Have bought train tickets for Edinburgh (arriving Mon 22nd, returning Thurs 25th) without confirmation that I’ve got somewhere to park my sleeping bag for those three nights. It’s such bad form to nag when you’re asking a favour, so I sincerely hope the person who offered to help returns my last email. Otherwise, I shall have to depend upon the kindness of strangers.

Some days ago: As I queue up at Angel Waterstones, buying Mr Kundera’s The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting, a slightly grizzled 40-something man in a Hawaiian shirt is signing a book for a staff member. I glance over to see it’s a copy of Simon Reynolds’s ubiquitous doorstopping guide to the post-punk genre, Rip It Up And Start Again. He is not Mr Reynolds, so I assume he must be in one of the bands covered in the book. Should have had the nerve to ask. He looked the way many 40-something former band people look: an air of lost boyishness.

This week: rather excited to meet the utterly recognisable Ms Maureen Lipman. Chatted about her late husband Jack Rosenthal’s TV movie Ready When You Are Mr Gill, about the pathos and tragicomedy of the film extra world. Made 30 years before Ricky Gervais’s new series Extras, and remade with Tom Courtenay, Bill Nighy and Amanda Holden for Sky Movies two years ago. One hopes that it will see a DVD release if only to compare and contrast with the Gervais programme.

The latter is a bit Nathan Barley: has its funny moments, but there’s something not quite right about the whole tone. In the second episode, the main joke is meant to be that Mr Ross Kemp thinks he’s terribly tough and can handle himself in a fight. Not only is this rather obvious and not funny enough per se, but the whole premise is rather upstaged by the grimace-inducing sight of Mr Kemp mugging his part. He’s such an astonishingly bad actor, he can’t even play himself convincingly.

Email from someone at the Evening Standard. They read my 2002 diary entry about how the classical music-dominated Royal Festival Hall has become such a great venue for enjoying alternative rock music in a civilised, seated fashion, without the danger of cigarettes burns, sweaty moshpits, spilt beer, and where the audience is less likely to chat during the performance. Ms Jude Kelly has just taken over the building, and there’s fears in the classical music world that she’ll have the RFH booking more Brian Wilson and less Beethoven. The ES person wanted me to comment. I said I’m very glad the RFH is in the hands of the director of The National Theatre Of Brent’s Messiah, one of the funniest 80s TV shows unavailable beyond a deceased Betamax video recording. Probably not what the ES wanted to hear, but take away my love of obscure comedy references and I am nothing.