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Thursday 10 November
To pick up where last week's blog hurriedly left off . . . Enjoyed a very civilised lunch meeting with my All The Way From Memphis cohorts at RIBA (the Royal Institute of British Architects, who are kind enough to lay on a restaurant for people who work at the nearby BBC - perhaps a lot of British architects eat at the BBC canteen). We're back for a belated second series on Radio 4 in the New Year, recording in January because one amongst us is heavily pregnant and due in February. It not being in a state of disrepair, we're not aiming to fix it, but it would be slightly unadventurous to book the same guests, so we had a brainstorm for new ones, whose results ranged from Robbie Williams to Zane Lowe. If either of those two end up on the programme in January, I'll be very surprised. I ate what was listed in the menu as a "daube of beef", which Independent restaurant critic Tracey MacLeod - who was not reviewing - identified as a "lump". She's good. The pumpkin soup came with "ginger foam". I thought we'd kind of got over foam as a garnish in posh restaurants. It's as if somebody in the kitchen has actually spat in your soup - perhaps after chewing a piece of ginger. The ice is not only broken, it has melted. Ha!! Progress Report!!

As if one meal out wasn't enough, I went to a dinner in a room above a pub near Liverpool St Station this evening, guest of the City Of London branch of the Round Table (invited to speak about my convoluted media journey by Martyn Hooton, who got in touch mainly because his mum, Mrs Hooton, used to teach me cookery at middle school). For the uninitiated, Round Table - or "Table" as those in the know call it - is like a younger, more self-conscious version of the Rotary Club. The lower age limit for members is 18 (although frankly, who, at 18, is going to want to join Round Table?); the upper age limit is 45, making it a bit like Logan's Run. The gender limit is to have gonads and no vagina. (I am always suspicious of clubs for men only, as I like the company of women.) I met about 25 men who were under 45 tonight, all of whom looked and dressed as if they had jobs in the City, which I rather suspect they do. I was underdressed in my t-shirt but perhaps that was a useful thing. It was, with the greatest of respect, like entering another world. The idea of Round Table is for men with jobs to meet other men with jobs and do some charity work. You can't knock that, really. You could, if you were feeling cynical, question the need to be so ceremonial about it. The men were keen to tell me it's not the Masons, right? Nothing like the Masons! Since the Masons is a secret society, I can't verify this, but it was certainly rather more formal and ritualistic than I'd prepared for (or dressed for).

The dinner itself involved saying Grace, with no provision for opting out if, say, you're crazy enough not to believe in God. They must all believe in God, which is reassuring in what we're told is a more secular age. The agenda also involved a man reading out the minutes of the last meeting until another man formally proposed to take the minutes "as read", on which there was a vote and it was carried that the man stop reading the minutes. (I don't know why they don't take a vote before the meeting to take the whole meeting as read, then they could get on with eating the steak pie and talking about each others' jobs and smoking like chimneys, which most of the men did, except Martyn, in case you're reading this, Mrs Hooton.) The man who proposed the minutes be taken as read then tried to recite The Aims & Objects of Round Table and couldn't, so a further man did instead. These are the aims and objects, in case you should ever be called upon to recite them (I would definitely learn them if I was in Round Table, just in case):


To Develop the acquaintance of young men through the medium of their various occupations;


To Emphasise the fact that one's calling offers an excellent medium of service to the community;


To Cultivate the highest ideals in business, professional and civic traditions;


To Recognise the worthiness of all legitimate occupations, and to dignify each his own by precept and example;


To Further the establishment of peace and goodwill in international relationships;


To Further these objects by meetings, lectures, discussions and other activities.

[I copied that from the Round Table website. There was a missing apostrophe in the second aim, which I've added in.]

Guests had to stand up, one by one, and be toasted. Then we all toasted the Queen - again, without any provision for opting out if, say, you're crazy enough to think the Queen is a waste of space and money and makes this country look a museum rather than a thrusting modern democracy. Also, at least two of the men were wearing chains of office, like mayors. It's all a bit opening-of-Parliament for my tastes, but fascinating to be a part of, in my t-shirt. The men weren't allowed to remove their jackets until the chairman, Martyn, said they could. (What power!) I think they were allowed to go to the toilet without getting permission, which is a relief. I enjoyed the Tablers' hospitality, both conversational and gastronomic. I don't think I'd be allowed to be a member: I don't drink pints, I don't smoke, and I don't really have a "legitimate occupation", which, as it happens, was the thrust of my talk, which I gave after dinner at 8.30. They proved a very responsive and patient audience as I rattled on about my career and showed slides of me as a child to get cheap laughs out of the 1970s décor. The questions afterwards were varied and intelligent - a far cry from the no-questions of the journalism students I spoke to the other week. It was an education. And some of them will be reading this. So thank you for giving me a glimpse inside your non-Masonic world. Not a single trouser leg was raised, nor a single buttock smacked with a cricket bat in the making of this report. My throat was ravaged by the time I got him. Memo to self: never agree to do a talk in a smoke-filled room.

Just look at the behaviour of apparently civilised people yesterday when items of clothing by Stella McCartney went on sale in H&M clothes shops up and down the land. These items usually cost hundreds of pounds but they were going for high street prices even though Stella McCartney sewed them together (which, I hate to tell you, she didn't). Certainly in the London branches there were unholy scrums of people fighting to nab these pairs of jeans and trenchcoats and ribbony dresses, just grabbing as many off the racks as they could so that they could sell the ones that didn't fit them on eBay. As a result, the entire stock was cleaned out within hours in the shops in Kensington, Covent Garden and on Oxford Street . I understand these were bargains if you count having the name of a Beatle's daughter on the label as adding intrinsic value, but at the end of the day, they are only ribbony clothes, and buying them to sell on is a low trick. eBay is, of course, filled with items already. This really is a country to be proud of.

You might say that it's not this country that's going to the dogs, but all countries. Not so. This afternoon, as it happens, I looked in a branch of H&M in the city of Cologne , or Köln, in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany , and most of the McCartney clothes were still on the racks. This means Germans are sensible and less mercenary than Britons. (We're bought all of them and they're now available on eBay.)(Only joking.)

I liked Germany today. I have only ever visited it on business before, when I was a roving music journalist: Hamburg to see Roddy Frame, Dusseldorf to see The Wonder Stuff and The Mission etc., plus a pleasant trip to Hanover to see my brother when he was stationed there with the Army. This trip is pure pleasure. We are here, as you may have gleaned, to see Sheffield 's Arctic Monkeys play a small, 350-capacity club called the Underground on their first European tour. We took an early flight from Heathrow and landed in Köln Airport , a quite small but very efficient airport, before lunchtime. Unlike the rest of the riff raff who follow bands around like football teams, we opted to stay in Köln 's finest hotel, the Excelsior Hotel Ernst. It's impeccable. The only criticism I can possibly make about the room is the hand soap, which, by mistake, is an orange wine gum wrapped in cellophane. Being a wine gum, it doesn't actually lather. This is a small quibble.

I really like the taxis here - they have the meter built into the rear view mirror. One day, all taxis will catch up and have this. As luck would have it, today is Carnival day in Köln , which means the streets are thronging with carousing Germans dressed in fancy dress. Some are clowns, others Napoleonic soldiers, others milkmaids, some just have devil's horns or painted faces; all are drunk on German beer. It is a good day to be in a city otherwise fairly nondescript except for its amazing Gothic cathedral (Köln er Dom), which was started in 1248 and finished in 1880. I expect the builders had another job on elsewhere in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Despite the proliferation of fast food outlets specialising in meat, bread and cheese, and cafes and bars full of clowns, Köln city centre is lacking in nice restaurants. If we were here for longer we would explore, but we're not, so we came back to the hotel and ordered room service, which turned out to be a good option. (Because I am on holiday for 24 hours, I am eating wheat. This will make me fat and sluggish, but it's holiday rules.) Bread, toast, croutons, it was a wheat feast. Lovely presentation: the crème brulée came complete with what can only be described as a kind of vertical swoosh of purple, made from set sugar. It's garnish like this that marks a hotel out from the herd. (I daresay some of the Arctic Monkeys fans who follow them around are sleeping in ditches by the side of the road, but I have paid my dues in this regard.)

Had a siesta, which is something I like to do when I'm on holiday, even in non-siesta countries. (I don't think Germany would be one of the most robust economies in the world if they all went to sleep in the afternoon, even with all the money they save by not buying Stella McCartney.) At about 6.30, excited about the night ahead, we attempted to master the Köln underground (which is apt, as we were off to the Underground club). Despite a ticket machine that spoke in all languages, I couldn't work out which platform we needed, or which direction we needed to go in, or indeed which station we were at. In the end, we gave up and caught a cab. Part of the fun of visiting new cities is working out their transport system. This is the first that has ever beaten me. (I am impressed, by the way, that there appear to be no ticket barriers in Köln - you buy a ticket, but nobody checks them at either end. What an honest city this is.)

TEN THINGS THAT MADE THIS EVENING ONE OF THE BEST OF 2005

1. TIMING
By getting to the club early, we found ourselves near the front of the queue (one of the few skills of the English we brought over with us). Overheard quite a few English accents, northern English mostly. The Monkeys have an impressive body of young, largely male fans. (It's a bit like the Round Table, except without the minutes.) Full marks to the English girl in front of us who obviously lived here and could speak German too, who dealt brilliantly with the city's drunkest young man, a local wearing a Roy Keane football shirt and a Murphy's stout promotional witches' hat. He slurred things at her about not having a ticket and she was far more patient with him than I would have been, but as the doors to the club opened, he loomed over her, saying, "Can I ask you one more question?" She replied, "Only one more, because after this, I don't want to talk to you any more." Nice.

2. TIMING
One of the reasons for travelling out here to see the band is that next time they play at home it will be in some cavernous barn and everybody in the audience will know every word to every song. That's a cheering thought in many ways, and a moral victory for a band that made it without the media's permission, but at least out in Germany they're still on the cusp of being discovered, and that's a nice place to experience them.

3. POSITIONING
I know I always joke about preferring seated venues and wanting to beat the rush at the car park etc. but there's nothing to beat a small club. Mentally prepared not to be able to see a thing, we managed to commandeer a vantage point at the side of the mixing desk on a raised platform with stools and thus had an unimpeded view over the heads of the throng.

4. THE SUPPORT BAND
A local trio who were too shy to introduce themselves but nonetheless did an unenviable job of distracting the crowd for half an hour with their post-Interpol noise and black shirts.

5. THE ATMOSPHERE
It positively fizzed. Brits, expats and Germans alike want the Arctic Monkeys, and feel a certain ownership too, which makes this the optimum time to catch them.

6. THE SET
They came on and did 50 minutes. This was a relief, as they have been known to do 30. Because they are so prolific, a lot of our favourite songs from those available as demos have already been dropped, such as Bigger Boys And Stolen Sweethearts, and Wavin' Bye To The Train or the Bus. They began with a newer song tonight, View From The Afternoon. At home, they tend to get the two singles out of the way first, knowing that the fans know all the others just as well! (As Steve Lamacq says, no other new band could do this.) They ended with A Certain Romance, with all the favourites in between, Mardy Bum, I'll Still Take You Home, Vampires Is A Bit Strong But . . . and When The Sun Goes Down among the singalong highlights. We sang along.

7. THE LOOK
These boys, and they are boys, are the opposite of styled. They're not even reminiscent of a band like the Mondays, who actually had their very own local street style. This lot just look like it's only the music that matters. Even their haircuts are not really haircuts, rather hair that has been cut. You have to love that about them. Not only have they bypassed music-biz orthodoxy to have a number one hit, they have also bypassed the look and the lifestyle.

8. THE BASSIST
Andy is an excellent member of the band. He's the one who legendarily had a nosebleed during the Astoria show and had to go off and get a tissue. It's clear that all four are busting with talent and brio, but there is something about Andy's rock-like presence that anchors them onstage. I couldn't see the cheeky drummer at all.

9. THE VENUE
It was basically an oblong room with a bar at one end, but it worked. What made it special was the beer garden outside, to which most of the audience repaired after the set (it was balmy for a November evening). I bought a takeaway sausage and some chips with mayonnaise from a really excitable lady serving food who blamed her hyperactivity on the caffeine in her just-microwaved coffee. It was the perfect German, post-gig snack. We got talking to a bloke called Lee in the bar who had travelled with mates all the way from Mansfield to see the band and was definitely older than 19. This band inspire loyalty across the ages.

10. THE FAN MOMENT
Lead Monkey Alex came out into the garden and was accosted by fans. Two of them were us. I was compelled to tell him to his face that his band were "f----ing brilliant" and shake him by the hand. He seemed shellshocked but appreciative. A lad from Hull had just finished telling him the same thing. They are f----ing brilliant.

Managed to crack the underground system to get home, but still got off at the wrong station (mainly because the map they gave us at the hotel didn't have names next to all the stations, which is less efficient than I've come to expect). Didn't take that long to find the hotel once we had asked some non-clown-dressed locals. All in all, a brilliant evening, worth every penny. I realise this blog is almost as long as last week's already and I've only done two days, but these have been unusual days. Germans are very tall, aren't they?


Saturday 12 November
Ordered too much room-service breakfast, but that's traditional isn't it? You fill in the card the night before when you're starving. In a cab with the meter in the rear view mirror by 9.30 and up, up and away in a catering-free BA plane by 11.00 (should have brought some of the excess wheat-based foods from the breakfast). Not much else to report about the day after the exceptional gig before. Taped Bodies , as my own was completely spent. I have a proper croaky throat now, due to two consecutive nights in smoke-filled rooms. It is surely time to ban smoking in all public places just for my benefit.

Sunday 13 November   
Throat still sore. I have been mainlining Echinacea lozenges, executive-strength Vitamin C and hot water with slices of lemon to fend off the impending cold that the City of London Round Table and those with their hands stamped at the Underground Club, Köln, wished to impose upon me. I would have gone home and gone to bed early after the show today if not for my date. I had arranged with Richard Herring to go out with him tonight and there was no way I was going to risk plunging him back into depression, ill-health and gambling by blowing him out.
Because he is a guest on the programme, he gets a BBC cab to take him home, which is more than I do for presenting it, so we commandeered it and took it to the Riverside in Hammersmith, the place of our date. (The controller of the cab firm asked the driver to put him on speakerphone, so that he could tell Richard he thought he was really funny, although not as funny as our driver, who in fact turned out not to be very funny at all, so that's a bit of a conundrum. How can we trust the comedy judgement of that controller?) At the Riverside - where I have seen Richard play live in the past - we witnessed Vega$m, the latest show by Brand X/Gawkagogo, an insanely talented cabaret troupe who combine costumes, masks, puppets, cut-outs, music and the sheer seat of their creative pants to create parallel universes of seedy, gothic, satirical weirditude. This latest show, which both Richard and I missed in Edinburgh, is based around a Vegas show-lounge and features such unforgettable mutant creations as Elephant Man Elvis, Dennis Hopperfield (an illusionist based on Frank from Blue Velvet ), Frankenstinatra and the Rot Pack, Liberarnie (Liberace meets Arnie) and a tumour shaped like Tom Jones. It's funny, it's odd, it's unlike anything else you'll see on a stage all year, and it's all performed by three people, one of whom, Paul Garner, I went to school with. He certainly hasn't frittered away his talent in the meantime. I liked the way they involved the audience, with Paul's character Stack Salamamba, and his partner Sarah's character Felony Fatale introducing us on the way in, and handing out bingo cards, 3D glasses and cocktails. The run ended at the Riverside tonight, but have a look at their website: 
It was an early show, 6-7pm , so Richard and I continued our date at a nearby Indian restaurant, which looked really new but turned out to have been open for five years. He only had two Kingfishers and I had a mango juice, so neither of us were drunk enough to take it any further (also, I told him my story from the early 90s when Rob Newman wouldn't let me kip over on his sofa, even though it was really late, which is why I don't trust comedians). He chivalrously walked me to the Tube, or quite near it, and we parted with a manly handshake. I think Richard is far funnier than our cab driver.

Home in time to watch Bodies from last night, and to wish there were more than two more episodes left.

Monday 14 November 
A mad piece of news: I have been formally invited by the "Governing Council and Senate" of the University of Northampton (formerly Nene College , when I went there in 1983-84) to accept an "Honorary Fellowship". This would make me an honorary fellow of the University. I am flabbergasted. This is, quite literally, an honour. Resting on my laurels (I hope I get some laurels), I had the day off work. Having fixed the telly, watched the last bit of In My Father's Den, the Matthew MacFadyen film from NZ. It was the bit in which the whole plot was explained. Despite the gap in watching it, I'd say it was an excellent film. Bleak, poetic, understated, and a chance for MacFadyen to have a big cry. Hats off to writer-director Brad McGann. Though my throat is less sore, my head has starting to stream. It feels very much like a common cold to me. Bloody smokers. (Saw the fox in the garden this afternoon, by the way, and her eye is healing.)

Tuesday 15 November
Yes, it's a cold alright. A common one. (Although fairly uncommon in this house.) I'm hoping today is as bad as it gets: thick head, runny nose, phlegmy throat, tired bone marrow. It was bad enough for me to bail out of a day's writing with Simon Day and stay at home, close to the radiator, naturally medicated and with a view to an early night. I wish! I had a call this morning from BBC Bristol, with whom I am making this pilot, The Time Of Our Lives, and their schedule demands that I wake up, ready for filming, tomorrow morning in Witney just outside Oxford , so bang goes my home-based recovery. Thus, fed up, I moped around a bit, wrote two things for Radio Times and a scene breakdown for Lee, and awaited the BBC car at 7.30pm . Boo. Bad timing.

Wednesday 16 November 
Easy enough drive to Witney last night. Checked into the Four Pillars Hotel at about 9pm, feeling ready for very little. It's a nice looking building from the outside, but depressingly standard on the inside, fitted out to look exactly like An English Hotel. (Do they all get their carpets and their curtains and their little metal rubbish bins from the same suppliers?) All I require is two meals and one bed. To the hotel's credit, the woman at reception was able to supply me with a razor, as I'd forgotten mine. To its detriment, when I phoned down for room service and ordered a pot of decaffeinated coffee with my chicken curry, the gentleman on the other end seemed unimpressed with my choice.
"But you've got coffee-making facilities in your room," he said, as if I was perhaps an idiot.
"I know," I replied. "But they're just sachets."
He proudly assured me that the coffee I would get on room service was also instant, as if he was determined to talk me out of it. I'm afraid at this point I rather insisted he bring me the pot of coffee I had ordered. It was now a matter of principle. The principle of: I have f---ing ordered it; I am staying in this hotel; f----ing bring me it.
God help visitors from Europe or America who come to stay in our hotels.

One theory as to why our hotels are so bad (and it's not an excuse) is that they cater for so many business travellers who stay for one night, they have no interest in looking after their guests on anything more than a cursory get-them-in get-them-out basis. The Four Pillars certainly had a lot tables-for-one at breakfast this morning. All men, of course, eating cold toast and warm eggs from the buffet and - if they were anything like me - feeling near-suicidal. I was almost overwhelmed by how depressed it made me. No wonder people eat breakfast so fast in hotels. Dealing stoically with my common cold, I checked out of the hotel at 8am in time to be met by another cab, whose driver, from a local firm, didn't actually know where we were going and spent - no exaggeration - 15 minutes trying to find out by poring over his map book, fiddling with his GPS, phoning his controller and finally phoning ahead to the destination, all of which, I humbly suggest, he might have done in the 15 minutes before I'd got in the cab. I almost got shirty with him but refrained. I will make no comment, other than this: my job today between 9am-5pm was to be the presenter of a documentary programme about 50 years of social history drawn from the home movies of ordinary people, interviewing people and doing PTCs (pieces to camera), and it took us from a lovely country lodge in Witney to the Territorial Army barracks in Bristol, and I sincerely hope I was better at it than this morning's cab driver was at doing his.

Tonight I am at Jury's Hotel, by the quayside in Bristol . No room service tonight, I actually dined, alone, in the restaurant. Not too bad: a reasonable piece of chicken accompanied by what looked like completely undressed, dry green salad. I was back in my room and tucked up in bed like a very moderately under-the-weather person, by 8.30. I watched Jamie's Italian Odyssey, or whatever it's called, followed by all 90 minutes of Take That: For The Record on ITV1, a terrific, entertaining, frank and emotional documentary about the five lads who shook the world. I loved every minute of it. For once, a TV show that deserved to be as long as it was, packed with candid interviews, unseen footage and with a real dramatic arc, culminating in Robbie blowing the other four out at the climactic country-house reunion and, in a final flourish, brilliantly edited, admitting that he'd swap all of his success to have what Gary has: ie. a wife and a happy family. Best drama of the week.

Thursday 17 November
Good night's sleep. Slightly improved solo breakfast, in that the fried food was hot rather than warm. Ensconced in another cab, driven by a man who knew where he was going, by 8.30am . As I write, I am back home. I am now officially drained. Can't write any more, which is just as well, as you probably feel the same way. In précis: another day of filming in Bristol, in a teenager's bedroom in Redland, a retro shop and a street. Whether the pilot of The Time Of Our Lives will get commissioned by BBC1 and whether I will be allowed to present it, is in the lap of the gods, or will be, when my new friends at BBC Bristol finish splicing it all together. On the platform at Parkway station by 3.30 (what a singularly unappealing tin shed it is). Changed at Reading . Home by 7pm in a commuter train that stopped not just everywhere but even at some fictional stations between Reading and Reigate . (Ash? North Camp? Blackwater?)

It's great to be home. My cold has now turned into a latent cough, a rattly chest and a sore nose. New series of Little Britain on BBC1, script-edited by Richard Herring, and co-starring my comedy friends Paul Putner and Steve Furst, which is why I won't say I was disappointed, especially by the new characters, and even more especially by the incontinent old lady. Instead I'll say that Vicky Pollard and Sebastian were still very funny, as was everything that came out of Tom Baker's mouth. I preferred The Worst Week Of My Life with Ben Miller, back for a second series. Good, old-fashioned slapstick-embarrassment-fun. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the longest week of mine. And yours.

BLOG COMPETITION!
Hi, readers! Every week until I get bored or you do, I'll be inserting a line from one of my childhood diaries into the blog. This week's rogue quote comes from my diary of 1983 when I was 18. If anyone can correctly spot it for a tiny prize, email the show via andrew.6music@bbc.co.uk And please do post comments below. By all means tell me it was too long this week, and there was way too much information about the Arctic Monkeys.

The opinions expressed in this column are Andrew Collins' and not necessarily those of the BBC.