Not Found

Friday 16 September

The middle bird feeder was down this morning. I strung it back up. And thus, another blog-week begins. Day off, although some script to-ing and fro-ing occurred between Lee and myself. The deadline is upon us. Our sitcom is being recorded in two weeks' time (Sunday 2 October) and there's a full cast read-through on Tuesday. I've been deliberately vague about it in this blog, but it's in the public domain now. Tickets for the recording, at the mighty Thames Studios in Teddington, are online. There's a news piece about it on Chortle . So let's be up front: it's called Not Going Out . BBC2 have commissioned a broadcast pilot, with a view to picking it up for a series next year. It stars Lee Mack as Lee, a layabout who lives, in Docklands, with Kate (Catherine Tate), the book-PR ex-girlfriend of his City-boy best mate Colin, nicknamed College (Tim Vine). Kate and College split up when College had an affair with a girl from work, leaving Lee living platonically with Kate. That's the set-up. The sitcom revolves around this triangle, if that's not a geometric impossibility, as Lee is forced to get various jobs to pay the rent, and - hopefully, if we write it properly and the characters are played well - the audience will be wondering will-they-won't-they? (Will Lee and Kate get together? Will Kate and College get back together?) Anyway, the script is almost written. I'm very pleased with it. It's very different from Grass : more traditional, very verbal, studio-based, with an audience, tightly-plotted but with a higher laugh-per-minute rate (or gag-per-minute - the audience will be the judge of whether it's funny or not). I've really enjoyed working with Lee. He's a gag man at heart, but he's become totally immersed in the structure and the subtext and the story arc. We're down to detail now, individual lines, tinkering.

Put it all behind me this afternoon with a planned trip to the first showing at Reigate Screen of Pride And Prejudice . You may recall that the similar first screening of Revenge Of The Sith was all but empty, with just us and about half a dozen others. Not so today. When we arrived at just before three there was a queue! Not exactly round the block, but certainly out of the door, and made up almost exclusively of white-haired old ladies. It's official: Jane Austen is a bigger draw than George Lucas in Reigate . I was virtually the only male in the audience as we settled down for some quality costume romance.

Directed by Joe Wright (his first feature film, although he helmed the excellent TV drama Charles II: The Power And The Passion with Rufus Sewell), and written, so we are told, by a number of people, including an uncredited Lee Hall ( Billy Elliott ) and Emma Thompson, the first big-screen Pride And Prejudice since Lawrence Olivier and Greer Garson is a triumph. I thought it impeccable - witty, fluid, atmospheric, stunningly lit and well cast. I've had a problem with Keira Knightley in the past (awful in Bend It Like Beckham and out of her pouting depth in TV's Dr Zhivago ), but she proved a warm and credible Miss Elizabeth Bennett, while Tom Hollander made a truly obsequious Mr Collins and Donald Sutherland a three-dimensional Mr Bennett (you'll cry at the end when he does). It seems to be a truth universally acknowledged that Matthew MacFadyen had Colin Firth to beat as Darcy, but I thought he pulled it off - haughty and disdainful with a gradual thaw to reveal the humanity beneath. However, I don't fancy Colin Firth, and there is a substantial lobby that does. On the way out I overheard two old ladies saying, "He's no Colin Firth." This will be the factor that makes it a four-star, not a five-star film. To me, it's a five. I have been spelling MacFadyen wrong all my life.

More agreeable drama tonight. Part two of Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky , Jenny's Story - rather racier than last week's, and lacking Phil Davis, but you can really lose yourself in its lovingly-created world. Followed by lifelong documentary series 49 Up , which is the kind of drama you couldn't write. The changes wrought on the original kids from 7 Up have been less profound over this latest seven-year interval. It was between 28-35, and 35-42, that most of them seemed to change direction, get divorced or hit one of life's potholes; this time they've mainly filled out and in some cases had their first grandchildren, but the effect is no less profound. Tony the cockney cab driver and his wife have, with crushing inevitability, bought property in Spain . The urchin from 7 Up is the only one with two houses. That tells you a lot. While Bruce the troubled boarding school boy who taught in Bangladesh and the East End seems happy now living in a suburban house with wife and kids. Jackie spent most of the time talking about how she was portrayed in 42 Up , which was quite postmodern. Can't wait for part two next week, to see what's happened to Neil the drifter. Everybody's interested in Neil the drifter, and the programme-makers know it, saving him up till last. These are real lives, but they belong to us. How odd.

Saturday 17 September
The middle feeder was down this morning. I strung it back up. Workout before breakfast, quite unusual for me, but energising. Made a disastrous spontaneous decision to drive into London , which took longer than taking the train, due to Chelsea Bridge being closed, a crawling diversion and a worse-than-usual bottleneck at Mitcham. Anyway, no time to go shopping for organic produce and healthy snacks, had to make do with a soup and a wheat-free sandwich from Eat. Sometimes work days feel like work days, that's all. (I'm a bit grumpy about the fact that I got no book-writing done last week, but then I'm the one who keeps saying yes to talking-head jobs. I'm having my photo taken for the book jacket next week and I haven't even started Chapter Five.) The chart show was much improved from last week. Eleven new entries! And an unblocked toilet!

Made my own dairy-free pesto tonight for the first time ever - fresh basil, walnuts, olive oil, black peppercorns and that's it! Delicious with the chicken. Risked falling through a hole in the fabric of time by watching an episode from the third series of Spooks on DVD, even though series four has just started on BBC1. This was episode 3.1, to use their terminology, and picked up directly after the cliffhanger at the end of series two, in which Tom shot Harry after being framed as a traitor and apparently drowned. Except he didn't drown. Matthew MacFadyen agreed to come back for two episodes. Meanwhile, his replacement, Adam Carter (Rupert Penry-Jones) has been drafted in and their relationship - frosty then mutual respect - was one of the more intriguing aspects of this race against time. This really is first-rate BBC drama. We will be watching series three and four concurrently, I can tell. Leona swears that Keeley Hawes, who plays Zoe, is Chesney Hawkes' sister. I can't verify that first fact anywhere. She also told me that Hawes left her husband after five months for Matthew MacFadyen. That seems to be a matter of record.

Just when you thought you had enough top-quality British drama on the slate, along comes the second series of the sublime Bodies on BBC3, one of the best things that channel has produced. Written by former registrar Jed Mercurio and set in a corrupt, callous, often incompetent and always bureaucracy-strangled obstetrics and gynaecology ward, it is a protracted health warning: never get ill, never have a baby, and if you do, never have it delivered in hospital. It's more of the same, and the same is what I require. The stoic and resigned Max Beesley on his way out but still snatching torrid sex with Neve McIntosh in his grotty student bedroom, Patrick Baladi sliming his way up through the ranks, and Keith Allen proving that you can be a surgical consultant and hit golf balls at another surgeon's car until the alarm goes off, and use a rude term for vagina as your computer password. Inspired, and about ten times more in-your-face-gruesome than ER , including, tonight, an inverted uterus (before your very eyes!) and a woman with low platelet-count "bleeding out" all over the floor. All in a good cause.

Sunday 18 September

The middle feeder was still up this morning when I left for work at 10.10. A small victory. It's getting colder, have you noticed? It's turning. The sun's still out, but even by late afternoon, you start to entertain immoral thoughts about the thermostat. I will resist central heating for as long as possible. I spent the latter part of my childhood in a house where windows were always closed and radiators were always on, or seemed to be. (My early Dickensian childhood was characterised by bed socks and hot water bottles, but I suppose somewhere along the line our financial circumstances improved and the radiators went on to prove it.) I only really began to notice how stuffy and overheated Mum and Dad's house was when I moved to London . When I went back for weekends I would actually become existentially depressed by the cloying heat. In my own house, I prefer plenty of air circulating about and radiators on in emergencies only.

Wore long trousers into 6 Music, and long sleeves. Leona wore tights and a cardy. That's it. Official. Summer is over.

The middle feeder was down by the time I got home from work this evening. I strung it back up in near-darkness (also trod in some fox sh---, but I was wearing my wellies). Really tired tonight, probably because I woke up at 5.45 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. My mind was full of stuff. It's still full of stuff. Unfortunately I nodded off during the first of a new series of Waking The Dead , although if I'm honest, it wasn't quite up to scratch. A bit vague and too complicated to get into. I'm not thick, I can handle a complex plot, but this one - which concludes tomorrow, naturally - was impenetrable, and it's no fun without Claire Goose (who was killed at the end of the last series) and Holly Aird (can't remember what happened to her character).

Luckily, I woke up in time for part two of BBC4's Forty Years Of F--- , which covered TFI Friday , Gordon Ramsay and Deadwood , among others, with much discussion of the word c---. I wasn't on it very much with my big head and thin body, but I didn't expect to be.

Monday 19 September

A bracing start to my fake-Saturday: a 40-minute workout, followed by a self-administered blood test! Those who know me will recognise that I like to have my blood tested and my mineral content analysed regularly. I pay what some might call too much attention to my own health. Monitoring what I eat, drink, wash with and rub into my skin is just not enough! I also demand to know how much mercury, lead and molybdenum are in my system! There are companies out there that will sell you home-testing kits, which come in reassuring sealed packs, with swabs and spring-loaded lancets and plasters. The one I did this morning was a test for homocysteine levels. You prick your finger with a supplied lancet (self-harm!) and squeeze a few drops of blood onto a special card, wait until the indicator spot goes blue, then pop the results back in the prepaid envelope and send it to the lab. Homocysteine is an amino acid present in the blood that, if found at a higher-than-normal level, can lead to all sorts of trouble, including heart disease. If your levels are higher than normal, you can bring them down with supplements. Last time I tested myself, about a year ago, it was within the safe range, but it's always worth keeping an eye on it. (It's so much easier, if you don't mind paying for the privilege, to test yourself and bypass the NHS and the hassle of having to convince your GP to have you tested.) The life I lead. If you'd told the 30-year-old me this is what I was going to be like at 40, I would have laughed in your face and ordered another drink. 




The middle feeder was up this morning when we left for Northampton at 11.00. Rotten drive to my home town to see Mum and Dad - the M25 was a motherf-----er. Took us the best part of two and a half hours. Fortunately, Mum had prepared a cold lunch of meat and salad, so nothing burned. A perfectly pleasant few hours ensued: leisurely lunch, my sister Melissa popped round between trips to drop off and pick up various among her three sons (the youngest, William, 3, has started play group and doesn't much like it - I feel his pain), then a stroll in Abington Park, the park of my youth, although I've checked and it's shrunk. Canada Geese have also moved in. Back on the A45 by 5.00.

Let the second part of Waking The Dead go tonight. Put on a Spooks from series three instead but fell asleep before the end. This is becoming all too common.

Tuesday 20 September

The middle feeder was still up this morning when I left the house at 7.20. Why so early? I had to get to Avalon HQ in the wilds of Ladbroke Grove for 10am , and there was no way I was going to be late for the big read-through of Not Going Out . As it was, I got there at 9.30, thanks to having to wait in a big mob twice at Victoria Station before I could actually enter the Underground. They kept closing the gates "to prevent overcrowding on the platforms." I know it was rush hour, but doesn't that tell you that the system isn't working? Anyway, nice to get to Avalon early: met the director Gareth and the producer Charlie before the meeting room was full of people. Both seem nice. Also met Catherine Tate for the first time (guess what - she also seemed nice) and Tim Vine (nice). Jo Butler, who's playing the main supporting part, I already know, because she played Jemima the vet in Grass (small world - she is nice too). It was a fair read-through, with an audience comprising everyone from the designer to the props buyer, but it was also a bit flat, as the actors weren't really throwing themselves into it, and a lot of the show's warmth will come from the performances and the chemistry. This is what read-throughs are like. Had a coffee afterwards with Lee, Catherine and Angela, who plays Maggie. It all suddenly feels very real now, not just me and Lee emailing each other.

Home via Radio 4, where I recorded a column for Front Row about Bilko , which is 50 years old this year and still unavailable on DVD, due to a rights issue. Criminal.

Middle feeder still up when I got home at 3.40, and still up now, as I write, at 10.10. I'm watching a drama that's split stupidly into two bits around the news on BBC1: Derailed , the true account of the Ladbroke Grove rail crash of 1999. I love this kind of stuff. It's in the same mould as Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday , albeit not quite as dramatic as either. (Second part mainly about the Cullen Inquiry. Still lacked a bit of oomph, but worth sticking with.)

Had stomach ache for the third night in a row. Couldn't work out why. Then we remembered that I've been taking a combined magnesium-calcium supplement for the last three nights. It doesn't agree with me. I'm not taking it any more. I love the way the body communicates.

Wednesday 21 September

Middle feeder was down when I woke up this morning (which was late for me - 8.00). I couldn't be bothered to string it back up. I realise this is reckless and devil-may-care. I had planned a book-writing day, but that, by law, is never allowed to happen. First, I had to watch Robots on DVD and review it. I really enjoyed it, but I do have a real soft spot for computer animation, and it was something of a socialist parable. As with Shark Tale , they've overdubbed voices from recognisable British personalities for the UK release, including Cat Deeley, Terry Wogan, Vernon Kay (spare me) and Chris Moyles (spare me again). I don't get it. Who's this actually for? Do these people need their egos massaging any more vigorously? Anyway, after I'd done a soundtracks recommendation piece for Word , which I'd committed to ages ago and had to be delivered today, and eaten my breakfast and had a workout, it was lunchtime. No book written. I did actually get down to some this afternoon, between emails and phonecalls and offers of further work I shouldn't be taking on. I'm just a self-employed person who can't say no.

Both the chicken and the venison which we had delivered on Friday reached their use-by date today, so I had to cook both tonight! Ate the chicken, and put the cooked venison in the fridge for tomorrow. It was like working in a restaurant kitchen.

One and a half Spooks from series three on DVD tonight, the one I fell asleep during (3.2) and the next one (3.3). MacFadyen has gone (decommissioned rather than killed off, which made a change), Penry-Jones is in. I have a bad feeling about Zoe's new boyfriend. I don't like him though, so let's hope their relationship is doomed. They usually are. Found out this evening what the difference between MI5 and MI6 is - one's internal security, the other's external.

Propped my eyelids open long enough to enjoy another Lost . The one where Sayid makes an important discovery on the other side of the island. That's all I can say. Lucy Mangan in the Guardian today said Lost is all over. She's wrong.

Thursday 22 September
Middle feeder still down from yesterday. Even though I had limited time this morning before a cab came to collect me, I went out and strung it back up. Why a cab? Because I was off to a studio near Old Street to have my photo taken for the book cover. I was asked to bring quite a few costume changes, so I requested a car. This is not something I do as a rule - the journey probably took longer than if I'd gone by train, and there are enough cars on the road without me adding one - but hey, sod it. Because the book is subtitled An Accidental Career In Showbiz , the cover concept is me trying to get into a party, looking forlorn yet hopeful at the same time and wearing laminates round my neck. Although the photographer Adam took lots of different combinations of shirt, t-shirt and background, they all amounted to the same pose. I felt it went well, and I didn't look too much of a tit. 





Next stop: 6 Music, to record trails and eat my lunch. Then on to the Soho offices of World Productions (they made This Life , The Cops , Attachments - I felt privileged to be over their threshold). I was meeting a young man with designer stubble called Roberto to talk over a possible writing project that superstition prevents me from revealing at this tender stage. He took me to Soho 's most famous coffee bar, Bar Italia, and I had a mint tea. Sacrilege. Then back to the BBC to do what is now a regular slot about films for Radio Merseyside (the Linda McDermott show: Nice woman).

The middle feeder was already down when I arrived home at 5.10. It's not even a battle now. It's a Zen thing. They test my resolve. I test theirs. They chew through my flex, I tie the two ends of flex back together again. It is life in a nutshell. If only they ate more nutshells and less of my seeds.

Part two of 49 Up , including Nick the Yorkshire farmer's son who moved to Wisconsin to invent nuclear energy or something, got divorced in time for 42 Up and is now - you guessed it - remarried and happy. It's a generational thing: so many of the 7 Up kids married young and divorced unhappily after 35, only to remarry in time for 49. Only Neil, the one from the children's home who was found drifting in Scotland at 28 and drifting in the Shetland Islands at 35, remained single. He's in Cumbria now, a Liberal Democrat councillor, a lay reader and pretty together for someone who seemed so battered and bewildered in his 30s. Good on him. It's amazing, too, how many of them are doing selfless things in middle age: running libraries, fostering kids, setting up schools in Bulgaria . They turned out a nice bunch really.

Question Time is back after recess. I hate the new credits sequence. It's like an 80s idea of space age or a cheap promo film for the Post Office. Bad lettering. Too fast. Horrible. A fairly dull panel, made duller by David Milliband. Some dreadful high-horse nonsense about Kate Moss - a subject about which they competed to know the least (with the exception of Bonnie Greer, the token sensible person). Kate has been dropped by Chanel and Burberry - the fashion houses are falling like dominoes. She'll live to walk up and down in a dress another day, but I despise the prurience and the hypocrisy of the media. The press seems to be delighting in bringing her down just because she never gave them an interview. 




Let me quickly tell you about my Francis of Assisi moment: at dusk, I went out to scrape the remains of last night's chicken carcass on the lawn for the foxes (whom we feed but never seen any more since the nights drew in), and the family of deer were still out there. Their first instinct was to leg it in a panic. But instead they all just looked at me. I stopped and sat down in silence on the step. We looked at each other. They very slowly began to make their way down the garden, aware of me but not frightened. They knew I wished them no harm. I sat there for a long while, just drinking in the mutual man-beast respect. Then, as if that wasn't Snow White enough, a fox appeared from the hedge to my left, snuffling around. I threw him a piece of chicken. He crunched it up gratefully. Again, the deer did not flinch. I threw another piece, closer this time. He came closer and crunched that up. Another fox appeared (it was too dark to tell which one). I had foxes to the left of me, deer to the right and I was stuck in the middle with a plate of chicken. Eventually, I got up and walked slowly down the garden to distribute the rest of the chicken, while the foxes skulked in the hedge and the deer ignored me. Communing with the animals and birds makes all the troubles of the world go away. I don't believe in God, but I do believe in Nature. I'll put the middle feeder back up again tomorrow and never mention it again.