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Friday 26 August
Of course I'm getting emails telling me not to put a word-limit on my blog now. The backlash has begun. I'm just going to write it this week and see where we end up. 
 
I have to begin on a bombshell: it wouldn't take Poirot or Foyle to expose our little cover-up so I'll just come right out and say it: we recorded the 6 Music Chart today , for transmission tomorrow . This was unavoidable and we've never done it before. It always goes out live, every Saturday, but the Radio 4 panel game I'm recording tomorrow demands that I'm in Edinburgh at lunchtime. I hope you'll forgive me. To be fair, it is one of the few programmes on the network that doesn't need to be live. We get the chart information in early enough to record it on a Friday and the Cut-off Sleeves competition is live online all week. Anyway, enough guilt. We did it. It was in the can by just after midday and I was off to Heathrow by 1pm. It won't happen again.

The Radio 4 programme is Banter . It's a broadcast pilot (ie. it's going out on the radio - Tuesday night, 11pm) produced by Avalon, the comedy giants who are currently running my life for me. Radio 4 have a long tradition of recording comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe and the BBC always have a strong branded presence there. Also, there really is no point in trying to record a comedy show in London in August! I have been asked to host the show, which, in radio panel game terms, is a big promotion for me. I hope I don't blow it.

Easy enough journey, although no food on the plane, it being British Airways, whose meals are ordinarily supplied by Gate Gourmet, who are having "a bit of trouble" currently. I don't travel for work as much as I used to when I was a journalist in the late 80s and 90s, and doing so, especially alone, takes me back to those days of hopping on a plane to Utrecht to interview Kitchens of Distinction in a bierkeller. (I never actually did, but it felt like it.) Even though security is tighter, it's easier now, with the joy of automated check-in. The flight to Edinburgh is something of an indulgence, in that it's far more environmentally friendly by train, but I'm on a time budget. I'm only in the city for a day and a half and I have to be back in the office by Sunday lunchtime. When I arrived at Edinburgh International I noticed a driver with a sign for MR RUSHDIE (very discreet) but there was no car laid on for me, so unlike Mr Rushdie I had to queue up for an astonishing 20 minutes to get a taxi. You'd think, on a Bank Holiday weekend - the closing weekend of not just the Fringe but the International Festival, the Book Festival, the Film Festival, the TV Festival and the tourist-magnet Edinburgh Tattoo - they'd lay on one or two extra cabs at the official rank, wouldn't you? My cab driver spent the whole journey into the city centre on his mobile, driving one handed through heavy traffic, moaning to his friend that all his fares had been into the city centre, which was taking an hour there and back. Meanwhile his meter was ticking up past £20. I couldn't find it in my heart to feel too sorry for him. What did he expect?

Edinburgh is rammed. I haven't been up on the bank holiday since 2000, when Stuart, Dave and I performed Lloyd Cole Knew My Father at the Pleasance. It really is a heady and thrilling place to be, especially if you know where you're going, don't need a map and like walking. Avalon have put me up in the Thistle Hotel, which, although a chain, isn't as pokey, characterless and functional as I had feared. Indeed, I have a very spacious room, which is a total waste, as all I'll be doing in it is sleeping.

Within half an hour of checking in I had decanted the essentials (umbrella, kagoule, apples, trail mix, pen) from my big, travelling rucksack into my smaller rucksack and I was out, heading for a diner called Favorit, where I met Richard, producer of Banter , for a script meeting and general chat. I ate a very nice chicken salad. It's always a triumph to find something healthy to eat in Scotland. (When we were up with Lloyd Cole I became reliant on an organic vegetarian café called Henderson's, tucked away in a basement off the main drag but always packed with people wearing sandals, kagoules and bum bags.)

Saw two shows in succession tonight, on my own. It's character-building to find yourself in faraway city on your own. Sort of liberating too, not having to wait for anyone or make group decisions. I even had my mobile switched off. Stewart Lee at the Underbelly was on fire. (Not literally, thank heavens, as you wouldn't want to be evacuating a cellar with stone steps in a panic.) He really is one of the best stand-ups alive. His genial manner is offset with a sparkling turn of phrase, obviously painstakingly well rehearsed, and - this year - a powerful emotional punch. I won't ruin it, but there is a kind of breakdown in the second act that is, as well as uncomfortably funny, really well acted. Hard to beat. (I had a quick word wit him afterwards, but it's always a difficult moment after a show, for performer and admirer. If you say it was brilliant, you sound insincere, and they don't know what to say back other than thank you. I'll talk to him tomorrow in the cold light of day, I hope.)

Complete contrast: Lucy Porter, whose themed show Happiness is at the Assembly Rooms. She's really built up a following with her bubbly persona, but it's laced with difficult material and dirty words, and that's her secret weapon. I was sitting next to two old ladies who were loving it but getting a real decadent thrill from the forbidden material. I was obviously not shocked (even when she called Jim Davidson an "evil c----") but I was knocked out by how much she packs into an hour. She really works hard. Offended by her remarks about Scousers, a Liverpudlian in the audience called her a "Home Counties bitch", which was a bit harsh.

In the queue, on my own, for Lucy, at 22.40, I experienced at first hand the discomfort of being sober at Edinburgh. I was sandwiched in by drunk young men, who weren't offensive, just stupid and annoying, laughing at the photos on a mobile phone. Perhaps if I too had been drunk, I wouldn't have found them stupid and annoying. Also, it's much colder without alcohol inside you. The thermal power of laugher soon warmed me up.

I saw some much drunker men, locals, on my walk back to the hotel. One young gentleman at a bus stop just screaming and swearing into his mobile phone: "I think we've got a f----ing problem here, pal!" over and over and over again, louder and louder and more desperate sounding. Damn right you've got a problem. You're going to wake up in a skip covered in blood and vomit, and not necessarily your own. Still, you're only young once.

Saturday 27 August
The big day. I slept with the window open, as hotel rooms are notoriously airless. This meant an alarm call at 5.40, when a particularly loud group of drunk young people went past on the street below, shouting and screaming their way home. I couldn't get back to sleep, as my head was buzzing with preemptive thoughts about Banter. I lay awake thinking about it until it was time for my depressing chain-hotel buffet breakfast. You've got to hand it to the Thistle: they play low-level bagpipe music in the restaurant at seven in the morning. My guess is that no Scottish people stay here, despite the name. I had Germans on one side and Americans on the other as I tucked into my dispiriting but functional cooked breakfast of carton apple juice, tinned prunes, warm beans, warm sausage, warm bacon and warm eggs. At least I'd brought my own mint teabags and was able to have a lovely hot beverage that made me feel at home. (I realise that as a wheat- and dairy-intolerant diner with an aversion to caffeine, I am my own worst enemy at breakfast, as toast and yogurt and milky coffee would make it all so much easier to bear, but these are my crosses to bear. William Leith's excellent book The Hungry Years makes a good point: we live in a carbohydrate world.)

I checked out without a great deal of regret (although they did supply complementary Guardians on each floor) at 8.30 in order to relocate my stuff to the flat where I'm staying tonight and get back to the Pleasance to meet Richard at 10am. Amanda Howard Associates, my agents, are renting a flat for the whole festival (they have a number of clients up here in various productions, as they represent a large portfolio of theatricals), and I've bagged a spare bed there tonight. I always prefer to walk in Edinburgh - indeed any major city - if I feasibly can, and the march to the flat only took about 20 minutes. It was beautiful to be out before the streets filled with tourists. A dry and still morning, and the view of Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh's famous hill, was stunning as I made my way out towards Meadowbank. Found the flat, picked up a set of keys, dropped off my big bag, packed my small one, regained total independence and was back off out. It's always good for my soul to locate where I live and confirm that I can walk home at the end of the night.

The Pleasance Beyond is the largest of the venues clustered around the famous Pleasance Courtyard. It seats 300. This is where Radio 4 record their shows. It was thrilling to arrive and find microphones being tested and a buzzer being wired up for the presenter, which was me. The panel for this all-important pilot comprised Richard Herring (always good to have a familiar face and someone I know on the programme), Lucy Porter (we've met before, but she doesn't really know me), Will Smith (never met, heard a lot of nice things about) and Russell Howard (rising star, only 25, instantly likable and an Avalon artiste who they're keen to promote). We had a run-through in the green room over fresh fruit, nuts and wheat-and-dairy-based M&S snacks (none for me, obviously) to familiarise ourselves with the format. It's basically about Top Threes: the panel debate the Top Three of various given subjects - children's authors, movie franchises, items on a Chinese takeaway menu - and score points for being funny or interesting, or for matching answers. That's all you need to know. The point is: banter.

The recording began at 12.15 and the auditorium was sold out. (The tickets were free.) Loitering behind the stage, there was a tangible sense of nervous excitement. I like this. I didn't know that Mark Damazer, controller of Radio 4, was in the audience, or I would have been even more nervous. Producer Richard welcomed the audience and did the "housekeeping" (fire exits, don't leave during the recording etc.) before handing over to me. I had to "fill" for a few minutes while he made his way outside to the OB van, so I tried a bit of stand-up which I'd written in my head whilst laying awake at 5.40. It went OK. They were, you might say, a captive audience, but I got a ripple of laughter for my terrorist material. The closest I've come to stand-up is entertaining people at book festivals. I like the instant reaction and the roar of the crowd, but the experience serves only to double my respect for those who do it for a living, and in front of much more hostile people than those who come to book festivals or Radio 4 recordings.

Not to go into any unnecessary detail, the recording went very well indeed. All four panelists punched their weight. We got groans and hisses as well as laughter and applause, which meant a good, reactive crowd, and I think I kept control. Pleased to meet regular 6 Music listener, emailer and competition-enterer Paul Johnston and his wife Kirsty afterwards (I'd put them on the guest list). They live the other side of the Forth Bridge and seemed to enjoy the show. Let's hope we get a series.

It must have been weird for Richard, Lucy, Will and Russell to emerge, blinking into the light of the courtyard at 1.30 in the afternoon with an adrenalin buzz, only to have to mentally regroup in time for their proper shows later on. Me? I didn't know what to do with my buzz. After a bit of mutual appreciation, and a genial chat with Stewart Lee and his cousin, I walked, on my own of course, to Henderson's! I ate a hearty organic vegetarian curry with salad and an organic, wheat-free homemade flapjack with homemade smoothie. My kind of food. I am feeling very independent with my knowledge of Edinburgh's streets and no map.

Back to the flat, slightly deflated after the earlier high, for a nap. Left text messages for Stuart Maconie (who's up here filming for BBC2) and Robin Ince, but both too busy to meet up, so I watched The X-Factor. What a frightening programme it is. What ugly proletarian desperation it trades in.

Walked back to the Pleasance (it's a beacon - other major comedy venues are available, but you can't beat the courtyard) and queued early for Robin's show at the Pleasance Below. It's always odd to see people you regard as mates doing their job, but Robin was suitably excellent. He combines well-written material and newspaper/magazine headlines with an easy manner and enough rage to stop his observations being remote. I thoroughly enjoyed the show. It was a full house, and the audience seemed anything but hostile (except perhaps during the Maxine Carr material). However, meeting him for a drink afterwards, he was in a foul mood. He said the audience were terrible, the worst of the festival in terms of getting the jokes and laughing. I had nothing to compare them to, and thought they were fine, but there was no changing Robin's mind. The comedian's life is one of self-flagellation, disappointment and depression.

Walked home before midnight and managed to resist chips. My cab to the airport is booked for 7am tomorrow morning.

Sunday 28 August
Woke up at 6am. My body always does this. Crept around so as not to wake the flat. Cab arrived early, 6.45. No traffic whatsoever, so was at the airport by 7am with two hours before my flight! I always say I'd rather be early than late - William Leith is always late - but this was extreme. Still, it meant I had time to eat another depressing cooked breakfast - which was actually nicer than the hotel's and I had an organic pear juice with ginger, which suggests Scotland is looking up! - and read the Independent. Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, was on my flight, but casually bypassed the herd and got waived onboard at the same time as "anybody who requires assistance". How cool is that? Almost finished The Hungry Years on the flight. (A good book to be reading on British Airways at the moment.)

Back at the BBC by 11am, ready to do my Sunday show. It was pouring with rain when I left Edinburgh, and blazing summer when I arrived in London. I felt trapped in the long trousers I'd sensibly worn for the trip and couldn't wait to get home.

It feels like I've been away for a week, even though it's only two days. I sort of expected Leona to have tons of gossip for me, but of course she didn't. I didn't manage to hook up with Stuart last night (he didn't finish filming until late), but he'd also flown back to London to do the Freak Zone, so at least I saw him briefly as we handed over. (He took a later flight, which had Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr on it, which trumps Mark Thompson.)

Home at 6pm. Finished The Hungry Years on the train. Into my shorts. Eat some non-Scottish food. Watch Top Of The Pops, unlike the rest of the population, expect an avalanche of emails but of course, I've only been away for two days, and part of a bank holiday weekend to boot. Start of a three-part Messiah on BBC1 tonight: suitably grisly and gothic. Too early to make predictions.

Monday 29 August
Hot today and apparently a Bank Holiday, which allowed me to do nothing with impunity. (I got so used to working Bank Holidays when I had my weekday show it feels decadent to actually spend them sitting round the house like normal people.) Watched a couple of sitcoms that I'm reviewing for BBC7's Serious About  Comedy on Wednesday - Still Game, which I absolutely loved and The Green Green Grass by John Sullivan, which I absolutely hated, not least because it reminded me of the BBC sitcom Grass (it's about Boycie off of Only Fool And Horses who moves to the country because he's grassed up some gangsters - nice set-up!). Then we caught up with last night's BBC3 documentary Who The F*** Is Pete Doherty , which was depressing in the extreme. If he ever did have any talent - and the first Libertines album says he did - it's evident that he's urinating it up the wall by hanging around with sycophants whose job seems to be to make excuses for his behaviour. It was a good documentary in that it presented Doherty as he is, and let his slightly sleepy-sounding friends with ugly teeth dig their own graves for the camera. They repeated the Kirsty Wark interview with Doherty straight afterwards but I'd had enough of the self-deluded little twerp by then. Everyone around him keeps idolising him as a poet and a genius, but where's the evidence? (My views are not necessarily those of the BBC, remember.) 
Part two of Messiah, which really cranked up the Da Vinci Code angle with its serial killer who's obsessed with Dante's Inferno. Terrific. Of course, in real life, serial killers just kill people, rather than arranging elaborate clues in order to get caught, but that wouldn't keep you watching over three consecutive nights.

Finally saw the last episode of The West Wing , season five. As it was a final episode, it was mostly concerned with building up to a cliffhanger. Nothing as dramatic as Jed and Josh being shot in season one or Zoe being kidnapped in season four, or even the question mark over whether he'd seek reelection at the end of season two, but enough to make the wait until the next season arrives on DVD on September 26 feel like too long! (Oh, the episode was called Memorial Day, co-written by John Scarlet Young and Josh Singer. For the record.)

Tuesday 30 August
Hot again. Two walks into Reigate, one to collect registered mail from the post office (Hitchhiker's Guide on DVD for review in Radio Times ), the other to pick up juice supplies from M&S (they do a nice not-from-concentrate tropical juice, and it's three cartons for the price of two). I had planned a day of book-writing, but of course that DVD needed reviewing, which meant watching all the extras, and then Front Row phoned with a column idea, which was, in fairness, half an idea. I spent a while trying to work it up into an actual idea but couldn't, and threw in the towel. Eventually, I got into my book, but half the day was gone. How does that happen?

Second edition of Don't Get Me Started on Five (that's twice I've watched Five in an eight-day period - unprecedented!), which after last week's embarrassment by Michael Buerk was refreshing, in that I agreed with every word of it: Rosie Boycott on "false grief" (ie. the national outpouring of emotion for people we don't know and have never met, from Diana to the Soham girls). I was shocked when Diana died, and I felt sad that someone young had died in a horrible way, but I could never connect with those people who felt the need to lay flowers and burst into tears. If you're wailing and sobbing at the death of Ken Bigley or Holly Wells, whom you never knew or met, what's left to cry with when your actual loved ones die? 
 
Final part of Messiah.  I know it's not a game, but I guessed the killer about ten minutes in (or two hours and ten minutes into the whole thing). It didn't ruin it for me. First class acting from Maxine Peake, Hugo Speer, Harriet Walter and Helen McCrory, and of course Ken Stott. You have to admire the nerve of making a drama that's so unrelentingly filled with misery, death, torture, grief (not false grief), fear, fury, bitterness, wrath and wretchedness.

Listened to the edit of Banter when it went out on Radio 4 at 11pm. It's hard for me to comment but I will say I think Richard did a terrific job of editing an hour of material into half an hour without losing the spontaneity and the atmosphere. Give us a series!

Wednesday 31 August
Got a series! Who says that BBC commissioning editors drag their feet and umm and ahh? Don't know when the series will air yet, but we've got one. What excellent news.

What terrible news. Hurricane Katrina leaves great swathes of the Mississippi and Louisiana coast wrecked and flooded, with hundreds, maybe thousands feared dead, and already, prominent American scientists are lining up to say it's nothing to do with global warming. It's all part of a "natural cycle", apparently. Whatever you say.

Hot again. A round trip into London left my t-shirt sticking to me and my sunglasses sliding off my nose. I was in town to guest on Serious About Comedy, BBC7's review programme, hosted by Robin Ince. My fellow guests were Joel Morris - a hugely funny man who writes for, among other things, The Day The Music Died, plays with the band Candidate and is a co-conspirator behind The Framley Examiner  - and Stephanie Merritt of The Observer, who kept banging her elbows on the table and going off-mic. We all hated The Green Green Grass, which was encouraging, and we all loved Still Game.

Supernanny followed the usual pattern: different location (Swindon), same old story. It's funny how you always end up despising the ineffectual and indulgent parents on it, and not the kids. When did parents stop parenting?

A Foyle's War on DVD, The White Feather, which was all about Charles Dance and his Nazi sympathisers, followed by next week's Lost on E4, in which we found out all about the Korean couple and that's all I'm prepared to say. Still hot.

Currently reading The Wisdom Of Crowds by James Surowiecki, an intriguing look at the way groups of people can react and think in a way that's smarter than the average intellect of the individuals in the group. It was recommended to me by John Foxx. I like the theory although I have a sneaking suspicion that crowds are idiots.

Received a polite, handwritten letter from a gentleman in Jersey asking me, in my capacity as Radio Times Film Editor, if I knew of a film version of Ken Follett's Eye Of The Needle . It seems amazing that a reader would go to all the trouble of writing and sending me a letter to ask me this when they could find out by asking in a shop, but maybe he's infirm or old, and I found it rather sweet. There was a film, in 1981, starring Donald Sutherland and including a glimpse, if memory serves, of Kate Nelligan's breast, so I shall at least be able to write back to him with the good news. It's the least I can do. (I won't mention the breast. I was a teenager when I saw it. Mind you, if he's old, he might appreciate it.)

Thursday 1 September
Need I mention that it was hot? Another trip into town for a down-the-line interview with Radio Merseyside in my RT capacity. While there I met up with Adam Smith and our agent Kate for a frightfully pleasant lunch at the almost-deserted Heights bar (chicken Caesar salads all round, except for those of us who subsist on liquids only).

Picked up a preview disc of Rock School from Front Row (for whom I'm reviewing it next week), which I watched on my return home - it's another theatrically-released slice-of-slightly-eccentric-life documentary in the mould of Spellbound and Etre Et Avoir, though it's not as good as either. It's about an after-school rock class run by this caffeinated "character" called Paul Green, who teaches kids between nine and 17 how to play Frank Zappa and Black Sabbath. I didn't warm to him, which somewhat undercuts the film's appeal. The kids were sweet though.

An epic, two-hour drama-documentary on C4 tonight with a particularly lurid and offputting title - The Year London Blew Up: 1974. It pieced together events from when the IRA took its bombing campaign to the capital between 1974 and 1975 - so it wasn't even an accurate title and it certainly wasn't a subtle or tasteful one. I despair about the idiocy of C4's commissioning editors sometimes. Do they really think daft tabloid titles is the only way to make us watch documentaries? It was actually an intelligent, level-headed telling of the tale, and I could live with the reconstruction because it was done in a verité style. Shame it was so thoughtlessly marketed.

Longest blog yet. So sue me.

The views expressed are those of Andrew Collins and not necessarily those of the BBC.