Listen to the man talking
Humorous open-mic moment on CNN (and I hope you read that in James Earl Jones' voice: "See-En-En") that of course none of us saw, but was well reported in the press. If you want to watch the clip it's here. During live coverage of President Bush's comforting remarks from New Orleans one year on from Katrina, a fruity-seeming anchor called Kyra Phillips (where was Wolf Blitzer?) went to the "bathroom" with her lapel microphone still on, and while Bush droned pointlessly on, her conversation with a female co-worker went out live at 12:49pm EDT, whatever that is.

Phillips: "... assholes. Yeah, I'm very lucky in that regard with my husband. My husband is handsome and he is genuinely a loving, you know, no ego [unintelligible], you know what I'm saying. Just a really passionate, compassionate great, great human being. And they exist. They do exist. They're hard to find. Yup. But they are out there."
Unidentified woman: "We'll see. He's going to come, you know, he's set for an extended visit [unintelligible]"
Phillips: "I mean, that's, that's how you figure it all out, those extended visits. [laughter] ... Brother, of course, brothers have to be, you know, protective. Except for mine. I've got to be protective of him ... Yeah. He's married, three kids, but his wife is just a control freak."
Unidentified woman: "Kyra!"
Phillips: "Yeah, baby!"

Another newsreader, Daryn Kagan, jumped in to rescue the situtation:

Kagan: "Alright, we've been listening in to President Bush as he speaks in, uh, New Orleans today [Oh no we haven't!]. This is the one year anniversary of Katrina making land shore there. President Bush saying if another natural disaster hits, our country, we must, uh, react better than that. Let's listen in once again to President Bush."

Boo! Put the gossipy ladies back on! I found a transcript of this, by accident, on a right-wing US forum, which prides itself on "exposing and combating liberal media bias." (Yeah, there's too much of that in America.) Not much for the right wing nutcases to chew on here, other than the misfortune of a woman on an apparently liberal news channel, so they say. This gentleman had a go, though:

"For crying out loud, that is an awful lot of conversation before someone reacted. And these people pick on Bush for waiting for the all clear before he left the school on 9/11 and they can't even turn off a mike in a reasonable amount of time?"

Yeah, baby! Exposed. And combated.

The refrain in Spain
Bank Holiday Monday treat: the new Almodovar. Volver is being hailed as a return to form for the Spanish Fellini, just as every new David Bowie album is hailed as a return to form. To which assessment you must ask the question: return from where? He's seemed pretty on-form to me for a long while. In Sight & Sound, Peter Mathews takes the opporunity to bring Almodovar - and the legions who love him - down a peg or two, daring to suggest that he was never that great to begin with, and that he just recycles the same old themes with the same old formidable actresses and the people lap it up because of his dizzying brand. There's little arguing that Pedro returns again and again to the same well. Volver - which means "coming back" or "coming home", named after a song - ticks all the boxes, but that doesn't stop it being a stirring, evocative, funny and affecting female drama.

big question: what was Penelope Cruz doing knocking about with Tom Cruise and flirting with Hollywood? She's so much better on Spanish soil. Indeed, this is the role of a lifetime for her. She plays a suburban Madrid housewife of rural roots with a young daughter and a useless husband, who is haunted by her past but gets on with it. A textbook Almodovarian heroine. She looks fantastic in it - with a certain 60s look, heavy eyeliner, on teetering heels, little cardies stretched around her ample bosom, she's Sophia Loren, or Anna Magnani (who appears herself on a TV screen, as if to hammer the point home). It's all very deliberate, but Cruz pulls it off, coping admirably, but on the verge of tears much of the time. Presumably it takes a gay man to create female characters like this. Certainly, he puts women - especially mothers - on a pedestal, but he grounds them in gossip and "trash TV" and getting their hair done. They remind me of the women in my family, who used to congregate round our house on a Thursday and have their hair done by Auntie Janice. The smell of perm solution always takes me back there. I don't suppose people would fete me if I wrote a film about three generations of women in Northampton, but it works in Madrid. (Of course I felt immediately like going back to visit Madrid while watching the film, by the way.)

Only a gay male director would be allowed to occasionally objectify (ie. worship) his leading lady like Almodovar does with Cruz, in one scene shooting her washing up from above, all the better to see down her cleavage. Imagine Ken Loach doing that! I also liked the references back to Almodovar's childhood in La Mancha, with its fierce wind (fabled to send women mad) and its windmills. While Don Quixote tilted at the old-fashioned kind, now we get a landscape of wind turbines, the same energy that brings insanity and brush fires (it is a fire that killed Penelope Cruz's character's parents), bringing power to the small village where The Past took place. It's a striking image. But this is a director that does striking.

Yet again, it's a foreign-language film that relights my fire. I'm pleased that the Odeon at Wimbledon would reserve one of its screens for Volver, but even more so that the cinema, albeit one of the smaller screens, would be on its way to full on a Monday afternoon. It's nice to know there are people out there who will read subtitles. Volver makes me want to watch some old Almodovars. Peter Mathews is harsh. This is a four-star film. Not his very finest work (I prefer All About My Mother), but up there.

More Gore on our screens
A tubby, middle-aged man in a jacket and open-neck shirt does a Power Point lecture. They turn it into a feature film, released theatrically. It is one of the most gripping, powerful and important films I've seen this year. An Inconvenient Truth feels like a great sigh of relief, as America finally wakes up the idea that climate change is a reality and not, as certain government-controlled maverick scientists would have had them believe, a theory. When the ice on the top of Kilimanjaro is melting and hurricanes tear the shit out of entire communities and the hottest years on record are, like, this year, last year, the year before that, and so on, it's time to take your head out of the sand. Al Gore was into this stuff in the late 60s and 70s, and is anything but an eco-warrior-come-lately (actually, even if he was, so what? God loves a recent convert) - he was frankly sidetracked by a career in politics. Having been elected to the House of Representatives, where he truly believed he could do some good, he actually got caught up in a lot of hot air, and, eventually, that tragic, failed bid for the presidency in 2000. At least this put him back into the real world, where he picked up the laptop again and went out on a real campaign trail. It does not bear thinking about: this man could have been president and not coporation-loving, gas-guzzling, Alaska-drilling, regulation-relaxing, climate-change-denying George W Bush whose father, in the 1992 campaign against Bill Clinton, said of Gore, "This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme we'll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American." Anyway, Gore is doing more now than he ever could in Congress. He's one of my heroes.

This film is a fairly unspectacular record of one of his presentations, intercut with perhaps one too many shots of him staring meaningfully out of windows, or fiddling with his laptop in hotel rooms (the confessional stuff about his sister dying and his son nearly dying are a little unecessary too - I was on his side already), but the material is explosive - and explosively put across in a series of graphs and slides and then-and-now photographs of the Larsen B ice shelf and the dried-up Lake Chad and so on, with Gore as your genial, impassioned and even sometimes humorous narrator. He's like a quiet preacher, delivering The Truth, but an Illustrated Truth. I actually believe that this film, which is released here on September 15, should be shown to every child in every school in every country in the world. We and our parents and their parents and their parents before them have fucked up the planet, and if the kids don't know this, the cycle will continue. We have to break the cycle. As Gore says, most people go from denial to despair, but he says it doesn't have to be this way, and offers plenty of ways we, as a nation, or as a people, or as individuals, can slow down global warming.

I like the fact that the film has a U certificate, with this warning: CONTAINS IMAGES OF ECOLOGICAL DISASTERS. Yeah, and they're scarier than anything in Hostel or United 93.

Straightforward plug
I won't dresss this up. It's straight off the press release:

FREE tickets have just been released for the second series of BBC Radio 4's comedy panel show BANTER, hosted by ANDREW COLLINS, of Radio 2's The Day The Music Died. Your regular panellists are back; RICHARD HERRING (BBC2's Fist of Fun, Radio 4's On The Hour) RUSSELL HOWARD (if.comeddies Nominee 2006, BBC Radio 2's Out to Lunch, Chortle Award Winner 2006) and WILL SMITH (South Bank Show Award nominee 2005, Time Out Comedy Award Winner 2004) to discuss, debate and decide upon their definitive "top threes" in categories covering anything from science to cinema, and from playwrights to PlayStation.

It's a show for everyone who's ever debated subjects such as:
Who are the three most influential women of the 20th century?
Who is the greatest sitcom character of all time?
And perhaps even more importantly ...
What are the three best chocolate bars, ever?

As well as the regular panellists, BANTER will feature guest appearances from a selection of the nation's finest and best-loved comedy talent. Previous guests have included DAVE GORMAN (BBC2's The Dave Gorman Collection, BBC3's Annually Retentive and Comedy Central's The Daily Show) CHRIS ADDISON (BBC4's The Thick Of It, "He's brilliant. No question" The Times) Perrier Award winner JENNY ECLAIR (BBC2's Grumpy Old Women) and ARTHUR SMITH (Radio 4's Excess Baggage, BBC2's Grumpy Old Men).

Recordings will take place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), Malet Street, Central London on the following dates:

Sun 10 Sept (two shows; Doors open: 17.00 & 19:00)
Tues 26 Sept (Doors open: 18:00)
Thurs 28 Sept (Doors open: 18:00)
Sun Oct 1 (two shows; Doors open: 17:00 & 19:00)

If you would like to get your hands on free audience tickets then go to TV Recordings, but you had better be quick as we only have a strictly limited allocation of tickets.

Eagles Of Death Metal play to packed studio of two!
The musical treats continue during my week as Gideon Coe: today, Jesse Hughes and Gene Trautman of the Eagles Of Death Metal, doing a stripped-down version of what they did as a full band on stage last night at Camden's Electric Ballroom, where, I'm told, certain among their fans were wearing false moustaches in honour of Jesse. He turned out, perhaps inevitably, to be quite a character, speaking candidly (before going on-air) of the "beautiful Polish chicks" in whom they wallowed last night at their hotel when other folk were asleep. They look the part, don't they? The music they play is basically heads-down, no-nonsense boogie, but they do it with such spirit - and cowbell. So, yet again, I find myself in the position of having a fabulous live band playing two songs at me. Jax was also in the studio, but that still means audience members equal band members.

There's a story Jesse told once in interview about him having relations with a married woman whose fella came home early. Despite, as Jesse remembers it, smelling of sex, he attempted to avoid violent retribution by telling the cuckolded gentleman he was gay. And it worked. You can sort of see how. There is a thin line between cartoon heterosexual and gay.

Oh, by the way, no fist-to-heart gesturing, but both Jesse and Gene made a real effort to come and thank everybody before they left. What nice men.

Kasabian play big gig in small room

Of all the weeks to be filling in for Gideon on 6 Music, I picked the one in which Kasabian, my favourite band, played live in the Hub. It was a real privilege. Although some people filed down to the fourth floor to witness them play two songs, Empire and Shoot The Runner, there isn't a lot of room in there for an audience, so it felt like they were playing for me! I had to sit on a stool and face them as they belted the songs out. It must be weird to do a radio session, and give it your all in such a tiny venue to such a small handful of technicians and BBC passholders, but that's what they did. Full marks to drummer Ian, whose banging must have upset Radio 3 a floor below. If they complained, we didn't hear them.

The brief interview between songs went well. I went out to meet them before the session and got my fandom out of the way then ("The album's fucking great!" - something as erudite as that). They got nine out ten for the album in the NME this morning and were on a high. If you're reading this before August 29, you can listen again to session and interview (and see the full gallery - photos by Zoe) by finding the show on the Radio Player here.

What a fine bunch of lads they are. I was worried that Serge might be a little serious and po-faced, but he wasn't. I allowed my dignity to slip afterwards and demanded a photo with them. They obliged, obligingly. Here is my souvenir.

When they left to make sure tonight is "big" in honour of the nine-out-of-ten vindication, Serge did that gesture where you tap your heart with your fist and then point. I was genuinely touched. Perhaps I shouldn't have been, but I was. It's just a session for a radio station after all. But I'd say they're big enough now not to have to do 6 Music, with an arena tour booked in December, so good on Kasabian. *Taps heart with fist and points at them*

Not Going Out: the backstage pics
A preview of the session taken by set photographer Pete of BAFTA award-winning star, co-writer and executive producer Lee Mack and the bloke who ate oat cakes in Studio 1, Teddington Studios. (Who chose to eat oat cakes!) Apologies for the wacky mucking-about-with-cameras shot. It was the heat of the moment while the crew were eating their dinner. An exclusive glimpse of the NGO set, anyway. It looks just like a real flat!

Not Going Out ... Gone!
It all started on Tuesday, April 28 2005, when I first met Lee Mack at the offices of Avalon, who manage Lee and were developing the sitcom that would become Not Going Out, but at that tender stage was still called The Lee Mack Situation. Since then, it has been my life. Not for the whole of that time, as we were working on the pilot up until September, which was something of a breeze, but certainly since December, when we began work on the next five episodes. As you may know, we were locked in a Central London office from Tuesday, January 2 this year until Tuesday 20 June. Why the Tuesdays? I don't know. It all ended on a Sunday, at Teddington Studios, where, for the last six weeks, we've been filming the finished episodes. Last night, the last one was put to bed.

Avalon gave me a bottle of champagne, which was nice. I think they gave everybody else one, too. And so they should. A lot of people make a TV programme. It was always Lee's baby. He stars in it, as a character called Lee, and the show will live or die on whether the great British public find him an engaging fellow or not. I suspect they will. I do. He was terrific in the pilot, which landed us the series, and, watching him on and off over the last six weeks, I believe he retains that X-factor needed to carry a mainstream sitcom. It's in the lap of the gods now - well, it's in the edit for the next three weeks - but I am as proud of punch to have played my part, even if it did become My Sitcom Hell along the way.

During the actual filming, with studio audience locked in for what usually took about three hours per episode, I took up my position on the studio floor, basically loitering by the monitor where the producer, Alex, does his fraught job, and following it around for each scene and each new camera set-up (the open-plan flat and the pub were permanent sets, with addtional ones, like the funeral wake, the acupuncturist's, the therapist's, even a car driving along in darkness, being built around them). As the writer, or co-writer, you are essentially a spare part during filming, but then again, you have every right to be there, to watch your child take its first steps and says its first words. I ended up seeing three out of the six being shot, and I enjoyed every one. I wouldn't have wanted to be in the audience, and yet a loyal knot of people seemed to attend every recording. God bless them. Mum and Dad came last night. It took from about 7.20 to 10.45pm, quite a marathon, but they said they enjoyed it. It really is a treat to hear an audience laugh at jokes you wrote in a stuffy, soulless rented office on Oxford Street in March.

Three cheers to co-stars Tim Vine and Megan Dodds, and, last night, to 15-year-old actor Rupert Simonian, who was the computer whizz son in The Constant Gardener, and 14-year-old Nicky in the episode of Not Going Out subtitled Kid. I won't give the story away. An enormous sense of relief fell upon the entire cast and crew when the final "pick-up" was in the can. It's only after the recording of a TV show, chilling in the Teddington canteen and eating nibbles, that you understand why actors tell each other they were marvellous, darling. Because they need to know that. It's impossible not to be sucked into saying it too.

Looking at the photo above, taken way back in February, it seems so long ago. I'm almost nostalgic, but then again, not. To think, five episodes of a BBC1 sitcom were dredged up from the pits of our two souls and tapped, agonisingly, into that PC. Some days it was like drawing comedy blood, especially when we fell into Lee's experimental system of writing five jokes each and then choosing the best one. For every joke. (I worked out that we were, in effect, writing nine spare sitcoms at that point. I wonder what happened to all those unused jokes?) I think Lee was still detoxing at that point, so dried fruit, nuts, bananas and nettle teabags abounded. That soon went to the wall, and he was back on hot chicken sandwiches, Danish pastries and lattes, the real food of the comedy writer. (I don't think I ever tempted him into a Nairn's oat cake, which I'm masochistically partial to. Prisoners have rioted over less.) It was not the easiest six months of my life. I gave up my desk job in 1997 so that I wouldn't have to go into an office five days a week. Oh, the irony.

Not Going Out goes out in mid-September, possibly on Friday night, possibly at 9.30, on BBC1. I hope you like it. I hope I like it.

The Vinyl Solution
This is one of 52 twelve-inch vinyl records I now own. When I woke up this morning, I owned somewhere in the region of 2,000. In the ongoing life laundry, a very nice man called Rob drove down from Newcastle this afternoon to take my record collection off my hands. He runs a second-hand record business called Steel Wheels, from which you will now be able to buy all my old records. I have been hanging on to my vinyl for too long. In fact, it's moved house three times and it's bloody heavy. So, when Rob and I transferred it from the spare room down into his car, that was the last time I will ever have to break sweat over it.

I kept back 52 records - no more than a BBC record box's worth. This is mainly my 80s-themed DJ set, should I ever be called upon to provide it in the future, plus one or two that I know aren't available on CD, such as my Age Of Chance collection, including the above, One Thousand Years Of Trouble. Interestingly, I was contacted the other day by Steven E, formerly of Age Of Chance until he left, fairly acrimoniously, before their second album, the disappointing Mecca, my copy of which, by the way, now resides at Steel Wheels. It's always nice to hear from your heroes. Steve confirms that, unlike Cud, whom he's mates with, AOC won't be reforming. He wonders if One Thousand Years should be reissued on CD. I say, YES! It really is one of the truly great lost albums.

It feels good to be free of the vinyl. I kept back my seven-inch singles too, by the way - they really are like a photo album and represent a much more formative time of my life, when all I could afford were singles. Also, they don't take up so much damn space. On a related note, we moved out the final carload of videos and books yesterday, to Oxfam in Purley, who did promise they'd take some stuff after their refit, and they were true to their word. After driving round the roundabout twice, circling the plum parking space right outside the shop, we eventually pulled up on the kerb, kind of daring a traffic warden to punish us for our act of neatly-boxed charity. It was 3.30. The shop closes at 4.30. But as I approached, an elderly lady was flipping the CLOSED sign round. I look at her through the glass with such an urgent expression, she opened the door, and said they were closing early due to staff shortages (they had to get to the bank). But after my pleading, she agreed to stand at the door and unlock it for each batch of boxes. It was such a relief to to leave it all with them and drive away with an empty car.

So, the act is done. No more videos. No more vinyl. No more magazines (except for my New Yorkers and a collection of vintage Mad magazines from the 60s and 70s). And less books. A lot less books. So hats off to Oxfam, the most accommodating of all charity shops (I know, they are the biggest and best-established, but you can't beat a bit of organisational and shopfitting skill), and Scope.

Not the World Cup 2006: a New England



England 4 Greece 0
Hard to get worked up about a friendly, which this was, but seeing as it was the first of the Steve McClaren Era, there was much riding on it. And what a triumph it was for the man who has promised to launch "an England style", with "blend and balance". Without Beckham, Rooney and Owen, for various reasons, McClaren was able to present a New England, in which Defoe actually plays, and in which Downing and Richardson and Bridge can have a crack, and - even more significantly - in which old hands like Lampard and Ferdinand and Cole and even Gerrard to a degree, can find their best form again. It was a minor miracle. John Terry made a solid captain, scoring the first of four goals, and Hargreaves seems to have comfortably settled back into his role of Popular Player. Crouch seemed his usual awkward, comical self, and missed a couple of easy crosses, but redeemed each with two goals, and the lovely Lampard, with his boring autobiography behind him, broke his recent duck. It was pouring with Mancunian rain, the England fans gave it as much welly as if the score had mattered and only one question resounded around Old Trafford, which I'm almost relucant to repeat:

Why the fuck couldn't they have ... etc.

(Oh, and special mention to Jonathan Pearce in the BBC commentary box for his valiant pronunciation of the Greek players' names.)

Ah-ahh-ahh-ahhh-ah-ah-a-ah-ahh
Kasabian at Brixton Academy. First time we've seen them live. A cosmic experience, hampered only by being in the circle - first time I've been up there, and although you get a good view of the stage, and the sound is unimpaired, there's an occasional steward telling you not to dance in the aisles, which is irritating, and you feel just that little bit detached from the communal experience. None of this could take away from a terrific performance. They played eight songs from Empire, which, considering many of them were new to the partisan crowd, went down incredibly well. They even risked playing three in a row (Me Plus One, By My Side, The Last Trip). Lighting was simple but effective, with blocks of red, projected spider-web shapes and additional pulsing green lights, but nothing too distracting and you could see the faces of the audience for a lot of it, which adds to the communality.

Tom Meigham (pictured) is a formidable frontman, albeit not one with much to say between songs ("Cheers, Brixton! Thanks a lot, London!") - he's more like a conductor, in fact, cheerleading the audience, leading them in song. A rangy, almost comical fellow in a red top, he was counterpointed marvellously by the much more sultry Sergo Pizzorno in his cowboy hat, and his stern instruction, "I wanna see every single fucking one of you moving." They make a great team. This is a band who've been touring non-stop since 2004 (I think they did three tours in one year), and for a band who go off at impressionistic tangents, they're tight. I was chuffed to hear my favourite song from the album, The Stuntman, but inevitably, the old ones drew the most fevered response: Club Foot, Cutt Off, Processed Beats, arms in the air, overhead clapping, nothing like as much beer thrown as you get at Arctic Monkeys gigs, but then again, this seemed anecdotally to be a moderately older crowd. There were certainly more females in the audience than you might expect for a laddish lot like Kasabian, but maybe that's down to the handsome Serge.

Highlight was, handily enough, the last song of a 15-minute encore: L.S.F (Lost Souls Forever). Such drama in those instrumental bridges between verse and chorus, giving Tom an excuse to further whip up the crowd! And though the obtuse lyrics are hard to sing along to ("The troops are on fire! ... I'm trading just a little more ... step on it, electronic ... I'm carving through a letterbomb etc."), you can't go wrong with the chorus:

"Ahhh, oh come on!
We got our backs to the wall!
Ah!
Get on!
And watch out!
Sayin', You're gonna kill us all!"

The climax was an audience singalong, at which the band reduced the song to near-silence, with just a bass drum going, and the "ah-ah-ahh-ahh"s resounding around Brixton's caverous hall. When the house lights went up, the crowd carried on chanting, and I mean out of the auditorium, down the stairs, out into the foyer of the Academy and onto the Stockwell Road. According to the Kasabian forum, this continued in the pubs. What a fantastic night. Glad I saw Kasabian here, in a relatively small venue, so that I don't feel the need to see them at Earls Court on their December arena tour. I wish them well though, and since they're already such a festival hit, I'm sure it'll work. (They're coming in to play the 6 Music Hub next Wednesday, while I'm sitting in for Gideon. Life is sweet.)

This excellent photo was taken by Bubbs, and the full set can be found at the forum, under the "Live" thread.

The ONE Show: daytime TV in the evening
First, it's not the new Nationwide. Yes, it's a live, early-evening regional news magazine show, bracketed by the actual news, on BBC1, but it's new, not Nationwide. This is what they'd have us believe anyway, and comparisons will always be odious. When Nationwide went live in 1969 it was part of a restructuring of BBC's news output (the Early Evening News went from just ten minutes long to 20 minutes at the same time), and its regional bias was radical and, in many cases, just beyond the technical capabilities of the time. The programme stayed black and white for two years after the rest of the network had gone colour, because not all local BBC stations were geared up for the changeover. However, once it had found its stride in the 70s, anchored not just by the man who spoke its first words, Michael Barratt, but also Bob Wellings and later Frank Bough and Sue Lawley, Nationwide gripped the nation to the tune of 11-12 million viewers, with its mix of hard, often consumer-based news, authored reports from the regions and "lighter" items (its skateboarding duck story still dogs the programme's very name). I remember it well from my youth. I had a particular liking for Tom Coyne - anybody remember where he reported from? I know a lot more about Nationwide's genesis thanks to a terrific article by Ian Jones on Off The Telly, which can be found here.

I was reading up on Nationwide, which ended in 1983, because I was called in to review new incarnation, The ONE Show by Radio 4's Front Row this evening.

It went out not at the old time of 6pm, but at 6.55pm, anchored by Adrian Chiles - whom surely not a man or woman in this land can dislike - and Nadia Sawalha, who described herself as the "wacky" to his "wonderful" in the opening preamble, which is worrying. Far from the sober, deskbound Nationwide (I'll try not to mention it again), which Barratt introduced in 1969 with the promise of "the facts, the people and the background of the country we live in," The ONE Show is set in the now-statutory open-plan studio with the real world seen outside the huge picture window behind the presenters - in this case, attractive canalside development in Birmingham, This Morning-style. There is also the standard-issue low, frosted-glass coffee table with logo etched into it. It's significant that the show was launched in late summer, as it means that bright sunlight floods in, making it seem even more like daytime TV in the evening. Gravitas is nowhere in evidence. Nationwide covered the resignation of Ted Heath in 1975, live. Would The ONE Show (I hate those capitals) do the same if David Cameron resigned between 6.55 and 7.25? (Answer: it wouldn't happen - politicians resign in time for the news these days.)

For a programme whose modus operandi is regionality, and which begins with a computer-animated map of Britain, it was an own goal to have no report from further north than Birmingham: a live interview (with delay) from Pontypool with the new Doctor Who companion, who's having the time of her life and "living a dream"; a hard-hitting hidden-camera investigation into our lack of manners on a train to Milton Keynes, which prompted the inevitable phone-vote (if someone took their socks off in a train carriage, would you a) confront them, or b) say nothing? - phone or text now); Kate Humble topping and tailing a pre-edited film about red deer in Exmoor; back to Brum for a crunching gear-change and an in-studio interview with David Oakley, the drugs-trial unfortunate who now has cancer; and finally, a quick word with Dan Snow in Dover to flag up his report from Dover tomorrow. It was all over very quickly. Nadia said they were going to "poke around" in "every nook and cranny" of this country, which they didn't, but we must give it a week.

Unlike Nationwide (oops), which made TV stars of regional footsoldiers like Stuart Hall, Hugh Scully, Sue Lawley, John Stapleton and later Des Lynham, The ONE Show risks nothing and starts with well-established names, like Humble and Snow and, on tomorrow's programme, Charlie Dimmock. This suggests a different approach, one more attuned to the celebrity culture we now live in, and one less about the regions. After all, Humble's not from Exmoor, Snow isn't from Dover, they're merely roving reporters, reporting from wherever the story is. Then again, it's not the new Nationwide. It's a light magazine show, low on news, high on ... what? Lawley described the original as being like a "local paper". This is much more like a local paper. Give it time to bed in. The important thing is that the March of Chiles continues unabated, and for that we must be truly thankful.

Oh, and the result of the phone vote? 49 per cent said they would confront, 51 per cent said they would say nothing. An attempt to break this down regionally was half-hearted. I think 86 per cent would confront in the South West. Or was it say nothing?

I hold The Independent in high regard, not least their bold and polemical front covers, but I don't want this:



I know the question mark is supposed to make it alright (we're not saying they are the enemy within, we're asking, are they?), but do we really want to be suggesting that the "enemy" walks among us in this kind of emotive, curtain-twitching, shop-your-neighbour fashion? The phrase "the enemy within" harks back to what Mrs Thatcher called the leaders of the 1984-'85 Miners' Strike. The Independent looks like a copy of the Daily Mail today. I expect better. (Inside, admittedly, Robert Fisk is given his usual platform to say what needs to be said.) Oh, and while I'm here, I like the art prints they've been giving away but does the big red and blue lettering of "LICHTENSTEIN: FREE GLOSSY POSTER" not slightly distract from the seriousness of the story beneath? I know, I know, sign of the times. But I don't have to like those times.

I didn't like yesterday's front page either:

10/8
Was this going to be the next date in the calendar of terror?

Answer: probably not. Again, Daily Mail sensationalism.

And if you want to know that what we're reading isn't news, but speculation, just skim over this lead article from the Indie and take note of the bits I've bolded up. It makes enlightening reading:

Bomb-making equipment has been discovered by anti-terrorist officers investigating the foiled plot to blow up 10 transatlantic airliners, intelligence sources say. MI5 and the police believe a Britain-based terrorist cell, assisted by al-Qaeda members, had been planning to start a series of suicide bombings on American-bound planes as early as yesterday or today. It has also emerged that there was a police informer working closely with the plotters.

The alleged terrorists were foiled after police carried out the series of raids in which they arrested 24 people, mostly young British men of Pakistani descent, in east London, Buckinghamshire and Birmingham. The police were rushed into making the arrests after one of the alleged ringleaders - a British citizen - was arrested in Pakistan on Wednesday, US intelligence sources have disclosed.

The police acted swiftly because they were fearful that the arrest in Pakistan would alert British based suicide bombers and prompt them into carrying out the planned attacks in the next few days, the US sources confirmed.

Anti-terrorist officers are understood to have found material and documents that could be used to make liquid explosive bombs for smuggling onto aircraft, at houses in east London and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. There are also unconfirmed reports of one or two "martyrdom videos" - recordings made by would-be suicide bombers - being discovered. The suspects are accused of planning to use specially adapted sports drinks bottles to smuggle in the explosive material, which could be detonated with a battery, or flash from a disposable camera.

An unprecedented year-long surveillance operation by MI5 and the police is alleged to have uncovered a plot to blow up nine or ten airliners, killing up to 3,000 passengers and crew, in three phases. The investigation has discovered a series of links with Pakistan, where several of the alleged plotters are thought to have been partly trained, financed and radicalised by al-Qa'ida members, although the alleged plot remains largely a homegrown affair, intelligence officers believe. The alleged plan was to use a homemade explosive and smuggle it through airport security in hand luggage.

Three of four suicide bombers would each board a passenger plane heading for the United States and detonate the devices at the same time. Two further waves of attacks would then be carried out at later dates. The terrorists had got as far as identifying several American-owned airlines to target, but had yet to select specific flights or buy any tickets, it is understood. Security sources believe they intended to purchase tickets at the last minute.

The alleged plot has caused chaos to airports and forced the authorities to introduce strict new security measures, including banning hand luggage. Britain also remains on the highest level of security - known as critical - although the Home Office has admitted this is only as a precaution. Police continued to search more than 20 properties yesterday and are preparing to question the 24 suspects being held on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Nineteen of the suspects have had their bank accounts and assets frozen.

Several of the people arrested, which included a mother and her child, are expected to be released without charge in the next few days. As the investigation progresses more details of the the operation have emerged. Known as Operation Overt, the US network, ABC News, revealed that the British police had penetrated the alleged cell and had someone working for them on the inside.

MI5 were reportedly alerted to one of the suspects after a relative became suspicious and contacted the authorities, according to an unconfirmed US report. It was also disclosed that the reason the police had to bring forward their plans by about a week was that one of the leading alleged plotters was mistakenly arrested in Pakistan.

Police have said that they have arrested all the suspected main players, although it is not clear whether everyone involved in Pakistan has been detained. But John Reid, the Home Secretary, said: "We can never be certain and we want to be sure that, alongside the operational interventions we made, we maintain a very high level of vigilance and the necessary restrictions on the aviation sector."

Domestic God
I'm here to tell you, with a certain amount of multi-tasking pride, that this morning I boxed in the pipes in the downstairs toilet while simultaneously making a delicious chicken stock with last night's carcass. That's carpentry and cookery at the same time. I should have my own TV programme. The boxing was easier and harder than I'd imagined - the sawing of the wood to fit around the pipes, using a jigsaw and special drill bits, was easier, and the mounting of the plywood onto wooden beams was easier, but the fixing of the beams to the plastered walls was harder, in that I was working on my knees around a toilet bowl, basin and heated radiator, which I was trying not to damage in any way, as they're new. It's pretty cramped in there, and I had to cut a couple of corners (not literally), but I'm still pretty chuffed with the end result. It cost me no more than the price of the wood from B&Q and a morning on my knees. I've primed it, ready to undercoat tomorrow morning. And the stock came out OK too.


Customer review
Forgot to mention that when I went out to post a letter on Tuesday evening, I walked along the road that adjoins ours and noted, once again, that in a relatively litter-free area, it only seems to be people who eat McDonald's or drink Carlsberg Special Brew who drop their packaging on the grass verges, from moving cars I suspect. What does this tell us about litter louts? That they eat crap food and drink disgusting beer. However, here's my social-engineering theory blown out of the water: on Tuesday I saw a discarded Phil Collins CD. Face Value, featuring the excellent In The Air Tonight and I Missed Again, but not a lot else of note. I think this, too, was cast from the window of a moving car. The jewel case was smashed and the disc loose, just sitting there, with Phil's big, divorced face staring impassively up from the grass. It was obviously thrown out in a fit of taste. Imagine the scene. A row, perhaps? A punishment after heavy words lightly thrown? "Right! If you don't take that back, Phil goes out of this window!" I rather admire the person for going through with it. It's an easy threat to make, but to actually commit ...

I think the people who throw beer cans and Coke cups are just ignorant twats.

Miami Something Or Other
Well, it looks brilliant. But the problem with Michael Mann's Miami Vice is not the pictures, it's the sound. You have to admire Mann - he knows how to shoot a city. Miami gets the same star treatment meted out to Los Angeles in Heat and Collateral - just look at those twinkling lights and the cloudy purple widescreen skies, all grainy and unreal. Things get slightly queasy when we get under the artificial lights. It's all very impressive. Mann can do this. Why he's doing it to an 80s cop show that he executive-produced, I don't really know. He's lifted it out of the decade that made it iconic, put socks on Crockett and Tubbs, added laptops and mobiles, and removed every ounce of camp, accidental or otherwise. This is a very serious film. It's about drugs. The guns make a lot of noise, even when they're being cleaned. As do the "go-fast boats" and the helicopters and planes and cars. Perhaps it's all this extraneous racket that makes the dialogue so difficult to hear. I've seen this film in a big cinema with a state-of-the-art sound system and I still couldn't follow it - this is the fault of Michael Mann, not some bad speakers. Unless he is being postmodern and doesn't think we need to hear what the men and ladies are saying. Or unless the actors are bad speakers.

Worst offender is Colin Farrell, who may as well have been speaking, or muttering, in a foreign language throughout. I caught a few words - "boat" was the main one - but most of it was just sound. Can we blame Farrell for this? After all, he's just an actor, doing what he's told by the director. (It wasn't his fault that he looked ridiculous in that moustache either. OK, so there was a smudge of facial hair under his lip, but that's not a beard, it's still a moustache.) Jamie Foxx is mildly better in terms of comprehensibility, and the fact that Naomie Harris is English lets her off the hook a bit, as she is doing a broad, New York-style American accent, likewise Ciarian Hinds, who spits his words out like a mouthful of tobacco. Gong Li, for whom English actually is a second language and who must have learned her lines phonetically, we forgive. Her character, Isabella, the Cuban-Malaysian drug lord (or drug lady), is the weak link in the plot anyway - her salsa-fuelled romance with Crockett is both unbelievable and unpleasant. And slow. This is the 20 minutes they should have removed from another film that's 20 minutes too long. Michael Mann is happier portraying single men, ideally at work, away from pesky women. He doesn't like sex, hence the cheesy nature of the sex scene involving the heads of Foxx and Harris, but the bodies of some models.

Miami Vice is then, a beautiful-looking film of little narrative merit. You can just about follow what's going on - disco, drugs, shooting, explosion, drugs, kissing, disco, boats, shooting - but you won't know why it ends when it ends. It doesn't even have the excuse of Pirates Of The Caribbean 2, which was made back to back with Part 3 and operates like a Saturday morning serial. This one just ends, with some big synth chords. I won't ruin it for you. But I wonder if anyone else has seen it, and felt there was something missing at the end?

Great to see Eddie Marsan in a small role - he played Sunshine in little-seen sitcom Grass - I may have mentioned him in relation to Pierrepoint. Oddly, Naomie Harris calls him "sunshine" at one point. Spooky. (Hey! Unless I misheard her!)

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Felt like some easy entertainment last night, so wandered down to the Screen and caught Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 in what must be its fourth week of release. I really enjoyed the knockabout maritime fun of the first one, and this was essentially more of the same swashbuckling hokum with CGI monsters and bad teeth, except it was so much less at the same time. It ticked all the boxes: Johnny Depp reminding us that he thought of Russell Brand before Russell Brand did, Keira Knightley making that weird pouting face that everybody seems to love, Orlando Bloom with his pathetic bum-fluff doing his Errol Flynn bit, lots of cannon fire and creaking decks, a big fight in a rough bar, a parrot, a monkey, some comedy gurning deckhands, including Mackenzie Crook with his wooden eye, and a satisfying ending that ties up all the separate story strands. Hang on, don't tick that box, as when the inordinately indulgent 150-minute running time is finally up, they just stop the film, throwing in a cliffhanger to make sure you tune in again next year.

I know they made Parts 2 and 3 back-to-back - the studio accountants love that kind of economy - but did they have to conceive of them as two halves of the same story? What a swiz. Also, there's a big octopus-like sea creature in this one, the Kracken, which is pretty impressive the first time it attacks the ship with its computerised tentacles, but less so the second time, and the third. In a film that's at least 20 minutes too long, that's one Kracken attack too many isn't it? (Jason And The Argonauts rolled out a new monster for each new sequence and that was all done by hand.) Naomi Harris was good as the Jamaican witch, and Tom Hollander too as the starchy villain. Bill Nighy might have been good as Davy Jones, with his octopus face, but it was difficult to tell under that deft blend of latex and pixels. He was a voiceover artist really, and well paid, I hope, for his troubles. The best bits were the out-and-out action sequences that took place in daylight, like the swordfight between Bloom, Depp and Jack Davenport on the rolling millwheel. Great stuff. I'd have liked more of that please. And less interminable sequences at night, on board the pirate ship, with all those crusty CGI blokes made out of bits of other sea creatures.

I might have let it off a few of these points of order if it had had an ending. Like proper films. I've a good mind not to go and see Part 3, That'll show 'em.

Airline terror plot disrupted: bothered
First of all, I feel sorry for all the daily papers, as this happened too late for their morning editions. A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, so we are told. Scotland Yard say that the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft. Twenty-one people have been arrested. High security. Delays at all UK airports. Threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 to "critical" (this means "an attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK").

So why do I not believe them?

I realise that it may all be true, but I hear news like this and I am immediately filled with cynicism. My brother, the policeman, will kill me for writing this, but whenever a terror plot is foiled and we, the public, are expected to be grateful, I can't help thinking, well, I could say that I foiled a terror plot this morning. How would you know if I hadn't? You've got a beleagured government, who, whether you support them or not, are definitely in need of a boost. And the foiling of dastardly plots makes everyone look good. It also makes us all terribly grateful.

Is this my problem, this terrible deep-seated cynicism? Or is it them? Life would be a lot simpler if you believed what you heard on the news.

But you've got John Reid, desperate to push through more draconian anti-terror measures but thwarted by critics whom he says, "don't get it", and now he can go on telly and tell us that had this airline attack gone ahead it would have caused a loss of life of "unprecedented scale". In other words: if you want us to protect you from frightening foreigners with exploding hand luggage, you've got to give up some more of your civil liberties. Sorry, but look what just nearly happened.

I feel sorry for anyone stuck at an airport. Tony Blair, in the Caribbean, and his ministers, elsewhere, are already on holiday so they'll be OK. (Oh, unless enough Labour rebels get Parliament recalled over Lebanon, which must be worrying a few of them.) Mr Blair paid tribute to the the police and the security services today, as he ought, since they are operating under appalling pressure, not just from government, but also from the media. But wrongful arrests get made under pressure. And people get shot. And it's as much the government's fault when this happens as the police themselves.

The PM's statement said, "There has been an enormous amount of co-operation with the US authorities which has been of great value and underlines the threat we face and our determination to counter it." Yeah, the US authorities who allowed September 11 to happen. Well done, those authorities. Terrorism didn't start on that particular day, by the way. There was some terrorism before it. I've checked.

Scotland Yard said, "We believe that the terrorists' aim was to smuggle explosives on to aeroplanes in hand luggage and to detonate these in flight. We also believe that the intended targets were flights from the United Kingdom to the United States of America." I will not comment or speculate on this until the suspects have been questioned, as what we learn in the next few days through the media will not be reliable. Remember Jean Charles de Menezes and all the guff that came out about that in the days after the shooting. Let's wait for people to be charged, and then see what we have been protected from.

Police have spoken to a "good number of community leaders to make them aware that a major operation was under way." We all know what this means.

Meanwhile, US air marshals are being sent to the UK to provide extra air security. Thanks. The US Department of Homeland Security, which continues to operate with one of the stupidest names in US history, increased the "threat level" applied to US-bound commercial flights originating in the UK to "red", the first time it has done this for flights coming in from another country. (In other words, they're only on red alert for certain flights. This is a very localised alert. Let's not get too excited.)

So, we have arrested 21 people and yet the threat remains. Airline passengers are not allowed to take any hand luggage on to any flights in the UK. Passports and wallets will be allowed to be carried on board in transparent plastic bags. These measures are in place "for a limited period only." So, in a couple of days, it'll be back to hand luggage. Why? Have they arrested the people or not? Why not ground all flights? Oh yes, too expensive.

Still, at least you can be sure that British people will be moaning about their flights being delayed, so some things will stay as normal during this most difficult time.

Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Burton Bradstock
Work. A day return to Dorchester South to see Billy Bragg. Virgin are republishing Still Suitable For Miners in the New Year and they want me to update it with a new chapter. I don't get down to see Billy often enough, so it's a good excuse to visit his "clifftop mansion" (sorry, but that's what the tabloids called it when he betrayed his socialist beliefs by moving to the former guest house in Burton Bradstock and I know he loves it when I call it that). There are few nicer places to be than the cliffs overlooking Chesil beach on a balmy day like today, and there are few nicer people to interview than Billy. We chatted for three hours into my tape recorder, moving from his office to the Hive beach cafe (too crowded - it being, oh yes, the height of summer), from whence we took away raspberry smoothies to his front garden. For the first update of the book, in 2001, we did a similar thing, albeit a couple of days after the World Trade Center attacks, which, I must shamefully admit, seemed an awful long way away on that day, which was also balmy.

There's less of immediate note to put into this new chapter, as Billy's been writing his own book, The Progressive Patriot (an autobiographical journey to the heart of English identity - I can't wait to read it), which is out in October. But we covered the England, Half English tour, the push to get Take Down The Union Jack into the charts for the Golden Jubilee, the General Election, the BNP taking 12 council seats in Billy's own Barking heartland, the single he co-wrote with cancer patient Maxine Eddington, We Laughed (credited to Rosetta Life) for National Hospice Day last year (it charted at number 11 - I had no idea it had anything to do with him), the release of the first box set, and of course his battle with MySpace over ownership rights. I'm really pleased Virgin want to update the book and I shall enjoy writing the new chapter and tinkering with some of the existing ones (for instance, it says he's been in the business for 15 years in the 1998 version - that's now 23 years - and I think there's a present-tense reference to Top Of The Pops). He's excellent company and it's a pity it was something of a flying visit, and work-related, but I'll be back.

The train journey there and back was spiritually cleansing, as solo train journeys usually are. It took me three and a half hours to get there, changing twice, which concentrates the mind nicely, and prevents you from allowing yourself to nod off, in case you miss your change. Reigate to Guildford, Guildford to Woking, Woking to Dorchester South. When I was waiting for my decaff coffee in the cafe at Woking, an agitated young man in a suit was behind me, waiting to pay for a chocolate bar. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he had his money ready. He may have been agitated because his train was due, so I won't judge him for that. But he eventually lost his patience (there was only one man serving and he was making my coffee) and he put his money down on the counter before I had made my transaction, cursorily showing the man behind the counter his purchase. I noticed the customer had both earpieces in, which I consider rude when you are making transactions with other human beings. Anyway, he rushed off. The man behind the counter told him it wasn't enough money for the chocolate bar, but the customer couldn't hear him as he had his music on and he had turned away. The man shouted after him, but he was oblivious and left the shop. We're talking about 20p's difference, but I felt really sorry for the man behind the counter as he couldn't go after the customer without leaving the shop unattended. He sighed and put the money in the till. I really hope he doesn't get in trouble when they cash up at the end of the day. It wasn't his fault. This was my last ever coffee with soya milk in, as I have decided not to drink soya milk anymore after reading about how it is manufactured.

Soya was one of the things I spoke to Tom Robinson about tonight, filling in for Mark Radcliffe on Radio 2 between 10.30 and midnight. I was his studio guest, and we talked about all sorts: honorary degrees, writing sitcoms, guilty pleasures (and the preposterous nature of the concept when you are over the age of 17), and soya milk. I described how it is industrially made from the leftover sludge after processing it for oil and flour after separating it from the flake of crushed bean used for animal feed. Once you know that it is leftover sludge, it's hard to drink it.

It was a long day, as my cab home from the BBC got me in at 1am, and I left the house this morning at 8am, after about five hours' sleep. It was nice to spend the day with two men who had been on the Red Wedge tour though. And I finished reading a book called Unimagined, a childhood memoir by Imran Ahmad, which I will review separately, nearer the time it is published, which is March 2007 (the publishers sent me a proof copy, hoping for a positive quote to put on the cover, which I am certainly inclined to give them).

Incidentally, I passed Leona's house in Brockenhurst on my way to Dorchester, as it overlooks the railway line, and she and Michael waved out of a bedroom window at my train. I waved back. Sort of pointless and silly, but all the better for it. We did the same on my journey back to London. That's a lot of fun for one day.

Going to the pictures
Wow. What an experience. After work, I ventured into West London, that mysterious hinterland, to meet some friends and discover the delights of the Electric Cinema on the Portobello Road. You feel as if perhaps someone might ask to see your passport in the Notting Hill area, it's so different to the rest of London. I've known a couple of friends who lived here, and they spoke of the constant noise, the constant buzz. They also moved out, one to the suburbs, the other to Herefordshire. It's not for everyone, but as a visitor, it's like nipping abroad for the evening, to a place that's part European capital, part New York. Particularly effective on a balmy night like this one, when everyone's out on the pavements. Those that aren't certifiably young, look and dress young. You wouldn't want to try and get a parking space on any other night except Sunday, when it's free. This is very built-up area, mainly bars, very Wendy James, very Rough Trade shop, and it can make you feel dowdy, but that's part of the fun. Seen the film Notting Hill? You haven't seen Notting Hill.

Our friends had bought tickets for us all to see Miami Vice and booked us in at the Electric Brasserie. The cinema was bought and refurbished in 2002, and a restaurant and bar added, by the bloke who runs Soho House, in Soho. In the dark, airconditioned cool of the back of the brasserie, we ate posh fish and chips (the chips came in a small metal bucket) with mint-flavoured mushy peas, a stack of buttery spinach, and desserts all round. My only worry was that, full of lovely food, I would nod off in the cinema. I was relying on Michael Mann to not let that happen. Mind you, cinemas are so uncomfortable, this was surely not going to happen. At 8pm we got up and went next door. Already the evening was a hit.


Fuck. This is what I call refurbished. There must be no more than about 150 seats in the cinema, which has just the one screen. The Electric is the oldest purpose-built cinema in London and it's been lovingly restored to its early 20th-century grandeur. What's not traditional is the layout. Each seat is a leather armchair, with a leather footrest, and with a handy table for drinks in between each one. You sink down into your seat with a bottle of water or beer or wine at your side. The actor Paul Bown, out of Watching but now mainly out of The Bill and Doctors, was sat in front of us. This is a an astonishing place. The prices are hiked accordingly, for ticket and drinks, but it's an experience anyone who loves the cinema should have at least once. It was warm in there, so to have a large bottle of Aqua Panna to hand, with a glass, was perfect. Miami Vice is a long film (about two hours and 20 minutes), but I could have stayed there all night. Only once did I start to feel myself slide into slumber, but I pulled myself out of it. Nobody would have noticed or cared if I had. The seats are further apart than the houses in our street!

I'll review the film separately. Needless to say, we repaired back to the Brasserie when it was over for a late-licence nightcap. Again, pricey, but you get what you pay for. The Electric is by definiton not a place you could afford to use as your regular cinema, but we all deserve a treat, and it fits that bill. (Oops, did I say bill? Let's gloss over that.) The only downside of a superb evening was the little film about the history of the cinema that they showed, which had misplaced apostrophes in the "its" on almost every subtitle. A subtle letdown in an otherwise sophisticated and literate-seeming republic of cool.

Its. Its. Its, you idiots!

Can't keep up with my hair
Enjoyed last night's History Of Light Entertainment on BBC2 - part three, which was about radio and television's symbiotic relationship. This is a well-made series by the looks of it (didn't see the previous two episodes), reliant for its talking heads on people with a real stake in the story it is telling, rather than just media commentators. Due to unfortunate editing, Christian O'Connell was the only head who appeared to be there to make gags. He may have said lots of pertinent, observant stuff, and he is a DJ, but they only used three bits and all were jokey, which made him, not the programme, seem glib. I was on it. You had to wait about an hour to see me in my little brown tracksuit top (I looked much less smart than the other contributors - Mark Radcliffe had a suit and shiny shirt on - there was no dress code that I was aware of). I remember doing my bit in a hotel room in Piccadilly way back in January, I think, judging by my shaggy hair, but it's so long ago, I humbly calculated that I might not be on. Perhaps, I thought, they'd managed to draft in more important people since getting me in for safety. (After all, better to have Terry Wogan talking, than me talking about Terry Wogan.) But there I was, saying nice things about Noel's House Party and Chris Evans at his peak. I'm glad I said positive things, especially when Terry Christain came on and tore Evan to bits. This came across as bitter and vindictive and jealous, even if it wasn't! It's a dangerous game, being a talking head - you can rattle on coherently and wisely for an hour, but it will be the off-the-cuff remark that gets edited in to suit the programme's narrative. I am always careful not to fall into this trap. I don't wish to come across on telly as one of those tiresome moaners. As it happens (guys and gals), The History Of Light Entertainment was concerned mostly with history and less with hagiography. It didn't have an axe to grind.

Because I've been tied up with Not Going Out since December, I've turned down many talking head gigs this year. Because I'm free of those particular shackles now, I agreed to one that took me to somebody's house in Shepherd's Bush on Friday morning, where I spoke about 60 years of children's TV for a BBC4 Time Shift programme. (These are of a high quality, and they usually give me a good slice of the pie.) At least, whenever it's on the telly, probably December or something, I will be able to look at my hair and go, "Ah yes, that was in August, when it was quite short again, with a small quiff. I look quite shiny too - it was bloody hot that day and I walked the length of the Uxbridge Road to get there."

For the record, the grab above is from the first series of Doctor Who Confidential, when I was experimenting with a fringe. (Imagine how dull it would be to be a talking head and never changing your hairstyle!) I didn't grab it. Someone else did, and posted it on my Wikipedia entry. Having an entry is in itself weird, an accurate biography that has been entered by Anon, but I find the use of picture even weirder. I suppose I could go and change it, but that strikes me as vain.

The Empire Strikes Back
I have taken receipt of the new Kasabian album, Empire. It is a mighty beast. We've had the five-track sampler in the car for a couple of weeks and it has made the drive from Wimbledon to Reigate (one we make often) that much more epic. The downside is that we now know five of the tracks, including the single Empire - a number 9 hit, radically released on the same day as it was debuted on the radio last Monday - much better than the remaining six. This will soon be rectified. I know Kasabian are not to everyone's taste with their greasy hair, their messianic pronouncements and their Leicesterness, but they make music of such swagger and scope I can forgive them (not that I believe coming from the fine city of Leicester is something that needs forgiving). Their debut album, which turned my head relatively late at the very beginning of 2005 just as they had their biggest hit with Cutt Off, restored my faith in the inventiveness of British rock. It's dirty, loud, lyrically original ("John was a scientist/He was hooked on LSD/Interested in mind control/And how the monkey held the key") and it works as a cohesive whole. No laurel-rester, Empire is a great leap forward. It's still recognisably them, but they're pushing in a number of new directions, notably Glam on Shoot The Runner, Dylanesque on British Legion and Chemical Brothers-style dance on tracks whose names I don't yet have on the tip of my tongue. Could be one of my albums of the year. And if you haven't seen the epic Napoleonic war-themed video ("Stop!") watch it on their website. Anybody else hear the single and think of the Colourbox World Cup Theme? Back me up on this.

Oh, and nice to be back.