 901 words. Today, we wrote 704, but that meant we finished the last-but-one scene of Episode 4 (which might turn out to be Episode 5 or even 6). It was hard, but we're pleased with the results.

Tonight, Richard Ayoade was in The IT Crowd, which I love. But I'll be at the Arctic Monkeys gig instead, which I will review later. I am still at the office as I write this, but I did go for a walk at 3 o'clock to get some Vitamin D - by which I mean soak up some sunlight. Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin that is found in food and can also be made in your body after exposure to ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun. Sunshine is a significant source of vitamin D because UV rays from sunlight trigger vitamin D synthesis in the skin.

Gig
The last night of the NME Awards Tour at Brixton Academy. We were there on the first night, in Dublin, and caught it again in Sheffield, so it seemed only fitting to see it off at the biggest venue on the tour. Sold out, although when we arrived at 7.30 (just in time to miss the Mystery Jets, who you only need to see once in a lifetime), it was actually possible to get to the bar. Don't know why. We selected a spot halfway down the ramped auditorium, in front of the mixing desk, and could see perfectly for We Are Scientists, who I find pretty average on record, but who come alive on stage. They are the geekiest men on earth, but make a big sound for a trio, and the singles are good. (Isn't that the way with so many of today's feted bands?) Clearly, there was a surge when Arctic Monkeys took the stage at about 8.45, and it was harder to see. Plus, the beer started flying in earnest.

Throwing Beer At Gigs: What I Think
I think it is dimwitted and antisocial. I've noticed this phenomenon coming in at gigs, although not - of recent gigs attended in London - at Belle & Sebastian (audience too polite) or Bauhaus (audience too old). It seems to be young, beery men who think it original and clever to cast their half-empty plastic pint pots into the crowd, showering all and sundry with sticky liquid. It must be annoying for those with mobile phones and cameras outstretched (which is . . . let me check . . . almost everybody). Worst, it is a waste of beer. If these young idiots don't want it, you could collect it up and give it to tramps, who would really appreciate it. I got covered in beer at the Octagon in Sheffield, but stayed dry tonight due to our position. I shall still have to wash all my clothes as they now stink of fags. Roll on the great day in 2007.

Alex Turner was clearly pissed. He sang all the words, but repeated himself and muttered between songs, and looked positively dazed during finale A Certain Romance, when Mystery Jets and assorted Scientists joined them onstage for demob larks. The Monkeys played well, and the "new song" (debuted in Dublin) Leave Before The Lights Come On is shaping up really nicely. But due to the size of the venue, not everybody knew all the words, reducing the usual singalong magic. (I've been into the band since they first went to number one - yes, as far back as that - but not everybody was so quick off the mark. Some only got into them the second time they went to number one. Part-timers and Johnny-come-latelys.)

Maximo Park were, once again, the best entertainers on the bill. They put so much into their set, from Paul Smith's scissor kicks to the strange chopping gestures of the keyboard player, and were worthy headliners, even though I prefer the Monkeys' songs. There's no comparison in terms of stagecraft, and yet there was still an element of electrictiy missing. Arctic Monkeys create a stir. Maximo Park entertain the troops.

Paul Smith: he works out.

On points, then: best gig of the tour, Dublin. I still can't believe I am comparing dates on an NME tour.

Thursday morning, before breakfast, my best time. It is two days after Valentine's Day. On Valentine's night, I watched In Her Shoes, a romantic chick flick that looked appalling in the trailer but turned out, under the directorship of Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, 8 Mile etc.) to be quite sound. I hate to think of films being aimed at a specific gender anyway. Toni Colette played the ugly duckling character (hair scraped back, boring job - gasp! - glasses) and Cameron Diaz her ditzy party-girl sister. Yes, they learned lessons about themselves along the way, but at least their problems weren't solved by meeting a Prince Charming each. In fact, Diaz's problems (dyslexia, mainly) were solved by an old man in a Florida rest home. So there.

The Radio 4 programme I present called Banter is on tonight. My hair has reached an unmanageable length. I am very tired. Last night I was too tired even to watch Shameless or part two of Lefties. After an hour and a half of Dermot O'Leary backstage at the Brits on Radio 2 (which brought flashbacks of when Stuart and I did the same gig for two years' running for Radio 1, as implausible as that now seems), I put my sore head on the pillow.

I am seeing two comedians. I'm currently working in an office in Central London with Lee Mack all day. We usually finish up around 3 or 4. However, when he'd gone home last night, I saw Simon Day. As one left the building, another one entered. It's like a Whitehall farce.

Very good piece by Stewart Lee in today's G2 about taking Jerry Springer on the road. I think you might have to register to read it in full, but it's here.

Good if sometimes demanding day at the office with Lee. We wrote half a scene. If that doesn't sound like much, a) fuck off, and b) it is. We sculpted those words. We slaved over each one until we were happy with it. Also, it's a long scene, and it's the climactic one in Episode 4, so it's important we get it right.

I had one of those embarrassing moments where I was walking towards somebody I was pretty sure I knew, but couldn't quite place. He looked at me and clearly thought the same thing, but as we passed, neither of us acknowledged the other with a smile or a wave. We just kept on walking. It was only when he'd passed that I placed the face as Gareth, genial director of the pilot episode of me and Lee's sitcom, Not Going Out. I felt such a twat. Maybe he only recognised me afterwards too. You meet so many people.

I also saw a young man being wrestled to the ground by two other men, who looked like security guards, albeit in fairly casual uniform of jumpers. I expect the other man had stolen something, unless they were the least discreet muggers in Central London. This provided a good spectacle for the people on Oxford Street, who stood and stared.

I saw a dead blackbird on the way to the station this morning, in the middle of the road. I know I should pull myself together, but it broke my heart. I keep thinking of his poor wife.

Right. Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment. So, without too much fanfare, Where Did It All Go Right? gets a new blog. For those who wish to read the archive of the online diary I wrote for 6 Music last year (April-December 2005) go here. This is a fresh start. The drawback with the 6 Music diary was that a) the BBC had to stress at the end of each entry that my views were not necessarily those of the corporation's - which of course they're not - and b) I had no access to it. I just delivered the words once a week and they were added to the site by someone with the accreditation and software to get under the bonnet. I became a passive observer of my own blog, unable without a palaver to go back in and tweak things. Or indeed to add a two-line ponder on a Tuesday evening about Larry David or coal tits.

This will work like a proper blog. I make no promises, having rested the previous one because I was too busy writing a sitcom (deadline May 2006) and a book (deadline July 2006) to give it my full weekly attention, but with the freedom to jot down thoughts any time I like, there's hope.

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