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Hello Leicester! Goodbye World!

Friday 12 August 
Another morning spent filling up the skip. This was a very focussed session as, having cleared out the garage and the shed, I was now "going deep", excavating the functionless, overgrown black hole that is the area by the side of the shed. The previous owners kindly left us enough roof tiles to re-tile the roof, plus an assortment of bricks, concrete slabs, four bits of wire mesh fence and some huge chunks of concrete with no earthly use. It was a tip and a breeding ground. And the only way to clear it was to concentrate the mind, pull on the protective gloves, brave the nettles and methodically cart the debris, brick by brick, up the drive to its new home. It was a dreadful penance, in that each upturned tile revealed a network of spiders and unidentified insects which had to be re-homed (or lightly brushed off into the gap under the shed). Paul McKenna charges good money to cure phobias, but I think I've cured my own arachnophobia by moving a load of bricks and tiles. I admit I jumped out of my skin when I uncovered a small frog, but it was the shock of something big moving rather than fear of small frogs. Anyway, after a couple of hours' hard graft, with nettle-scarred legs, thorn-scarred forearms and minus about a pint of sweat, I'd cleared it. The shed is free of detritus. The skip is piled high. I feel like a real man again. Albeit a real man who saves the lives of spiders and woodlice.

Another excellent Foyle's War tonight, centred around a petrol racket at Bexhill with a bit of IRA terrorism thrown in for good measure. On a detective-story high, we squeezed in an old Sherlock Holmes before retiring.

Saturday 13 August 
It seems that I have inadvertently caused ire and murmur within the community of people who follow this blog (whom I imagine to meet every Friday night a la the Algonquin Round Table, cigarette holders perched, to swap witty aphorisms about my deer sightings and discuss, over Manhattans, long into the night, which writer wrote which episode of The West Wing). Some among you, I understand, are regular users of the London Underground and are geographically and logistically unable to avoid it the way I - a less frequent visitor to Central London - very noisily do. Graham Kibble-White, redoubtable and level-headed TV Cream  head honcho, has registered a formal complaint on behalf of all those who cannot beat the terrorists by walking to work, and confessed to being "irked" by my constant crowing. Two points in my defence. One - I was using the weapon of irony against the suicide bombers. (I am "beating" them by allowing them to disrupt my routine. Ha ha. Actually, they are beating me. But not if I pretend I am beating them in my blog! Tony Blair should take notice of my reaction to terrorism and perhaps start using irony against them too. Unless, of course, his draconian anti-terror laws are ironic.) Two - despite the pleasant aspect of the sun-dappled, goose-filled St James's Park, through which my overground diversion takes me, it is actually incredibly inconvenient for me not to take the Tube to and from work. In order to arrive there at the same time I have to catch a train from Redhill that leaves an hour earlier (to allow for the 45-minute walk at the other end), and it involves catching one home that leaves 30 minutes later. This, door to door, even if I get a cab home from the station, adds a sum total of one hour and 45 minutes to my journey time. Hardly a walk in the park. However, I apologise to any Tube-users who have been similarly irked by my constant documentation of this lifestyle-change. It was not meant to rile, merely to entertain. I'll put a sock in it.

After a decisive sitcom session with Lee Mack and a solid Chart Show (never mind how I got to work), I found myself racing across London in a BBC cab to St Pancras and, by 7pm, ensconced on the fast train to Leicester. I'm doing my show from the outside broadcast (OB) caravan tomorrow, as did Steve Lamacq yesterday and Marc Riley this afternoon, and as will Jane Gazzo tomorrow night. This is not my first 6 Music OB (that was Belfast in a shopping precinct last April), but my first from a festival, and my first time at this particular event. And what a perfectly-formed, civilised, family-friendly affair the Summer Sundae Weekender is. Main stage outside, second stage inside the De Montfort Hall: you can walk from one end of the site to the other in about five minutes, I'm told the camping areas are very nice too and if there are drugs here, they're well hidden. It's more of a village fete in a large back garden and you get the feeling that most of the people here are from Leicester or the East Midlands and that makes it feel really local and less like some corporate rock team-building weekend. (6 Music are big media partners and have "branding" everywhere. It actually looks like Summer Sundae are sponsoring 6 Music, but don't tell anyone.)

The Airstream caravan is well placed, right by the stage, and it's very welcoming, with only the most polite picket fence between us and the real world. Come and accost Steve Lamacq and give him a demo tape! I turned up at about 8.30, by which time today's rain had stopped in accordance with the BBC Weather website's predictions and the Bees were mid-set. I'd basically missed all the bands I wanted to see (Art Brut, Magic Numbers) so I was left with the choice of two middlebrow, coffee-table dance acts - Elton's favourite Mylo inside the Hall for slightly younger parents and stray students, and Lemon Jelly outside for the over-40s. I saw both, as two songs into Mylo's seemingly electrifying set, the cigarette smoke drove me outside. The Jelly were much more chilled: the epitome, in fact, of a Sunday afternoon act, and easy background music for a chat with Jane while I tucked into some trail mix I'd brought with me to fend off the privations of wheat-and-dairy-biased festival catering. (I'd been thwarted at the organic vegetarian stall as they'd run out of coconut curry and only had beanburgers, which I didn't fancy. I vow to get a curry there tomorrow.)

Pleasant after-hours conversation in the bar of the 6 Music hotel with Marc and Lammo; Mark E Smith anecdotes mainly. Nice to spend a bit of time with my fellow DJs, whom I rarely see socially, and with the rest of the 6 Music crew, who, again, are virtual strangers now that I'm on weekends. They're a good-natured, youthful bunch, if clearly borderline alcoholics. I retired at 1am, having charged an unfeasibly large round of drinks to my room like any decent person on a works outing would, and consumed more water and apple juice than any man can take. This is my first sober festival and it's working out OK. I'll certainly be up earlier than anyone else tomorrow, something that will make me smug but also lonely at breakfast.

Sunday 14 August 

Smug and lonely breakfast. (Actually, Verity was up, but asked to be left alone to read her book, which is fair enough.) It was, as they always are at small, affordable chain hotels, disgusting. A bowl of unnaturally sweet prunes and apricots which must have come from a catering tin that was mostly syrup and a piece of wet haddock and two poached, factory-fresh eggs. Thank heavens I brought my own mint teabags. Even a small, affordable chain hotel can't mess up a pot of boiling water.

On site by 10.30, with the sun in the sky. There was a brief shower at about midday, by which time I was queuing for an organic coconut curry and stayed dry under their awning. It was sweet to watch the entire crowd calmly move inside the De Montfort Hall and then emerge again as soon as the rain stopped. All festivals should be like this. I was jealous when the 6 Music lot trooped back from the bar with that life-affirming first pint of the day - a good festival memory - but it passed. A boy called either Tristan or James recognised me and gave me a fanzine called Pretentious Indie Rubbish. He's a big 6 Music fan, which is heartening.

It was fun doing the show live from a festival in a caravan, although my microphone wasn't working for the first 15 minutes, which was a slight setback. Perhaps not. [I have since listened back to the programme online and it's oddly calming to hear my Blow Monkeys "bed" without me talking over it. How mysterious it must have sounded to the millions who I know tune in every Sunday .] Once the studio manager Andy had identified and depressed the offending button, it was plain sailing. And the sun stayed out. I think we should broadcast the whole weekend from Leicester next year, not just selected shows. For the price of a couple of rooms in a small, affordable chain hotel it would be worth it for atmosphere alone.
 

My big moment came at 17.45 on the dot when I was out on the main stage introducing The Duke Spirit. This was my only go at being MC, so I milked it shamelessly, and got everybody in the crowd to raise their hands, Bob Geldof style, in order to MAKE ANALOGUE HISTORY. This was Lammo's gag, so I hope he appreciates it. I gave out the cricket score as well, which was a crowd-pleaser (England had declared, Australia needed 423 to win, whatever the hell that means).

The curry was worth the wait, by the way, but I'm glad that my overnight bag contained mostly food bought from the health shop on the way to work on Saturday: nuts, seed bars, dried fruit, apples and bananas. These snacks saw me through the weekend and all the way home. I caught the 18.17 from Leicester, in the house by 21.10. That's a whole weekend away from hearth and home, not something I particularly relish, but I loved experiencing the festival, and the company, and I'd do it again. As long as they put me up in a five-star hotel, away from everybody else so I don't have to see them or buy them drinks, and provide a helicopter.

Caught most of The Amityville Horror on ITV3 tonight. Dated but still creepy, especially the bit with the pig and the religious statue falling onto Rod Steiger's priest and making him blind. We were so scared of the devil in the 70s weren't we? I wonder why.

Monday 15 August
Unusual start to the week. I accompanied a delegation from the local residents' association to Reigate & Banstead Council, there to have a meeting with planning officer Mr Simmons. There were five of us in the delegation - rather flatteringly I'd been asked to go along as "someone young". I won't go into details but it's about local objection to a planned development of flats. The meeting gave us more hope than we expected, and the smoking gun turned out to be drainage. Nice to get locally involved.

I'm currently listening to my own programme on Listen Again. I wouldn't normally do this, I promise, but I'm curious as to how it sounded if you weren't there - alright actually. This live track by Lemon Jelly ('The Staunton Lick') is a stormer. Perhaps you didn't have to be there, standing by a tree, eating trail mix, talking to Jane, watching a man unable to get up off the grass due to alcohol consumption.

My new favourite programme tonight (it's official), a Silent Witness two-parter with a theme of prescription drugs and the damage they can do. We followed it up with 9 Songs on DVD, Michael Winterbottom's much-discussed porn film. It is porn, technically, in that you watch two actors having sexual intercourse more than once (there's even a "money shot", which is not something you see every day unless you're Dave Baddiel, is it?), but it's still a compelling, original piece, and not an experience I'm likely to forget. I admired the way he wove these scenes of grubby sex into footage from various gigs at Brixton Academy (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Von Bondies, Franz Ferdinand etc.), and I didn't mind the lack of a story. It's very European. Not one for mixed company though. And if I ever see Cracker again, I won't be able to look at Robbie Coltrane's son in the same way. Dirty boy. (I read that for the sex scenes the set was cleared, so it was just the two actors, the director, the cameraman and the sound recordist. Oh, that's alright then. Piece of cake.)

Tuesday 16 August
Speed-viewed Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas on DVD. I was reviewing it for Radio Times, had already seen it, and required only a top-up. It works quite well in disconnected bits. I know it's not everybody's cup of Mescaline and it rambles, but I do love it.

The man came and took our skip away. I saluted the lorry as it pulled off up the road.

The telly is too good at the moment. A new series of Supernanny (same format: tantrum-throwing brat, broken-looking mum, useless dad, their fault, familiar advice, this time with the "naughty step" replaced by a "reflection room", too much talk of "issues", but very tense, very stimulating), followed by Lost on C4, then the next episode directly after it on E4. It was so exciting I stayed awake until midnight! [DON'T READ THE NEXT SENTENCE IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN EPISODE FOUR YET:] It turns out that Mr Locke was in a wheelchair before the crash but miraculously regained the use of his legs!

Really pleased to see that L'Oreal have been censured by the Advertising Standards Authority for the ludicrous claims they make for their anti-wrinkle cream. I suppose it's only right that a company making a product that's largely composed of chemicals should advertise it with the accent on science. But if you believe it's going to turn you into Andie MacDowell, you're stupider than the woman who left her bag at East Croydon.

Thursday 18 August
Quiet day, which is just as well, as I've passed the 3,000 word mark! Bad habits creeping back in. What will Louise in Suffolk say?

Had a call, out of the blue, from someone called Morag at Cosmopolitan who asked if I'd like to write something for them. I said yes. She sounded pleased and told me it was a column called 'Sex and The Single Guy'. I explained that I'd been married for 11 years. The conversation ended there.

Another day on which I'd planned to write a chapter of my book, but Lee Mack called at lunchtime to finalise our scene breakdown for the pilot episode of our sitcom (I'll tell you what it's called if they commission it). We nailed it in two phonecalls. He then asked if I could get the first draft of the script to him by Sunday as he's going away on Monday and really wants to get some work done on the dialogue before the casting on Thursday. Deadlines always inspire me, so I worked on it solidly into the early evening, missing Channel 4 News. I finished it just before eight o'clock and sent it off. Hopefully it will have been a pleasant surprise. It also clears the decks for me to . . . write a chapter of my book!

Because the days are shortening and the nights drawing in (getting dark before nine o'clock), we're not seeing the foxes. They come out for their food at dusk but it's hard to make them out. That's a shame. It's been a lovely summer and we'll keep feeding them, but much of the pleasure has ebbed away with the light.

 After about two months of having it, we finally watched Ken Loach's Land And Freedom on DVD. It was brilliant, one of his very best. Some grumps have complained that there's too much polemic in the dialogue, but the 20-minute meeting about collectivisation between republican fighters of every nationality was, I thought, inspired. Of course, I now want to read a definitive book about the Spanish Civil War, even though I have two on the go about the looming oil crisis: The Final Energy Crisis, a collection of essays edited by Andrew McKillop and The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, an American perspective, but a straight-talking one. Both books make it clear that world oil production has peaked, while oil consumption continues to rise, especially in China and India , and yet nobody seems brave enough to deal with it. I feel a deep-seated need to read apocalyptic books like this. They don't make me depressed. They make me feel equipped. A new series started on BBC2, There's No Waste Like Home, a sort of environmental makeover show for energy gluttons, which was quite coy about the effects on the planet of overconsumptionon of electricity and gas, turning into a financial efficiency matter, but it was hugely depressing seeing this family of five using 11 times the national average of gas, leaving their thermostat up to 28 and leaving it on 24 hours a day. They were allowing their kids to change outfit three times a day and then washing the hardly-dirty clothes, and tumble drying them, not to mention throwing out 17 bags of rubbish a week, and not recycling anything. Idiots! (They should re-name it You Are What You Heat.)

It was hot today. Too hot. A good day to change the world. Creamguide, the weekly TV newsletter from TV Cream arrived in my inbox. In it, they said they were boycotting 6 Music for a week "to beat the terrorists". Now that is funny.

4,000 words. Whoops.

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