Thursday night’s Beautiful & Damned is certainly interesting. Miss Red and Mr O’Boyle have booked some live acts, which means that my contributions are limited to a couple of short DJ sets and the provision of the silent movie, The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari. Which has the most wonderfully designed caption cards I’ve ever seen. Not the usual white text against a black blackground, but shaded greys and boxes and chunky fonts at slanted angles, almost like the speech balloons in those Roy Lichtenstein paintings.

First up is a cheery band from California called The Procession, who are bouncy and listenable in that Donovan, Ben Folds-y way. We also have the gentlemen known only as The Rabbi, a fellow Boogaloo character and chum of Mr Doherty. Plus we get a song from Shane MacGowan himself, who sings something unkind about the English.

And there’s another act called Frank Sanazi, an actor friend of Miss Red’s. His act entails dressing as Hitler and singing Sinatra numbers with excruciating puns on the names associated with the great unkind of history. Osama Bing Crosby. That’s Reich! That sort of thing. “Have you seen me before?” he asks the audience. “No!” “That’s just how it starts…”

I’m reminded of “Heil Honey, I’m Home”, the notorious sitcom which never made it beyond its first episode. Much like that doomed TV series, some people find this act entertaining whether at face value or because of the coupling of bad taste with bad puns. But some find it not just unfunny but offensive and upsetting. As he continues, persons from the latter camp make their position abundantly clear by first vociferously heckling him, then actually taking to the stage and wrestling the mic from his hands. I squirm uncomfortably in the corner. Then I squirm even more when I realise that one of the hecklers is a friend of mine. Then Miss Red goes over and remonstrates with the act’s ill-wishers, and my squirming is taken to record levels. I understand the differences of opinion, but given my position as both a co-host of the evening and as someone who doesn’t like to see one’s friends in a heated dispute, I know I should take firm, decisive action and intervene in the only way I know how.

So I stare silently at my shoes until the moment passes.

And then I play Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’, which at least is a response you can dance to. Mr Ferry has recently been in the news, accused of saying nice things about The Nazis in some interview or other. He’s had to do the inevitable embarrassing apologies, setting the record straight and so forth. It’s all so unnecessary, but some people do like to spend passion and energy finding things to get upset about. Sometimes it’s warranted and worthy, but sometimes it’s self-righteous; the accuser is getting a buzz just from being an accuser. And an accuser often has the air of immunity by being on the better end of the finger. Their rule is: let he who casts the first stone be without sin. It’s all aggression of a kind, and I’m ultimately against aggression. In a very passive way.

On the subject of heckling, I’m not sure if it’s best to deal with an atmosphere of tension, ie finding an entertainer excruciatingly un-entertaining, by eclipsing it with an atmosphere of more tension, ie heckling. I never wake up and think “You know what the world needs? More tension!” Though that’s clearly how many people DO wake up, otherwise there’d be nothing to read about in the newspapers.

Some people – including performers who relish dealing with a heckler – think tension makes them feel alive, makes life worth living. To which I say, fine, but go and see it in its proper place, like at a wrestling match. I like music, but I don’t think it should be broadcast everywhere you go, or loudly through walls. Everything in its place. Consideration. Moderation.

I’ve never heckled in my life, though God knows I’ve sat through enough bands and acts I wished would just leave the planet. I either go to the toilet, or I leave, or I grit my teeth and sit it out. Like backpacks, there’s just no style to heckling. It’s not just a vocal, instant, critique; it has an aggressively solipsistic side, coupled with the danger of being lost in translation. It forces everyone in the room to pay attention to someone they can’t necessarily see, who has decided to be part of the show. It colours the event with a third party view rather than forging your own. It’s a reaction that demands a reaction. On some occasions, an ugly pack mentality. And alcohol and peer pressure are nearly always included in the equation. I’ve seen hecklers who were clearly just performing for their friends around them.

In the dark of a venue, a halo can resemble a burning pitchfork.

And it’s just all so aggressive.

Yet on the other hand, I may not ever feel the buzz from being a heckler, but I can’t deny the buzz of being around uneasy situations of conflict. Anything for an interesting life. Heckling is still a show.

I’m just trying to think if there’s ever been such a thing as a beautiful heckle, a stylish heckle, a gentle, kind heckle. Or just a really brilliant one that merits applause in any context. One that springs to mind is from a routine by David Baddiel:

Heckle: “Everybody hates you. You must know from school.”

Anyway, this is actually only one small element of the Beautiful & Damned evening. Like heckling itself, it’s pulled the focus of this diary entry, but isn’t representative of the whole event. A couple of women come up me later to say how much they enjoyed the club’s music.

“It’s all so relaxing,” they say.

A bright and warm day in Highgate, just as there’s been for the last few days. Low-cut tops on women, shorts and short sleeves on men. Not me. I take my jacket off from time to time, but that’s about it. I can’t remember the last time my legs saw sunlight. It’s been so long that the shock might kill them. Or kill someone passing by – pale doesn’t come close.

Pink blossom from the tree next door drifts past the window in little bursts; noiseless, hypnotic. Twice it’s snowed this year in London, and twice I was out of town: Suffolk and Tangier. But I’ll settle for little rains of pink blossom.

Discussing with Rowan Pelling what I’m doing for the Cambridge WordFest event on the 28th. Although it’s a book festival, she’s trying to bump up the entertainment side of things. So instead of reading my bit from the Decadent Handbook about holidaying with Mr MacG, I might now do Quentin Crisp’s Greatest Hits, which I did at the Bistrotheque last year. It’s essentially Dickon does Steven Wright does Quentin: one-liners in a row, quote after quote. I take care to make it a specially-assembled and personal selection of QC’s wit and wisdom, to stop it becoming an indulgence. I once saw a cabaret act at the Edinburgh Fringe where a man recited the Woody Allen stand-up routine about the moose. That was his entire act. I suppose it was a kind of cover version.

Or I could write and perform a kind of Dickon’s Rules For Living monologue based on this diary. Or I could do an acoustic set of Fosca songs, the wordier ones. Which are more like strings of tragicomic quips and musings posing as songs. We shall see. But whatever I do, I shall work at it. So it works.

I once saw Billy Childish perform a solo set at the ICA, reciting poems, stories and singing a cappella. The crowd in the bar downstairs was so loud that he gave up on the spoken word and resorted to the songs. Songs cut through chatter. Particularly if you scream them, as he did.

There’s the chance the people who run the Latitude Festival might book me for something or other, which I’m really hoping will happen. Partly because I’m from Suffolk, partly because I can stay with my parents in their cottage by the Southwold lighthouse. But mostly because it’s such a magical little festival. Last year I wandered around there as a punter, and people came up to me to ask me when I was on. They didn’t know about me, they just thought I looked like a performer. So I really should be more of a performer. I love making up stories, fictional conversations and general musings; it’s just a case of working out if they work best in a song, or in text to read out.

A message:

I’m looking forward to reading the short story you just wrote. Will it only be available as part of the CD, or will it be published somewhere else?

It’ll just be on the CD by This Year’s Model for the time being. I plan to include it within a book of stories, lyrics and essays at some point between now and the grave, but that won’t be for some time. When the CD is available to buy, I’ll put the details here.

Last night: watch ‘New York Doll’, the documentary about Arthur Kane of the New York Dolls. Beautifully made, and features contributions from Morrissey and the great Nina Antonia. The reunion scenes are much like the underrated Bill Nighy film Still Crazy. Mr Kane is revealed to be a gentle Mormon librarian in a shirt and tie, who just happened to be a seminal rock star, if a financially unsuccessful one. Content with his religion, though still harbouring deep resentment at never having made it all those years ago, while watching countless bands – those who are clearly influenced by the Dolls – do so much better.

I look at posters of young bands on London billboards and my abiding thought is, how long will they last? Which jobs will the band members do when the inevitable split happens? And will these jobs be really them, or just an excuse, a nervously smiling alibi till the grave? The tragedy is built-in. Here are some young men. This is now, and this will be gone.

Then again, it only applies to those to whom it applies. If you’d told me in 1990 that The Charlatans would still be happily recording and touring in 2007, while The Stone Roses, Ride and Happy Mondays would be long departed, I’d never have believed it. I wonder who the equivalent of The Charlatans will be in 2024?

More emails suggesting ways of watching Region 1 DVDs on my iBook, this time recommending programs which copy the DVD to one’s hard drive and render it multi-region. I can’t burn my own DVDs, as it’s only a CDRW / DVD-reading drive. But the idea is I can watch it in situ, then wipe the space later. So I rip the disc, and spend over an hour fiddling with VLC trying to get the resulting files to play, but with no joy. Never mind. Thanks to the readers who mailed me about it, though.

To the ICA to see Prick Up Your Ears and drink strawberry beer with Ms Shanthi. She’s currently the sub-editor at Arena, one of those men’s magazines with thick spines. To my delight, the ICA cinema has improved since I was last here, for a terribly muffled and scratchy print of Metropolitan. This screening is a brand new print, because it’s the 20th anniversary of the film. There’s been little fanfare for this re-release of an 80s classic. Shame, as it’s certainly better than any new movie currently playing. The poster says, “From the director of The Queen and the writer of The History Boys.”

Prick Up Your Ears was itself made 20 years after the events it depicts: Orton and Halliwell’s last months in 1967. Apart from the occasional distracting blast of very 80s-sounding incidental music, it’s still as funny and as sad as ever. And I’m still noticing new things about it.

The young Orton utters one of Alan Bennett’s favourite phrases for his characters when thinking about all the books they’ve never read: “I’ll never catch up”. In fact, he says it twice.

A new favourite quote from the film, when Paul McCartney gets in touch to discuss the Beatles script Orton’s writing:

Orton: Was that Paul McCartney on the phone?
Halliwell: No, it was someone cultured. His chauffeur, I think.

We don’t get to see the young McCartney, but if we did, there’d be a scene where he’d play Orton the songs from Sgt Pepper, then in the recording stage.

Coming out of the cinema, we collide with the other event at the ICA. It’s some sort of O2-sponsored NME-compatible band night. Lots of photographers, security, people with those tell-tale laminated passes around their necks. For one night, the ICA has become Backstage At The Reading Festival. Loud, drunk young men everywhere. All of whom look like clones of Pete Doherty, or Russell Brand, or Alex Zane, or Mr Arctic Monkey, or Donny Tourettes.

Young men in 2007 London can dress any way they like. Yet they insist on picking one look from the above five; whether it suits them or not. It’s like those CGI crowd effects in films, where they take a small number of extras on the screen, and digitally repeat them to make a huge crowd. Their female counterparts are not only better dressed (which was always the case), but more individually dressed. You can look fashionable without being a clone. It just helps if you’re a girl. Boys can look good, but they have to look compatibly good.

Many young men here either haven’t shaved properly, or have yet to start shaving. While I’m at the urinal in the packed Gents, a gaggle of them make cackling comments about my appearance, saying I’m going off to King’s Cross to pick up rent boys, or some such. Though this crowd of rockist striplings aren’t at all typical of the venue, I feel it’s something of a wry achievement to solicit the usual idiot jeers in the supposedly broad-minded and arty ICA, especially after seeing Prick Up Your Ears there. It reminds me of the time I had the ‘watch your backs, boys’ comments in a gay bar near Charing Cross station, by unwitting businessmen having a drink before their train.

Amongst this young NME-friendly crowd, I feel terribly old, and terribly intimidated. But I also feel relieved that I’m not in that world anymore, that I have zero desire to attend any rock festivals as a spectator, Latitude excepted. However, I’m happy for these young men if they’re happy, what with their Maximo Party Chiefs or whoever it is.

In your twenties, you don’t really notice or care if you actually like the music you’re meant to like. It’s more important to be one of the crowd, or play to the crowd, or least know about what the crowd is talking about.

In your thirties, the crowd is the last thing you want to be involved with, particularly when they’re 10, or even 20 years younger than you. There is danger in numbers.

I don’t know where my place is. But I do know where it’s not.

Terribly tired last night, and retired early. Which means today I’m up with the dawn, swishing opening the curtains to Mr Gershwin’s An American In Paris on Radio 3. It’s good curtain opening music.

I really love waking up to Radio 3’s news bulletins. Just the basic headlines and details, spoken soberly and evenly. Just enough to keep you in touch. If you need to know more, you tune elsewhere. Otherwise, back to the music. You go from reminders of the worse deeds of humanity, man killing man (more often than not), followed by the better deeds of humanity, such as Mr Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.

It’s also a good way of feeling better about getting out of bed full stop. People have died; you haven’t, yet. So be thankful, get up and use your life. And if it’s not what you want to do with your day, or indeed with your life, change it. Write a symphony like Tchaikovsky, or do whatever you have to do in a beautiful way. Be the Tchaikovsky of data entry. Help others; all help is beauty. Try not to hurt anyone.

One more note about my short visit to Dublin. In Ireland, Magners Irish cider is called Bulmers, and always was. They can’t be Bulmers elsewhere because their rivals in the UK (who make Strongbow) are also called Bulmers and own the name, at least for cider. It sounds like a huge coincidence, but on further investigation (ie Wikipedia) it transpires that both companies were once associated. People moved companies, tradenames changed hands, the usual petty things. But on going to a Dublin bar, I found it amusing that a famous Irish cider is called the same all over the world, except in Ireland itself.

Ian Watson sends me a list of some more angel songs:

“The Black Angel’s Death Song” by the Velvet Underground
“Angels With Dirty Faces” by Sham 69
“Gabriel’s Wings” by the Family Cat
“Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel
“A Sinner Kissed An Angel” by Frank Sinatra
Something from the “Wings Of Desire” soundtrack

I mention this because I remember “Gabriel’s Wings” very well. One of those songs which could have been a massive hit had it not been recorded by a ragged low-budget indie band. Likewise “Gabriel” by St. Christopher. The indie scene has always been full of better songs than many of those in the mainstream chart, from the 80s till now. But of course, a good song is never the whole package. The Family Cat never had the legs of Girls Aloud. In every sense.

If I were one of those shadowy men behind the pop acts, I’d buy up the better indie songs and give them to the boy bands and girl groups with shinier hair but duller songs. It has happened on occasion. The Sundays’ “Here’s Where The Story Ends” was covered by a jolly dance pop outfit, and became a hit. And Cher had a hit with some lesser-known indie song which escapes me.

Tonight, in lieu of seeing anything at the cinema which we can agree on, I’m seeing Prick Up Your Ears at the ICA with my friend Ms Shanthi.

Thoughts on the movie Sunshine. Looks great for its UK Lottery money, Cillian Murphy is great, and I like the fat gold spacesuits especially. Only drawback is that the plot is too full of sci-fi cliches for my liking. I’ve been told that they’re not cliches, they’re influences, references and deliberate homages to other films. But that just makes me want to watch the other films instead: Dark Star, Silent Running, Alien, Cube, 2001. Even the more recent Event Horizon and Sphere seem more original than Sunshine, at least in the plot.

I think in these pop culture-saturated days, there has to come a point where you must be careful not to pay homage and make references so much that it’s at the expense of your own work. Don’t go to pains to join in when you could blaze your own trail. This applies to bands, too. If you like someone else’s work so much, go and start a website.

Which is in itself a reference to a Joss Whedon-directed episode of Angel. The ballet one. Sorry.

Thanks to the emailers who sent me some tips for viewing Region 1 DVDs on my iBook. Sadly, none of them work, as I’ve got the very last revision of the 12″ iBook G4. This comes with an unfortunately named ‘combo drive’, the Matshita CD-RW CW-8124. I’ve had a look at a few forums online, and this one has yet to be successfully ‘hacked’ with ‘firmware’ (I’m making lots of inverted-comma finger gestures here) for region-free playing. And no, the VLC program doesn’t play Region 1 discs either. No, it really doesn’t. Not for me. Honest. But thanks all the same.

The main advice for this model is, I understand, to replace the entire CD drive. Which would cost over £200, as I’d have to pay for a professional to rip the thing apart and install the drive. Seeing as you can buy a region-free stand-alone DVD player for under £20 these days, changing the drive seems an unnecessarily pricy measure to take.

Enough computer talk. Yesterday, while London sweltered, I sat indoors and finished that little story for the band This Year’s Model, “Rhoda’s Pocket Doomsday”. I tried to do something a little Saki-meets-Borges, in the old songwriting method of aiming for different influences at once and failing, but finding your own voice somewhere along the way. I need to do more.

Popped over to Claudia Andrei’s for tea and Doctor Who. The episode, “Gridlock”, was very 2000AD, very Fifth Element, very Brazil. It looked wonderful, and David Tennant is unquestionably the most energetic and physically fit of The Doctors. Hard to imagine any of the other ones jumping so nimbly between row after row of hover-cars. He also has such a watchable face: all mad eyes and Mr Punch-ish pointy nose and chin, but handsome with it rather than goofy. Perfect for the role, and with Billie Piper gone, he takes hold of the programme’s core continuity.

An email:

Glad you have met Andrew Martin–the Stringer books are fantastic, esp. The Lost Luggage Porter (the new one) despite Faber’s attempt to flog them to the nostalgia circuit with like, old people and that on the covers. Comics: Have you read Chris Ware? The *utter, utter cruelty* of children….

Oh yes, I’ve read Jimmy Corrigan, and found it astounding stuff. It’s sad that even Guardian award-winning graphic novels are still regarded by mainstream readers as something lower than even the trashiest, most formulaic prose fiction. Whenever there’s any piece in the media about comics or even one particular comic, there’s this sense the article has to get defensive. “It’s a comic book, BUT – “.

This prejudice works two-ways. When you’re talking to the converted and the cognoscenti, it seems you have to know everything about the medium itself. Enjoying graphic novels feels you have to belong to a private club, with all the pros and cons that suggests. Graphic novels aren’t a genre, but they’re filed and treated as one. It seems odd to like some comics.

I also note that Richard & Judy’s TV Book Club – the most powerful UK influence on selling books of recent years – still hasn’t featured any graphic novels. They do the cookbooks and the celeb biogs and the chick-lit and the popular fiction that the broadsheets avoid. But not graphic novels. Which I think is a terrible shame.

I was in Waterstones Bond Street recently, and they have a section for visiting authors to recommend their favourite new books. Zadie Smith, of all people, plugged two graphic novels: Epileptic by David B and But I Like It by Joe Sacco. Ms Smith’s little card attached to the books said “Graphic novels take so much time and care to make. The least we can do is read them.”

This Thursday 19th is Beautiful & Damned night once again. Miss Red and I haven’t yet grown bored of it, and she’s now booking live cabaret acts in addition to my selection of silent movies. We also have a MySpace page here:

http://www.myspace.com/thebeautifulanddamnedclub

Currently reading: Nada by Carmen Laforet. 2007 edition, trans by Edith Grossman. London Library copy.

Currently writing: a short story for the Swedish group This Year’s Model. It’s for their CD booklet, and the other contributors are Vic Godard (Subway Sect) and Jessica Griffin (Would-Be-Goods). My story is called “Rhoda’s Pocket Doomsday.”

Currently listening: Radio 3 or Radio 4, some BBC news and arts podcasts, plus “The Arts And How They Was Done” by the National Theatre Of Brent, on Radio 4. The funniest thing on the radio.

Currently watching: Doctor Who, Peep Show, a new documentary on The Carpenters and an old documentary on the Chelsea Hotel (Arena, 1981, it’s quite famous in itself). All via downloaded torrents.

These days, I only really use my real TV and DVD player for playing Region 1 DVDs, as that’s one of the few things the iBook can’t do. There’s no ‘region hack’ for the iBook either. I do hate that ruling about regions. Either put out a DVD which you can play anywhere (as opposed to buy anywhere) or don’t, I say. Or make all equipment multi-region, or don’t. When I buy an imported American edition of a book (eg because there’s no UK edition), it doesn’t ‘not open’ in the UK. Though if there was a way to make that happen, I’m sure publishers and lawmakers would implement it at once.

I feel the same way about CDs and digital formats that only work in certain machines, even though you’ve paid for an official copy entirely legitimately, with the proper slice of your money going to the creators.

Oh, and I feel the same way about unskippable copyright announcements at the start of DVDs themselves. And unskippable adverts for other movies that go on forever. I’ve paid my money, I own the product, so stop ordering me about, thank you very much. Put the warnings and trailers on the disc, sure, but don’t make them unavoidable.

It’s all about ‘rights’. By which they mean, the rights of the manufacturer eclipsing the rights of the consumer who’s actually bought their product.

I should stop ranting.

I forgot to mention: I met JP Donleavy of “The Ginger Man” fame at Victoria Mary Clarke’s book launch. He’s another author with a beautiful speaking voice, and spoke elegantly and articulately at the event about his admiration for Ms VMC. A lovely man.

I should also mention I’m doing my own reading-aloud debut outside of London very soon. It’s at a festival called Cambridge Wordfest, or “cambridgewordfest” as they advertise it. There’s Michael Rosen, Jeanette Winterson, Billy Bragg and something with me called The Decadent Cabaret. Here’s the details.

Saturday 28th April, 10.15pm. Cambridge ADC Theatre.

cambridgewordfest presents
The Decadent Cabaret
£8/£6

A scandalous entertainment of readings, burlesque and music, performed by contributors to The Decadent Handbook, which is edited by Rowan Pelling. Exclusive to cambridgewordfest the event includes a performance by Miss Sugar Kane, a top burlesque striptease artiste, music from ska-punk duo Salt Peter and Norman Brock’s band Doghammer. There will be readings by assorted libertines and jezebels including Michael Bywater, Salena Godden, Dickon Edwards and Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray (internationally debauched authors of the Decadent Gardener and Decadent Cookbook). Not for the faint-hearted.

Michael Rosen is on at 10 in the morning there, doing an event called “Wake Up With Poetry”. I have fond memories of him captivating young audiences at The Puffin Shows in the early 80s and am toying with the idea of catching an early train to see him, and to make a day of it in Cambridge.

Back in Highgate after an immensely pleasurable day and a half in Dublin. I’ve seen the doctor about my left hand / wrist / arm, and she’s ruled out Carpal TS and anything major. It’s definitely RSI. So on her advice I’ve invested in a gel wrist rest, the thin and long sort you can get for keyboards and laptops. I don’t use a mouse these days, just the trackpad on this iBook G4.

Apart from anything else, the gel wrist-rest I got from Ryman is rather pleasing aesthetically. Colourless and transparent with sunburst designs in black on the inside, which distort pleasingly when you press a finger hard onto the surface. It’s like one of those more unusual jelly sea creatures with no apparent front or back end, or mouth, or face of any discernible kind. But a pretty thing nonetheless.

In Dublin, the pedestrian crossings make the following noises.

When you press the button to cross, there’s a steady, low sound:

“Putt… putt… putt…”

Then, as the signal to cross appears:

“PEEYOW! Putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-putt…”

This is in contrast to the London pedestian crossings, which make no sound whatsoever to register the button has been pressed. Presumably blind people in London have to hope for the best that the ‘Wait’ sign has lit up. The ‘cross now’ sound for London is a stressed-out series of high beeps. I prefer the Dublin putt-putt noise. It’s a little more laid back but it does the job perfectly well. I could go on about other aspects of the city, but I think this is Dublin v London in a nutshell. Always judge a city by its pedestrian crossings.

Spend much of the 36 hours with Miss Hattie E, who is charming company full of tales from her days as a jetset pop journalist. We sit in a series of pavement cafes and sup tea and scoff strudels. We visit the Wilde statue with its quotation-covered columns (“Punctuality is the thief of time” is my favourite for the day), the Joyce memorial in St Stephen’s Park, the Book of Kells and the impossibly glorious arched library in Trinity College with its JM Synge exhibits, and the National Gallery with its Vermeer and all the Irish artists that you’re amazed aren’t more noted internationally.

Also at the National Gallery there’s a temporary exhibition called The Fantastic In Irish Art. So that was me happy. Harry Clarke’s works from the early 20th Century are a highlight, with a spindly elfin style echoing Aubrey Beardsley. Many artists have depicted Shakespeare’s Ophelia in a languid and sensual pose, but few, I think it’s fair to say, have set her in the loving embrace of a gigantic lobster. Jack Butler Yeats’s Pippa Passes is exquisite, and I highly suspect it has been used on the cover of some Angela Carter book. A barefoot girl running through a wood, head thrown back in a rather unusual pose, making her arms look like angel’s wings.

Which makes sense, given the event I’m really here for. The Victoria Clarke book launch – for her ‘Angel In Disguise’ memoir – is a lot of fun, and I get my first taste of a bar where everyone is drinking but no one is smoking. The ban reaches London in July. Though I feel sad for those who like a good cigarette or cigar, it’s nice to come away without one’s suit stinking of second-hand tobacco.

Ms Clarke is decked out in black PVC and angel wings, the venue’s walls are covered in paper cut-outs of angel shapes, and there’s free angel-themed cocktails. I play my set of angel songs, and manage to NOT play the Robbie Williams one. The Style Council’s “Angel” has aged remarkably well, particularly as it comes from the time when people had started to give up on Mr Weller’s blue-eyed soul combo. Madonna’s “Angel” (from her Like A Virgin period) and ABBA’s “Angeleyes” are the other refreshing favourites. Minor hits for them, but so much better than major hits for, oh, pick any name from the dart board.

Last night in the commercial break for the marvellous new series of Peep Show, there was a series of ads for current bands: Bloc Party, Klaxxons, Maximo Park. And it sounds typically old man-like of me, but I genuinely can’t tell them apart. Pleasant enough young men standing around playing guitars, playing pleasant enough, slightly-alternative guitar rock. But their choruses don’t have an iota of the catchiness of even the verses of those ABBA and Madonna singles, or the blissful class of the Style Council. There will always be young men keen to stand around with guitars, but too many are keen to join in when they should blaze their own trail. It’s not hard to be different from the rest. Look, I’ve just written about the joy of Dublin’s pedestrian crossings and giant lobsters cuddling maidens. Why can’t Maximo Park sing about that?

At the book launch, Shane MacGowan sings “Devil In Disguise” with his sister Siobhan. I hear he’s had a fall on tour in the States, and has spent a few weeks in a wheelchair. But tonight he only needs a stick, and he refuses my offer to help him up the stairs when we all repair to a restaurant later on. He’s had a short-back-and-sides haircut that makes him look a decade younger. I meet his mother, and Ms Clarke’s mother and step-father, and I drink too much. Siobhan tells me off for being snooty about MySpace users. I have my photo taken with a gorgeous lady DJ called Poppy, and the other besuited dandy of the night, Sebastian Horsley. We look pretty good together, in a Gilbert & George sort of way. The next morning, he leaves me a very sweet message at the hotel reception, all arch credos and reminding me to keep up the idolatry of the self.

So, please do buy Angel In Disguise by Victoria Mary Clarke, because she’s a wonderful writer and has a unique take on the world. And because she’s been extremely kind to me. Advert over.

The day after the launch, Shane & Victoria make the front page of various local papers, including The Irish Sun. They’re getting married later this year. In a castle.

Now, in addition to the RSI jellyfish rest, I’ve decided to make little changes in my lifestyle. A general clearing out of the things that are stopping me do the things I really want to do, and an increase in the things that actually help.

So, no more takeaways or cakes or sweets junk food, at least not by myself. The strudels I shared with Miss Hattie are a good example that cakes eaten alone are depressing and self-deluding, but cakes eaten in company are heaven.

I also need a general cutting back on my exposure to the culture of sneering and the use of cruelty for cheap laughs. There’s so much of it about – not least in my own world. I watched the new Harry Enfield comedy show last night, and much of it seemed to me to be about sneering at people for the sake of it, taking joy in new stereotypes of the day: fat children, Polish coffee shop girls, American tourists, builders, Stephen Fry, dinner party types. All of which would be okay if it were actually funny, like the better bits of Little Britain. Without the laughs, it just comes across as a portrait of aging comedians feeling increasingly frightened of the modern world. The highlights were the parts with the least small-minded sneering and the most silliness, such as “Bono And The Edge At Home”. Which has been done by Vic Reeves and Slade already.

“Peep Show” will always command far less ratings, steeped as it is in the world of the British aging-slacker generation, but is far better written than any other UK TV comedy since “The Office”, and far more honest. The stars, Mitchell and Webb, must be millionaire comedians themselves what with their Apple Mac adverts, but their targets for cruelty are themselves, or rather their self-deluding Peep Show characters, not everyone else.

And the latest ailment is… my left hand. Woke up on Friday with left hand cramps, and they’re still about. It’s like a hand fever. Particularly annoying as I’m severely left-handed. Aches and pains and tingling and numb bits and pins and needles. Maybe it’s RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I don’t know. I just wish it would go away. Still, at least I can type. Just about. I’ll see the doctor if it doesn’t go. I’m utterly fed up with having to write about illnesses and ailments in the diary, and I’m sure you are too, Dear Reader. But if it’s on my mind, I have to write it down. Sorry.

Hasn’t stopped me from reviewing a couple of DVDs for Plan B Magazine. Mr Corman’s The Masque Of The Red Death, and Mr Cocteau’s box set containing his first and last films: Blood Of A Poet and Testament Of Orpheus. A twin of Cocteaus, ho ho.

Blood Of A Poet features the blonde, short-haired 20s model Lee Miller playing a living statue and looking suitably immaculate. I keep seeing Ms Miller’s name and face in bookshops lately. There’s been a few recent books about her decidedly unusual life: she went from modelling to being a top photojournalist. As a working model in the States, she was the first women to appear in a magazine tampon advert. Then she nipped off to Paris to be Man Ray’s muse and a kind of Surrealist version of Edie Sedgewick. Hence the appearance in the Cocteau film. Then she became a photographer in her own right: the most famous photo of Cocteau is hers, which is a nice Cocteau-esque mirroring of events. And then she became a war correspondent for Vogue, taking photos with the Allies as they liberated Berlin. There’s an famous picture of Ms Miller having a bath in 1945. In Hitler’s bath.

Another muse. Watching a teenaged Jane Asher in The Masque Of The Red Death, her performance is upstaged by her off-screen life: she was dating Paul McCartney at the time. This would be 1963, just before the Beatles’s first London gigs. All those songs she’s said to have inspired: “Here, There and Everywhere”, “We Can Work It Out”, “And I Love Her”, “For No One”. Yet she’s never properly talked to journalists about their relationship. No one’s business but hers. Quite refreshing given the acres of print generated by his current ex. I think Ms Mills should take Ms Asher’s cue: the only way to really triumph over the press is to politely ignore them altogether.

Off to Dublin tomorrow. It’s my first time in Ireland. Victoria Mary Clarke has got me DJ-ing at her book event, and she’s flying me over there. I’m travelling with her writer friend Hattie, and at Ms C’s request have spent a few hours today compiling a set of songs with the theme of “Angels”. Ms Clarke’s book concerns conversations with angels, you see.

Yes, yes, well, obviously that song by Robbie Williams and that other one by The Eurythmics.

But also:

Aretha Franklin’s “Angel” – can’t really go wrong with that.
Tavares – “Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel”. Nor that.
Bob Dylan – “You Angel You” – a rather good uptempo 70s Dylan track, with The Band as his band.
“Angel” – the Anita Baker song. Can’t decide if I prefer the original or the Style Council cover, with Mr Weller duetting with Ms Dee C Lee. May play both.
Madonna – “Angel” – minor hit from the 80s, better than many of her major hits. Has a certain pristine purity.
ABBA – “Angeleyes” – minor hit for them, better than most other bands’ major hits.
Curtis Lee / Phil Spector – “Pretty Little Angel Eyes”.

I wonder if Mr Spector is found guilty of murder, will his records still sound the same? Joe Meek killed his landlady. But then he killed himself too, and that seems to make all the difference.

It depends. In a similar vein, the BBC have just released a DVD of the excellent political comedy series The Thick Of It. Unusually, the main actor’s face isn’t on the front cover, because he is Chris Langham. Mr Langham is awaiting trial for a number of unpleasant sexual crimes. He’s pleaded not guilty, and the key phrase in such matters should be “innocent until proven guilty”. Sadly, the phrase “no smoke without fire” tends to override it, when an actor’s work is involved. Their performances are upstaged by their personal life. And thus, DVD covers. Just the front cover: he’s on the back in a little thumbnail photo alongside the other cast. Yet he dominates the actual series on the DVD.

I’m fascinated by the psychology behind such packaging. And the irony is, The Thick Of It is all about the politics of spin. It’s as if Peter Capaldi’s spin doctor character has been put in charge of the DVD himself. “It’s damage f—ing limitation, pal!”

From time to time I pop into the veteran independent bookshop Gay’s The Word in Marchmont Street, which has a unique and often exclusive selection of new and used books on gay topics. My rare copy of Mr Hoare’s Stephen Tennant biography was found there. There’s also a good stock of homo-themed graphic novels and comic books.

It’s been going since 1979, right through the Thatcher years and Clause 28, and is now struggling to hold its own against the escalating rents of 2007 London. With the demise of Compendium Books in Camden and Sister Moon of Charing Cross, I think many people of my age and older are surprised to learn that it’s still going. Well, just about still going. This story in the Times is fascinating.

Plenty of authors voice their concern at its possible closure, and the shop is offering a chance for supporters to ‘Sponsor a Shelf’ at £100 a go. I’d cough up myself if I could afford it.

Incredibly, though, Jeanette Winterson thinks the shop has had its day:

“Bookshops have made real progress by including specifically lesbian and gay books on their shelves, both generally and in special sections. The very fact that it is thinking of closing may mean that its work is done.”

But there’s more to GTW than providing a real-world, specialist shopping experience. I’m shocked at the use of the word ‘only’ in this part of the same news story:

Today, the only homophobia the shop suffers is ‘a brick through the window once a year and twice a week people spit on the windows,’.

Work not quite done there, I feel.

Lately, I’ve found myself spotted by published authors, or generally treated nicely by published authors. Needless to say, everyone should buy all their books. I only attract the best.

Andrew Martin, author of The Necropolis Railway: A Novel of Murder, Mystery and Steam. He chats to me while I’m loitering in Archway Video, and says he’s spotted me in The London Library.

Travis Elborough, author of The Bus We Loved: London’s Affair with the Routemaster. He chats to me in The Boogaloo and says he’s spotted me in The British Library.

Dan Rhodes, author of Timoleon Vieta Come Home. Now, he hasn’t spotted me in a library but he can’t avoid spotting me at his book event in the Boogaloo the other evening. Because I am rather drunk and am bothering him about how great the band Orange Juice are. Like many authors, he’s a voracious music lover; the solitary act of writing often coincides with the need for a well-considered soundtrack. I think a compilation of his favourite music was playing in the background to his book launch. And Orange Juice must have been on the track listing.

I can’t quite remember the details, because on this evening I am rather drunk. I have been to another launch party earlier the same night, the launch party for the Latitude festival, in a trendy club off Shaftesbury Avenue. There, I down a few free wines on an empty stomach before topping them up with a number of drinks at the Boogaloo.

I think I was in rather flirty mode of drunkenness. I hope I didn’t try to get off with Mr Rhodes. Or indeed Mr Ben Moor, the comic actor and performer of the brilliant stage show Coelacanth. Mr Moor was at the Boogaloo, and also at the Latitude event. And I had seen him at Latitude festival itself in Suffolk last year: he was performing Coelacanth in the Theatre Tent and it was rather fantastic. Full of clever wordplay with lines such as ‘like a white flag to a bull’. So I bothered him about that. I think I annoyed him by saying I hadn’t worn one of his badges.

I regret not being able to remember very much about this night of flirty alcohol, but I don’t regret feeling extremely happy. It was a very happy kind of drunkenness.

What I can say is that at one point Dan Rhodes gives me a free signed copy of his new novel, Gold. It has rounded corners and isn’t too long. Mr Rhodes is a believer in keeping stories short and to the point: he has also published a collection of 101 stories each lasting 101 words.

On the flyleaf, he’s put a quote from an Orange Juice lyric – “To Dickon – I’ll Never Be Man Enough For You.”