Not Found

Friday June 24

Monsoon: day one. Since Glastonbury started in earnest today it was traditional for the rains to come and they did not let us down. Judging by the news reports, some fields were under feet of infected farmwater, and chaos, loss, mud and schadenfreude were the inevitable result. Certainly the BBC had trouble, with Jo Whiley's onsite Radio 1 show failing to go live this afternoon, and much relocation of TV sets and the like for the coverage on BBC2 and BBC3 (Mark Radcliffe claimed that they had "lost" Lauren Laverne and Phill Jupitus at one point - how do you go about losing Phill Jupitus?). Do you think - and I speak as a music fan - that there's perhaps a shade too much coverage of Glastonbury now? It's wall to wall, round the clock, press-your-red-button-now. At one stage this evening we were flicking between BBC2 and BBC3, Royksopp versus Maximo Park, with choices of three stages on BBCi and more highlights due on BBC4 from 11.30, not to mention fulsome coverage on Radio 1 and 6 Music, and I did start to feel sorry for that tiny sliver of the license-fee-paying public who aren't interested in indie music. (Hey, get with the programme, you squares!)

Wrote my 2,200-word New Yorker piece for Word in one day flat, but that's on top of a week of formulating it in my mind and printing off useful bits on the Internet, and about three months of living in back issues of the magazine and books. It's almost an anticlimax not to have to write it any more. (Unless Mark Ellen rejects it as high tosh, of course. We'll have to wait until Monday.)

A man came round to clean our mattresses, quilts and sofas with a special sucking-and-vibrating hoover that actually sucks out all the house dust mites and allergens from deep within. He showed us what a quick, one-minute demonstration run over the mattress picked up. It was suitably disgusting: mostly dust mite excreta and dead human. It took him about three hours to do the full job. His name was the Mattress Doctor and I think I love him.

Actually, although it was a blessed relief back here in civilisation when the skies opened this afternoon, the abrupt and melodramatic change in weather from blazing sun to downpour played meteorological havoc with my chest. There was steam rising from the patio as it was pummeled with rain, and the air was thick afterwards. It had a shape, a form, a taste.

Did I mention that Henman's out of Wimbledon? He went out yesterday, as per his job description as a British sporting hero. Seems he was swearing at the crowd. Language, Timothy!

Oh, and best band of the day so far? The White Stripes, without a doubt, although I'm not sure whether their schtick was quite the climax the Pyramid Stage multitude will have been craving all day in the filth. Someone a little more uplifting perhaps? (What do I know? I haven't set foot on Worthy Farm since 1995.) And the biggest drip of the night, at least on the sofa with Colin and Edith, was that soppy, wordless Brandon bloke out of the Killers. My advice: cheer up and enjoy your immense and unfathomable fame, for it will be gone tomorrow!

Saturday June 25
Wimbledon and Glastonbury continue to dominate our screens. Leona is a big tennis fan and snuck an occasional glance at the third-round Andrew Murray match during the 6 Music Chart - but only with the sound down and never to the detriment of the programme! She is, after all, a professional. (He lost, of course, because - so his apologists say - he's only 18. Yes, and clearly outclassed. Come back when you're ready to play for more than three sets, sonny. And get your Mum to stop serving you pizzas and Frappucino. Why do we always pin our hopes on British players? Oh yeah.)

Of tonight's televised Glastonbury delights, I was - predictably - knocked out by the energy, attitude, crowd-control, ambition and massive drums of Kasabian, who had the all-important just-going-dark slot on the Other Stage, but Echo & The Bunnymen were tight and charged too, going through the hits (Zimbo, Never Stop, Back Of Love) while Mac's hair looked to be taking over the stage of its own accord. Full marks to Kaiser Chiefs, stuck on the main stage in the afternoon, for throwing themselves into the job of giving the mud-caked white people something to take home with them. Fortunately, I fell asleep on the sofa with the Independent 's ludicrous sixteen-by-sixteen prize Sudoku before Coldplay came on. I hope they played some of the old stuff. I went to bed. Funny, I don't recall ever being tired when I went to Glastonbury. I could stay up all night in those days.

Oddly, it didn't rain in any significant way, just threatened.

Sunday June 26
No rain again. It seems we're back to drought conditions. Goodbye, grass. I gave up with the Independent's bastardised sixteen-by-sixteen Sudoku. It's an insane challenge. I reached a stalemate on the train and broke all the rules by putting in a couple of numbers I wasn't sure about (NEVER DO THIS!). This worked for a short while on the journey home, then led me up a cul-de-sac, at which point I would have angrily thrown the paper out of the train window if indeed it had any windows, which it doesn't, and if I dropped litter, which I don't. Going back to a regular nine-by-nine Sudoku was such a relief before bedtime. Someone always has to push things too far, don't they?

Talking of the Independent , today's Sunday paper review with Richard Herring was the most rib-tickling yet. It was partly the material we had to hand - a story about one of the Chuckle brothers being hit by a cuckolded husband with a spanner, and the Independent On Sunday's Gay List - and partly the fact that, given half a chance, we will descend to the level of sniggering schoolboys. I hope to God it was as entertaining to listen to!

Revisited the Indian restaurant in Clapham Junction. They had the front completely opened up and it was nice and cool inside. Chose the lamb kahari this time (and that carrot side dish again). Very tender. Had the Kasabian album on in the car, there and back, our loyalty re-ignited by last night's on-the-button Glastonbury performance. Nobody of much note on at the festival tonight (it is Sunday!) - and from what I caught of Ian Brown, he sounded worse than a cornered cat. Instead we seized control and watched a tape of Radiohead's 2003 Glastonbury headline set instead - a true modern classic. I know people with lighters love Coldplay but at the end of the day they're a one-man band, and what I adore about Radiohead is the way all the individual members play such a vital part in the racket and the stage show. You could just watch Jonny Greenwood, or Ed O'Brien, and it would be compelling.

ITV are 50 years old and opted to celebrate themselves in a seemingly highbrow 10.40 slot with a history presented by Melvyn Bragg. I was looking forward to this, but it was the most garish, smug, unhelpful, self-congratulatory, badly produced piece of trash. What a pity the BBC or C4 didn't make it. There was an intrusive music bed playing under Melvyn's links that gave it the feel of a corporate video, they had unidentified clips in montages, appalling-looking composites (including one of Lew Grade superimposed over Sunday Night At The London Palladium - why?) all in a graphic style that looked to have been conceived by local news in the 80s. If this programme hit its stride in Part Two, I shall never find out. A wasted opportunity.

Really shocked this evening to read on the Internet that Richard Whiteley has died, aged just 61, of pneumonia. I didn't see that coming, even though he's been off Countdown since May. I'll tell my only Richard Whiteley anecdote tomorrow.

Monday June 27
Here goes: in 1993, myself and Stuart Maconie managed to convince the fledgling Radio Five (long before it went Live) to commission a six-part comedy drama series called Fantastic Voyage. This was, apart from being a vehicle for ourselves, a parody of yoof TV and Saturday Morning Kids' TV combined, presented by two ex-hospital radio DJs called, well, Andrew and Stuart, and with rock star guests like Suede, Blur and Billy Bragg (we pulled favours). Each week - and here's the surreal bit - the contents of the show would be microscopically reduced, a la the original Fantastic Voyage, injected into the bloodstream of a celebrity and broadcast from there, whizzing past their pancreas, going in and out of aortas etc. At the end of the show, we would be flushed out of their body and restored to normal size. The idea being: nobody had done that before, had they? For episode one, we would be injected into the bloodstream of Richard Whiteley. He didn't appear in the show, but the show appeared in him, if you see what I mean. However, our producer, a young Turk called John Yorke (now Head of Drama at the BBC - didn't he do well?), suggested we contact Mr Whiteley to get his blessing for the use of his name and bloodstream. Because Stuart and I were journalists at the time, John left this piece of diplomacy to us.
So, one day, I plucked up the courage and phoned Yorkshire TV.
"Can you put me through to Countdown?" I asked, hopefully.
"One moment," replied the receptionist.
"Hello, Countdown?" said a new voice.
"Hi, I wonder if you can help me. I'm from the BBC," I said, aiming for some authority. "I'd like to speak to Richard Whiteley."
"Hang on," said the voice. So I did. This was becoming surreal.
"Hello, Richard Whiteley here," said Richard Whiteley.
Shocked to be in the presence of the great man with so little red tape or ceremony I stuttered a bit as I carefully explained what we wanted to do with his body. He listened patiently, chuckled and gave his blessing, saying it sounded very funny. There was no demand to see a script or for my people to talk to his people. I thanked him kindly and he wished us both good luck with the programme. And then off he went to prepare for that day's Countdown. That is the full extent of my dealings with Richard Whiteley, but I think it shows not just what a good sport he was, but also, how bloody accessible! RIP.

Scorcher: day two. Vest weather again, although I sensibly switched to a normal t-shirt with arms when we went to Kingston to buy a new vacuum cleaner. (Why? I don't know. It wasn't Kingston itself, more the fact that I would be wandering around a department store and I don't want to look like the men who wander round department stores in vests in the summer. It's a fine line: vest-wearing can leave you feeling one step away from going topless, which I only do in the comfort of my own home or back garden. Even when it's a hot as this, you have to maintain some semblance of dignity.) Drove back via Esher, as I've never been, and it was very pretty indeed. Sandown Park looked glorious, and it was a treat to see Moore Place, that golf-club-attached restaurant Gordon Ramsay tried to sort out in series one of Kitchen Nightmares - the one that was painted purple, remember? I simply cannot believe, after all that, they haven't repainted it yet. I wonder if being on telly improved their takings? It's an eyesore. (I've just checked Radio Times and it seems Gordon is "revisiting" the purple palace next Tuesday. I hate the way Revisited has become a euphemism for Repeated With A Bit Tacked On At The End,  but in this case, I welcome it.)

Latest DVD through the post: Song For A Raggy Boy.  (Mail order rental is a revolution. It really is so much better for watching things you might never actually pick up in a blockbuster-dominated Blockbuster - you're more inclined to take a flyer if you can keep the thing for weeks on end until you get round to watching it. And of course, it works out cheaper.) Set in 1939, this was basically The Magdalene Sisters  for boys: systematic, institutional abuse of underprivileged kids in Ireland by sado-masochistic representatives of the Catholic church, in this case the fascistic, strap-wielding "prefect" Brother John played with icy malevolence by Iain Glenn and his younger cohort Brother Mac, played with the obligatory twisted streak by Marc Warren, who was in charge of sexual abuse. Aidan Quinn did a fine job as the lay teacher come to save the boys from torture with his enlightened poetry classes, good heart and Spanish Civil War past. The course of events was sadly predicable (albeit based in autobiographical fact), and the denouement was a little saccharine and Dead Poets Society , but it's a morbidly fascinating subject to me. Inevitably, the final caption revealed that the last Industrial School in Ireland was closed down in 1984. This was beaten by The Magdalen Sisters, whose last such institution for "fallen" girls was closed down in 1996. The past is never far away in Ireland.

Tuesday June 28
Morning; did my VAT. It's a quarterly pleasure for the self-employed and one that I actually feel does me good, as it forces me to put my finances in order once every three months. I have it down to a fine art now and as long as I get an early start I can have the whole lot signed off and the cheque in the post by lunchtime. It's bracing to have all my receipts in their respective monthly envelopes and each one, down to the smallest bus ticket, logged in my red accounts book.

Afternoon: keep fit! Submitted myself for the first time to the Body Doctor home workout whose only equipment is a bench, a gym ball and some weights. It only takes about half an hour and you do it three times a week. It damn near wasted me, but that's because walking to the station is my only exertion. I haven't stepped foot inside a gym for about six years. I could barely write the address on an envelope after I'd finished!
 
Liberty, the civil liberties pressure group, advertised in the Guardian today. As they and other groups feared, ID cards were voted through by a slim government majority and now the bill goes to the Lords. (I daresay it would be impolitic of me to express my views on a BBC website, so I shall refrain.) Here's the irony: Liberty wanted names and addresses for a petition against the gathering of information by the government. In other words, to support them you had to give them your details. Information: it's a minefield!

Received a pre-release DVD from Radio Times for review: The Interpreter. Now I have an abiding problem with Nicole Kidman. I think she's a vastly overrated actress and a very prissy, frigid presence on the screen. The last straw for me was Cold Mountain, an otherwise stirring drama that was totally undermined by the fact that Kidman didn't even look dirty after an entire Civil War. She's just too clean. Too Nicole Kidman. Sure enough, despite a valiantly attempted African accent and a hairstyle that went coquettishly over one eye, she was the weak link in The Interpreter, an otherwise intelligent and pacey assassination thriller with a knowing touch of Three Days Of The Condor from Sydney Pollack. Sean Penn simply acted her off the screen, as indeed did Catherine Keener in a tiny role. When will they stop casting Kidman in major films? She ruins them all. Imagine Catherine Keener in the Kidman role!

A welcome return of Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned. Nothing to tell really, just the same programme as before with a slightly fatter Baddiel and slightly longer-haired Skinner.

Wednesday June 29
A glutton for punishment, I repeated yesterday's exercise routine. I can see how people get addicted. I much prefer doing it at home than going to a gym. So they've got a lat pulls and rowing machines and a car park. I've got a gym ball and a mat and I can look at the garden.

Talking of which, a unique sight out back tonight: foxes and deer at the same time. At around 8.00 we saw the mother deer come through with two Bambi-style fawns. The fox regarded the deer in the same way that a cat regards a fox: with quiet respect. That's how I like to see it anyway. Someone call Bill Oddie.

A quick trip to Wimbledon before Wimbledon started, if you see what I mean. It's the first time I've been into Wimbledon town itself while the tennis has been on, and it was interesting to see ticket-holders pouring out of the tube station and queuing in an orderly fashion for the special shuttle buses while a cockney man tried to tempt them into queuing instead for a taxi. If they hadn't cut it so fine (this was around 12.30, and play starts at 1.00), they could have walked up the hill for free.

 Nip/Tuck is on too late - 10.50 usually although tonight, unfathomably, it was pushed back by 15 minutes due to "an extended Big Brother". So I had to stay up 15 minutes later than advertised because of the scum of the earth. That's not fair is it? Anyway, I was enjoying a second wind, having been in danger of nodding off during tonight's DVD, Blind Flight and recovered - not because the story of Brian Keenan and John McCarthy's incarceration in Beirut was boring , but because not much actually happened over 90 minutes beyond two bearded men in their pants being moved, blindfolded, from one stinking room to another. (And also because the Body Doctor workout makes you tired! Keenan and McCarthy managed to stay fit just doing press-ups.) You had to admire Ian Hart and Linus Roache for losing so much weight for the roles, and for carrying the film, and as it was based on Keenan and McCarthy's books, co-written by Keenan and script edited by McCarthy, you have to accept it as a true account. But it was a bit worthy and literal, and you can see why it didn't get much of a cinema release. Incidentally, Nip/Tuck was - eventually - another corker, with the theme of ageing deftly woven between stories about fatherhood, cancer, adzuki beans and the early menstruation of an eight-year-old. It really is quite profound.

Thursday June 30
You win some, you lose some. Bad News: Billy Bleach  (the follow-up to Grass) has not been commissioned in the latest "offers round" at BBC2. That's our third attempt, and our last. Simon and I are now taking our ball home. It's their loss etc. However, BBC2 have commissioned a pilot of the script I wrote with that other comedian, who I daresay I'll be able to mention soon. They want us to write another script (I think the one we submitted may be a little too controversial for a pilot), but that's still punch-the-air news. Happy phonecalls and messages flew around this evening as a result. So last month wasn't all a waste of time. The lesson remains: nobody knows anything and have as many fingers in as many pies as possible.

Rain actually stopped play at Wimbledon. I managed to avoid it as I went about my business in town: a low-powered meeting at Avalon about the project I'm not at liberty to talk about; pop into 6 Music to give Gideon's producer Gary my choice for tomorrow's Great Lost Album (as I am sitting in for Gid for one day only); pop into John Lewis to pick up a SoundDock speaker system for my iPod so that we can take it on holiday (I ordered it over the phone as they were sold out in Kingston - it was the last one in the Oxford Street branch, as we're not the only holidaymakers with the same idea, clearly).

The SoundDock worked like a dream, but only after a fashion. I had to download a software upgrade for my iPod before it would make any noise, and to do this, I had to upgrade the operating system on my laptop, in order to download the software (isn't that typical?). It was worth the hassle.

Watched an annoying documentary about allergies on C4 then half an episode of House on Five, following a lot of recommendations. Didn't really like it, despite Hugh Laurie's creditable American accent. Too glossy and self-conscious after ER.


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