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Saturday May 14
Caught up on some taped programmes last night. Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee was Myra Syal's big vanity project on BBC2 - she adapted it from her own novel and took the best part (giving the part of her husband to, er, her husband, Sanjeev Baskar). Amber from Footballers Wives was in it too. It was a bit clunky for my tastes, and so desperate, through the attitude of its main protagonists, to distance itself from Asian clichés, you couldn't help but draw imaginary ticks in the air each time an Asian cliché cropped up. Also, the key dramatic device of the first episode (I won't be watching the other two) was totally without credible motivation.

Also, from earlier in the week, Compulsion: Love Will Tear Us Apart , just about the most depressing documentary I've seen in ages (and I've seen a few), just two addicts battling their way out of addictions and trying to hold their marriage together. What made the subject "saleable" in terms of television was the fact that a) they were middle class, and b) they were addicted to everything on the menu: heroin, booze, gambling, infidelity. They were doomed. And they had two kids! Heaven knows where they would have been if a church organisation in Hastings hadn't put them up and looked after them. Not that it helped. Couldn't watch it all.

Taped the first half of The 100 Greatest War Films , aware that I'll never get to watch it all. There's another part tomorrow night, also three hours. Also taped Soul Deep and Conviction . I'll be taping over those in a week's time, equally unwatched.

Garden State on DVD. Zach Braff is obviously talented (he wrote, directed and starred), although it started so much more promisingly than it ended, when his character Largeman was hooked on prescription drugs. As they wore off, so did the film's originality - in fact, it ended at an airport, which one character leaving and changing their mind. That should be banned.

Read up on our new friends (there are three of them now) in the big book of urban foxes. It turns out that they really do eat anything, as we suspected, are not nocturnal and they give birth in May, which means our lot are totally out of whack, as they seem to be a parent and two youngish cubs. They look less than a year old. Hey, natural cycles are all out in this new, globally warmed world. Sorry to break it to you, David Bellamy. The three foxes are now - as warned! - turning up at mealtimes. Fine by me.

Sunday May 15
Day three of my marathon of ten consecutive days on 6 Music, as I'm sitting in for Gid all next week. I predict that by next Sunday I'll have run out of things to say. Expect a shorter blog.

By the way, we watched Garden State last night because our grand plan, to see Attack Of The Clones again to get in the right mood for Revenge Of The Sith on Thursday, was thwarted by the local Blockbuster's only copy being out. The back half of a spirited, authored documentary by Dermot O'Leary, Generation Jedi on BBC3, excited me. (Yes, I was on it, and so badly lit. From below!)

After I'd finished my 6 Music show, I went to the 8th birthday party of my niece Katy. (As promised, I dedicated a song to her on the radio and she was tuned in via the telly.) The party was well underway by the time I arrived at 6.30 but the host had saved back some meat for me and barbecued it to order.

It was one of those days that feels like summer and allows children to play in the garden and adults to drink on the patio, but actually grew slightly chilly as the evening set in. Too cold for sandals. Being out, we missed the foxes, who will have turned up at what is now the allotted time and found slim pickings. (In the big book of urban foxes, it says that if you see a fox and it looks hungry, it isn't!)

Monday May 16
Because I'm "playing Gid" this week my free time is slashed, so it's a good job my two ongoing sitcom scripts are with their respective comedians, being tweaked, polished and having jokes added. (If I ever set up my own production company, I'll call it Just Add Jokes.) It's nice to be back on the radio every day - more so because it's someone else's show, with someone else's regular features and someone else's team. Actually, both Gary and Jax worked on my old teatime show, so it's like the old days.

Unsure about which train to catch to a) get in on time, and b) not get stressed out, I plumped for the 7.18 from Reigate. It wasn't anything like as packed and inhuman as I feared actually, and I wasn't the only passenger not in a suit and tie. Even the Redhill train had spare seats, so I sat all the way to London. Admittedly I was sandwiched between two idiots going on about how drunk they'd been in their lives, so I had to put my iPod on a lot earlier than I tend to and forgo reading The Years With Ross . (This book, which I'm loving, was recommended to me when I got chatting on this very train a couple of weeks back. A noteworthy occasion. I was reading my New Yorker, and this middle-aged bloke next to me turned out to be a fan of the magazine and told me he'd just finished the Ross book, an account by James Thurber of the early years, written in 1958. We are programmed to fear being spoken to by strangers on train - unless that's just in London and suburbs - yet this chap and I had an intelligent and informative conversation all the way to Victoria, which moved from the magazine to American politics, and he was inspired to get his wife a New Yorker subscription for her birthday and I was inspired to order The Years With Ross on Amazon that night.) Note to self: bring in packed lunch tomorrow. If you don't eat wheat or dairy, there's little you can pick up in an eatery at breakfast time.

Finished the show at 1pm. Out of the building at 1.05pm. On the way home by 1.32pm. Home by 2.10pm. How civilised. Drove all the way out to Mitcham in South London to the Blockbuster we used to belong to, because Reigate's only copy of Attack Of The Clones was still out. Ironically, having successfully tracked a copy down and brought it home, I fell asleep about 40 minutes in this evening. That's getting up at 6am for you. It is better than Phantom Menace , as I remembered, but the dialogue is terrible and Hayden Christensen isn't up to much as Anakin. I'm foolishly holding out hope that Part III will at least offer closure. I expect crushing disappointment yet again, but at least I can walk home from the cinema and it only costs £4.50.

Tuesday May 17
Went for a meeting after finishing up at 6 Music over at Riverside Studios (where we used to film The Movie Club for ITV in 1997-98). Again, it would be improper to name names, but I've written a treatment for another sitcom for another quite famous comedian. I met the people at the production company my agent sent it to - they look after this comedian and he's looking for a vehicle. The meeting went well; they are going to run it past the comedian and perhaps arrange for the two of us to meet and talk about it further. They were shooting some TV poker tournament in the bar. Poker's everywhere suddenly. I saw Joe Absolom in the Riverside coffee bar. Remember him from EastEnders? Matthew Rose? Then, on my way through Victoria train station, I saw Edward Fox and his wife. He looked very white, and his voice sounded as plummy as a royal, but I was chuffed to see this fine actor in the flesh.

Incidentally, I oversaw my first ever Hub Session this morning. Frank Black, no less. He drew quite a crowd and played brilliantly, but was understandably nervous during the interview. I made a joke about all babies looking like him and he didn't get it.

Triple whammy on Channel 4 this evening: Property Ladder (last in series; real idiot who made every mistake in the book in converting a place in Earl's Court to rent out - expensive parquet floor, allowed it to become personal, under-budgeted, fitted the wrong windows, turned a good sized living room into a living room and a pokey bedroom . . . and so it went); Bad Behaviour (best of the series; single mum with five kids by four dads, managed to tame not only their tempers, but her own - a real inspiration, she was); and Stalking Pete Doherty (a tragic piece of car-crash whose subject actually took a back seat while bipolar "documentary maker" Max Carlish proved himself one of the more disturbing men on British television this year, fooling himself into thinking he had penetrated Doherty's inner sanctum, when they were merely putting up with him - a lesson to any groupie). Phew. Stayed awake for the lot, too.

Foxes now appearing like clockwork. Tried putting out some cat food that ours had rejected. Guess who loved it?

Wednesday May 18
Another appointment after 6 Music, this time by cab to an empty office building in Old Street where BBC4 were shooting a documentary about the NME . I jumped at the chance of being interviewed for it. It's high time someone made a documentary about the paper, and who better than BBC4? It all overran, inevitably, and then they wanted to rostrum the photos I'd taken in (including that great shot of the NUJ picket line with Billy Bragg, so by the time the cab had turned up, rush hour has begun and the traffic was so heavy, I leapt out at Blackfriars tube station and made my own way back to Victoria. I caught the 17.02 back to Redhill - much later than I'd like in my new life - and it was unpleasantly packed. What are so many people doing getting off work so early? Don't they have proper jobs?

Had to work this evening, which is something I try to avoid, but both sitcom scripts have to be in by Friday (it's a BBC offers-round deadline), and both needed tweaking. I also had to write my Film of the Week review for Radio Times - that timeless piece of wartime propaganda In Which We Serve . Thanks to working the morning shift at 6 Music, my workload has spun out of control. But I finished in time for Desperate Housewives , so all was not lost.

Thursday May 19
Two historic events today.

1. Star Wars III at Reigate Screen this afternoon (first showing). After girding myself for a letdown, the film turned out to be good - certainly better than Parts I and II . I loved the sheer depth and scale of the universe Lucas and ILM have created, and there's no denying the sheer poetry and satisfaction of how it all ends, with newly-minted Darth Vader overseeing the construction of the Death Star while baby Luke is delivered by Obi Wan to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru on Tattooine as the suns go down. Hayden Christensen is definitely dwarfed by the job at hand, but Ewan McGregor was much more comfortable in the role with his big fuzzy beard and action heroics on the back of a big lizard. It being the afternoon - and having got up at 5.30 to work on my Tube review before breakfast - I admit I dozed off once, but woke up refreshed and alive for the remaining hour.

2. My first even Soduku. It's a grid-based numerical puzzle that seems to have sparked a war in all the newspapers. Well, having maintained a cynical aloofness about it all for two weeks I finally succumbed and filled one in on the train home, thanks to one catching my eye on the back page of the Independent . It was hugely entertaining, although I can't imagine wanting to do more than, say, 10 more in my lifetime.

Last push for the quite-famous-comedian sitcom script tonight. Billy , the Simon Day one, has gone off to our producer, who will shepherd it to the controller of BBC2 via head of comedy Jon Plowman, so at least that's out of our hair at long last. Nothing more we can do.

Starting to get a bit blasé about fox visitation. I just carried on cooking the dinner while one of them hovered up the cat food I'd put out for him in the wet grass.

Last but one Footballers Wives tonight (it's all building up to an end-of-series shooting next week). Quite enjoyed the Abi Titmuss documentary on C4 - she's no fool (except being filmed by John Leslie having it off). Talking of the highly-paid bra and pants model, it's rumoured that ITV are going to cut short Celebrity Love Island (of which I haven't even caught a passing glimpse) from five weeks to two. It's a thankless world. Did a much harder Sudoku (it seems you can spell it any way you please) from the Guardian . Took me two hours, but I was listening to the telly at the same time.

Friday May 20
Last morning playing Gid and last 5.30am rise in order to get the 7.18 train. It's been weird being a commuter. You see the same people. There was one woman missing on the platform yesterday. I wonder where she was. That's what happens when you travel by the same train. Who cares where she is? I don't even know her. She wears pink trainers. It's been a hectic week, squeezing everything into the afternoons, and although I've really enjoyed working with Gary and Jax again, I will enjoy my freedom again next week. Just think: no sitcoms to write. Maybe I can finally get back to my untitled third memoir.


The views expressed in this column are the views of Andrew Collins and do not represent the views of the BBC.