The new New Yorker
The new New Yorker arrived, a day early, actually, issue dated March 27, 2006. This is both a joy and a pain, as it is every week. I'll explain. On my 40th birthday last year, Stuart Maconie began a subscription to the weekly journal for me as a gift. I have recently renewed my subscription, having truly had the quality of my intellectual life improved in the interim. I'd obviously always been aware of the New Yorker, I'd even flicked through it a couple of times, but not until it started arriving on my doormat did its true magnificence hit home. It has been a vital part of my reading week ever since, and I daresay always will be.

I quickly became obsessed with it - the insane length and intensity of its features, the old-fashioned language, the sense of history, the abiding interest in the Supreme Court and the White House (in that order), the refreshing, leftist politics, the sheer poetry of Anthony Lane's movie reviews (oh what a disappointment when it turns out on occasion to be David Denby - there ought to be a word to describe that peculiar sense of melancholy), the arch, obtuse, think-about-it nature of the cartoons, the artistry of some of the cover illustrations, the typeface, the dogged refusal to list what's inside the magazine on the cover, the - for me - totally pointless Time Out listings at the front for concerts, restaurants and art exhibitons it would be most inconvenient for me to attend, even the curious, arcane netherworld of the small ads (Orvis Fly-Fishing Adventures; Bensonwood Open-Built Homes; Hoosac Boarding School "since 1889"; The Poke Boat - "it's everything a canoe/kayak isn't", Asiatica, Kansas City, "Timesless clothes for worldly women"; The Retreat at Sheppard Pratt, "psychotherapeutic mileu" etc.). I bought every book about the New Yorker I could get my hands on, personal accounts of working there since it was launched in 1923 from the likes of Brendan Gill and James Thurber, Peter Arno anthologies, even back issues from eBay, including some elegant bound volumes from the 70s. In short, I gave my life to the New Yorker. Not bad for someone with deeply-grained anti-American prejudice. (Hey, I pick and choose which bits of America I'm anti.)

Here's the rub: I cannot physically finish an issue before the next one arrives. I tend to keep them in the toilet, and, as I've explained, the Seinfeld book has dominated these past few weeks, which has put the magazine in second place, albeit with a certain symmetry, as it's New York either way. So the new issue (pictured) has arrived. I've started reading it - Anthony Lane, a piece about Bill O'Reilly (his "baroque period", apparently) - and that means last week's will have to go "on the pile". The final score, then, for issue dated March 20, 2006:

Read
The Talk Of The Town(front section, smaller pieces): Chilling (about climate change), Glass's Master Class (about a Philip Glass score to a Samuel Beckett play), Taggers (electronic tags)
The Financial Page: Net Losses (about "tiered access" to the Internet - always read this page, as its writer, James Surowiecki, is such a good communicator)
The Utopians by Ben McGrath (about Playa Grande, a private playground for the boho rich in the Dominican Republic, in which we learned that money manager, environmentalist and Manhattan socialite Boykin Curry and his interior designer girlfriend Celerie Kemble, "have got such startlingly good taste, and not just the kind where it's, like, they know how to put a certain lamp with such and such a textile throw." They sound like wankers, the lot of them, and I was thus compelled to read on, for seven and a bit pages. Moby is an investor)
The Current Cinema (Lane on V For Vendetta, as exquisite as ever: "At this point, a few simple questions need to be asked of [the filmmakers], such as, What in the world are you doing?")
Half-read
To Shop And Drive In L.A. by Patricia Marx (a seven-day retail odyssey on the Other Coast, a nice idea that descended into a list of shop addresses and clothing items . . . "a Balenciaga Jacket, embroidered jeans and a sheer skirt")
Ideas For Paintings by Jack Handey (the obligatory "humor" page, not unfunny, quite surreal)
The Alchemist by John Colapinto (about Tobias Meyer, chief auctioneer and worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby's - a tyical New Yorker profile, incredibly detailed and in apparent awe of some guy who does an important job, nine pages long!)
The Raid by Ken Auletta (something about corporate raiders and AOL Time Warner, which I would have finished, had the new issue not arrived!)
Unread
Fiction: Gleason by Louise Erdrich (I never read the fiction - there's too much non-fiction to get through)
Pretty Things by Nick Paumgarten (about Hedi Slimane, a fashion designer, not bothered, although the "weird French bloke" did take pictures of Pete Doherty, whose name caught my eye while skimming. Alan McGee is quoted as saying, "He's not a leech, he's not a user," but that's as far as I got)
Meet The Mets (baseball, not interested)
The Girls Next Door by Joan Acocella (about Playboy, looked interesting, ran out of time)
Mysterious Skin by Paul Goldberger (the Allianz Arena in Munich, an architectural piece)
Ghost's World by Sasha Frere-Jones (the Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah by the mag's very clued-up rock writer - I will read this)
The Theatre (tend to ignore, as it's the New York theatre, unless it's a play I've heard of or an actor I recognise from the illustrations - Ibsen this week; it seems Cate Blanchett is at the Brooklyn Acadmey of Music in Hedda Gabler, check local press for details)

So, I think you can appreciate my frustration. Such a lot of interesting stuff. So little time. Long may the New Yorker frustrate! Read the best of the new issue for free here

The Apprentice: Week Five

[SPOILER ALERT! Blah blah blah . . .]

The teams, all mixed-up genderwise, had two days to produce a TV ad and a billboard for an as-yet non-existant credit card for Sir Alan's private jet business. This is patently ridiculous - the exec from Saatchi said they'd usually get 12 weeks - but hey, any excuse to see our business bad people making arses of themselves. The team led by Paul, the fattest of the men, thought they were in with a chance as one of them, Sharon, uniquely, knew about advertising. Unfortunately she just taught it. Once. And was - you're ahead of me here - seemingly devoid of any advertising instinct or opinion. The team spent the first five hours not coming up with the concept. At the end of day one, they went back to the house with no concept. Then Paul had an idea in the car: something rubbish to do with a card trick. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up when he announced it. Sharon gave it the green light with her vast ad knowlege. Out of all the ideas they'd had, it was the best. Paul was confident they'd win, as the other team "didn't have the brains".

The other team, led by Ruth, the fattest of the women, had an idea. but it was the wrong one, based on the 14th feature of the card conveyed in what I understand is called a "fact find" (in other words, a meeting) with Sir Alan's softly spoken son, Mini Sir Alan: the concierge service. Ansell was the weakest link as he alone bigged this up. And yet, when all was said and done, he escaped boardroom censure by dint, I think, of being a nice chap. Mani, who certainly claimed always to have been against the concierge idea, is a dickhead, and thus found himself blamed when the writing was on the wall.

Suffice to say, Paul's team won, and, to be fair to the self-satisfied egomaniac, he did a good presentation to the entire, grumpy-looking creative staff of Saatchi - don't forget these people work in a building with NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE carved into the doorstep and have "blue sky labs" with a blue sky painted on the ceiling: they must be hard to impress. Off they were sent to drink champagne out of little bottles at London Fashion Week.

Ruth dragged Jo - out of bitchy spite, as she hadn't done much wrong beyond be all goggly-eyed - and Mani back in to face Sir Alan's Muppet-faced wrath at their shitty film. Ansell snuck away, guiltily, I hope. They were quite the unpleasant trio, with Jo doing her usual indignance, Ruth screwing her face up at any disparaging remark like the character Pig off of Pipkins (no offence), and Mani trying to oil his way out of the firing line. "I'm a world-class presenter," he told the camera. "You've gone from achor to wanker," said Sir Alan, a line he'd obviously been dying to use, the old rogue. After the usual dummying, he fired Mani, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The English language may now move freely, unmolested. (What was he on about when he raised his "60,000 feet point"?) In the cab of death, Mani claiimed he had not yet peaked. On this programme you have, mate.

I can't wait to see the footage of Jo returning to the house next week. Air will be punched. The words, "Get in!" will once again echo round the living room. What a bunch of goons.

Previous reviews:
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four

Downing Street look upon the recovery of little Alfie as vital to national security
Oh dear. Just for the record, we watched the only ever bad episode of Spooks on DVD last night: series three, episode eight - episode 3.8 as they pretentiously have it - the one where our heroes from MI5 are assigned to the kidnapping of a rock star's baby. It's almost as if it was a Christmas special, played - certainly initially - for cheap laughs, because, hey, it's set in the stupid old world of the music business. Why does drama so seldomly do rock music right? Although the programme never shows any credits, for writers, actors, anybody, in an effort to keep up its secret-service veneer, we watched the featurette about the episode afterwards and discovered that it was written by Howard Brenton, who looks to be in his late fifties, hence the outdated, embarrassing portrayal of a modern rock star, played by Andy Serkis, called Riff, or Sir Riff, as he is seen being knighted at Buckingham Palace in the opening sequence, with his wasted wife, the supermodel Miss B. Did nobody on the production team check to see which rock stars have actually been knighted before launching into this? Riff is supposed to be a British grunge icon from the mid-90s, a borderline alchoholic who looks like Kurt Cobain and whose wife takes coke, openly, in front of MI5. Are these the kind of people who would be knighted? They're clearly supposed to resemble Posh and Becks, in terms of their celebrity-couple status and well-being as a matter of national morale, and yet Posh and Becks would be laid low by a drugs story.

Naturally, when a character offered another one coke, they called it "the finest Bolivian". Does anybody actually say this any more? And if this Riff bloke had sold, as stated, 15 million copies of his last album, why is he living in London in an admittedly large house but one that handily backs onto the street for ease of kidnapping? Surely he'd live in a country estate, or in Ireland? The other area where it fell down was the involvement of the media, and an obvious substitute for Heat magazine, called, ahem, Mega. Arabella Weir played the editor of this magazine, which somehow had an exclusive about MI5's involvement in the "Riff and B" kidnap. This rang rather false. It was as if they wanted her to be a powerful tabloid editor who lunched with spies, but also wanted to cleverly reflect - and satirise - celeb culture, so hedged their bets. Heat don't really do cover stories, as such, they gather together long-lens photos of ladies who are too fat or too thin. Mega was a classic case of a mocked-up magazine.

I'm not going to go on about it. Spooks is one of my favourite dramas on telly - which is why I was so crestfallen by this naff episode. In the interviews on the featurette with the producers and writer, they all sounded very unsure about it, pedalling wildly to convince themselves it was a good idea. It wasn't.

I know Jerry. He's not a Nazi. He's just neat.
OK, Seinfeld update. Due to precise maximisation of time and a day at home yesterday, I managed to do my prescribed amount of sitcom writing (two scenes, one tickle of an existing scene), walk into Reigate for a particular juice from Marks & Spencer (pineapple, peach and passion fruit), a Mother's Day card and a birthday card for my niece, pick up a copy of the Independent because I was in it (see: previous entry), eat a hearty lunch of sausages and soup, exercise and watch a batch of Seinfelds. I call that a very good day. For the record, I finally finished Season Three. (Seasons Four and Five arrived in the post yesterday.) That's:
The Limo
The Good Samaritan
The Parking Space
The Letter
The Keys
Of these five, I laughed out loud the most at The Limo, which took place in a limo, and featured Peter Krause, later of Six Feet Under, as a Nazi. But The Keys caused me to smile the most. I admired The Parking Space, and enjoyed the fact that so much of it was shot outside, in real time, with darkness setting in, but it didn't amuse me as much as the lower-concept episodes. We also treated ourselves to the 15-minute Season Three blooper reel, which was, let me check, ah yes, the funniest thing in the world. Seinfeld, Alexander, Richards and Louis-Dreyfus seem to laugh the whole time while making the show; clearly this can't be the case, and it's the illusion a blooper-reel creates, but as professional comedians and actors, they certainly seem to fill up and brim over with laughter a lot. I love the imaptience of the director's voice, off-camera: "Compose yourselves, guys. We're still rolling." Imagine being cross with the cast of Seinfeld.

Not that I'm obsessed or anything, but I am nearing the end of Sein Language too, which is proving the perfect Toilet Book. I don't usually have a Toilet Book. The toilet is a place to keep up with the New Yorker, whose articles are so long, they take a number of sittings - the one I'm on at the moment about a bunch of bohemians buying up swathes of the Dominican Republic has been open for days. (I prefer the train for a book, you get longer sittings - about half an hour between Redhill and Victoria. Although the new New Statesman usually trumps the book, and I'll read as much of it as I can in a return journey on a Friday or Saturday, then release it to the coffee table for communal use.) The Seinfeld book comes in bite-sized pieces of wit and wisdom, so it's perfect for the toilet. As mentioned, I like to maximise my time. So I'll continue reading the book while I brush my teeth. This involves standing over the book, not over the sink, so I have to make sure I keep all the toothpaste spit inside my mouth, and usually have to break off from reading once to expel. This, I think of as an efficeient use of time. Time and motion. There's nothing to do while you clean your teeth. And the book's just sitting there. I use an electric toothbrush that shuts off after two minutes to tell me when I'm done cleaning. I never read on past the two-minute shut-off. Those are the rules.

I realise this is turning into a Seinfeld routine. That's the effect he has on you. He makes you ponder the mundane. Seinfeld also claims to maximise his time. "When I'm making my bed and I tuck in one side of the sheet, I stay bent over as I walk to tuck in the other side. Why stand up and then bend again? It's a waste of life."

By the way, should you ever need a definitive Seinfeld episode guide, it's here.

Billie-Jo And Me: A Tonight Special
I don't normally bother about Tonight With Trevor McDonald, mostly because it's sensationalist ITN crap, but it just happened to coincide precisely with cooking the dinner last night so I watched it all. I note this morning that it drew an impressive 6.4 million viewers (beating the FA Cup match on the other side, which must have really irked BBC1 after the damp-squib Jean Charles de Menezes Panorama on Black Wednesday a couple of weeks back, which pulled just 2.1 million, thus proving that the murder of an innocent Brazilian on a Tube platform in Stockwell doesn't put bums on seats like the murder of a 13-year-old foster-daughter with a gerbil and a dog in Hastings). Anyway, I found myself morbidly and mundanely fascinated by the interview with Sion Jenkins, 48, who might not be able to spell "Sean", but can clear himself of murder.

Looking like a cross between Jim Davidsdon and sports presenter Rob Curling*, Jenkins might have had enough of being cross-examined, having been on trial three times, but he allowed Sir Trevor to do it one more time. This was his first interview since being cleared of killing Billie-Jo with an iron tent peg, and the interview covered most of the contentious areas: his odd behaviour on discovering her body (he claims, fairly credibly, to have been in shock - who knows how we would react in the same situation? - we might go and sit in the car for a bit like he did), his circuitous route to B&Q, which was held against him as a deliberate attempt to provide an alibi for himself (he claims, less credibly, that he couldn't do a three-point turn and drove round the block, twice, instead) and the allegation that he beat his kids with a stick and his first wife, too (which he flatly denied - it's his word against theirs).

He certainly laid in to the police, for what he sees as tucking him up and failing to notice that he was in shock, and the prosecutors, who used his odd behaviour (going to the DIY store without any money to buy white spirit that he didn't need) to turn him into a murderer. I know that a lot of people think he did it. Until they find out who did (perhaps the suspicious-looking vagrant?), these people are going to carry on believing he did it. Perhaps he did do it. Jenkins, whose Prince Charles-like use of the word "one" can't have endeared him to anyone on the jury, had this to say to Sir Trev (who incidentally has some pretty marked downward creases in his forehead, suggesting gall bladder trouble): "For any man or woman in this country who believes in British justice to now have a situation where the Crown might seek a conviction on hearsay and on bad character issues that bear no relationship at all to what that person is in the dock for, I think is worrying, deeply worrying."

It's a fascinating case, made more fascinating by this interview, so I must thank Tonight for setting it up for me. Nobody explained why Billie-Jo had the name of a country singer.

*Apologies to Rob Curling, who looks like this. You decide.

And to compensate, this is his website - he does training videos and conference hosting. Why not book him and say it's the non-murderer Sion Jenkins. That would pack out the auditorium.

Undead, undead, undead
There's a piece in today's Independent about Goths. There's also one - played for cheap laughs - in the Guardian, and it's no doubt in the other papers too, as it's based on that most vital of newspaper sources: the study. In fact, a media studies doctorate. Hey, it's all news.

To save you the bother of hitting the link and reading the whole thing, here's a precis: Dr Dunja Brill, a 32-year-old German "with her own Gothic tendencies" (it says here), studied Goth subculture for her doctorate in media and cultural studies at Sussex University. She believes Goths were misinterpreted following the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and insists that far from being "a sinister group of social misfits, Goths place a high value on university education and highbrow culture. Parents agonising over their offspring's sudden passion for black clothes and eyeliner should be reassured they are more likely to end up a doctor, architect, social worker or in the creative industries than dropping out."

Dr Brill states, "The Goth lifestyle allows you to lead a perfectly sane, stable lifestyle with a proper job, your own flat and even a family, then at the weekends or in your leisure time follow your Gothic activities. The scene has quite middle-class values - education, highbrow culture, theatre, museums, romantic literature, poetry, philosophy, Gothic architecture. Many Goths like classical music. It's a status symbol to have a good collection of classical pieces - mostly requiems and darker pieces."

Well, I preferred Alien Sex Fiend to classical music, but as a professional ex-Goth (a bit like being a professional Northerner, I suppose), I was contacted by the writer of the Independent piece, Ciar Byrne and she interviewed me over the phone. Hence, my testimony alongside her piece:

'There were never any fights or violence': Andrew Collins, writer and broadcaster
I turned 18 in Northampton in 1983. I was in the sixth form and there was a big style move towards longer hair and looking a bit moody. My look just evolved. The first hair colour I dabbled in was henna and then black. I wore a black coat, black scarf and Dickensian fingerless black gloves. I went to art foundation school [clearly, Ms Byrne misunderstood this - I actually did a foundation course at art school, but she's quoted me with a high degree of accuracy so I won't complain] and started to become more Gothic. I never dared to wear make-up. I don't think anyone did in Northampton. I went round to my friend Kevin's on a Saturday night and we would listen to the Cure and Sisters of Mercy and sculpt our hair in identical fashions. Robert Smith of the Cure was our model. We used to go to wine bars. They would always change as the management realised we were spoiling the view. Bauhaus were Northampton's most famous export and they used to drink in a wine bar in Bridge Street, although we were too cool to look like we recognised them. There were never any fights or violence in the places where we were. We drank blackcurrant and lemonade because it looked good. The flip side was what we called "rugby players", wearing a suit and a smart haircut and white socks and yet they would be rowdy and have fights. Then I went to art school in London and suddenly I was surrounded by people who looked even more ridiculous than me.

Interesting footnote about Goths of today, the little Marilyn Manson fans. "Goth culture still arouses suspicions. On its website, the Parents' American Religious Organizations [sic] Defending Youth, Parody for short, blames Goths for everything from the Columbine massacre to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and South Park. The website asks: "What are the worst dangers that threaten our children today? Satanism? Drugs? Homosexuality? A culture of violence? Heat exhaustion? What if there was a danger that included all of these? That danger is here and its name is GOTH."

*This is a quote attributed to Craig, bassist in our band Absolute Heroes, from an article about us in the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, September 15, 1982. It refers to our sticking-up hair. Here's a picture (I hadn't really "gone Goth" at this stage, but our singer Jo was well on the way):

Sunday
I'd like to thank Mark Lamarr, as he was parachuted in to do my Sunday show for me on 6 Music as part of the BBC's fulsome coverage of the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, which used to be, well, local, and has now grown into one of the biggest jollies on the media calendar. Radio 2 and 6 Music are well represented there, by presenters and management (Stuart's out there, as is Steve Lamacq), although they have cut down this year (Mark Radcliffe isn't). Anyway, I heard Mark Lamarr "trailing ahead" on Radio 2 on Friday night: in his usual couldn't-care-less way he muttered that he was doing a show "either on Saturday or Sunday" on "Radio 6". Nice work. One BBC etc. All I care about is that I get the day off work!

25 repetitions (or until fatigue)
Wake up at 6am, which is my usual hour. Go defiantly back to sleep. Repeat this process until it is 9am. Rise, well rested, in fact too well rested, to do my exercise, something I don't usually have time to do on a Sunday when I'm working, as I have to get into 6 Music in plenty of time to read the Sunday papers. This is a fitness regime with particular emphasis on the upper body that I began last year, around May, and is taken from the Bodydoctor book, which has good, clear instructions and helpful photos of a man and two different ladies doing it. The blonde lady looks very stern, the dark-haired one looks much more relaxed, the man looks like a Liverpudlian sailor called Barry who my brother and I befriended on holiday in Jersey in the early 80s. This is unimportant, but when you look at the pictures in a book as often as I look at the Bodydoctor they start to play hideous tricks on the brain. For the record, this is my regime. (I'm putting this down more for me than for you, but bear with me.)

12-MINUTE WARM-UP
I do 12 minutes on the treadmill because it takes that long to get properly warmed up when you do it first thing in the morning in winter, before the radiators have had a chance to get to work. I average at 6.5 kmh on a 3% incline, and usually notch up around 1.3km and burn off 65 calories. I never thought there would come a time in my life when I would care about this kind of shit, but I do.
INCLINED CHEST FLIES
I've no idea why they are called this, but the Bodydoctor does not make stuff up. Strengthening the upper and inner chest muscles, these involve lying on a flat bench and raising the dumbbells in an arc-like movement from an outstretched crucifix position to above your chest. First weights exercise of the day: always a shock to the system.
LAT-PULL DOWN
You really need a lat-pull machine for this, which I don't have, but the book shows you how to make do with an exercise ball, which I do have. You sit on it, edge forward, lean forward and pretend you are pulling down a bar to behind your neck. This is achieved by using your imagination and holding an elastic strip between your hands. I don't know what the technical term for this item is. (All of these are 25 repetitions, unless stated otherwise.)
INCLINED DUMBBELL PRESS
Back on the bench, with the seat and back adjusted, extending your arms upwards from a starting position where the dumbbells rest at chest height, palms facing forwards. Easier than the Chest Flies.
STRAIGHT-ARM PULL-OVER
Nothing to to do with wearing a jumper. Same position on bench, with one dumbbell cradled between both hands and allowed to arc behind the head, then straightened up again. Quite easy. A bit distracting when you momentarily glimpse your own puffing reflection in the silver dumbbell as it passes over your head.
SEATED SHOULDER PRESS
This one looks good in the mirror. You notch the bench up so you're in an upright position and raise the dumbbells into the air above your head. It is tinged with melancholy, as the hardest exercise comes next:
SEATED LATERAL RISE
Ooh, this is a killer. For this I swap my 4kg weight for 3kg. That's how hard it is. Another sit-up-straight exercise. Start with your elbows locked at right angles and the dumbbells held out in front, then allow your arms to "float" upwards until they are level with your shoulders. 25 of these and you'll be suffering, even if it does strengthen the shoulders, upper back and backs of the arms. Your reward is the easy one:
SEATED BICEP CURL
Arms at your side; using the arm as a hinge, you bring the weights up level with your shoulders. I don't know why it's easier than the others, but it is. Then, with the home strait in view, you put the bench level again.
TRICEP BENCH DIP
These are just push-ups off the edge of the bench. I've been doing these wrong for about 9 months, but I re-read the instructions and now I'm on it.
PRESS-UP
Trad arr. I can only do 12, or 10 on a day after I've stupidly eaten ice cream and aggravated my asthma.
SIT-UP
These aren't actually in the workout, but they feel like a good way to end the session. If I was good I'd finish on some stretching exercises. If I was good.

What did you have for breakfast?
Breakfast: pink grapefruit, raspberries, strawberries, pumpkin seeds. Bear in mind none of the rest of this ever happens on a Sunday . . . Read the Sunday papers, but at home, at the kitchen table, and only the two newspapers I actually choose to read, the Independent and the Observer. What a rare treat in itself. No skimming. No sticking Post-It notes in. No photocopying the stories for Richard. And no News Of The World or the Mail, which suck the very life out of me on a weekly basis with their idiocy, salaciousness and their panicking.

Having sex with giants
Feet up. Watch a couple of Seinfelds on DVD, namely, from Season Three, The Boyfriend Pts 1 and 2 (one of the great achievements of this series with its JFK parody) and The Fix-Up. I am nearing the end of this season now, so I was reminded to order the next one online. Which I did. I like it when Jerry says, "This is the whole thing," in his opening schtick. It is. He's right. (Incidentally, I am enjoying Sein Language, the book of wit and wisdom Rob and Jessie bought me for my birthday: it's basically Jerry's routines, written down, in bite-size pieces. I particularly liked the bit about suits and pyjamas, but paraphrasing is not going to put across the concise genius.)

The curly kale is off
Pleasant late Sunday lunch at riverside restaurant in Mortlake called The Depot; a panoramic view of the Thames with people in boat race-style boats and Canada Geese, and fabulous, hearty food: carrot and ginger soup, smoked haddock, broccoli with ginger and chilli (to replace the curly kale advertised), rhubarb crumble and custard, pot of peppermint tea.

Wise men
More Sunday papers. Top Of The Pops, great to sit down in front of despite being as dispiriting as ever, not least for the insipid appearance of James Blunt and a terrible new song by Girls Aloud, who can do much better, and Trevor Nelson - bless him - introducing the Secret Machines as "Secret Machine" (I know it's not your kind of thing, Trev, but when your main job is to introduce artists it's good to check their names before you say them out loud). Who are Orson and why are they top of our pops? What a dreadful looking shower in their pork pie hats. What kind of music is it? Where do they come from, and where do they fit in?

Dubai has our ports
This has been such a relaxing, leisurely day, I even found the time to read an essay from yesterday's Guardian, by New Yorker economics correspondent James Surowiecki, about foreign investment and protectionism, which, despite a really nice illustration, turned out to be boring. But how nice to have time to even read the boring stuff from the previous day's paper.

Beltway Arnie
The West Wing continues to grip my soul. Episode two of the final season, The Mommy Project (something to do with the US electorate wanting a "daddy" on national security, but a "mommy" on jobs and healthcare), written by Eli Attie: inevitably dominated by the electoral race between Matt Santos and "Beltway Arnie" Vinick, and friction between the Santos campaign and the White House, beseiged by the NASA leak. A good episode for Josh. A bad one for Leo, who was totally absent, referred to only in terms of his cholesterol levels, which was a worrying omen in the cirumstances. Janeane Garofalo joined the cast as a fast-talking (as opposed to what?) media consultant. Preferable, certainly, to Mary Louise Parker. As usual, I caught and understood about half of what was said, and that thrills me to my bone marrow.

I am always right
Followed by a brand new Poirot on ITV1. I am a sucker for two-hour murder mysteries with an all-star cast, albeit a late convert to Monsieur Poirot. Cards On The Table had a bridge theme, and four explicit suspects, which was quite contained - although I was dummied into thinking it was the Superintendent, just as the writers intended. An interesting cast that included Zoe Wanamaker, Robert Pugh (seriously underused - that's how much these actors must want to appear in a Poirot, the TV equivalent of a Woody Allen), Tristan Gemmill (better known as DI Veal from little known sitcom Grass - always a treat to see the actors from that going on to better things) and Honeysuckle Weeks (forces' favourite from Foyle's War). It's now just gone 11pm and, knackered from exercising and doing nothing, I'm calling it a fantastic day. Not a jot of work done, not a word spoken into a microphone, not a foot stepped onto a train platform. Back to work tomorrow, and I don't even mind.