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Friday 30 September
Another Zen moment in St James's Park at about 8.30 this morning: me, five pelicans swimming majestically along in a line, a cormorant, some quarreling moorhens and a graceful low-flying heron. It was so beautiful, I turned my IPod off and removed the earpieces. To think, I spent most of my life oblivious to birds. Even as a child, when I loved animals, especially hippos, I thought birds were boring. How wrong I was.

A lunchtime meeting with my agent, Kate. Just a chance to catch up, really, sign some contracts, compare diaries, have a natter and pick at a lovely salad over the fold-out leaf of her agent's desk.

Caught up with Elizabeth I from last night, first of a pair of two-hour epics written by Nigel Williams with a tremendous amount of wit. Helen Mirren was both regal and human as the ghost-faced monarch, and her aides played with the required shadowy cunning by Patrick Malahide and Ian McDiarmid (who, once upon a time, long ago, used not to be in every drama on television. How weird that must have been for him). Jeremy Irons stole it as Leicester , with his ravaged old face and his suppressed passion. Ever since he voiced Scar in The Lion King, he has become Scar in The Lion King. Some nasty bits too: when Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, the first swing of the axe didn't go right through. And three traitors were disembowelled publicly. Perhaps they should bring that in for dissenters and hecklers at Labour Party Conferences.

A perfectly nice day, but it was dominated by one thing, which I shall now dramatically reveal: The West Wing: The Complete Sixth Season arrived on my doormat this morning. I was thinking about it all day. They're going to be showing this series on More4, which launches on 10 October, but a) I can't wait that long, and b) who wants to be restricted to watching one ep a week? I clocked off early this afternoon and watched three in a row. It picked up, as ever, directly from the last ep of the last series. NSF Thurmont, written by John Wells: Bartlett under massive pressure to bomb Palestine in retaliation for the death of two congressmen in Gaza (and Fitz); Donna on the operating table; Leo and Bartlett at odds. (I'm taking care not to give anything away that's not in the blurbs on the DVD sleeve, as many of you will be watching these on the telly.) The Birnam Wood, written also by John Wells, was even better: it was the one where . . . and now I have to stop. I'm not going to tell you what the third episode, Third-Day Story (Eli Attie), was about, as it gives away important stuff about episode two which you're better off not knowing. (Ironically, they do give much of this away in the blurbs, so don't read the blurbs. Don't go on the internet like I do, either.) In conclusion: season six is cooking. It's great to see a new, permanent name in those stirring credits (which, by the way, have been coloured in, red and blue, since season five): Mary McCormack, as national security adviser Kate Harper - she's the token dove and acts as Jed's conscience, I think. How unlike what we laughingly call the read world! It seems clear now that season five was something of a makeweight, a transition from Sorkin to post-Sorkin. I found much in it to enjoy (the conflict between Toby and Will; the powerhouse Stormy Present episode; The Supremes, with Glenn Close as the moderate Supreme Court judge; the lockdown; and, of course, the dramatic Gaza climax), but I have a feeling that Bartlett's last term is going to take The West Wing to the next level. Bring on Jimmy Smits! Bring on Alan Alda!

Saturday 1 October 
Now, regular readers will remember that in June I was privileged enough to appear in a Doctor Who audio adventure. These come out every month on CD and are stand-alone adventures featuring one of Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, Paul McGann or - in my case - Sylvester McCoy. There's a detailed account of the day here: Needless to say, among hardcore Doctor Who fans, these carry as much significance as the new TV episodes. Hardcore Doctor Who fans are a breed apart. I knew when I accepted my role as radio announcer (typecasting!) Drew Shahan in the episode Live 34 , I would become a footnote in Doctor Who lore, but I never expected this. Today, before the Chart Show, I found myself sitting behind a trestle table in a shop called 10th Planet in a shopping centre in Barking, signing copies of the new CD with a big silver pen. The fans were queuing round the block when I arrived at 11.00. It was quite daunting. It wasn't just me, so don't be unduly impressed - I was flanked by David Darlington, who did the sound design, music and CD mastering (he's also a big Whovian himself, if you'll permit me to use that term, and might, on another occasion, be queuing on the other side of the trestle table), Maggie Stables, a lovely actress of about my mum's age who actually said things like "dear David Tennant" and "dear Roy Hudd" at the mention of their names and who plays Colin Baker's assistant in the audios, and Bruno Langley, former Coronation Street teen star, now part of the Who woodwork for having been in two eps of the Eccleston series. To be honest, he was the biggest draw (he's off the telly!), but the majority of fans who lined up had stuff for all of us to sign, including sleeves from the Live 34 CD for myself and David. Some of them even took my photograph. Let's blast the stereotype: it wasn't all overweight men-children with elasticated waistbands and problem skin who spoke like Mr Bean. We had entire families, parents and kids, women, even teenage girls (mainly there to have their picture taken with Bruno). Some fans were chatty, others awed to be in the presence of Who footnotes. These are good people. At least one, a normal-looking chap in a NIN t-shirt called Steve, was a reader of this blog, so he merits a mention (not least for revealing that his baby has a Guns N'Roses romper suit that reads "Sweet child o' mine").

I remember when I worked at Select magazine in 1993, the editor once made a withering comment about Cure fans, implying that it was "sad" that they copied Robert Smith's hairstyle. I leapt to their defence, saying, "These are the people who will buy Select because it's got The Cure in!" Never call fans sad. You don't call football fans sad. Nor are those for whom Who is a near-religion. It starts a lot less wars than actual religions. Anyway, barring a 20-minute lunch break, the four of us were signing, solidly, for about three and a half hours. Gary Russell, evil Svengali behind Big Finish, who produce the audios, was there and I hope he was pleased with the turnout, and the turnover. I felt, yet again, privileged to be a small part of this universe. Graham Kibble-White, more of a hardcore fan than I, sent me some extracts from a Doctor Who message board where they were debating whether it was a good or bad thing that you can hear me inhaling during my performance on Live 34. That's all you need to know. Grown people discuss breathing. For all your 10th Planet needs: I was done by 2.40 and on my way back into London . I had a splendid day. If you want to know more about the Big Finish audios, go here:

A terrific night of drama: West Wing, episode four, Liftoff, which was a humdinger. I'll say no more, other than it was written by Debora Cahn. (Leona is six episodes in already. It's not a race.) Followed by Bodies, episode two, on BBC2, which was so good - i.e. so awful, so frustrating, so painful - we watched episode three directly afterwards on BBC3. I wondered where they could go with it after the first series but they've switched the dynamic by giving Rob (Max Beesley) his job back at the behest of oily management and putting Roger (Patrick Baladi) on the back foot. It seems wrong and childish to say that it's my favourite programme, but it is. Favourite British programme.

Sunday 2 October
The big day arrives. The recording of Not Going Out in front of a live studio audience at Teddington Studios (formerly Thames Studios), Teddington. The cast and crew were obviously there all day, setting up, running through, but I had a radio show to do first. I was itching to get down there. After a stressful cab journey across London , I arrived at the glorious riverside home of Des O'Connor, TV Burp and many others at 6.15 and managed to squeeze in a canteen meal before taking a tour of the set with Lee. It was a memorable moment. Consider this: I met Lee for the first time on Thursday, 28 April. Six months later we are filming a sitcom. That's pretty fast for the lumbering dinosaur that is television. Something must have gone right. (To a degree it's the persuasive powers of Avalon, but the time seems to be right for Lee, and Catherine Tate's next career move after two series of her own show is a factor for BBC2 - it all helps to oil the wheels.)

Anyway, by 7.00 the audience were being shown to their seats, crew were checking their headphones and actors were having their makeup touched up. As the writer, with your work pretty much done (barring any last-minute rewrite panics), you don't have anything to do. So where to loiter? I considered parking myself in Green Room 1 (too small), Green Room 2 (too remote) and the production gallery (too dark and severe). I ended up hanging around the studio floor, hoping I wouldn't get in the way of the cameras or trip over any cable. It was the right choice. I could still watch it on a monitor, while enjoying the reactions of the audience and soaking up the thrills of making telly. I only got in the way once, when the props people were replenishing the restaurant scene.

Without going into interminable detail, it went well. It's quite a trial for the audience at three hours, but they laughed in all the right places, and in some of the wrong places. The performances were good (Lee's comic timing is spot-on and he was good-natured throughout, which kept the audience onside), and the warm-up, Julia Morris, with whom I did the Last Word pilot a few weeks ago, was top drawer. She talks dirty, but does so in such a charming, self-effacing Australian way, it's never offensive (and I speak as someone who had a 13-year-old nephew in the audience). All in all, it was a pleasure to behold. Even though Lee came up with most of the jokes, I had the more subtle pleasure of witnessing the narrative unfolding in a credible and satisfying way. Credit is always divided equally with a production like this, but I thought of the title. Remember that when they're all praising Catherine Tate.

Monday 3 October 
Easygoing day. Watched a couple of recent editions of The Daily Show, highly-regarded nightly satirical news half-hour that goes out on Comedy Central in America and is coming to More4 when it launches in a week's time ("We turn now from our troubles in the Mideast to a completely unrelated topic . . . oil"). I'm writing about it for Night & Day , the Mail On Sunday 's TV-listings supplement, which relaunches this weekend. The new incarnation is going to be aimed at men. Private Eye call it Nuts & Day, although I've had assurances from Andrew Davies, the deputy editor who called me in, that this is not the case. I'm withholding judgment until Sunday, but if all goes well, I may be providing a weekly TV column for them. I'm on probation for a couple of weeks (and so are they!), but it will be odd being in the same paper as Peter Hitchens, whom Richard Herring and I mock every Sunday on my show. But it takes all sorts. Perhaps I will be able to sneak coded liberal propaganda into my reviews! Either way, I've been enjoying the work so far. Motorcycle couriers keep turning up with packages containing videotapes and preview discs. It's quite exciting. Incidentally, try out this sample Daily Show gag: Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman in a permanent vegetative state whose plug was pulled last year after becoming an unwitting cause celebre for pro-lifers, was described as "a pilates class away from joining the cast of Stomp !" It's cruel, I know, but it made me laugh. I think it's a clincher.

This evening I went into London to appear on Front Row (and buy organic vegetables). Mark Lawson was in the host's chair tonight in his offscreen jumper. I reviewed Kinky Boots and made much mention of Northampton , where it's set (I was, in fact, a stunt reviewer, chosen for my geographical roots). It was, as ever, all over too quickly, but being cut off by Mark is always a pleasure. He does it so well.

Home in time for rack o' lamb, eaten at leisurely speed as - unlike most nights - we weren't aiming to be sat in front of the telly by 9pm . In fact, we had until 10pm , as we were recording the second part of Waking The Dead. We subsequently watched both parts in one sitting (I was able to do this because I woke up at the scandalous time of 8.30 this morning!): Subterraneans , in which two seemingly disparate murders, connected only by Guildford and the M25, turned out to be committed by the same high-profile guest star, this time Toby Stephens. I liked it when Sue Johnston casually referred to "a lake of blood and soft tissue". That's this programme in a nutshell.

Tuesday 4 October
I have noticed a weird patch of green on my right cheek. Actually I noticed it the other day but thought nothing of it, assuming I'd left a fingermark on it after reading an inky newspaper or cooking with turmeric and I ignored it. But it's still there, and I do wash my face regularly by the way. I entertained the thought that it might be a liver spot, or the Green Death (as seen on Doctor Who in the 70s), but have settled on it being a subtle bruise. No, I don't know where I got it. I'll report back.

Well, that was a waste of time. I spent the morning lovingly composing and fine-tuning a 600-word piece on The Daily Show for Night & Day and at 8.30 this evening (they work late), Andrew phoned me and said they couldn't use it as there's a piece elsewhere in the paper on Jon Stewart. Great. Cooked up an alternative on the spot, but I do hate writing stuff that doesn't get seen.

Spent way too much of the day fiddling with my computer. I'm currently in the process of moving from my old iMac to this PowerBook. Under the tutelage of Tom Robinson (he's Dr Mac), I've transferred almost everything from my hard disk using a Flash Drive (including everything I've written on a computer since 1997) but I can't work out how to transfer all my emails and contacts. Added to that, one of my email accounts sort of froze this evening and it took me a while to fix it. I fixed it using both my computer skills: trial and error.

The funniest West Wing ever tonight, episode 5, The Hubbert Peak, written by Peter Noah, who is officially the funniest writer on the team. Nothing grave happened, it was all about Josh crashing an SUV into a Toyota Prius ("Your head says hybrid, your heart says SUV"), and Toby being taught how to be a good press secretary. Endless witty one-liners. The Hubbert Peak , by the way, I know all about. It's to do with a prediction made in 1949 by M King Hubbert about the oil peaking. I've just finished one book about the subject, The Final Energy Crisis, and I've started another one, The Long Emergency. I'm obsessed with the oil running out. The oil's running out! Oil production in the US peaked in the 1970s. World oil production will peak in about 2035, and that's if oil use stays the same, which it won't. Ask China and India . So the sooner we do something about it, the better. My friend Adam Smith, so aptly named, says the market will sort it out. So does President Bartlett on West Wing. I wish I had their faith.

Hooray! Property Ladder returns! For this series they're cramming in two houses per episode, which means twice the opportunity for two sets of first-time property developers to ignore the advice of Sarah Beeny while her crazy zebra hairstyle mutates. The couple who budgeted £40,000 to convert an art deco house in Burgh Heath ("an unfashionable part of Surrey ") and ended up spending £120,000 were my favourite. If I ever become a property developer, which I won't, but if I do, which I won't, I will do whatever Sarah tells me.

Sad to hear of Ronnie Barker's death, aged 76. It was heart worries that influenced his decision to retire, aged 58, while he was still "at the top" (as all his obituaries will say, although his last two projects after Open All Hours were flops, so this isn't true - I wanted to like The Magnificent Evans and Clarence, but they're weren't up to scratch). I'm glad he enjoyed almost 20 years of retirement. He'd done more than enough to deserve it. The funny thing is, if they show episodes of Porridge to mark his passing, it will be just as if he was still with us. Porridge is always on. (I'm glad to have seen him in the flesh, at the BAFTAs one year, and I'm glad Simon and I included a short clip of Porridge in Grass.)

Wednesday 5 October 
More computer misery. For no apparent reason I couldn't send emails from my laptop this morning. I could receive but not send. It kept asking for my password and telling me my password was wrong when it was, in fact, right.. I called BT Yahoo technical support and do you know what? I didn't have to wait that long and the bloke on the other end was really helpful. I re-inputted (that's an ugly word) a couple of details on my email accounts and as if by magic - but actually by computer - I was able to send again. I mention this only because I had a rather different experience when I phoned the Apple helpline. Even though I could now send, my inbox was telling me I had new mail but I couldn't see it. (Three of these were test emails I had sent myself, but that's not the point - who wants to be told they have new mail and not be able to see the new mail? It was spooky. The BT man told me it was out of his jurisdiction and advised to try Apple.) Well, the Apple man asked for the serial number of my laptop, which I gave him, and then he told me I had not registered it. I thought I had, but he said not. I can't imagine why I wouldn't have done, as it's surely the first thing a new computer asks you to do. Anyway, I hadn't and that meant he couldn't give me advice without charging me . . . £35 and a penny! First of all, what an extortionate amount, and second, what's with the penny? Is £35 not enough? What does the penny pay for? Wear and tear on the swivel chair? Charm school for the helpline operator? Anyway, when I told him I'd bought it in January, 2004, he said that because I'd had the computer for more than 90 days he would still have to charge me for advice. Good customer care. What's 90 days? Three months. Why should I pay for advice after three months? I tried to trick the man by telling him what was wrong with my email, hoping he would accidentally give me free advice, but he was too clever for me. Or too frightened of the sack to bend the rules. I gave myself full marks for trying, though. Then I put the phone down on him. I know that was childish and rude, but it was my only defence and it made me feel better, even though by the end of the call I had even more invisible emails awaiting my attention. In the end, I quit the Mail programme, started it up again, and it was fixed. As if by magic, but in fact by turning something off and turning it on again. I'm glad I didn't pay Apple £35 and a penny to find that out. I don't mind paying £35 but I object to the penny.

Watched and reviewed Mr & Mrs Smith, the noisy, sadomasochistic action comedy starring Brad Pitt and his future girlfriend Angelina Jolie, two people who have dispensed with their surnames in the gossip mags. It was a silly film, but intriguing in its explicit correlation between violence and sexual intercourse. They both play assassins who lead secret, boring, suburban lives (neither was very convincing in the boring, suburban bits). In an establishing scene she killed an arms dealer by dressing up as an S&M prostitute and breaking his neck. Later, she and Brad try and kill each other and have a very violent fight in their house, which includes him kicking her repeatedly while she is on the ground (domestic abuse in another film). This seems to turn them on and they have sex, although you don't see it, because it's a PG13. What a strange film for 13-year-olds to watch.

Also watched some episodes of BBC3's Stars In Fast Cars, , which were biked round as a replacement review for Night & Day. It was quite good fun in a low-rent sort of way, just celebrities like David Dickinson, Jonathan Edwards the God-fearing runner and talking head Gina Yashere competing in various destructive driving games. I tried not to resent this programme, even though I hadn't planned on watching and reviewing anything else today. I had planned to start reading the Eric Sykes autobiography sent to me by the Times for review. Book reviews are bad value for money, in that it takes ages to read a book, but you get a free book, in this case a hardback, so that compensates. (Reviewing Mr & Mrs Smith is much easier. You can eat cereals while you're doing it.)

Tonight, the last Foyle's War on the second box set which we hadn't seen, with the curious title The Funk Hole (it refers to country retreats for people rich enough to want to "sit out" the war, apparently). It was a corker, even though Foyle was suspended from duty and this meant slightly less Michael Kitchen than usual, with his meaningful squints, grimaces and turns of the head. Followed by two eps of Lost in a row: the one where we find out about pregnant Claire, and the one after it (no plot details, as they will impact on the ep before). Hurley remains my favourite character. I can't wait for his flashback episode. Perhaps he will be thin.

Thursday 6 October 
Woke up to the smell of gas. The whole house was full of it, upstairs and down. I found a gas tap partially open on the hob. Just a touch, must have done it whilst cleaning last night, but enough to fill the house with gas overnight! Quite worrying, especially as the boiler goes on automatically at about six, but we didn't blow up, I'm happy to report. I opened all the doors and windows and within an hour the helpful smell was gone and we were free to use light switches again. What an eerie way to start the day. Pepper slept through the emergency - on her chair in the kitchen - and was her usual, talkative self all day, so it can't have done much harm. Moral: don't clean the hob.

Day of irritation (first two paragraphs of column rejected by Night & Day for reasons too ugly to go into, necessitating rewrite; problems with the subtitle of my book at Ebury, too spirit-sapping to go into, necessitating curt email), alleviated by two back-to-back West Wings (The Dover Test by Carol Flint, mostly about a bill put through by Jimmy Smits; A Change Is Gonna Come by John Sacret Young and Josh Singer, in which a Taiwanese Independence Movement flag was the narrative engine), a curry (at what used to be the best Indian in South London when we lived there, but which has a new chef who puts too much mustard into the Aloo Chops) and a gig: Goldfrapp at Brixton Academy. A fantastic show, with inventive lighting, humorous dancers (who kept coming back on in new costumes and doing the same dance!) and a spectral performance by little Alison Goldfrapp in her red cape. It being a gig, I had to crane my neck to see her and the secondary cigarette smoke was disgusting. I came away with a tight chest but a happy heart. It has been a week of not going out, so it was nice to go out.

The green on my face seems to be fading. Not the Green Death after all, thanks for asking.