A very modern day. I receive a free digital camera in the post, which I suppose is a fairly modern thing to receive. It is in response to a coupon I sent off months ago for some product whose name escapes me. It does not have one of those handy screens at the back where one can instantly check the picture, and has no flash facility, but then it is free. I look upon it as a sort of digital Lomo, the analogue vintage toy camera favoured by arty sorts, and take it with me to my first engagement of the day.

Today's engagement is a wedding. It's the second wedding I have been invited to in my thirty-two years. The first was of my cousin, who married a TV chef from the Carlton Food Network. I feel a little sad that I'm not invited to more weddings. It's true that I rail and rant against coupling of any kind when given the air space, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good wedding. At base, after all, I am a romantic. A new-new-new romantic.

I received my wedding invite via Friendster.com on the Internet. This, surely, makes it a very modern wedding indeed. A marriage made in Friendster.com.

The couple in question are a Ms Esther and a Mr Paul. Mr Paul is the drummer in the band Franz Ferdinand, who are that rare thing – I band I like who manage to be liked by real people too, even though they don't wear trainers onstage. My faith in humanity is tentatively restored.

Despite being Scottish, Mr Paul has not brought his weather with him, and today appears to be warm, dry and gently pleasant. Spring finally starts in London.

Like any self-respecting fictional scientist, I try out the camera upon myself first, in Moorgate Tube station:
<img src="http://www.fosca.com/friday-april-2nd19.jpg"></img>

The ceremony takes place at Bromley Public Hall in Bow Road, well within the sound of Bow Bells. This is deep within London's East End, and so signs of this kind, a few steps from the hall, almost have a sick, romantic tinge of their own, if you're in a dark, Kray Brothers mood.

"Mug me, mug me do! It's been so long since I last felt the touch of a man…"

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/friday-april-2nd15.jpg"></img>

Inside the registry office, Mr Paul is sporting a rather fetching hat with a feather in its band, and signs the marriage register with the gorgeous Ms Esther. Then, fully bonded within the eyes of The Law, they retire to the grounds outside for more photographs. I have rice in my pocket ready to throw. An American Girl tells me this is bad for pigeons, and makes them explode. This makes me throw the rice with more gusto than ever.

Many more photos are taken, some with myself ("Okay, now, let's have all the people who like The Monochrome Set").

I spend time chatting to everyone who will speak to me, and retire to the nearest pub with Franz Ferdinand's manager, Mr Cerne. Apropos of nothing, he shows me the latest list of Franz Ferdinand merchandise awaiting approval. It includes mugs, dart flights, and underwear for both genders. I suggest he adds pens and ties – not ties with a logo (far too tacky), but ties in the logo's striped colours, a la Eton. If such articles become reality, you heard it here first.

Disembarking at Highgate Tube Station, I call in at the Boogaloo for an ill-advised additional drink:
<img src="http://www.fosca.com/friday-april-2nd20.jpg"></img>

My flu appears to have vanished, and I am keen to go out tonight. Club "Soul Mole" at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm it is, then.

<p><i>Postscript, April 6th.</i>

I originally illustrated this entry with more equally atrociously blurred photos from the wedding, but on discovering they had been featured elsewhere, out of the diary context and without my knowledge, I thought it was better to remove them. Also, on reflection, my photos really didn't do the occasion an iota of justice. Far superior snaps were taken by others present. So, my apologies.</i>

Hit rather heavily by a bout of flu, I find myself confined indoors for most of this week, and have to give any clubs a miss for the time being. Which includes Kash Point tonight, much to my chagrin.

Snuffling and coughing, I remember that it’s time to set the world to rights with another instalment of the Scarlet’s Well Mp3 Singles Club.

This rather beautiful, jaunty uptempo track is as good at relieving cold symptoms as anything Mr Beecham might muster. Titled Big Dipper On The Spearman’s Floor, it’s sung by some of the motley Hesperus crew walking back to Mousseron from the Underworld… via the sea bed. The Spearman being the sea god Neptune, the Big Dipper being the constellation of The Plough.

Bid takes lead vocals on this one, and it features a rather gorgeous E-Bow-like soaring instrumental break.

Link:

Like the previous mp3, it’s taken from the album The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse, released on May 3rd on Siesta Records.

In the current issue of Q Magazine, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex suggests a track listing for the ideal Art-Rock CD compilation. He includes The Monochrome Set’s “He’s Frank”, written by Bid circa 1978, and played by me at the club Stay Beautiful when I DJ’d there. From the same songwriter twenty-six years on, “Big Dipper…” may not be Rock enough for some, but it’s definitely Art. And I know what I like.

More info: http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/

Big Dipper On The Spearman’s Floor

Can you see the Dipper, the twinkle of the Dipper
Look up to the ceiling of the vasty deep
It points the way to where we’ll find our sleep
If you hear a fiddle, the scraping of a fiddle
Coming from the hull of a passing yawl
It’s just a jolly, praying for us all

For the benefit of my friends, enemies, stalkers, and potential murderers, here's where to find or avoid me in Nocturnal London this week.

Monday – Launch party for Modern Painters magazine, Photographers Gallery.

Tuesday – Daytime – Visiting the Gaston exhibition with my father. Evening – The Dreaded Music Quiz, Boogaloo pub, Highgate. Ms Frost's team, and at her invitation.

Wednesday – The Siren Suite, Atlantic Bar. Kash Point one-off spin-off night with classical music. 8pm to midnight, thankfully.

Thursday – NFT1 – "Teknolust". Camp sci-fi arthouse film, with Tilda Swinton. <a href="http://www.llgff.org.uk/films_details.php?FilmID=188">After party at Kash Point, the listing says</a>. Which I would go to anyway.

Friday – Visiting Ms Denitto and Ms Spivack for the Camden Mews Film Club – "Carry On Screaming".

Saturday – Ms Gonzalez's birthday party in Collier's Wood. This means I have to decline an invite to another birthday party in Finsbury Park (Mr Robin's – invited by Ms Ellen). Ms G booked me first (some weeks ago), and like all sad clowns, I must honour my bookings. There has to be a system. Besides that, I'm fairly certain I've never been to Collier's Wood before. SW19 – the path less travelled. The unkind will doubtless add "With reason."

Sunday – Daytime – Scarlet's Well rehearsal, Stockwell. Followed by my first free evening in 7 days.

The Teknolust film on Thursday night is the only event I have invited myself to, and thus have to pay. I am a great admirer of Ms Swinton and her serenely aloof, endlessly watchable features.

So, very quickly, and not quite knowing how, I find my week mapped out for me. Living on benefits I have to budget my limited finances accordingly. Being unemployed is a full-time job. I'm meant to be staying in more often, working on Fosca songs, Bid's songs, the novel, generally sorting out my clutter (both physical and mental), and chasing up possible means of getting paid for being Dickon Edwards. I will have to start saying "No" more regularly, with the utmost care, so as not to quash the possibility of future invitations. Just not this week, though. This week, I am a shamelessly grateful tart.

Still, a diary mitigates indulgence, and I shall try to write about the events worth reading about.

A request from the Swedish indie fanzine, “Ettnollett”, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary.

Most fanzines I’ve been aware of barely make it to twenty months of existence. Twenty years demands some sort of applause.

They want me to name my five favourite songs of the past two decades, for their anniversary issue. A difficult task indeed, so I decide to whittle down my short-list by removing any proper pop songs (e.g. Swing Out Sister, Kylie Minogue, Take That) and keep my selection restricted to fanzine-friendly indie-pop. Even then it takes me a while before I decide on the following:

Morrissey “Girl Least Likely To”
The Pastels “Comin’ Thru”
Galaxie 500 “Strange”
McCarthy “Keep An Open Mind Or Else”
Scarlet’s Well “The Return Of The Hesperus”

The last choice sounds gruesomely biased, but it is genuinely my favourite Bid tune of the past 20 years, pipping “Jacob’s Ladder”, “Reach For Your Gun”, “Up” and “I Love Lambeth” at the post.

Here's the first photo of Scarlet's Well, the new live band supergroup incarnation.

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/scarletswell2004.jpg"></img>

Left to right:
– Martin White (<lj user="martylog">) – accordion. Responsible for accordion versions of chart hits at <a href="http://popjustice.com/">popjustice.com</a>
– Alice Healey – vocals. The main SW female singer, who features on all four albums so far.
– Kate Dornan (<lj user="serious_k">) – keyboards, vocals. Also plays in Fosca, Butterfly Stitch, and Madam.
– Bid – vocals, guitar, musical captain. Former frontman of <a href="http://www.bid.clara.net/mset/">The Monochrome Set</a>.
– Jennifer Denitto – drums. Formerly of Linus and Long Good Luck. Currently also in <a href="http://www.picturecenter.co.uk/index2.html">Picture Center</a>.
– D.E. – guitar, vocals. Formerly of Orlando, currently of <a href="http://www.fosca.com/">Fosca</a>.
– Toby Robinson – Bass guitar. Producer of the SW albums, and Krautrock veteran. Worked with Can and Stockhausen.

And here is the new SW press biography, researched and written by myself.

<b>Scarlet's Well – The Yarn</b>

Originally conceived as a studio project in 1998, Scarlet's Well is less a pop band than an exotic secret world, a walled garden whose ivy-covered door implores the curious to try its handle.

From within, three lavishly-packaged albums have emerged, released on the <a href="http://www.siesta.es/">Siesta label</a>: "Strange Letters" (1999), "The Isle Of The Blue Flowers" (2000), and "Alice In The Underworld" (2002). Word-of-mouth recommendations have abounded, and Drowned In Sound.com declared "Isle…" as a <a href="http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/1539.html">bona fide Classic Album</a>.

2004, however, sees the first tentative raising of the Scarlet's Well profile in The Real World, determined to reveal the band's existence to the thousands who might adore them if they only knew they existed. As well as the release of a fourth album in May, "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse", a live band has been put together and the first Scarlet's Well concerts are starting to be booked around the world. Finally, the secret is out.

On paper, they're the musical incarnation of Bid, the handsome, enigmatic, quietly legendary London singer-songwriter, accomplished fop-pop pioneer and former front man of cult New Wave dandies The Monochrome Set.

"I didn't really intend Scarlet's Well to be a band. I wanted this to be an Atmosphere, created by any method available, and I thought that I would have greater freedom by using a variety of different singers, musicians and writers."

Bid's Scarlet's Well collaborators have included living modern rock star Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand, lately in the charts with "Take Me Out"; and dead Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, constantly in church services with the hymn "In The Bleak Midwinter". All of which is very Scarlet's Well.

"I wanted the feeling of an open-ended musical with a partly ever-changing cast. The identity of the albums had to be strong enough to allow these changes, without them seeming like compilations. I like the variety, and it gives me more leeway as to the subject matter of the lyrics."

And what lyrics. Archaic and arcane, literate and witty, cinematic and surreal tales of doomed pirate crews, ghostly parrots, lusty werewolves lurking in leafy glades, flirty jellyfish, water-shrew shuffles, demons and cobbled streets. Lead vocals are approached like roles in a story, with Bid's voice taking turns with a diverse cast of girlish young ladies, mostly recruited from local school musicals. The archetype of the petticoated girl wandering matter-of-fact among the fantastical and mysterious sets Scarlet's Well in the cultural company of Lewis Carroll, E Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett, "Picnic At Hanging Rock", and more recently, Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials".

The music, meanwhile, is a gorgeous, intoxicating form of defiantly non-rocking, timeless and folkish fop-pop. Stunning, ornately-crafted melodies arranged for accordions, mandolins, brushed drums, summer guitars, smoky pianos, banjos, fiddles, ukuleles, and bouzoukis, most of which are played on the records by Bid himself.

"I pick up whatever instrument is lying about in the studio and attempt to play it. I used a bouzouki because Toby Robinson (the studio owner and co-producer) had just come back from a trip to Greece and had been hood-winked by a canny shepherd."

Attempts to pigeon-hole Scarlet's Well musically are ultimately frustrated, though the desperate might invoke comparisons with upstarts like The Divine Comedy (fop-pop crooning), Tindersticks (exotic, atmospheric arrangements) and The Magnetic Fields (eccentric, but accessible songwriting, a multitude of styles and genres). Other names that spring to mind are The Tiger Lillies (the band from the stage show "Shockheaded Peter"), Kurt Weill, Kate Bush, Tom Waits covered by girls and girlish men, as well as Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods (non-ironic, Gothic fantasy songs laced with metaphor, wordplay, symbolism, soul, and love).

<b>A BRIEF HISTORY OF BID AND THE MONOCHROME SET</b>

Descended from a long line of Indian kings ("It's still, technically, an offence for the British Queen to step on my shadow."), Bid began his musical career while a teenager in giddy Punk Rock London. He played in The B-Sides before they became Adam and The Ants, and then founded The Monochrome Set in 1978 with early Ants refugees Lester Square and Andy Warren. Their first singles appeared on the original Rough Trade label.

Influential, articulate and unique, The Monochrome Set delighted cultish hearts and critics alike. Their admirers include Morrissey, who used to write fan letters to Bid in his pre-Smiths days, and who once remarked "How can anyone go through life without the dear, cuddly Monochrome Set?"

Andy Warhol's Interview magazine described them in 1982 as "…possessed of a very bright wacky eclecticism… they have a very charming way of fusing seemingly incompatible styles of music that makes their songs fresh, instantly familiar and pleasantly alien…psychedelic mannerisms with California Byzantine pastiche….the dilemmas of aristocratic genetics…an ominous minstrel air….. Martinis refracting Mount Everest…"

After 20 years, 9 studio albums, 6 compilations, 2 live albums, one stab at the UK pop charts with the 1985 single "Jacob's Ladder", one reformation, a number one single in Bolivia ("Eine Symphonie Des Grauens"), and a bout of genuine success in Japan, Bid finally felt The Monochrome Set had run its course and looked elsewhere for a suitable context for his estimable talents.

By way of a prologue to Scarlet's Well, he worked as a producer for many Monochrome Set-admiring groups, including the Would-Be-Goods and The Karelia, the underrated former band of Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand). Crucially, he also produced the 1996 acclaimed compilation "Songs For The Jet Set", celebrated by NME as "escapist pop music of the highest calibre; a tapestry of delights…8/10", and by Melody Maker as an album of "poise, balance, charm – with oodles of class added."

Escapism was the key. Whereas The Monochrome Set were always restricted to reflecting and inhabiting The Real World, whether it cared or not, Bid now realized he could instead let The Real World come to him. His creative imagination was utterly unleashed, unbound, and unfettered for the first time in his life. Scarlet's Well was born.

The Scarlet's Well songs are so classic-sounding, so infectious, and so unlike everything else around the musical firmament right now, that they could well appeal to small children and old ladies alike. The group remains defiantly anti-fashion and anti-rock. Pro-vocabulary, pro-creativity, pro-wit, pro-beauty. A band led by one of the greatest British singer-songwriters in the English language alive, at the peak of his creative powers.

Now, a London-based live Scarlet's Well band has been formed comprising Bid (vocals, guitar), Alice Healey (vocals), Toby Robinson (bass), Dickon Edwards (guitar, vocals), Kate Dornan (keyboards, vocals), Martin White (accordion) and Jennifer Denitto (drums). <b>Their début will be at the Spitz in London on May 26th</b>.

Blood has been dripped upon Bid's media profile grave, and an elegant hand has shot up through the soil…

<b>SCARLET'S WELL – THE STORY</b>

"I envisaged a village somewhere in the South-West of England. I called this little place "Mousseron" (a particular type of French mushroom), and further imagined a nearby magical well, called "Scarlet's Well". About a year after the release of the first album, I heard about a <a href="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cornwallpics/bodminwells/pages/Scarletts%20Well%20Sign.htm">real Scarlet's Well</a> near <a href="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cornwallpics/bodminwells/pages/Scarletts%20Well%201.htm">Bodmin in Cornwall</a>. I seem to also recall that nearby Boscastle used to house <a href="http://www.museumofwitchcraft.com/">the only witch's museum in the country.</a> I am irritated by the fact that Real Life continually strives to emulate my twisted and bizarre psyche.

"In making these albums, I am walking through a thick fog, lit here and there by fireflies, and have little idea of where I'm going. Storylines develop between songs and albums, and I sometimes make an effort to guide them, but mostly end up following some silly sprite into a puddle.

""Strange Letters" is "set" in the village, with the penultimate song being about a ship sailing out to sea (thereby inadvertently establishing Mousseron as a port).

""Blue Flowers" is partly set somewhere off the coast of South America, with the crew of the ship from the previous album now on the trail of the lost Lord Fishgarlic, a native of Mousseron. Some of the words on that album are spoken by him, some by the girls sailing after his memory, and some have nothing to do with any of it! The penultimate song is the reading of a parchment written by Lord Fishgarlic and found on the floor of a temple by the girls, describing his opening of a secret doorway within and entry to a foul place beneath the earth.

"On "Underworld", Alice and her friends journey back to Mousseron through the Underworld." The Return…" is the ship coming back by itself. "Macaw" is about a ghost on the ship haunting one of the two macaws that sailed- this one flew back, after betraying the others. The other parrot walks back with Alice's (much reduced) party. Most of the other songs are about encounters and dialogues Alice has with the dead and the cursed. "Cerberus" sees Alice cheat the guardian of the Underworld and escape (by putting him to sleep, q.v. Orpheus and the Lyre). "Diary" is Alice's exit from the Underworld into the Mousseron annual steam fair, where she is unnoticed in the mayhem.

"In "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse", a group of people sing songs and tell stories in an inn ("The Laughing Horse") on the outskirts of Mousseron.

"Some may think that this is a little excursion; far from it. I can't see myself doing anything else for the foreseeable future. I can't help it."

http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/

<img align=left src="http://www.bid.clara.net/swell/dr-spid-l.jpg"></img>The new <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/">Scarlet's Well</a> album is called "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse", and is released this May on <a href="http://www.siesta.es/">Siesta Records</a>.

It's a glittering gem of a record, and features more cinematic fop-pop from legendary songwriter Bid, at turns wry, arcane, evocative and ornate.

Bid describes the album as "A happy pig walking through the forest, looking different through the varied foliage and dappled light."

As no singles are to be released from "Dream Spider…", I thought it would be a nice idea to make some of the songs available in advance, one by one, as mp3s. People can treat them as singles of a sort. Bid has now granted me permission to do this, and each song will be available to download for a limited period.

Needless to add, if you like what you hear, do tell others. And please <b>buy the album</b> when it comes out.

So, here is the first such release <a href="http://www.fosca.com/Scarlets-Well-How-The-Cypress.mp3">(click here for link)</a>.

This is a rather gorgeous slice of androgynous English Psychedelia, called <b>"How The Cypress Made Apollo"</b>. Written by Bid, vocals by Florence and Bid, and, I feel, the most dreamy and sensual song in the Scarlet's Well repertoire.

<i>Green leaf for his tongue
Petal make his lungs
Breathe deep, scents in the air
Live, live, live

Mute swan weave his hair
Starling make it fair
Curls kiss his golden brow
Live, live, live

Through woods far away
Forget-me-knots will play
Leap high, up to the sun
Live, live, live</i>

http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/

An open request for advice from my UK readers, as I suspect most of them will know all about the subject.

After being treated like a leper once too often for the crime of not owning one, I have tentatively decided to get a dreaded mobile phone, to use discreetly and carefully.

It has to be one that can be switched to some kind of absolutely silent alert, which I suppose means a vibrate function. Not one that just makes a loud vibrating sound, mind. It must be also able to easily send and receive text messages composed of proper sentences, and doesn't have to make that ghastly beep noise when such a message arrives.

Additionally, bear in mind that I'm keen to spend as little money as possible.

I thoroughly resent having to do this, but look forward to my life being made a lot easier once I do.

Many thanks in advance.

Much talk in the press and among friends about Mr Wilson's London concerts at The Royal Festival Hall, temporarily known as The Hall Of Grateful Weeping Men while he is there, spotlighting a Great Lost Pop Album, "Smile".

I am not a Beach Boys devotee (just as well – my wallet couldn't take the strain), but I do have my own favourite Great Lost Pop Album. At least, lost in the sense of never being reissued on CD, or indeed ever available on CD at all. Until this month.

The album is "Bite" by Altered Images from 1983. I've been waiting twenty-one years for this.

The reissue, "Bite… Plus", follows the other two Altered Images album reissues in being very nicely put together, with bonus tracks and sleevenotes, and at mid-price too. But my enjoyment is marred when Track 2, "Another Lost Look" turns out to be an inferior, unfinished, guitar-heavy demo version where Ms Grogan is barely singing at all. As opposed to the full, synth-drenched vocal-soaring version on the original vinyl album that I'm familiar with.

Quite interesting to have this demo version, but not at the expense of the one I wanted. The proper version hasn't been included on any of the group's many CD "Best Of"s, either. Ah well, I shall have to put up with my scratchy-vinyl-to-mp3 version for ever more. I do wish these reissue people would do things properly. But I suspect it's only me who minds.

<img align=left src="http://www.fosca.com/dickon-at-kashpoint2004.jpg"></img>
<b>[<a href="http://www.markusinteractive.com/clubs/kashpoint2">Photo by Tatu Vuolteenaho, used with permission. Click here for more photos from the night.</a>]</b>

Every Thursday night, I'm currently to be found at the club <a href="http://www.kashpoint.com/">Kash Point</a>.

Last week, it took place for the last time at the venue Moonlighting, underneath Greek Street. Festooned with tacky mirrors, Stringfellows-style striplighting, and plush seating, the premises seemed rather more suited to bored businessmen and luckless lapdancers than the colourful New-New-New Romantics of Kash Point.

After taking this week off, the club will be changing venues once again, returning on March 4th at Infinity in Old Burlington Street. So it seemed fitting that the last night at Moonlighting was its busiest there, by a long way indeed.

The reason for this radical swelling in attendees was, it seemed, down to one thing. Fashion. There are all kinds of exciting new pop acts performing at the club every week, but rarely do they draw so many souls that a substantial queue develops outside the building. Announce a Kash Point Fashion Show instead, and the fire regulation limits are met within minutes. The only conclusion to be drawn is that Fashion is officially Better Than Music.

Is this true? Or do Fashion People just have more friends than Music People? It certainly is a curious world. The people behind the scenes in the fashion industry are not any better looking or better dressed than their counterparts in the music industry, yet their work has a more universal quality. Fashion itself never goes out of fashion. Music can often appear the domain of the young. The sight of a man in his thirties carrying a guitar case in the street can be downright embarrassing to all. People have to be Fans of music. Music has to be explained, even defended. Fashion doesn't need fans. It's already accepted. Fashion manages to both feel ridiculous, elitist and closed-off to The Rabble, while soliciting forelock-tugging in even the most resentful of minicab drivers. Fashion is The Royal Family of art forms. "God bless them – they do a good job".

One hears of slumps in the sales of music magazines, but not of fashion magazines. Fashion's connection with advertising is purer than Music's, and so somehow more forgiveable. Musicians lending their songs to advertising campaigns are looked down upon as desperate, but fashion models and make-up designers appearing in commercials are acceptable. Because they're worth it. The model Ms Moss makes fashion-connected adverts all the time, and her appearance in a pop video is seen as a Good Thing. But when a pop star like Ms Madonna appears in a clothes commercial, the world weeps.

Kash Point's own fashion show, held at the end of London Fashion Week, featured, as one might expect, gloriously imaginative, colourful, and often cumbersome creations that the late Leigh Bowery would have approved of. But the thing is, Kash Point really encourages people to come dressed like that whatever the week. The host, Mr Glamorre, always wears an entirely different visually striking ensemble, every week. Another young club staffer, known only as Little Richard, goes in for customized garb usually involving something cheap he's found melded with a large amount of gaffa-tape.

One one memorable evening, Richard was decked out in a child's lobster costume, picked up in an Archway discount shop for a tenner. A desperate attempt to cash in on the film "Finding Nemo" was probably the shop's intention. The costume was the most unlike a lobster, or indeed any creature, that it was possible for a costume to be. A better description would be a tube of three hula-hoops covered with pink nylon, with a hinged lid at the top by way of a mouth. Sad, spongy lobster arms drooped uselessly from the sides, and cheap plastic white goggle-eyes on the lid completed the costume, at least as far as its woeful manufacturer was concerned. In addition, Richard had improved the thing by gaffa-taping a couple of old pillows to its front. And then proceeded to walk around the nightclub and dancefloor in the costume all night.

When he danced, the costume began to disintegrate. It may have been a natural process, or aided by its wearer, or both, but every time I glanced at the dancefloor, the lobster had devolved into something else entirely. Its bottom half vanished fairly early on into the night. Then, as Richard went into a frenzied pirouette, one of the pillows span off into the crowd. The other found its way up the costume, and into the lobster's mouth. I've seen many sights on London club dancefloors, but the vision of an unconvincing giant dancing lobster swallowing a pillow is, I firmly admit, exactly the sort of thing I postpone suicide for.

The following week, Richard recycled the lobster's thorax, wearing it horizontally on his head. Thorax On The Dancefloor.

In the packed Boogaloo pub the other night, my local here in Highgate, where on Tuesdays there's a faintly legendary rock and pop quiz. Sometimes mildly famous pop people drop in. Tonight there's Bernard Butler, and, more impressively, Shane MacGowan, if only to confirm he's alive and not locked away in some institution. Mr MacGowan scares me.

I am later informed that Carl from the Libertines is also present. I've yet to be swayed by his group, but I do approve of them reciting Mr Sassoon's Suicide In The Trenches at a recent award ceremony.

I join Ms Senay, Ms Anna, Ms Jen and Ms Jane and as usual find most the of questions far too difficult. However, I do know that:

(a) The director of Curiosity Killed The Cat's video for "Misfit" was Andy Warhol.
(b) The acting debut as nuns in a 1968 episode of "Tarzan" was by Diana Ross and the Supremes
(c) Bob Hardy and Paul Thomson are the rhythm section in Franz Ferdinand.
(d) Rattlesnakes was the debut album of Lloyd Cole and The Commotions, who are reforming.
(e) Rescue Me was by Fontella Bass, NOT Aretha Franklin.
(f) Joan Baez looks like that.

I am absolutely useless at everything else. When questions begin "Which reggae producer…", I laugh with giddy abandon and nip out to set fire to a squirrel.

Mr Butler's team wins. We come about halfway. But frankly, we have the best hair collectively, and that's the main thing.

All harmless competitive fun. No one got hurt, no beauty was despoiled. It is possible.

I mention this latter point, because I'm still reeling from hearing that the notorious <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,385956,00.html">Blue Peter Garden vandalisation</a> of the 80s was carried out by the millionaire footballer Les Ferdinand (not a patch on his musical relation Franz) and his friends. Mr Ferdinand now dismisses it as "just a bit of fun". A terrible, depressing catch-all phrase, also favoured by louts, bullies and rapists.

Far be it for me to suggest that's my view of all professional players of "The Beautiful Game", but the reader must understand that my prejudice is ingrained from school PE lessons, where my attendant Proustian sensations are akin to the stark terror of a Vietnam conscript.

One of the few joys about adult life is not being forced to play wretched football anymore. At school, sport is restricted to a few merciful hours per week. In the adult world, it's everywhere. The world is a World Of Sport. People wear trainers and other sportswear despite not even being professional athletes. Sport is The Default Interest. I've never understood why. Even many perfectly intelligent people, who would never dream of vandalising a fly, seem to like football. It makes no sense.

As soon as I am made King, I shall ban All Sport. Why? Just a bit of fun.