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.