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Friday 7 October 
Two worrying stories on the front of the Guardian today (well, they worry me anyway): George Bush is revealed to have said in 2003 that God told him to invade Iraq, and a new vaccine for cervical cancer is to be made available as early as next year. It seems that the media will happily question the sense of a world leader taking his orders from an unseen deity, but vaccination is accepted as a good thing without interrogation. (Even Jon Snow was stuck for difficult questions when talking about it on Channel 4 News tonight.) Don't get me started on mass immunisation. I was given the flu vaccine once. I came down with flu pretty much a day later. Thanks. They won't catch me out again. There's a piece in the current Ecologist looking into the flu vaccine, currently being sold hard by the NHS, of course, with Henry Cooper as their mascot. Very interesting, that's all I shall say, for fear of an ultimatum from Mark Thompson.

In the post this morning: a copy of the latest French magazine. Editor Justin Postlethwaite used to be a regular, indeed daily, emailer to my old weekday show, and after my 40 th birthday trip to Paris in March he invited me to write about it for the magazine. I duly obliged. Eight months later and it's in. (I think the New Yorker turns copy around faster than that!) They've done a lovely job on it, a fine layout (including some of our holiday snaps) and it's nice to have a platform from which to berate idiots who take flash photographs in Notre Dame (despite clear, pictorial warnings not to do so) and then run through the Louvre so that they can take a picture of the Mona Lisa and tick it off on their to-see list. I can't be alone in despising this kind of tourism. (Hey, it all seems so long ago now.) For all your French magazine needs (you might want to buy a cottage in Languedoc or learn how to poach pears in Pinot Noir), go here.
 
The new New Statesman has an all-guns-blazing cover story attacking the BBC, post-Hutton, for buckling under pressure from the government. I actually read Mark Thompson's detailed rebuttal at work (which was distributed to all staff via internal mail) before I read the piece, which was a bit topsy-turvy. It seems that NS editor John Kampfner has an axe to grind. Not being involved in news, I can't possibly comment. All I know is that Tony Blair didn't much like the BBC's news coverage of Katrina, so we must be doing something right. Although my views are not necessarily those of the BBC.

Sat down to watch the tape of last night's Spooks and was spooked to find out that we'd already seen it. That's what you get when you enjoy the episode of BBC2 so much you watch the next episode directly afterwards on BBC3. We're a week in credit. To fill the gap we watched Risking It All Revisited, which we'd accidentally taped before Elizabeth I. It's a gripping but stressful show about business startups, this particular one a new all-natural fast food joint in Clapham called Real Burger World. You had to admire this bloke Naz, who risked it all, but couldn't get punters to part with more money for a burger made from actual meat on the premises that cost about £1.75 more than the McDonald's across the street. His burgers looked lovely. I wanted to eat one and save his business. Watched Elizabeth I after dinner. No Jeremy Irons in part two, but lots of his son Hugh Dancy (not Jeremy Irons's son, obviously - though he has got two children with Sinead Cusack). Helen Mirren was both schoolgirl and dragon. Her last words were, "Get me a priest, girl. I am minded to die." Hats in the air and BAFTAs all round to writer Nigel Williams.

Saturday 8 October 
Bloody hell, it was pitch black when I caught my cab home tonight at 7.00. That's that then. Not much to report otherwise. In the gap between a very odd dinner (last night's leftover venison mince surprise, with salad and cold chicken from the night before) and Bodies at 10.00 on BBC3, we watched a Spooks from series 3 (the one where Harry's long-lost daughter was thought to be involved in a pro-Israeli plot) and a Curb from season 4 (the one where Larry has his sleeve stretched by the dentist). Bodies was the one where . . . well, you might be watching it on BBC2 in which case I'm one ahead and if I told you that one character, Nurse Rix in fact, ends up . . . you're no fun any more.

Almost forgot to mention: my monthly Sight & Sound came through the post this morning. Except this is no ordinary Sight & Sound - it contains the appraisal of Gene Hackman written by my own proletarian hand. I've seen my work printed in all sorts of publications over the years, from Classic FM magazine and Polish Playboy to the New Statesman and Heat , but none will compare with the thrill of seeing my byline in Sight & Sound. Four pages on my all-time favourite actor, a labour of love. I have already sat and read it twice. The money's terrible, but, as with appearing in Doctor Who, I would have happily paid them. I was so excited when the post came this morning, I fastidiously opened every other envelope first before I tore the cover from my Sight & Sound. It's good to know that I can still be that excited about having some words printed on a page.

Sunday 9 October
"Planned engineering work" - three words to strike dread into the heart of rail travellers, and the only real downside to working on a Sunday (apart from the lack of freshly-made wheat-free sandwiches in Fresh & Wild). No direct service from Redhill to Victoria; forced to take a train to London Bridge that stopped at so many tiny stations along the way, some of them made up I think, it was going to take an hour to get in, so I hopped off at East Croydon and caught a Victoria train from there, which was also doing something of a scenic route, meaning that by the time I got in I didn't have time for my traditional organic-shopping detour. Worse than all this, on the way home I had to do a similar change and because I'm not used to the four-carriage train from London Bridge I couldn't plan my exodus from the exact set of doors that alight next to the exit at Redhill. As an infuriating result, three people beat me to the taxi rank and took all three available cabs. Selfish bastards! A cab turned up eventually, but not before I had cursed those engineering works one more time. (Actually, the worst thing about it was a man standing behind me in the queue who wasn't smoking, but obviously smoked so much he smelt like he was.)

I love doing the Sunday show. It's six months since I selflessly relinquished my weekday slot for the sake of Steve Lamacq's career and I can't imagine doing it now. One show a week rather than five really concentrates the mind. We had so many emails today; maybe it's autumn drawing in, more people at home on a Sunday, trapped in the house with me. Either way, it's developing into a regular little gang, just like it used to be at Teatime, with new members always welcome.

I'm afraid the following story proves how infrequently we have chips. A spontaneous longing for deep-fat-fried potatoes when I got home tonight drove us out to the chip shop. The chip shop was closed. Of course it was. This is because chip shops close on a Sunday. They always used to when I was a kid, but I'd kind of optimistically assumed that Sundays had lost their day-off status. Not so. And good for them, really. Why should the honest chip shop proprietor open on a Sunday? Imagine, though, our bitter, inconsolable disappointment. Sometimes only chip-shop chips will do. But not tonight. In fairness, the peppered mackerel and salad was lovely. But it wasn't chip-shop chips.

My first TV column appeared in Night & Day magazine, which seems to be called Live now, and far from a hairy-palmed lads mag is actually mainly about gadgets and quad bikes, with some TV listings attached. (They haven't sacked Carole Caplin, which rather suggests they don't want to alienate women too much.) My bit is fairly discreet. I don't think anyone's going to notice it. That's fine. If they'll have me, I think I'll keep doing the column; it's chance to get some TV programmes biked to my house and an excuse to get reconnected to cable.

West Wing , episode eight, In The Room, written by Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., in which Bartlett suffered MS-related paralysis on Air Force One and Baker pulled out of the Democratic candidacy race. Alan Alda also showed up, as moderate Republican Senator Vinick, shining his shoes. Followed by a new Waking The Dead (part one of a story focussing on Grace) and a bit of The 50 Best Documentaries, which just made me want to watch the documentaries again. Read some more of the Eric Sykes autobiography before bed. I'm enjoying his tale, beginning in Oldham in 1923. He's just joined the Air Force. (I'll be honest, I skipped forward to the birth of his sitcom Sykes, but thought better of it and returned to the more traditional approach to book-reading.)

Monday 10 October
Having gone a week without mentioning the middle bird feeder, I must tentatively announce this: I strung it back up five days ago, but from a different branch, and . . . it's still up. I'm not saying it won't come down again, but it's still up after five days and that's a record. You won't see me gloating.

It's October 10 th . I mention this only because it was a boiling hot sunny day. Went to Kingston, which usually signifies retail therapy or the cinema (I like Kingston , despite its one-way system). It signified both today as I was keen to get a new jacket that's smart enough to wear to a restaurant, warm enough to qualify as a coat, light enough to wear casually, and casual enough to throw on. I found that jacket in a well-known high street store - after, I'm proud to say, looking at similar garments in all the other high street stores like grown-ups do. It's brown. I like it. However, it appears not to be jacket weather yet. Went to see A History Of Violence, the new David Cronenberg. It's film noir, a kind of modern Hitchcock with some distinctly cold, brutal sex (who'd be Mrs Cronenberg?) and a lot of bone-crunching violence (the clue's in the title). A very nice long take at the beginning, and some entertaining cameo work from William Hurt, but maximum credit to Viggo Mortensen in the pivotal role that might once have gone to Henry Fonda or Spencer Tracey or even Robert Mitchum. There's plenty going on in that face.

Three further episodes of West Wing, before and after dinner: Impact Winter by Debora Cahn ( Bartlett incapacitated in China ; asteroid headed for earth), Faith Based Initiative by Bradley Whitford! (yes: Josh writes his own script, in the one that Santos agrees to run, and Donna leaves), and Opposition Research by Eli Attie (Josh and Santos arrive in New Hampshire and get on each others' nerves).

More4 launched, and that means The Daily Show, daily, from now on (because there's not enough on already). Jon Stewart is my new favourite American. Part two of Waking The Dead. Like finishing off a really good two-course meal, albeit one with a serial killer.

Tuesday 11 October
So, the Arctic Monkeys. Julie and I have been listening with the enthusiasm of smitten teenagers to the available demos of this band. I put the tracks onto my iPod this morning. This is the most thrilling new music I've heard all year. What songs. No wonder Domino signed them within a week of seeing them (and no wonder they've apparently signed a £1 million publishing deal and the entire crowd at their recent Astoria gig knew all the words to the songs) - they're like early Libertines and the Smiths and the Fall and the Sonics and Kevin Coyne and so many other great coordinates tied up into a youthful package with a big cheeky, northern ribbon. They make me feel young again, even though I was at college when they were born. When their album finally gets made next year I'll be able to say, "Well, it's not as good as the demos." I am 40 years old.

Wore my ace new jacket. But it was too sunny to do so. By the time I reached Redhill station I was boiling like an egg, so I carried it for the rest of the day. Ah well. This was a trip all the way into London for a half-hour meeting at Baby Cow, the production company owned by Steve Coogan (who's in New York ) and Henry Normal (who took the meeting, a genial fellow with sticking-up grey hair). I can't divulge any details, but the meeting contained myself, Rob from Avalon and Simon Day. And it went well. These meetings cost nothing. In this crazy media life, you have to keep plates spinning at the same time as having lots of irons in the fire. You also sometimes have to "kiss ass", which is what Steve Coogan's doing in New York, according to Henry Normal. Thankfully, we didn't have to do that today. So, I spent four hours traveling for 30 minutes' meeting. Let's hope it was worth it.

Actually, this is why it's worth it. Avalon biked round a DVD of Not Going Out tonight and we put it straight on after The Daily Show. Obviously there are some rough edges, and the music is wrong, but I was still brimming with pride by the end of 29 minutes. The cast are great, especially Lee, whose reactions are comedy gold (he's made for TV). It's better than Blessed, the new parenthood-themed Ben Elton sitcom which starts on Friday. I know that's a bold claim, but I've seen a preview. Never mind that it rings hollow and moves at the pace of a dinosaur, it gets most of its laughs out of nipples (i.e. they are sore when you're breast-feeding; this is a secret that only people who've had babies know, and Ben seems rather pleased with himself for knowing it, and mentioning it), snot and vomit (again, babies produce these, and Ben's not afraid to bring it up, as it were, oops, made a joke). Hey, the BBC will be the judge of whether our sitcom is as funny as Blessed or not.

Long item on bird flu on Channel 4 News. The pharmaceutical industry will be rubbing their hands. Sat through the pain, stress and frustration of Property Ladder, then the first part of Elusive Peace from last night, a fascinating forensic examination of the Arab-Israeli peace process and its progress since 1999. Talking heads? They got 'em. Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, Yasser Arafat, Madeleine Allbright, the list goes on. Only Syrian president Assad was missing, and that's because he died in 2000. They had his interpreter though. No sign of Paul Morley or Boyd Hilton. (Incidentally, I said yes to one clips show today, and no to another. You've got to draw the line. Funnily enough I was approached by a production company last week to see if I wanted to be a talking head on The History Of The CIA , which was refreshingly different. Unfortunately I don't know enough about Che Guevara, the area they were interested in. There's no way I'm going to bluff something like that.)

Wednesday 12 October 
Started the day early, having agreed to speak to BBC Radio Southern Counties about a new poll by Total Film designed to accumulate easy press for Britain 's second-best-selling film magazine: the Top 10 horror movies of all time. In fairness, it's an intelligent list, with Texas Chain Saw Massacre on top. The deal with Southern Counties, which covers Surrey , Sussex and Brighton , is that they ring you up at 7.20, 8.20 and 8.45, by which you appear on all three breakfast shows. It's effectively the same interview, but I'm a big supporter of local radio, they're kind enough to ask, and it's all part of my wider brief as Radio Times Film Editor. Also, I got to use the phrase "lampshade made of human skin" at breakfast time.

Stupidly wore my new jacket again. I was carrying it by Redhill. When, after two days, will I ever learn? Worse, I had to carry it around the organic supermarket, impeding ease of shopping. On my way to the studio to record Serious About Comedy for BBC7 I actually treated my agent's office like a hotel and dropped my coat off, so I wouldn't have to carry it any more. (I also dropped my laptop off, as that was weighing my bag down. I left it with the concierge.) But guess what, by the time I emerged from that very studio, after an hour of spirited discussion of comedy with comedian Natalie Haynes and Sunday Times comedy critic Stephen Armstrong, it was clouding over. Perhaps I would get my wish and this mid-October day would grow cold enough for a jacket. By the time I left my agent's office at 2.15 (having watched Not Going Out with Kate and eaten my lunch on the leaf of her agent's table and not written a treatment with Simon Day on my laptop because he blew me out), it was pouring with rain. Hallelujah! I could wear my new jacket with pride and a sense of purpose. It was still too hot. Maybe January.

I was interviewed "down the line" by a reasonable, enthusiastic man called Jon for Radio Northampton about John Peel Day, which is tomorrow. It was enjoyable slipping into my John Peel impression, even though that's not why they asked me on. Think of it as a bonus. Jon doesn't have a surname. I looked on their website. He's just called Jon, out of Jon and Griff. (Griff doesn't have one either.)

As planned, went out for the Collins & Maconie's Movie Club inaugural reunion dinner (not that there'll be another one). This was organised by Andy Rowe, our old producer. We met at Mash, a noisy bar-restaurant that brews its own beer and would rather you shout than talk, at 7.15. Andy was already there (these days he produces the National Lottery Jet Set Live with Dale Winton - get him!) and with every new person who arrived, it was hugs and kisses and Proustian rushes: Verity, Mark, Rich, Zoe, Elaine and AJ (only Amber couldn't make it). The Movie Club (ITV, 1997-98) was such a laugh to make, every other week, two shows recorded in a day in the cinema at the Riverside , Hammersmith, with a light and a smoke machine to create the illusion of a projector and TFI Friday being filmed in the big studio next door. Zoe reckons it can't have cost more than about five grand a show. It ran for 18 months with nary a break. Stuart missed two shows (someone called Kate Thornton filled in - whatever happened to her?) and I missed none. As we ate and caught up (everybody's still working in telly, some have kids, only one of us was kidnapped by Colombian rebels and held in the jungle for 102 days - if you think I'm joking, read this) somebody would occasionally remember some stupid thing one of us said or an in-joke (Stan Boardman, captains of industry, "Smokey Smoker", Robert Dougal's Dressing For Television ) and we would collapse into tearful laughter. To work for that long on a tiny television programme with the same people is a bit like being at college together, albeit a quite small one in Hammersmith that you only go to once a fortnight. We had a marvellous evening.

Home by 11.30, in time to listen to some more Arctic Monkeys demos and discover from Julie that a loveless cockney ticket tout quoted in the NME thinks they are called the Atomic Monkeys.

Day ruined by message from Night & Day telling me I had to rewrite this week's column. This is the second time this has happened in three weeks. I think I quit.

Thursday 13 October 
Went on Radio Scotland's Radio Café programme (by the magic of wire from Broadcasting House) to mark the 80 th birthday of Margaret Thatcher by recalling what it was like living under her in the 80s with a presenter who was apparently on her first day in the job. She was fine. Mrs Thatcher was a dictator. But at least you knew where you stood with her. I took the opportunity to apologise to the whole of Scotland for her and all who voted for her in the prosperous Southeast of England.

Here's a surprise: Andy Kershaw has gone on the record criticising John Peel Day. Sometimes you just have to let it go.

Had those chip-shop chips tonight. Beeeeeeyooodiful, as money-grabbing supermarket-apologist Jamie Oliver would say. Watched two new episodes of The Thick Of It, which I loved, despite all the swearing, followed by Risking It All Revisited (the hair salon in Southampton with all the unsold Aveda products and the potato-faced stylist), Spooks (starring EastEnders' Dr Fonseca as an Algerian terror suspect in need of a good hairwash) and Question Time (on which David Cameron continued to dig his own grave by refusing to deny taking drugs, the naïve fool). The Last Word, on More4, one of whose pilots I appeared on, has certainly changed in the interim. Four guests reduced to three. A desk. And a weird news-story countdown format. I wonder if they'll ask me back?

By the way, it was cold enough to wear my jacket. Yes!

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