Not Found

Friday July 1
It was a treat to fill in (or "dep" as we say in radio) for Gideon this morning - a one day only offer. No preparation, no routine, no time to get into a radio rut, just three hours in the daytime, on a weekday, with my old pal Gary at the helm, the chance to play a track off the Scars album and the added bonus of being able to give away a pair of Live 8 tickets to a man called John in Wellingborough, just like proper DJs do! Though it meant catching that 7.18 train again and clapping another unknown band in the studio, it was a thrill. Quite a few of my old Teatime listeners got in touch. It was nice to hear from the old gang.
 
One of the foxes in the back garden has a limp. It's the mother of the other three - or so we have decided (she's bigger, with a much fluffier tail). She's still able to get about and it may just be a bad paw rather than a breakage, but it's heartbreaking to see, as you can't intervene. You just have to hope nature finds a way.

Did I mention that Mark Ellen at Word thinks my New Yorker piece "needs a bit of work"? I told you they were unforgiving taskmasters! That's why the quality of the magazine is so high. As a writer, it's always hard when something you've written is rejected, or even deemed not quite right. We all wish our work to be perfect, and accepted word for word, as written. Talking of which, I've put myself under a new level of pressure by pitching an idea at Sight & Sound magazine. To my surprise, editor Nick James said yes! I have my first commission for that hallowed journal. I've read it and subscribed to it for years, and was always sort of happy on the outside, but I had this simple idea and I now I'm on the inside. The quality not just of writing but of thought and expertise in S&S is off the chart. Am I up to the job? (They pay terribly, by the way, but that just proves what an honour it must be to work for them!)

The latest DVD through the post was our first clunker: Miranda, a self-conscious, smirking British con-artist thriller with John Simm (working very hard with weak material) and Christina Ricci (sleepwalking - what a waste of money she was, another American star bought in to give a British film international legs). Guess what - it looked OK in the trailer, but in reality it was confusing, flat and unable to take itself seriously. It was the work of first-time screenwriter, Rob Young (no previous, according to the imdb), so I feel his pain, but it's all down to the screenplay and I'm afraid this one wasn't ready for the screen - a problem with so many British film made by people who have trained in TV. The director Marc Munden has done some great stuff on the box - Vanity Fair, Conviction and the like - but he seemed out of his depth at 90 minutes. We ejected the disc after 45.

Saturday July 2
The day was inevitably dominated by Live 8, although spare a thought for the tennis (the women's final went on longer than expected and meant that the Hyde Park coverage had to stay on BBC2 longer than planned before switching to BBC1 where it belonged, thus pushing everything back) and for the Gay Pride march, which I was happy to bump into on my own march from Victoria to Broadcasting House via the ducks this afternoon. It was, I'll be honest, slightly surreal putting out the 6 Music Chart on such a big day, but you have to assume that there are people out there uninterested in Live 8, Wimbledon or Gay Pride but on the edge of their seats wondering if the Sleater-Kinney album has gone up or down this week. God bless them.

For my own part, I feigned disinterest in Live 8 but was sucked in. Mind you, there was some rubbish on while I watched in the Hub before the chart show at 4pm. I remain flabbergasted that the multi-million-selling Dido can get by on so little vocal ability - exposed by the cold light of an afternoon slot and a duet with the golden-voiced Youssou N'Dour. Pete Doherty was another lowlight, comprehensively (and perhaps wilfully) urinating his Big Break up the wall when he came on to do Children Of The Revolution with Elton John (ever the patron of the young and cool). A sweaty pub is Doherty's dominion, among the party faithful, not Hyde Park. I was unlucky enough also to catch the appearance of Bill Gates - it was like the bit in all award ceremonies when the CEO of the mobile phone company comes on to present an award. I also felt sorry for Jonathan Ross, trapped in his airless pod, facing away from the stage and the crowd. Having presented Radio 1's coverage of the Brits in the mid-90s from a Portakabin in the car park at Ally Pally, literally watching events unfold on the TV, I knew - on a much more modest scale - how he felt.

It picked up no end later in the day once I'd got home. I don't like him, but I'm man enough to acknowledge that Robbie Williams was just what the crowd needed. He really picked up the baton and ran with it, and even I can't knock him for that. Perhaps it was just the dusk. The Who were robust, too, with former Style Council prodigy, now Paul Weller stalwart, Steve White on drums, doing a terrific job. (It was a good night for spotting drummers - Chris Sharrock, formerly of The Icicle Works and the La's, made his appearance with his current employer Robbie and looked to be on top of his percussive game. It was like seeing Prefab Sprout's Neil Conti drum for Bowie at Live Aid twenty years ago - these are the twists of fate that make it all worthwhile for me!) Highlight of the whole day and night were, by light years, Pink Floyd. I can't believe we saw Gilmour and Waters sharing a stage again, even hugging. If Geldof achieves nothing else, he got the Floyd back together again, and they were magnificent. McCartney was an anticlimax after that, but they had to end with a singalong, and Comfortably Numb wasn't going to be it.

My favourite moment from a day filled with stuff and yet so well organised it had none of the seat-of-the-pants thrill of Live Aid, was Mariah Carey, who demanded a mic stand twice and to my knowledge never got one. That must be a first. A truly "historical day", as poor old thick David Beckham said. Make Poverty History And Can Someone Get Me A Mic Stand?

As if to fulfil my own miserable lefty stereotype I read the New Statesma's special G8 issue while watching (or listening to) Live 8 this evening, constantly amazed by the hypocrisy of governments while the rock stars assured us we were making poverty history just by watching the telly. Did you know that 84% of the world's arms are sold by the G8 countries - the UK being the second biggest exporter - in many cases to the very African nations that are then destabilised by conflict, which makes them ineligible for the debt relief handed out by the very countries that sold them the guns? Funny how nobody mentioned that all day. Not even Mariah Carey with her usually perceptive grasp of global politics.

I was knackered when Hyde Park finished, just before midnight, but I was glad I caught the Kaiser Chiefs at Philadelphia before I turned in. While Doherty blew his chance over here, I believe the Chiefs grasped theirs. Surely that tight and spirited performance will launch them in America. They deserve it.

Sunday July 3
Another Sunday night, another curry, back at the Wimbledon Tandoori this time, where the garlic naan is inferior to the one at the Clapham restaurant and the menu less descriptive but the room is more homely. The rain managed only to interrupt the men's finals once. It's been a dry and successful Wimbledon, albeit one largely without shocks (unless you count the rabid overreaction to a misleading spurt from Andrew Murray, who's a boy playing a man's game), or so I understand from my number one tennis correspondent.

Monday July 4
What a disappointment War Of The Worlds turned out to be. I feel as if I've been watching trailers for it all year and it just didn't live up to the promise. Went to see it this afternoon at Reigate Screen (the manager himself was selling tickets at the box office - that's how modest an operation it is). What was Spielberg thinking? It was all spectacle and no trousers. The first half was OK, thick with anticipation and build-up, then pretty spectacular with CGI as the alien pods emerged from the earth and started vaporising everybody, but it went downhill so steeply from there. Tom Cruise had almost no acting to do - it was just him running or driving along with his kids, shouting out their names when imperilled and then hiding in a cellar with a woefully underwritten Tim Robbins from aliens that are apparently advanced enough to bury their pods in the earth for a million years and send their pilots down in forks of lightning, but unable to find Tom and his daughter if they just hide round a corner and keep quiet. It seemed so steeped in self-reference (to Close Encounters, ET, AI , Jurassic Park ), you started wondering if Spielberg wasn't just on autopilot, leaving the lion's share of the action to Industrial Light and Magic, and forgetting to put in any pace or narrative. And the ending? I won't mention the ending. But guess what happens?

Good news about the mother fox. She was back tonight, with the kids, and her limp has improved immeasurably. It obviously wasn't broken. It filled me with joy. Saw a great spotted woodpecker twice today on the feeders. And the three deer were back. It's a regular nature reserve out there and I think of myself as a Francis of Assisi figure.

Really enjoyed Inky Fingers: The NME Story on BBC4 tonight. It's a story that needed telling and with just an hour to play with, they managed a pretty accurate and evocative job, with a fine parade of old-timers (Nick Kent, Tony Parsons, Charlie Murray, Tony Tyler) and plenty to represent my era (Steve Lamacq, Stuart Maconie, James Brown - no Danny Kelly, sadly). I had a fair chunk of airtime, which was pleasing. They managed to completely miss out Britpop and the Steve Sutherland Years by deftly skipping forward from our Morrissey-is-a-Nazi cover of 1992 to 2004 when he broke his silence and spoke to the paper again. That's 12 years gone in the blink of an edit. It was cheering to see the late 80s/early 90s period marked for posterity - all you usually hear about is the hip young gunslingers and Red Wedge, but our era was significant in its own way.

After a long, Wimbledon-sized break, I'm back with The West Wing. Tonight's episode, 15, was Full Disclosure, in which Hoynes drops a bombshell with news that he's writing a tell-all book about his time in the White House as VP. I love the way writer Lawrence O'Donnell Jr switched between two essentially tiresome board meetings (union reps in one room with Toby, the military base assessment committee in another with Josh: "as mind-numbing as a Radiohead concert") and made them interesting. Only seven episodes left. What will I do when it's over?

Tuesday July 5
Managed to dodge the downpours today. One occurred while I was safely ensconced in the lobby of BBC TV Centre, where I was having a pre-meeting meeting with Jon Thoday of Avalon and comedian Lee Mack about the pilot we've had accepted by BBC2 (it seems politic to mention him by name now). We are, as they say, singing from the same hymn sheet and suitably fired up. Met commissioning exec Lucy Lumsden, who seems like someone we can work with. We basically thrashed out what BBC2 want from the pilot and then some of the practicalities. Lee and I are writing a fresh script to go with the one we've already written, and they'll choose which one they want us to make. It's being shot in late September, so we have to get our comedy skates on. I'll hold back on any more details, as I mustn't jinx our chances of getting a series. But from now on, if I mention Lee Mack, you'll know what it's about.

Home in time to avoid the second downpour. (The woman sat next to me on the train was doing Sudoku.) Astonishingly, one of the deer came up onto the patio, eating the nasturtiums. I stood watching it for ages. Then it ate some apples off the grass and settled down under the tree in the long grass, very much treating the place like a hotel. As if this wasn't enough to make me leap for nature-related joy, a young fox turned up on the patio later on. Just passing through, but it was fantastic to see one close up. (Makes up for the dead one I saw by the side of the A217. Unsurprisingly, it broke my heart.)

Squeezed in another West Wing, episode 16, Eppur Si Muove, whose meaning escapes me, possibly because I watched it in two sittings and lost the momentum slightly. It was the one where Mrs Bartlett appeared on Sesame Street, written by Alexa Junge.

Gordon Ramsay revisited Moore Place in Esher on Kitchen Nightmares, the purple-painted monstrosity that we drove past last week. I have no problem with repeats, even when they're dressed up as new episodes, if they're as good as this. The only downside to watching so much Ramsay is that you start spotting his verbal ticks, one of which is to seek ratification after every sentence with an "Uh?" or a "Yes?" Once you've spotted it . . .

Wednesday July 6
Woke up this morning having just had a disturbing dream in which I watched a dog run into a busy road and his owner run after him. The owner, not the dog, was hit by a car. Nice way to start the day.

After a 45-minute conversation with Lee Mack this morning, I set about putting together a story structure for our second pilot. (This is how we work, and pretty much how Simon Day and I worked - I draw on my soap opera experience and treat the half-hour comedy as if it were a straight drama; then my comedian partner supplies the jokes. This is not to say I don't think of jokes and Lee doesn't have structural ideas, but it's a neat demarcation and thanks to email, it works.) Had a break in the middle to drive to Epsom to buy a card and birthday present for Ben, one of my Northampton nephews. I bought him a game, as suggested by my sister Melissa, for something called the Nintendo DS. I am now officially about four games consoles out of date. I used to be everybody's favourite uncle when I had a PlayStation, a Sega DreamCast and a Nintendo N64 set up at our old house - and games galore on account of my job as Q magazine's games reviewer - but I grew out of them and the hardware never made the house move in 2003. Actually, it's not so much that I grew out of them (I was in my mid-thirties after all), but that I suddenly found better things to do with my spare time. Whilst in Epsom, I bought two brand new lengths of clothes line with which to lash up two new bird feeders. The parrots have colonised the existing ones, so I felt it was time to add more and let the smaller birds back in. The feeders arrived by mail order this morning - one of them, a Challenger II, is as tall as a small boy, with 12 ports. Unfortunately, I got the wrong type of line - this was steel-lined and I couldn't cut it with scissors, pliers or secateurs. Is this interesting? It's my life.
At lunchtime today, the Olympic 2012 announcement  was finally made in Singapore. It was always between London and Paris. And here's where I land the job of Grumpiest Man in Britain - I was willing Paris to get it. I love Paris and all the hot air expended about redevelopment of the East End and improvement of public transport just made me ask the question: why not improve the city anyway? Why do we need to host a great big sporting event to attract investment in poorer areas? Also, every time Ken or Tony said, "The whole of Britain is behind the bid," I wanted to shout out, "I'm not!" Anyway, London got it. Cue: pandemonium, tears of joy and dancing in the streets. (I was so glad I was working at home today.) Of course, the selfish part of me thinks, great, at least we can go and watch some live running in seven years' time (when I'm almost 50!), but the Grumpiest Man in Britain part of me wants everybody to shut up about it. I don't know his name - they are, after all, interchangeable - but the DJ on Virgin this afternoon was insufferable. He said these were "glory days" and played Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen. He asked listeners for themed requests to play on this glory day and one suggested Money by Pink Floyd. The unnamed DJ took it very badly. "I don't care about the politics," he said, as if perhaps the caller had murdered his children. Of course you don't care about the politics, not on this glory day. But it's all about the politics (see how much capital Blair will make from all this tickertape), and it's all about the money (London will effectively be sponsored for the duration), with a little bit of sport in the middle of it. I'm glad it's not my council tax that's paying for it all.

A glorious, if slightly gloomy new period drama began tonight on BBC2 (I can see why it wasn't BBC1 material now): The Ends Of The Earth, based on the books by William Golding and concerning a sea voyage to Australia. Benedict Cumberpatch, an actor who will have encountered no name clashes when he joined Equity, was exceptional in the title role of Hawking , and was very good in this too, as a gentleman passenger aboard a ship of not necessarily fools, but certainly rogues and floozies and sodomisers! All vomit and seawater, it proved an excellent 90 minutes, with two more to come. Followed by the reliable Nip/Tuck , in which Christian lost custody of his baby, Wilbur, and Sean felt his age after a car accident. Once again, it was structured like a dream.

Thursday July 7
A bad day for London and Londoners, and in sharp contrast to yesterday's Olympic jubilations. Not a glory day. I spent way too much of the morning watching News 24 and Sky News as the depressing story of the four bomb blasts in Central London unfolded (it was seven at one point, but that's the nature of rolling news). Yes, I entertained that selfish thought: I'm glad I'm not in Central London today. I could easily have been. I was on Tuesday; I'm supposed to be in tomorrow for a meeting at Channel 4. (I phoned Mum to let her know - it reminded me of the day of the Kings Cross fire in 1987. At that time I used to pass through Kings Cross all the time, but not on that particular day.) It's always grim when something unexpected and ugly happens in a place where you work and where so many people you know work, but I felt distanced from it watching it on TV from the other side of the M25. The spookiest thing is that first things this morning I was watching the extras on the DVD of The Interpreter when I heard about the supposed "power surges" on the tube. Specifically, I was watching the scene in the film where a bomb goes off on a bus in New York, with commentary from director Sydney Pollack. The next thing I knew, there was a bomb on a bus in Tavistock Square in London. That was chilling.

Went shopping in Kingston. Bought a new bin.

Tonight, watched It's All About Love on DVD, an impenetrable, esoteric fable set in 2021 in which Clare Danes was a cloned champion ice dancer, Joaquin Phoenix her confused husband with divorce papers to sign and Sean Penn his philosophical brother, unable to "not fly" after overdosing on an aerophobia drug and therefore stuck on planes, observing the world as it falls apart. Global warming was causing snow in July and low temperatures in Uganda, where people were having to tether themselves to the ground to stop themselves "flying". I know. Not your standard futuristic thriller-cum-love story. You had to go with its flow, or not. Quite a welcome break from harsh reality, albeit baffling. Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, who made the amazing Festen, this wasn't in the same league, but it was at least diverting and strange.

Tomorrow, I venture into Central London. No doubt, it being London, some kind of dogged normality will have resumed. That's the moral of this tale.

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