This is the reason I was back in Edinburgh for 24 hours: to chair a session at the Media Guardian Edinburgh Television Festival at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre - my first time at this annual event. I arrived and picked up my delegate's pass at 11.3o this morning, and was out of there by 2.3o, sort of wishing I'd spent more time there, gassing with TV types. The event went off smoothly: a 30-year career retrospective with Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, currently riding high at the BBC with Outnumbered, but still best remembered for Drop The Dead Donkey, and before that, Who Dares Wins - which I used to love, although a rights issues means it has never been repeated or released on DVD. I'd met them for a preliminary meeting in London, so I was very comfortable around them - plus, they are very nice men, with many fine cautionary stories to tell. There's a short clip of the session here. Andy does most of the talking. (I liked it when he said they'd never written or pitched anything with a specific audience in mind. Why? "We outrank them.") I like chairing events like this with people I admire. It's easy - that's probably why I agreed to do it for nothing but a free First Class rail ticket and a night in a presentable hotel with a moody bathroom. Although I failed to give them the cue to tell the Les Dawson anecdote, which I've actually forgotten now, but I can assure you was very funny.

I did bump into a few TV types in the Loft Bar of the Gilded Balloon last night, where I was out drinking with Iain Morris, co-creator of The Inbetweeners, and Simon Wilson, of BBC Comedy. I met Adrian Chiles and told him I admired his work, because I do (and I wasn't drunk), but he was itching to gey away from me. Fair enough. I also met Jimmy Carr, although not for the first time (he and Iain go way back, and the first I heard of Iain was as Jimmy's sidekick on XFM) - we first met at the Fringe in 2001, and he sweetly remembered this. (I say sweetly because he is very famous, and the very famous can be very different from the not-famous you met eight years ago. He had nothing to gain from being nice to me other than the satisfaction of being nice.) Michael McIntyre was also in the bar, but we were not introduced. That's enough namedropping anyway. More importantly, I saw two further Fringe shows, which were an added incentive to coming back to this fine city on Media Guardian's shilling:

Pappy's Fun Club at the Pleasance One, a sizeable venue, which they have been selling out, suggesting they are on the verge of something. But I'm not sure how easy it would be to bottle and package the joyous DIY energy of their show. That's what's so appealing about it: you have to be there. It manages to combine the surreal silliness of Vic and Bob with the bouncing-up-and-down spirit of a Footlights-style revue, all the while revelling in its own threadbare amateurism, and yet capable at any moment of going off on one. It's a tremendous hour of fun, which isn't as anarchic and plotless as it as first seems. (And if you've seen it, you'll know why the mention of Dean is funny.) Then we saw Justin Moorhouse at the Pleasance Dome, the closest I've come this Fringe to an old school northern club comic. Justin is best known outside the circuit for Phoenix Nights and Looking For Eric, but he comes into his own in front of a mic, mixing unreconstructed gags about regional differences and dwarves with more thoughtful stuff based on the seven plots in a book about storytelling that he hasn't read. But at heart he's there to make audiences laugh at jokes. Which he does. I bust a gut at some of his stuff. He's a natural.

So, that's Edinburgh 2009. I failed to see the Angel Of The North from the train home for the fourth time in seven days, despite actually sitting on the correct side of the train. Here are my photos of me not seeing it. Proof that it does not exist.

Can you see the disappointment in my little face? I thought it existed. I believed the hype.

WARNING: may cause drowsiness. In this special, uncalled-for, extra, bonus, rubbish stopgap podcast, nominally called Number 79.5 and recorded in my Edinburgh Television Festival-paid-for hotel room against our better judgement, we allow tiredness and Fringe-fatigue and sudden lack of audience energy to undermine our razor-sharp topical observations and Maurice Gran-standard one-liners. We just about manage to comment upon the bad man in California, Anne Robinson's new smile, Ronnie Biggs and the Monopoly connection, the end of the NHS "flasher" gown and Amanda Platell (not the end of, but she has a column in the Saturday Mail, which we don't usually cover). It sounds like we have jetlag, and there's a weird gap at around 45 minutes. If you've never listened to our podcast, PLEASE DO NOT START HERE! If you have, and loyally sit through it, it almost picks up in the last ten minutes. Almost. We promise a return to form next week.

(Incidentally, it was only after we'd finished that we realised what went wrong: we sat the wrong way round. See: picture. What were we thinking!?)

I had the misfortune to read the diary of Pixie Lott in today's Guardian. I was drawn to reading it by the fact that they splashed big on this "exclusive" in their usually trustworthy Film & Music supplement with a huge picture of this young lady, and I took this to mean that she mattered in some way. Also, and I'm not playing dumb here, I had no idea who she was, or that she'd had a number one hit. (I didn't even know she was a singer when I first saw her name, although the name itself had crossed my radar somehow. I certainly didn't know she was British.)

So, I read her diary - and you may do the same here - which appears to cover two and a half months, from June to August, during which the Essex princess plays an industry showcase, goes to LA for an awards ceremony, makes a video, answers some stupid questions from "European journalists", has her photo taken, goes abroad again, Tweets Little Boots, gets bronchitis and plays the V Festival: "Last year I camped there and I loved the whole experience, although it rained in the morning so I rang home because I only live 15 minutes away and I was like, 'Dad, can you come and pick me up?'"

Except it's not a diary at all, it's an interview conducted by Paul Lester dishonestly presented as a diary, as if perhaps Pixie Lott wrote it or something. Anyway, it's not Pixie Lott who offends me, yeah? (I've since listened to her number one hit and it could have been made by anybody - this is hardly front-page news in R&B-based pop music.) I'm offended by the fact that the Guardian thinks I should be interested in this bubbly, 18-year-old stage-school brat. If ever an artist needed some context, it's Pixie Lott, who instead appears fully-formed in my newspaper, as if I should already know about her and care. Unless the whole thing's an elaborate pisstake? I mean, listen to this:

"I'd love to move to London, somewhere central, near the action, where it's busy and buzzy. I'm looking a bit 1960s today. Sometimes I dress more indie, or I might be hippieish, or classic and designery, or vintage - it depends how I feel. Nothing fazes me. That's just my personality."

Pixie Lott is 18. God help us if there's a war.

Before Senator Edward Kennedy selfishly died, aged 77, Richard Herring's big Hitlery face dominated the main BBC website homepage. (As Jim Bob commented on Twitter: "Could it be any bigger?") I took a grab of it, and I'm glad I did now, as Hitler is history. (You can read the story here - which, incidentally, has some very reasonable, positive, urbane comments at the end, a credit to either the moderators, or to the class of person who reads the BBC website.)

[Sorry about the interminable, Glastonbury-sized length of this post, but it's a week of my life I want to remember fondly and in detail]

Hello, this is me and my millionaire comedy partner Richard "Rich" Herring relaxing backstage at the Belly Laugh, one of the many devilishly humid venues provided by the Underbelly at the Edinburgh Fringe. It's been a culturally nourishing week - so much better than the odd days I've spent up here in previous years. Last year, for instance, I was up for two nights on the occasion of our experimental, free first live Edinburgh podcast, and the only other show I saw apart from Richard was ... Stewart Lee. Easily the most conservative and unimaginative way for me to spend two nights in Edinburgh. There is so much to see here, it's literally impossible to even make a dent in it, even in a week, so you just pick as best you can. And make sure you see Stewart Lee.


Tuesday: I arrived at 4.30 in the afternoon, and no sooner had I picked up my flat keys from Lucy Porter and "freshened up", I was off up the hill for the first of umpteen times to contribute to Mark Watson's 24 Hour Gig at the Pleasance Cabaret Bar (it moves around during that 24 hour period, and an impressive knot of people follow it, some for the entire 24 hours). They were just about to hit 18 hours - and I bumped into Justin Moorhouse on the way through the doors. Mark was half-dressed as a woman, in that he had on a woman's vest top. Phil Nichol was threatening to go and fetch some special guests, then Mark introduced me onto the stage, to forgivingly warm applause - I still had my jacket on and my bag over my shoulder as if I had just stepped off the train. We bantered for a bit (I had never met the face of Magners Pear Cider before and it was good to shake his surprisingly soft hand), and then he left me to do a foreshortened version of my Mitfords routine, which I had intended to do in the form of an audience vote, to find out the best Mitford. I enjoyed holding up the Mitford symbol cards and getting into my stride, but Mark came back on, three sisters in, and told me I had to finish, as Lionel Blair had turned up. It was a hoofing fait accompli! So I got Mark to pick a card, randomly, and he chose Pamela, of all people!

After going off, high on the chance to be part of Mark's famous gig marathon, and even higher off the speed at which I had gone from National Express passenger to Fringe performer, I became a happy punter and ordered my first pear cider of the Festival - and please don't tell me it's called perry; I am merely reading what it says on the bottle. (There would be many more pear ciders, sometimes Bulmers, sometimes Magners - the Fringe sponsor - sometimes Original, but mostly that distinctively day-glo green, always rattling sexily with ice in a plastic pint glass, and never making me properly drunk, not even in the afternoon, or hungover, despite Richard's doubts about this miracle.) It seemed pertinent to drink pear cider while Mark Watson entertained me. It's his fault, and his alone, that I have become a kiddy-cider drinker, although the brand's Starbucks-like ubiquity ought to offend my delicate, Naomi Klein-tickled sensibilities. And it does, when I put it like that. I drank two in short order, while standing at the bar, enjoying the random sight of Lionel Blair struggling to connect with the young audience but being cheered along anyway, and Stephen K Amos being fruitily gay, telling us he was looking for a boy. Although when Mark suggested Simon Amstell, Amos said, "I don't do Jew!" which seemed uproariously naughty, and he knew it.

Next guest was ... Simon Amstell, his second appearance apparently, all very matey and casual: he played the piano a bit, while Mark organised some groupies for Adam Hills' show, a ruse they'd launched earlier, and then a big Australian bloke came back from getting a Mark Watson tattoo, which was so fresh it was still under clingfilm, then Mark asked Simon for some pop dirt, and he said something libellous about someone famous that I'm not going to repeat here. This went down very well with an audience who were much livelier than they might have been after 17 hours. Then Ali McGregor, partner of Adam Hills who'd been gamely involved in picking his Robert Palmer-style entourage, did a comedy song about a cat that involved us laughing at the vaginal meaning of the word "pussy", which struck me as rather quaint.

As I wandered back to the flat, Robin Ince got in touch and asked if I'd like to join the bill of a secret Free Fringe gig at midnight at the Caves, doing some Secret Dancing. This would be my second gig in one day! You know me, I'm stupidly excited about being around comedians even though I am not one of them by trade, and I said yes. That evening, I went to see Richard Herring's Hitler Moustache at the Underbelly; he let me put programmes out on the seats so that I could go in early and avoid queuing - although I had paid for my ticket, as this is the correct way to experience Edinburgh, even if you are a famous person's helper - I sat far enough back not to be in his eyeline, something I tried to maintain throughout the week of seeing people who know me, as I didn't wish to put anybody off. (Actually, having had a few friends and colleagues in for the podcast gigs, it's amazing how quickly you forget they're there.)

I have seen every one of Richard's shows since Christ On A Bike in 2001 (I am a fan) and so I am fully qualified to say that I think this is probably his best: smart, rounded, mature, passionate, performed with gusto and confidence, and JSE (just serious enough). It's something of an achievement to get through it without fainting or melting, due - yet again - to the stiflingly hot Underbelly. But Richard suffers more, in his suit, than anyone in the audience, and all we have to do is sit and watch. And think. (Hardeep Singh Kohli, up here doing a cookery show, was in the audience. We chatted to him afterward and he confirmed that, as a gentleman of Indian blood and Glaswegian birth, he had no problem with the exploration in Richard's show of the word "Paki", which was a positive further endorsement for its anti-racism. Although when Richard referred to Hardeep an Asian, he said he found that more offensive than being called a Paki. It's a minefield.)

The Free Fringe gig at the Caves was odd, but indicative of the way modern Edinburgh now works: Robin had announced the bill - consisting politically-charged American Jamie Kilstein, politically-charged Englishman Nick Doody, politically-charged Robin Ince and me (to which Richard Herring was added later, mainly because he was coming along anyway) - via Twitter and FaceBook. By midnight, because he is Robin Ince, we had a modest audience of around 30. Amazing. Out of nowhere. For no reason I could ascertain, Robin put me on last, but unfortunately there was no way I could play my Secret Dancing CD in this damp place with no techie (even the chair I first put my laptop on was wet!), so I was forced to just talk to the audience for ten minutes, a bit about travel sickness, a bit about walking around London ... it felt like stand-up, even though it didn't have many actual jokes in it, and it was valuable experience for me. Clearly, I seemed a bit rambling next to proper comedians. Richard took the piss out of me for "headlining", but that's because he takes the piss out of me for everything I do, ever. I can take it. He supported me in a wet room under a bridge. (What a first day, most of which was spent on a National Express train.)


Wednesday: first podcast gig, as documented elsewhere. In the evening, I saw Stewart Lee's new show, If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Just Ask at the Stand, a compact downstairs venue with a low ceiling and brilliantly beguiling oil paintings on the walls which seem to be of stand-up comedians but aren't actually recognisable (one seems to be Frankie Boyle, though). Stewart has made this place his home. Last year he was trying out material for Comedy Vehicle; this year, it was a more polished new set, made up of some very sizeable chunks about a Caffe Nero loyalty card (was he pronouncing it to rhyme with "Aero" rather than "Hero" just to be obtuse? I liked it anyway), a pirate-themed activity centre, Top Gear and, without mentioning him, Mark Watson. As ever with Stew, whom I have known as long as I've known Richard but who remains much more of an enigma, even in marriage and fatherhood, it's all in the repetition and the choice of words, as much as the content, and he plays with fiction and fact with great, self-defeating glee.

Back to the Stand at midnight for a comic I've been dying to see for ages: Daniel Kitson. Apart from a brief and ultimately unhappy flirtation with TV when he appeared on That Peter Kay Thing and Phoenix Nights, Kitson seems happier to exist outside of the ambition-driven comedy scrum where he can control his own output. He's the comedian's comedian, and a true original. Wilfully odd-looking, this is not a persona, or an act, it's him: thick glasses, balding, flyaway hair, he looks like an indie kid who's much older than his 32 years; the lisp, the Yorkshire accent and the controlled stutter, to which he refers, add to the misleading effect of "character." But the sheer warmth of the man, even as he discusses death and loneliness, is not something you could rustle up. His show is long - up to two hours, some have said, but around 1 hour 45 minutes tonight - and seems rambling but is actually very controlled and skilfully written, if carrying a little extra weight, as if every new routine he's written has to go in somewhere (a long bit about cheese-rolling could go without any detrimental effect). Even though it was late, and we were all wet due to an Edinburgh downpour, Kitson held the room. He's a master. The other comedians were right. And if we're forced to take sides in a war situation, I'm against Peter Kay for the unkind things he said.


Thursday: The King Of Everything, a delighftully silly sketch show with Michael Legge and Johnny Candon at the GRV, another compact venue, except with tiered seating rather than pub chairs and tables, which gave a nice sense of arts centre to their absurd meta-sketches, in which Legge throws himself, Rik Mayall-like, into various parts, while Candon miraculously has the same voice and personality - his own - whichever character he adopts. This is subtly hilarious without you really knowing why, and the relationship between the two - part Peter Glaze and Don Maclean, part two male lovers - is what drives it. I was in stitches during a sketch about the renaming of a glam rocker which was essentially Legge reading out an endless list of names and Candon rejecting them. I can't quote you a single one, but each was beautifully chosen and judged.

In the evening, it was Shappi Khorsandi at the Pleasance Above, whose audience was noticeably "older", perhaps drawn in by Shappi's Radio 4 appearances. Someone else I've met and briefly worked with, Shappi is fully aware that her window is open, and she's diving through it. Although the routines that have made her famous concern her Iranian parentage, being a new mum has eclipsed this is in her new show, which has a strong autobiographical thread, but almost nothing about her younger, hipper sister who once dominated; plus, there's a lot of potentially solipsistic material about being famous towards the end. Mind you, she is so likeable, even when seemingly genuinely "distracted" (the show is called The Distracted Activist), it's impossible to mind spending an hour in her company. I saw her compere a few years ago when she was pregnant and I was instantly impressed. A few f-words may have slightly shocked the polite audience, but it's largely family-friendly fare.

Something very different to end the day: the first King Of Scotland Edwyn Collins at the Assembly Hall at midnight, an austerely ex-Parliamentary setting for an unplugged-style, sit-down concert with the still-recovering Edwyn and his restorative young band (three guitarists, one bongo player), plus, for a couple of numbers, a strikingly well preserved Malcolm Ross from Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and Josef K. Not having seen Edwyn play since his aneurysms, this was like holy communion for me. I have met him on and off since bumping into him for the NME in 1990 while interviewing Roddy Frame in Hamburg, and I was in fact the last to interview him, on 6 Music, before he had the two strokes in February 2005, so felt even more shocked at the news. He still walks with a stick, cannot play the guitar due to motor problems on his right hand side, and his speech is limited and staccato, but once he sings, it's like the illness never happened; the years just melt away and it could be 1980 or 1981 again. (I loved 1980 and 1981.)

The gig - the first of three - was not sold out, but every ticketholder was there for all the right reasons: to pay respect and tap a middle-aged toe to the great toons of Orange Juice, and we got the lot, from Falling And Laughing and Blue Boy to What Presence, with plenty of solo Collins on top. (No Felicity but you can't have the moon on a stick.) It may have been the sheer tiredness of the late hour and all that walking up and down the mound, but I had something like an out of body experience towards the close, transported somewhere else, but somewhere else really good. Two standing ovations, quite rightly.

By the way, out of six nights in Edinburgh, I ate a proper evening meal only twice (this is mainly due to the timing of shows and the lack of opportunity in between, and the rather more pressing need to drink socially). Tonight, I had an Indian meal with my agent Kate, at one of those restaurants that's just a door and you have to be brave enough to go upstairs: Suruchi, a very nice eating place if you like your peshwari nan to taste like a Bounty bar, and with Cobra on draft, thus breaking my cider-only rule - damn them! And Sunday night at the normal eating hour of midnight, with Richard and his mystery blonde girlfriend, at Bar Napoli on Hanover Street, a serviceable, noisy Italian that's as traditional during the Fringe as a plastic pint in the Pleasance Courtyard, or a breakfast at Henderson's, unless that last one's just me.

Friday: a reasonably quite day for bookings and the first without something pencilled in for midnight, thank the lord; just Sarah Millican at the Pleasance Courtyard, early evening. Before this, I used Twitter to ask Edinburgh if it wanted a drink. This was the first time I've done such a stupid thing, but Edinburgh is different during the Fringe - the atmosphere is such that nobody should have to drink alone, unless they want to. Even though I am professionally with Richard Herring, and sharing a crazy comedy flat with six other people, I tend to do the Fringe alone, mostly: give me a table, a drink and some kind of cake and I'm happy here.

Anyway, it was 5pm. I was having a coffee, by myself, at my second favourite Edinburgh coffee outlet*, The Black Medicine Coffee Company on Nicholson Street, which has free wi-fi and does lovely hot chocolate (unlike, say, Starbucks, who do horrible hot chocolate as an alternative to the horrible coffee) and a nice toasted salmon bagel. Whilst balancing on an uncomfortable high stool, and thinking I had an hour to kill, I thirstily put the call-out for a drinking companion on Twitter - rather hoping for a comedian to answer my call. No comedian did. But, a man known only as "Cockbongo" (he is, disappointingly, Tony in real life), who had been at a couple of podcast gigs and seemed mentally stable at the Tempting Tattie afterwards - where he mistakenly ordered the spicy sausage topping and found it to be some cut-up hot dog with jalapenos - typed the magic words: "We have a table in the Pleasance Courtyard. You're welcome to join us." So I took my stupid life into my own hands and wandered up there.

Tony was with three mostly-also-Scottish friends (one Northern Irish, I think), who also seemed mentally stable, so I bought them all a drink - at which point, the ubiquitous Justin Moorhouse, who had seen my Tweet but ignored it, walked past and said, "Ah, I see you've been able to buy some friends." This was very cruel, and sort of true! Actually, they were good company, and they got their rounds in, and we survived one of those instant Edinburgh downpours, the kind that whip vertically through a courtyard and cast all flyers and plastic cups asunder. One problem: I'd mistimed it, thinking I had an hour to kill, when in fact, I had two. Luckily for Cockbongo and his friends, we got on fine, and luckily for me, they did not kidnap me and kill me. We enjoyed the daily sight of the 85-year-old Nicholas Parsons doddering past, and watched Tom Binns, dressed as hospital radio DJ Ivan Brackenbury, working the queue to his gig, having his photograph taking with them. (I met Tom for the first time later in the evening, and he was moaning about the hydraulic catapult that's supposed to emulate a woman giving birth by firing a baby into the audience: he said it hadn't worked once. I couldn't work out if he really was depressed after nearly 20 years at the Fringe, or just saying he was for a joke. He certainly did some note-perfect impressions of Stewart Lee and Richard Herring for me.)

Did I mention Sarah Millican? Her new show Typical Woman is great. Not having seen her previous show, the one that got her noticed, I have nothing to compare it to, and just enjoyed listening to her forthright but approachable delivery and keen but cutting observations. It was a small room, and I suspect she could play bigger, but it allowed for an intimate, chatty show, with non-aggressive audience participation, and her tales of being strong but at the same time vulnerable and girly - which all have a ring of truth about them - were well told. (On holding her own with male Star Wars fans on a film degree course, she let her guard down by asking, "Which is the one with the teddies?")

I met her for a drink afterward, not because I make a habit of chatting comedians up after their gigs, but because Sarah had revealed to me via Twitter that her first TV appearance, 12 years ago, was as a "guest reviewer" on ITV's Collins & Maconie's Movie Club. She reviewed the martial arts thriller Tokyo Fist and was at that stage married (the divorce formed the basis of her first Edinburgh show, Sarah Millican's Not Nice). It was fun to catch up with her. She is, as you might expect from someone who didn't start comedy until she was 29, down to earth, but no shrinking violet, and that rare thing, a cheerful comedian. While chatting, we also said hello to Stephen Merchant and Brendon Burns, whom I congratulated on his eloquent contributions to the Brian Logan debate, which now seems so long ago.

A quick drink with Bridget Christie (whose show I was booked to see on Saturday), then we met up with her husband Stewart Lee at the Assembly Hall, as they were going to see Edwyn. I hung around with them in the queue until it was time to go in, hearing Stewart's horror stories about a "corporate" he'd done, then I failed to hook up with Richard, because he was still waiting to go on at a Time Out gig at the Pleasance, and getting drunk on the free beer - although as we discovered on the next podcast, this drunkeness allowed him to come up with an idea for a Beckett-style play about not being able to remember if a Mars bar was real, so no drop is wasted at the Fringe. Apart from the one that are just pissed up walls, of course.

Saturday: ah, the Gilded Balloon [pictured, in all its purple pomp], another hub of the Fringe, whose original home on Cowgate burned down so it now occupies Teviot Row House. Back in 1989 when I first came to Edinburgh with Renaissance Comedy Associates (ie. the St George's Medical School drama society), the original Balloon was where the Fringe Club was based. We came to the new building regularly when up with Lloyd Cole Knew My Father in 2001, and just walking through that underpass takes me right back. Anyway, my clever agent got me a special pass which meant I could gain access to the Loft Bar, for performers and their hangers-on only. I used this pass wisely, often, if I was in the vicinity, just going up there to use the toilets, which are much cleaner and more soundproofed than civilian toilets, or to get my laptop out (more free wi-fi) while I had a solitary cider.

I did this very thing before Bridget Christie's show, My Daily Mail Hell, in the Gilded Balloon Billiard Room, which was my first experience of her and a very focussed show, based on her experiences of working as an assistant on the Daily Mail diary page, but this was not just an easy stream of Mail-bashing (which, after all, is on its way down according to the all-seeing Guardian barometer), rather, a very cleverly written and staged piece about being an outsider - geographical (she's from Gloucestershire), educational (left school at 14), in terms of class (she imagines being a servant while fetching tea for "young racists") and in terms of fame - which took in Bridget's nightmarish experiences of getting quotes from famous people, her impressions of David Starkey and an elephant, and an actually quite moving recreation of Jack Vettriano's famous picture The Singing Butler. There is more than a touch of theatre to her stand-up, but it's never pompous, in fact, she laughs at herself throughout, which puts the audience on her side.

Actually, it being the weekend, audiences are now made up of not just comedy fans but also holidaymakers who are here for the weekend and have admirably just picked shows because of the quotes or the poster and turned up; these people need warming up, as they can be reluctant to let go and laugh, and are quite unused to being talked to by a performer. Bridget thawed her holidaymakers out with a bit where she actually leaves the room, with her microphone, while acting out a trip to the Mail canteen past a statue of Lord Rothermere, played by a volunteer from the audience, who gamely Hitler-saluted! There is, if I may be so bold, a deft touch of Stewart Lee to some of the delivery, but this is only natural when you are actually in love with Stewart Lee, in the sense that you have married him and borne him a child. I think it's mostly in the repetition ("piles, and piles, and piles, and piles, and piles, and piles ..."), which, after all, Stewart Lee didn't actually invent. Maybe he copied her. It's a minefield! Bridget refers to him in her show, but never names him, which is either discreet or slightly disingenuous, when most comedy fans know anyway. She is a real talent. (And she loves the Mitford sisters!)

I've gone lady mad, now. Another female comic to finish off my Saturday night: Danielle Ward, whom I know through Gifted Children, Karaoke Circus and living with her (in that, she is one of the people living in our comedy flat). Danielle is young and mordant, and doesn't make it easy for an audience with her darker material, but once you tune in, she's very original. In the Pleasance Hut, which is another boiling Portakabin, she struggled to connect, especially with the group of about ten holidaymakers across two rows, who shouted jokey things at each other (and at one stage two of the women held a conversation), but didn't actually contribute when spoken. This is not their fault - punters pay good money to be entertained and are often diffident that this wall should not be broken - but chat is a traditional ruse of the comedian, and if a performer relies on getting the room on their side for perhaps more demanding material by bantering, it can slow a show down if they sit with their arms folded. I don't know if Danielle knew that Bruce Dessau, comedy critic for Time Out, was in the audience. I hope she didn't.

I had an early night. Sated with female comedy and strong enough to deflect the allure of a drink with Richard and Stephen Merchant, I went down the hill, my Fringe Legs still aching, especially around the shin, but getting stronger by the day. (Walking down a steep hill can be just as punishing as walking up one. Maybe this has symbolic, theatrical connotations.)


Sunday: with a long, long day ahead, I paced myself with one show, and two hours' solid afternoon drinking with Michael Legge after his show at 4pm. We found ourselves under canvas at the Urban Garden, a large, open-air bar situated at Ground Zero where the Gilded Balloon used to be before it was blown up by terrorists from the Assembly Rooms, or not. It's a kind of improvised space, but safe from downpours and full of people. A good place to wile away a couple of hours talking about comedy with a comedian. (Michael and Johnny had enjoyed a full house, and it seems that some folk had come because of Richard and I discussing the show on our podcast, so he fucking owed me a drink.) I am pleased to announce that we discovered The Worst Toilet of the Festival at the Urban Garden: hidden down a long, dank, musty, flickeringly-lit corridor in one of the old buildings that wasn't destroyed by the fire but probably ought to have been, this facility, clearly signposted as an actual toilet, was a single, disabled-sized cubicle, with a disabled rail, but no sink or running water or paper towels. As Michael described it, "It's like a toilet designed by the naughty man in Saw." We both imagined the door locking behind us and a wall of hypodermic needles closing in unless we sawed our own nose off.

This is my friend Jon Holmes's first solo show at the Fringe, at the Gilded Balloon Nightclub, and a very promising start - by far the most audio and visual of everything I saw. Rock Star Babylon is named after, and based upon, his book of hoary old rock anecdotes, but if it appears to be a book reading, it is much more than that, with inserts of Stephen Fry talking, films, illustrations, PowerPoint-style captions, live interactivity using Wikipedia, songs, a shoe and bits of cardboard, interspersed with an overconfident small man sounding just like a stand-up comedian, with the kind of proper mic technique that remains, for me, a pipe dream. I have always liked Jon's style and enjoyed working alongside him, but it's hard for me to have to admit that I now admire him and am sort of in awe of his achievement. It's a cracking show whose effort is all up there on the screen, and it deserves its apparent family audience (it's JRE - just risque enough). If there was a power cut, of course, he'd be fucked. Jon told me afterward, as we hung out in the Loft Bar, that he had been inhumanly hungover and thought it a below-par performance. Then again, he's been to his show every night.

Aside from the usual parade of now-familiar faces in the bar - Hardeep, Barry Cryer, Ronnie Golden, Sean Hughes, Janey Godley - the comedy aristocracy up there lost their cool momentarily when an old bald man who looked just like Roland Gift because he was, in fact, Roland Gift passed through, stealing all the limelight in the building. What a guy. (I chatted to Jarred Christmas, too, who's being airlifted in to do a couple of shows, designed to capitalise on his fame in the Pot Noodle adverts - he described this as "the gentleman's Edinburgh.")

Then, finally, at 1am: this.

This turned out to be the perfect happy finish to my Edinburgh Fringe 2009 and the actual Dripping Point of my already sweat-soaked, salt-lined clothes: a flatshare outing to Martin White and Danielle Ward's riotous Karaoke Circus at the Pleasance Ace Dome. Usual drill: comics and members of the public belting out songs to a live, four-piece band in an assortment of wrong keys. The band were well rehearsed, the performers not. Having only ever been up once, as Tom Waits at the 100 Club, I felt ready to tackle my hero Robert Smith of The Cure, but it turned out I was wrong. I was not ready. But hey, this was not a problem, as the audience are not there to hate, and judge The Baron said my performance was "utterly magnificeeeeeeeeent!", so it must have been. The bill kicked off in style with Robin Ince finally doing Morrissey doing I Know It's Over, then, in pantomime style, getting the band to stop playing and launching instead into Barry Manilow's Copacabana. This was a new Robin Ince. And a new key. But a hard act to follow. Those that did included Simon Amstell doing an admirably melodramatic Hero by Enrique Iglesias ...

... Richard Herring getting the complex timing and intonation just right on Sparks' This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us, despite looking like the non-singing Ron Mael and not the singing Russell Mael; the whole of Pappy's Fun Club passing the mic around for Suspicious Minds, Carrie Quinlan belting out Born To Run, Pippa Evans belting out Livin' On A Prayer (thus engorging Jon Holmes with jealousy - he was one of many non-participatory peformers in the audience, also: Russell Kane, Dan Atopolski); Humphrey Ker of the Penny Dreadfuls and Greg McHugh making a superb if lightly half-racist fist of The Proclaimers' Letter From America; Anna Crilly and the cancelled sitcom Not Going Out's Katy Wix duetting sweetly on Especially For You; our flat's very own Justin Edwards singing Tiny Dancer while scrolling the lyrics down on Richard's iPhone and with his tiny dancing girlfriend Lucy Porter tinily dancing around and mainly behind him ... and, yes, my spirited attempt on the life of The Cure's The Lovecats, before which I called for some lipstick from the audience, which I smeared across my face, at least ensuring a measure of entertainment before I started singing. The winner was member of the public Jonathan Cobb whose rendition of Video Killed The Radio Star won him adulation and the prize of singing the closer, Nobody Does It Better. He was better than all of us put together. (Why does a member of the public always win? It's almost as if it's fixed so that the comedians don't win. Oh yes.)

Look, just enjoy a sensational selection of photos by KC's official photographer Paul Bailey - entire set here - I would say you had to be there, and 200 merry festivalgoers were, but if you just imagine the smell of hot, stale sweat mixed with pear cider and wine, you should be able to feel the magic:

A memorable night of discarded lyric sheets, discarded egos, hot faces, missed notes and a clown shouting utterly brilliaaaaaaaaaaant. I walked down the mound for the final time this trip at 3am, soaked through but happy - and smug that I had switched from children's cider to tap water at about 12.15 (what a cheap date I am). I even saw Richard's magic black cat, curled up on its doormat, asleep, which I took as a good sign.

On Monday morning, I left behind a comedy flat full of sleeping comedians, a week of sold-out podcast gigs, a broken kagoule (which I threw out with the rest of the rubbish - it's years old and decided to perish in Wednesday's deluge, depositing plastic white dandruff all over my clothes and allowing in the rain), and one discarded, unfulfilled loyalty card from my first favourite coffee shop in Edinburgh (*Wellington on Hanover Street - like the Black Medicine Coffee Company, it's not a chain but there are three branches in the city, which is acceptable to my inner Klein - it serves "flat white", the Antipodean for coffee, and warm, home-baked scones, which are delivered daily - only problem is that it's tiny, and you can't always get in).

I take away with me: a much emptier Waitrose shopping bag which used to have 28 copies of my "talking book" in it, but now only contains 12; a disc containing the illegally-copies second season of True Blood which a fan pressed into my hand after a show but doesn't work in my computer anyway (maybe this is as it should be); permanent heartburn from all that pear cider; the need to put all my Orange Juice albums on my iPod; bloodstains on the back of my nice grey jacket; and some utterly brilliaaaaaaaaaaant memories.

Oh, and a photo of a beautiful young cat called Cleo who was travelling with her owners to London on the same train as me yesterday (Traincat!). Unfortunately it is a shit photo taken on my shit antique Motorola phone, which I have no way of sending to anybody's email address, or even to an iPhone, so that it can be successfully posted anywhere. So, out of technological desperation, I took a photo of my phone's screen using the camera on my laptop, and the very shitness of this makes me smile, just like Cleo did. Richard Herring thinks I have gone mad. If I have, it's his, and Edinburgh's, fault.


Back to Edinburgh on Saturday, for one more night of laughter and pears.

In the fifth and final of our live, daily podcasts from the Underbelly in Edinburgh [be patient, it's on its technological way], we had our first almost lethally hot one, with sweat dripping down the walls of the Belly Laugh almost as if solely to prove that some cliches are true. Although it is Sunday and thus there is no news in the newpapers, we managed to extract something out of News Of The World's Kerry Katona video, the travails of Danielle Lloyd and Michael Jackson's Frankenchildren, while - as has become tradition in Edinburgh - lightly and affectionately insulting anyone in the front row. Thanks to Tony, who gave us the alcoholic ginger beer [pictured by Gordon, above]; the band The Smoking Rolo Sideshow, who gave us the big box of 60 Stinger chews, which we handed out as if it was Sunday school; and our unofficial photographer Gordon, who gave us the Green Party rosettes. Incidentally, we remain filthily sponsored by Profanity App, whose sales have dipped a little, but I'm sure you can remedy that. Incidentally - this podcast is about 5 seconds shorter than normal, not because of a glitch caused by rivulets of sweat dripping into the laptop, but because, as you'll hear, I was legally bound to remove a certain untrue claims that Richard kept repeating just so that I would have to come back to the flat and painstakingly remove it. Here's the front row in full, complete with empty chair (how did that happen? we sold out the whole run?) ...

Hats off to Jonny for making this new-fangled video tape recording of the Tempting Tattie happening. Even though there's one more live Edinburgh podcast to go tomorrow, today's "flash-pot", as I'm stupidly calling it, felt like a climax of sorts: good people doing a good thing in honour of an independent local trader and some high quality carbohydrates, and some of them buying my audiobook. Incidentally, the reason I left before the end was that Paul "The Cat" Johnston whisked me off to interview me for the Kirkcaldy hospital radio network where he has a Sunday show (which involved my first ever drive across the Forth Bridge, which is exciting): Victoria Radio Network. Here is some stationery photographic evidence:

And here is a late picture just in from Gordon Hodgson: some signatures in a book neither Richard nor I actually wrote (although I like to think I have sold many, many copies of):

In the fourth of our live, daily podcasts from the Underbelly in Edinburgh, we reach a new level of surreal whimsy and timewasting as the enormity of the task really starts to sink in. But what a tremendous audience, especially Colin from Arbroath with all his "highers", whatever they are. We discuss, among other issues, the lack of fanfare for the countdown to the apocalypse ie. when we all have to use energy-efficient lightbulbs to appease some killjoys in Brussels (as noticed exclusively by the Daily Mail) and the fact that some animals ride on other animals' backs. I also allow Richard to roadtest his Beckett-style play for the Fringe 2010 about the Mars Bar. This podcast is possibly a modern classic, possibly complete toss, but it certainly led to a truly phenomenal "happening" outside the Tempting Tattie, where 100 or so people queued to get their jacket potato, thus "breaking" the establishment twice. Thanks to all who took and posted pics via Twitter. Incidentally, we remain almost-lucratively sponsored by Profanity App, which is selling like hot apps.

Underbelly queue photo with view of the Ladies: Gordon Hodgson

In the third of our live, daily podcasts from the Underbelly in Edinburgh, we attempt to build bridges with our audience by testing their memory of key cultural signifiers (well, one bloke in the front row anyway, who had the memory of Mr Memory out of The 39 Steps); we also discuss the unfolding tragedy of Kerry Katona, the unfolding mystery of South African "hermathlete" Caster Semenya, the incredible journeys of a goldfish called Pooh and a giant tortoise called Zeus, and the majesty of Peter Key. We also experience what it's like when Richard is on fire, while remaining almost-lucratively sponsored by Profanity App. I feel we should apologise to the proprietor of the Tempting Tattie, was sadly overworked when we took the audience to his emporium after the show, as he had no other staff behind the counter. This was a very strange podcast, with many unfunny longueurs, but the audience were particularly supportive and patient. Which is why I am picturing the whole front row.

(And thanks to unofficial photographer Gordon Hodgson for the two pics at the top.)

In the second of our live, daily podcasts from the Underbelly in Edinburgh, we find out how many A-Levels our audience have got, discuss Scottish nationalism in relation to the Australian soap opera Neighbours, ponder the implications of the "hermathlete", wonder what's on this weekend in Stirlingshire, check out the Guardian's lastest wallchart, look into the ethics of wing-walking, and wonder if the opera director Stewart Lee really will turn up as a special guest for Friday's podcast (clue: no he won't). We remain sponsored by Profanity App, which provides amusing insults for Richard throughout the podcast, and devoted to drumming up business for the local Tempting Tattie. And here, once again, is a photo of some of the better - worst - qualified members of the audience. (And thanks to MissWiz, who took the photo above.)

Ah, and here's a pic taken by Sali of me outside the Tempting Tattie. It's been a hole lot of fun so far. (I'll review some of the others shows I've seen tomorrow - now I am off out to see another one.)

In the first of our five, live, daily podcasts from the Underbelly at the Edinburgh Fringe, we test the moistness of our audience and have them eating out of our hands, discussing the "swoop" on Kerry Katona's mansion, the 1,400 pints left behind the bar of the Glasgow Airport Holiday Inn for John Smeaton, the ethics of homeless people going on camping holidays, the accidental racism of a 12-year-old fan of the TV miniseries Roots and the endless permutations of our Edinburgh sponsor, the makers of the Profanity "app" for the iPhone you might, like Richard, be looking after for a young cycling resident of Shepherd's Bush. Next podcast TOMORROW! (And here's a pic of some of the audience.)

I know it's the silly season and that the newspapers have to fill up a lot of comment space to justify their existence and create an artificial dialogue with what little paying readership they have left, but this downpage piece hit a new low for me in yesterday's Guardian:

To kill a squawking bird
If you want to read it in full, it's here, but these are the salient points, made by a writer called Ariane Sherine, whose work in the newspaper I am not familiar with but who apparently writes for My Family, which is more successful than any sitcom I've ever written. Anyway ... "For the past three weeks," she begins. "I have been woken up every day at 5am by seagulls." Ah, it's a first-person confessional slice of life. "As I live in central London, this is a bit like being nuzzled awake by polar bears when you live in the Gobi desert." No, it isn't. "There is no reason whatsoever for the seagulls to be here, unless they're the stupidest, most short-sighted seagulls ever and have mistaken the Regent's Canal for the sea."

She goes on. I read to the end, assuming she would at some stage, awake from her solipsistic Metropolitan stupor and address the issue of overfishing, which is one of the reasons seagulls now fly further inland to feed and breed. I thought this was well known, it's been happening for years and is well documented, and it's thus effectively our fault, but Ariane Sherine has her teeth into this now and will not let go. "And if they're that daft, why could they not accidentally brain themselves on some windows, instead of disrupting my sleep at precisely the same time each morning, like some kind of insane RSPB-sponsored speaking clock?"

She doesn't mind the sound of an "everyday garden bird," just the squawk of the impertient seagull, who doesn't realise that Ariane Sherine wants to go to sleep in Central London. She believes that their call translates as, "Where the hell is the sea?" In fact, it translates as, "Where is the fish?" They are incredibly intelligent birds, and know that inland is a lot safer than the coast too: more room, less predators. She correctly observes that the gulls now scavenge in our urban, inland rubbish, but that's because their natural food supply has been pillaged, and also, we chuck out loads of really nice food because the supermarkets stamp it with a random date, oh, and because we are wasteful, horrible people. We help pigeons thrive in the same way, by dropping old bits of muffin all over the pavement as we walk along eating our air-filled lumps of doughy nothing. And then we complain about all the pigeons.

Wait a minute? None of this can be true, or else Ariane Sherine wouldn't be entitled to hate seagulls for making what is their natural cry near her house in Central London, and the Guardian, a national newspaper of some repute, wouldn't give her a column in which to do it. "How on earth can a bird get lost?" she squawks. "Shouldn't its inbuilt evolutionary radar systems stop disorientation?" Yes, except it is not lost. It is searching for food, except without the aid of a handy Waitrose. They "prefer", she claims, "to feast on dead Marks & Spencer fish heads than dip into the sea for a tasty live snack." Yes, that is correct. You, Ariane Sherine, are correct. The gulls are antisocial idiots, we are blameless. And yes, ha ha, you should, as you threaten, get a gun and shoot them. That would be solve the problem. Although you'll have to shoot all of them.

Let's hope the Guardian don't follow Murdoch's lead and make us pay for their content in the future. They will be hard pushed to justify putting a coin in the meter for groundless, self-congratulatory filler like this.

You can read my big piece on Dan Brown and the build-up to the publication of The Lost Symbol in today's Times, or read it online. They have used a funny photo from the session I did with photographer Richard Cannon on Wednesday at Waterstone's in Piccadilly, which involves a giant Dan Brown book. The thing is, it looks like they have cleverly superimposed a regular-sized book onto a picture of me pretending I am holding it up - but I really was holding it up! Not sure the shirt looks that good, but hey, you live and learn.

This is not a screen grab of me on yesterday's The One Show on BBC1. It is the whole of my appearance of yesterday's The One Show on BBC1, which was brief, to say the least, but still meant that I got to sit and chat to the mighty Germaine Greer in the BFI bar about history and Hollywood, which was a treat in itself. It also ruins my record of being on every TV show but only once. I have now been on The One Show twice. Bah! Bang goes the title of my next book: The One Shows. (Hey, I'm apparently a Film Buff. Don't tell anyone, but I'm not.)

This is a nice surprise: Christina Hardyment at the Times has, uniquely, reviewed my audiobook. Every little helps, as a big corporation disingenuously says. Because they asked, Go Faster Stripe allowed them to sell it "off the page" via their bookselling service, for the reduced price of £13.50. It would be nice if we sold an extra few this way, to Times readers phoning a number, but it would be nicer if they bought it at source, from Go Faster Stripe, who are not a big corporation and deserve the business. (We might have more reviews if we could afford to pay a PR to hawk it round the papers. But I prefer it this way.)

Through no fault of her own, the nice Times lady has mistakenly assumed the book to be new (and not, say, six years old), saying that it is "part of the current recession's singing-in-the-rain reaction against the misery memoirs that dominated the past decade or so." Though I'm happy to be part of a recession-beating trend, if it helps, I do object slightly to be described as "following in the footsteps of Nigel Slater's memorable Toast." I love that book, but it came out in September 2003, while mine came out in February 2003.

Ah, True Blood ... who knew my next favourite US TV import would be about vampires? I have no interest in vampires as a rule, having allowed Buffy to pass me by, and correctly adjudged Twilight to be for people under half my age, but the magic words "Alan" and "Ball" drew me to True Blood, having thoroughly enjoyed American Beauty and Six Feet Under, and - although here he is adapting another writer's work from source, that is the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris - you know you're onto a winner with the master. (Also, he's from Georgia, so clearly has an instinctive geographical "feel" for the Louisiana setting.)

Another winner from HBO, it's showing here on the abidingly essential FX channel, which is one of the few reasons I hang on to my Sky subscription - as it's not on Freeview or Freesat, for, one imagines, Murdoch-related reasons - True Blood hooked me in from the off, and now, having cheekily raced through the best part of season one due to press discs, I'm convinced it is inching its way towards being a modern classic. Usually referred to as Southern Gothic, which it undoubtedly is, this is more than just the story of virginal, extra-sensorily perceptive waitress Sookie (Ana Paquin in the role of her career) and her pan-ethnic relationship with vampire Bill (The Grand's Stephen Moyer, gone to America and everything) in a parallel present where blooduckers have been granted equal rights with complicated socio-sexual consequences and vampires desiring to "go mainstream" and integrate drink commercially available blood substitute called True Blood, while humans crave V Juice (vampire blood) for kicks. It's really the story of a small town, Bon Temps, and its interweaving plotlines. It would be easy to sell on the frankness of its sex, or the gushingness of its gore, but it's about far more than sucking and fucking in the Body Heat heat - it's a soap opera, concerned equally with gossip and gravestones, family and fangs, humour and horror.

Certainly, the lead characters - and by extension the actors - are a statuesque lot, easy on the eye and often glimpsed in states of undress, or at least in vests for the humid weather: Moyer, Paquin, Ryan Kwanten (who plays the world's most toned council employee, Jason, and used to be on Home & Away), Rutina Wesley (Tara), Lizzy Caplan (Amy), Nelson Ellis (Lafayette, pumped-up combination drug drealer/gay porn star/short-order cook) and Alexander Skarsgard (last seen as the hypnotic Iceman in Generation Kill, now the king of the vampires on account of his age and, presumably, height). But it's more than just a beauty contest - dismiss it as The OC with added haemoglobin at your peril. The other townsfolk are just as interesting: Sheriff Dearborne, Detective Andy Bellefleur, Lettie Mae, Hoyt, Arlene, Adele, Rene ... you're getting the impression that I'm sucked into this, and I am. Unlike that other hit from HBO, The Wire, it seems to win awards over there. And whether it's explicitly or implicitly post-Katrina is really up to you.

Like Six Feet Under, its use of existing music is smart and offbeat (in recent episodes of True Blood, we've heard The Eagles Of Death Metal, Allen Touissant, Cat Power, Heaven 17, Lynrd Skynrd, a cover of The Cure's Just Like Heaven by The Watson Twins, and Sweet Jane by the Cowboy Junkies), and like Six Feet Under, its credit sequence is worthy of an award all by itself: a beguiling, swampy montage of Louisiana verite, deftly mixing up the show's themes of death, religion and nature - a baptism here, a rattlesnake there, some flash frames of what can only be described as sexual congress, a Klan baby ... It can, and should, be seen here (and the song, Bad Things, is by a country artist I'd never heard of called Jace Everett, before you ask).



Interested? If you don't have FX, it's being shown on C4 later this year, except with certain cuts made to the sex and violence so that it can be shown at 9pm. Drained of a certain amount of blood, then.

OK, finally reached a point where I was mentally armed to see the controversial art-horror-porn film Antichrist by "the greatest director in the world" Lars Von Trier (his words, not mine). We chose a Sunday afternoon showing, at the splendid-if-premium-priced Curzon Soho, rather than a late night one, thus guaranteeing sunlight for soul-examination and mental-wound-licking afterwards. (Nothing like building yourself up, is there? I do like a tingle of anticipation before a film, and after some of the makeweight Hollywood dross I've had to sit through in the name of holiday cover, I was grateful for that.) I'm afraid I had read way too much about Antichrist before seeing it - what it means, what other critics think, a detailed account of its shocking content - but that's just me. I like exploring new cities, but I always thumb a tour guide beforehand.

That said, having now seen it, I am surprised by how much of what forms the dramatic climax has been described, catalogued and dissected by critics. Have they not heard of spoilers? (Even in saying that, I have disclosed that at least some of the notorious shock moments come at the end, but you don't know which ones. I pretty much did. Are the rules different with arthouse movies? Is it OK to discuss them to the point of giving away at least part of the ending? Discuss.)

Here's what you probably already know: it's an English-language film shot in Germany predominantly by Danes and funded by six European countries, starring an American and a half-French Englishwoman playing an American couple from Seattle, translated from Von Trier's native North Germanic tongue and thus giving the dialogue an almost in-built stiffness and poetry. It's ultimately about a bereavement and the resulting grief: the couple, unnamed, lose a child, and - he being a therapist - they hike out to a cabin in the woods to confront her fears and work out her anxiety. (And here's the first example of Antichrist's deep-seated misogyny: she is emotional, unpredictable and nutty; he remains stoic and calm. Chicks, eh? Probably her time of the month etc.) At the cabin, cut off from civilisation, the powerful effects of nature on the mind and the body take terrifying hold, and the line between reality and fantasy becomes blurred. Are the couple going mad? Or are we?

The story is divided into four chapters, and bookended by a prologue and epilogue. It's in chapters three and four, entitled Despair (Gynocide) and The Three Beggars, where the film goes off the rails and turns into a graphically gory horror movie, albeit one with a more serious psychological intent than to just show you horrible physical pain. (Either that, or you go along with the view, widely shared, that Von Trier is simply taking the piss out of us all, especially those Guardian-reading arthouse apologist among us, who will swallow any old exploitation if it's dressed as art. Clearly, as one of those people, I refute this. It can't be that simple, surely?)

Antichrist is beautiful. It begins in what seems to be knowing parody of advertising, in pristine, slo-mo monochrome, set against Handel, as if selling shower gel or perfume - except the scene, which is far more explicitly sexual than any Calvin Klein ad will ever be, contains, even conceals a horrifying dramatic event. Right from the start, Von Trier is - if not playing with us - playing with form. He dares us to be titillated, again and again, and punishes us for our bad behaviour. So what's going on? Is this a masterpiece? I don't think so, as its intentions seem so confused, beyond the definite motive of casting women as the root of all evil. (I won't give any plot points away, but the mother feels the death is her fault, and, well, the unfolding narrative done not make a very good job of dissuading us otherwise.) Beauty and ugliness have been juxtaposed many, many times in art and in cinema - Peter Greenaway might have made this film, had he an interest in horror, or, as Von Trier claims, had he plunged into a mighty depression and used work to claw his way out of it. This is a pretty dark piece of work, and when it stays this side of exploitation, it's intriguing and clever and, yes, truly scary: the weird animal presence (you've heard all about "the talking fox" - well, if you find yourself laughing when the fox says, "Chaos reigns" then you have an odd sense of humour, like the men in the row behind me); the stunningly shot forest, with its fairytale quality, possessed of a malevolent character even in broad daylight; the sound of the acorns landing on the cabin roof; the creaky doors and rusty tools. Von Trier has not thrown this film together; the sheer craft is there to behold.

And yet, for my money, he undoes much of his good work by seeking to shock. Although I had planned on closing my eyes for the bits that I'd read about but had no wish to see, I lost my nerve at the last second, and saw both of them. Yuck. (There's a third act of violence which I hadn't anticipated, so I saw - and felt - that one, too. Ouch.) I had presumed that I would get through my life without ever seeing one of these things - the "money shot", as it were - and although it was clearly achieved using special effects, it's pretty unforgettable. It aims for the same impact as the eyeball-slitting shot in Un Chien Andalou, that's all you need to know. I watched that, too, and have never forgotten it. But the Bunuel/Dali film was made in 1929, when the very grammar of cinema was still being forged (and sought to sidestep the kind of analysis that dogs arthouse cinema today, by claiming to represent and symbolise nothing). Antichrist comes off the back of a wave of post-9/11 "torture porn", and simply borrows the same techniques, while merely changing the context from functional frightfest for teenage boys to Freudian examination of grief and depression.

And then there's the frank sexual content. It used to be that an erect penis entering a vagina was the preserve of hardcore pornography. That all changed with a new wave of art movies beginning in the 90s: Lars Von Trier's The Idiots, Catherine Breillat's Romance, Julio Bedem's Sex & Lucia, and Michael Winterbottom's Nine Songs. (I'm not saying these were the first, clearly - Oshima's Ai No Corrida, which I started watching at the weekend as it's being reissued by the BFI, shocked the world in 1976.) Anyway, these are 18-certificate films, perfectly fine for 18 year-olds to watch. We have to get over this. It's progress, and no floodgates have been opened as yet. The sex in Antichrist is realistic. It is also violent. But it reflects the psychological problems that exist within the relationship. It is part of the story, not decoration, and certainly not titillation. If you want to be turned on by an erect penis entering a vagina, I believe this act has been cleaned up, depilated and relieved of all narrative baggage for you in a specialist type of film. Once again: discuss.

I can't read Antichrist as the "hoax" other critics have identified. It is what it is: a tale of grief and madness in the woods, which takes a very nasty turn at the end. The nasty bit will dissuade many from seeing it, while attracting others. But you should go and see a Hostel if you want crowd-pleasing gore. Go and see Antichrist if you want to see a film whose misogyny is at least subject for discussion, rather than, say the romantic comedy The Ugly Truth, which takes the shallowness and inferiority of women as a given, and makes jokes out of it.

This is me, on my own, waiting to review this week's films as Mark Kermode in the 5 Live studio, while Mark Radcliffe, who was playing Simon Mayo, was in Headingly, straining to hear me over the sound of appeals and various other crowd noises, not to mention a chorus of Just One Cornetto at one point (I don't understand cricket). I very rarely get to "be" Mark Kermode with Simon Mayo, as when Mark's away, Simon is usually away too. Mind you, they get quality holiday cover in for him, usually Phil Williams or Colin Murray or Richard Bacon, but whatever the pairing, we always know we're on a hiding to nothing trying to fill the chasm left by the people's favourites "Dr K" and "Dr M".

If you could see me on a webcam now, I'm looking just as bored - or thoughtful - in a BBC News green room, waiting to "be" Mark Kermode on Film 24. It can be a lonely life moving from studio to studio (I was even grabbed by the Six O'Clock News to give a soundbite about the late John Hughes - at least I was already in a shirt). This open-plan odyssey is animated only by the actual radio/TV appearance itself, when at least I get to talk. Due to "the cricket", my bulging portfolio of new films seen - seven! - was cruelly truncated on 5 Live by the unscheduled appearance of Sir Geoffrey Boycott at Mark Radcliffe's side for his own comment on England's collapse at the Ashes (that's what was happening, isn't it?), and I didn't even get the chance to rave about Mesrine: Killer Instinct - easily my film of the week. At least they only require three films on Film 24, so I know I'll get my chance to rave about it on the swivel chair.

I made a joke on last week's Film 24 about not being able to get wi-fi access at the BBC, which used to be true. Now I seem to be able to connect, which is why I'm wiling away the downtime writing about wiling away the downtime. Cheers.

PS: Just realised that all my Film 24 appearances are logged on the BBC website here (including tonight's - they work fast in BBC online). It seems I have been sitting or perching on Mark's chair for almost two years. I didn't know it had been so long. I've had a lot of use out of this suit.

PPS: Thanks to Paul Bailey for the grab. Nicely done.

So that's why I've been getting so much work done this afternoon.

I am too busy writing a substantial piece for The Times of London about Dan Brown's in-your-own-time follow-up to The Da Vinci Code - which, no, I haven't seen - to say anything profound or involved about it here. But I thought you might like the official countdown widget. I'm oddly excited. But then I really enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. Actually, I will give you this: I was surprised to find that in 2005, Stephen King addressed graduates at the University of Maine and called Dan Brown "the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese." Ouch!

And I hope you like my headline.

After a gloomy start to the week, I spent the last two nights performing on the bill of Robin Ince's School For Gifted Children at the Roundhouse, part of the Camden Fringe. To say it lifted my spirits would be an understatement: something about the backstage camaraderie, the flooded toilet, the lack of booze and the pacing up and down, the thrill of standing in front of an audience - with no microphone this time - combined with the confidence engendered by the knowledge that Robin Ince attracts a different class of comedy punter.

These were excellent, compact shows which did not overrun, both confidently sold out, and displayed the now expected mix of science, comedy, music and, yes, dance. It was further revenge of the nerds. And none of it would have been possible without Robin, who, as well as being a ferocious, brainy stand-up, has forged a second career for himself as curator, facilitator and host - at the same time learning how to be a dad. Since launching The Book Club in 2005, he has fashioned himself into a one-man comedy empire, often going unpaid or underpaid in his quest to include - and indeed favour - non-comedians on traditional comedy bills. An all-inclusive universe, driven by the engine of inquiry and knowledge and a bit of PowerPoint, evolving from the Book Club to the current School For Gifted Children umbrella, via various atheist-themed variety bills (the most notable being the Lessons and Carols For Godless People run at Christmas, in aid of the New Humanist Society, which returns to the Bloomsbury this December), Robin has helped turn men of science like Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre and now Marcus Chown into smartypants comic performers, stand-up lecturers, if you will, the sort a paying hardcore will now turn out to see. I enjoyed playfully informing Marcus, a gentle cosmologist who writes books about physics that real people can understand, that I am anti-science backstage last night. But that's because I'm not, really.

Also on the Roundhouse bills were Ince repertory players Gavin Osborn, a fine singer songwriter, and Natalie Haynes, ever-vigilant observer of life, and me. I am not a stand-up comedian. I wouldn't last five minutes in front of a real comedy audience, or at least not yet, but thanks to Robin - who is God, albeit a militant atheist God - I've been given the chance to develop routines about serial killers, the Mitford Sisters and The Poseidon Adventure, and now I've found a platform to demonstrate Secret Dancing, which was a joy. It was so much fun to explain it and then demonstrate its subtle moves, to the accompaniment of Mark Ronson's Ooh Wee and the Sugababes' About You Now - on both nights with a volunteer, Simon on Monday, and Rose last night: both courageous and committed and hilarious, and better than me at Secret Dancing. I'm afraid you had to be there. Robin even had me back on to finish last night's show with a mass swayalong to Take That's Back For Good. A fairly surreal moment in my life.

So, after last week's bad vibes, I'm sending some good ones to Robin Ince. And will now plug all his forthcoming Edinburgh ventures and beyond with this link and this unclickable calendar, because comedy needs him, and he needs your support because he keeps agreeing to do benefits and give pocket money to half a dozen physicists instead of himself:



By the way, the photo at the top was taken in 2006 for The Day The Music Died when Robin still had brown hair. It seems so long ago.

Apologies for the self-indulgent previous post about feeling fed up and panicky, which I did warn you I might take down by lunchtime. I've actually taken it down already. Instead, in the spirit of cheering up, here are a series of pictures that make it better.













Perhaps you'd like to suggest some equally cheery pics of your own. It's time to spread the good vibes. Right, off to GI Joe screening.