Tonight on "Big Brother's Little Brother", Dermot O'Leary used the VERY American phrase "you do the math" entirely seriously. It's MATHS over here, Mr O'L. Plural.

So I can only assume that particular catchphrase has officially entered UK English now. Along with "whatever", "go figure", "sophomore", "DUH!", and generally ending every sentence with that most infectious of bugbears among the UK young, Australian Querulous Intonation. The revenge of the convicts!

Please note, if your own accent, eg Australian or Liverpudlian, comes with its own built-in AQI, this is entirely fair enough. But I am referring to those with Southern England accents, whose newly-acquired AQI sets my teeth on edge.

As if every statement is a question?

As if the listener is an idiot?

As if they're not listening?

And it's even worse when they add "yeah", yeah?

"I'm just going out for minute, yeah?". YES! We ARE listening to you, honest!

Something that I think is of UK origin, but equally gets my goat, is people starting their retorts with the curious word "YeahNo". Make up your mind!

"YeahNo, like, as if, whatever, gutted, you do the math, DUH, go figure, yeah?".

This, then, is how all young people speak.

Well, an awful lot of them, anyway. The louder ones.

Am I going to succumb? As if.

Just don't get me started on "basically".

As I suspected, what should have been a celebration of Adam Ant couldn't resist upping the ghoulish ante. We KNOW he's got mental problems, so why not focus more on why he's famous in the first place, for the benefit of those unlucky enough to be under 30?

It featured Mr Morley and Adam's friends commenting on how sad it was that the media have concentrated more on his mental illness in a zoo-animal fashion, rather than on his work and place in cultural history.

This was a point made in a documentary that, er, concentrated more on his mental illness in a zoo-animal fashion, rather than on his work and place in cultural history.

How TV Works, Part 374.

Having said that, the non lets-look-at-the-loony parts and all the archive footage was marvellous. People need to be reminded of a time when anyone vaguely unusual and interesting like the exotic and beautiful Mr Ant was even ALLOWED to get anywhere near the charts, let alone constantly top them.

It was gratifying to see any vaguely serious documentary about him at all, away from the I Love Nostalgia clipfests. Perhaps this heralds a new trend of covering classics of British music properly? I'd love to see a decent doc on Edwyn Collins and Orange Juice, but I'd rather it didn't take Edwyn throwing a piece of a car through a Kentish Town pub window for it to get made.

For some reason, the narrator was Justine Frischmann from Elastica. Whose speaking voice has curiously become a lot posher since the Britpop days. When I say "become", I mean "reverted", of course. Actually, so has Damon Albarn's. In the recent film "Live Forever", archive interviews of him sounding like Ray Winstone are juxtaposed with recent footage of him sounding like Brian Sewell. I think this is in fact a good thing: once you hit 30, you stop trying to bevel down the edges of yourself in order to reach some mythical common ground of fitting in, and polish up who you really are, so if the world loves you, or doesn't love you, either way, it's for the right reasons.

Unless you are Neil Morrissey and Leslie Ash, who are unctuous ingratiation personified. The Adam Ant doc's ad breaks featured Neil Morrissey and Leslie Ash going to Homebase. At the end of which, I doubt there was a viewer who DIDN'T feel like going out and throwing something through a window, whatever their previous mental history.

By way of a curious parallel, the edition of Big Brother that followed began with the housemates dressed in operatic costumes, just like something out of an Adam Ant video. And then ended disturbingly with one of the housemates displaying violent psychotic tendencies for our viewing pleasure.

I was reminded of various parties of my teenage years, where, after sufficient alcohol was consumed by all, some boys thought it was extremely funny to grab girls and drag them along floors and down stairs and so forth. I usually left the party fairly quickly at that point. Ray from BB has done this on more than one occasion now. He's not a teenage boy. He's a fully grown man. The producers gave him a thorough talking-to afterwards, and all is apparently now forgiven. But I feel very uneasy about the man and would not want him to marry into my family.

I think, in my case, I've always been frightened of drunken men physically manhandling others out of "fun". In what way is it even vaguely amusing?

I feel terrible: headaches, dizziness, nausea, insomnia. Almost definitely connected to the heat: London is a stifling 29C today. It's just as well I'm not obliged to go anywhere on a bus or tube train, as I honestly think I'd pass out or be sick, or both.

My father suffers from extreme, paralysing migraines, which often get brought on in hot weather. So far I've appeared not to inherit them. But I've never reacted to hot weather <i>this</i> badly before, and am worried this is the start of that particular gene finally manifesting itself. I sincerely hope not.

So I've had to back out of attending an audience recording of "Little Britain", much to my chagrin. Initial reports from the front are excellent. Messrs Walliams and Lucas have their own style of grotesque character-based sketch humour coupled with a style of surreal wordplay that really doesn't exist anywhere else. And where else can you find Molly Sugden, Tom Baker, Giles from Buffy and Tim from Orlando in the same TV programme? A DVD is already being planned, and needless to add I'll be placing an advance order.

Still, I've been getting some Undone Things done. I've finally put a huge pile of dusty old music papers out for the weekly recycling van. Leafing through them was interesting: front covers for Heavy Stereo, Terris, Ultrasound and Three Colours Red. Much good did it do them.

Thoughts on the upcoming Adam Ant documentary. Tragic, After They Were Famous stories being good TV. Rod Hull, Gazza, and now Mr Ant. Nothing succeeds like success being "paid for" in Faustian terms. Schadenfreude is such an English quality for such a German word.

As promised, here's that photo by the American artist Sarah Watson of The Author In His Environment, as featured on a wall in St Martin's. Imagine it's flanked by similar images of London Men In Their Spaces, including Momus in a library and Dave Blur in his animation studio.

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

<img align=left alt="an Alaskan Moose, yesterday" src="http://www.alaskawebs.com/adsa/thumbnails/moose.JPG"></img>In an attempt to discipline myself and get The Undone Things in my life done, I have decided to ban myself from going out to any clubs or gigs or social gatherings for the time being. Or even going outside of Highgate. I hope people are understanding and, as ever, Don't Take It Personally. Which is fast becoming my catchphrase.

If I had the money, I'd do what Proper Writers do, ie lock myself in a shed or hotel room, or jet off to some foreign clime. Nothing hot, of course. Perhaps Alaska. Somewhere with moose. There, I'd rent a cottage away from urban distractions, refusing to come out until the Undone Things are well and truly done. So right now, I'd like to be treated as if I were in Alaska, and not Highgate. Hmm, I appear to have "Caroline Says" in my head.

In fact, Highgate is one of those odd parts of London that can FEEL quite remote. It's not so difficult. Not if you pretend the tube station and busy Archway Road (aka the A1) aren't there. Not if you concentrate on the crumbling gothic side-streets, labyrinthine leafy lanes, woods and parks and people getting lost on the way to the Cemetery (what else is Life?). And the slightly scary nocturnal yelps of the local urban fox could, in a sense, be moose-ish. In a completely untrue sense.

I've been treating this room too often as a Dressing Room in which I prepare for Going Out, and then a Rehab Clinic in which I recover afterwards. Nothing wrong with that, but all I've done recently, rather than doing the Undone Things, is just worry about the fact I still haven't done them yet. There's also the problem of when going out, people will ask you what you're up to. Next time I do go out, I'd like to say I've actually DONE the things I'm "currently working on" this time. As it is, I haven't been enjoying myself much at clubs and gigs of late purely because I know I'm avoiding getting on with the Undone Things.

My principal Undone Things are commissioned writing. Writing words and music for Bid / Scarlet's Well and Fosca, words for Smoke Magazine, and words for something else (non-musical) that I don't want to tell anyone about yet.

The other large Undone Thing is the clearing out of my surplus possessions, so being in the moose-bothering cottage in Alaska wouldn't help that anyway. It's an ongoing process, but I really don't want it to be ongoing much longer. I won't offer them on the web this time. Albums are a bit cumbersome to deal with in terms of picking up or mailing. Not when there's an awful lot of them. So despite my previous misgivings, it's off to MVE with everything that I can't put on eBay. Perhaps the staff will let me go out of the shop and wander around Notting Hill while they check the vinyl condition: that's the part I can't stand. The branch in Camden has a bearded man who kills my kind for our soft pelts, so I can't go in there any more.

I seem to have an awful lot of Ian Levine hi-NRG 12"s and compilations. Miguel Brown's "So Many Men, So Little Time". That sort of thing. Is that even worth taking to MVE? I recall buying them all for about 10p each in a MVE bargain basement as it is. Taking them back there seems the height of sarcasm. Or tautology. Tautology & Sarcasm – the OMD album title that never was.

One of Mr Levine's Record Shack compilations is a mispressing, amusingly, and instead features some version of "All By Myself" by an unspecified male ballad artist.

I can now confirm that Germaine Greer has joined that elite list of people who have wanted to see me naked.

I got a phone call from Ms McCarthy, who runs the life modelling class that I posed for recently, and who also auditions people who want to join the <a href="http://www.modelreg.com/">British Register of Artists' Models</a>.

It transpires that Ms Greer is shortly publishing a book about the history of male beauty and The Boy In Art, and is making a South Bank show programme to complement it. She needed a suitable model for an art class scene. I was flattered that Ms McCarthy thought I was the best model she knew of for the job, indeed I do like to strike <a href="http://www.modelreg.com/ds.jpg">poses akin to those in Renaissance art</a>, and so I sauntered along to the London TV Centre to meet the producer. He promptly asked me to take my clothes off so he could film me for Ms Greer's perusal. He'd been doing that with other applicants all day. Nice work if you can get it.

I heard back from them today. Sadly, it turned out she really wanted actual BOYS rather than boyish men. I kept thinking of that episode of Only Fools and Horses where Rodney is forced to pretend he's a rather over-developed 14, in order to get a free holiday abroad.

As retarded as I am, I'm hardly a boy. I just must be the most boyish-looking artists' model that Ms McCarthy knows of. Which is rather LESS flattering when you realise that most of the male specimens doing the rounds in London art schools must be over 45. I think for some of them, it's an alternative to getting arrested behind the back of Sainsburys. The real pretty boys are all in bands or magazines.

Shame. I was rather looking forward to exposing myself on ITV.

<img align=left src="http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00009NJ8V.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"></img>I've now heard <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00009NJ8V/ref=sr_aps_music_1_1/202-9872136-5295035">the new Pastels album, "The Last Great Wilderness"</a>. It's the soundtrack to the film of the same name. One of those indie films that no one not personally known to the director has actually seen. The album is ten tracks long, and checks in at 25 mins. One of them features Jarvis Cocker on vocals. Another is a cover version of Sly and the Family Stone's "Everybody Is a Star".

My thoughts turn to comparisons with the Stina Nordenstam soundtrack to "Aberdeen" – one or two actual songs, the rest are brief instrumental sound cues rather than proper tracks. With these indie soundtracks to indie films, I never understand why, if the tracks are going to come out in the shops, the artist doesn't expand the cues to proper tracks or even songs. No one really sits and listens to 45 sec snippets by themselves: just when you start to get into it, it's over. And like the Aberdeen soundtrack, the film in question seems to be more obscure than the album.

With proper commercial soundtrack albums, eg Moulin Rouge, the album and film promote each other, but ultimately the soundtrack album defers to the film. If the film in question runs for 2 days at the ICA then vanishes, I really think the soundtrack artist should rename the album as a original release for the artist in their own right, and build the cues into proper length tracks. Otherwise, it's all a bit half-hearted and comes across as deliberately non-essential. But in a saturated marketplace, ALL ALBUMS RELEASED MUST BE CONSIDERED BY THEIR CREATORS AS ESSENTIAL!!!! Why release a NON-ESSENTIAL album at all? Why release an album, or indeed write a song, if you don't honestly think it's the best one you've done yet? That's should be the law. If the Pastels DO think this, I think they should go back and make the tracks on "The Last Great Wilderness" long enough to give the music it's due… Life's too short for releasing deliberately wilful ephemera, surely. Not if your average workrate is like The Pastels, ie two proper albums a decade. The first Pastels single came out a year before the first Smiths one.

See also that Stephen Merritt soundtrack album – how often do the Magnetic Fields fans listen to that, compared to "69 Love Songs"? And have you seen the film? Has anyone??? What is the point? Bid's Scarlet's Well albums are deliberate soundtracks to imaginary musical films. With the Pastels album, and the Merritt one too, the film might as well be imaginary.

Still, the actual music is great, even if it's all too short. The post-Katrina Pastels have always been good at instrumentals – "Kitted Out" on "Truckload Of Trouble" is a glorious piece of cabaret burlesque. And I love The Sly Stone cover – the only actual proper Pastels song on this new album. The Jarvis song is nice – though a bit Jarvis by numbers, and even that ends a bit prematurely.

I may well buy the CD, because it's got a nice cover by Aggi and is inexpensive. But we'll have to see how much I actually re-listen to it, though. Shouldn't all albums be made to be re-listened to?

Is Stephen Pastel the Philip Larkin of indie music? Much revered and influential, a qualified librarian on the side, his voice unmistakably low and doleful, his work more and more sporadic, and when it does appear it's extremely, frustratingly short.

I missed the last night of Club Stay Beautiful last night, partly due to feeling utterly drained after a particularly intense and extended Fosca rehearsal (for our forthcoming big concert in Athens), and partly to an inaccountable revulsion at the thought of waiting at bus stops in the night. Which is silly. So I stayed at home, lay on my bed and watched the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000695JR/202-8603749-0328621">"Mapp & Lucia" DVD</a>.

Still, I don't doubt the club will return in some format sooner rather than later. Otherwise where will people like me go when we DO want to get out of bed?

Tonight's intended sojourn will not involve bus stops, being a birthday celebration taking place as it does at The Boogaloo pub, then at the person's own home. Both of which I can see from the window to the right of my computer here in Highgate. The Boogaloo was once The Shepherds, where Coldplay had their secret gig a year or two ago. I was rather hoping that would mean the new Groucho Club was mere yards from my front door, but the owners sold up and it's now more of a low-lighting wine bar with a phoney name. Still, the jukebox has Nick Cave albums on it.

The person whose one step closer to the grave people are cheering is Mr Taylor Parkes, the writer and failed gynaecologist. Providing he can be dragged away from scouring Popbitch for stories about himself.

Happy Easter To All My Adoring And Abhoring Readers:
<img alt="onstage, downstairs at The Garage, Good Friday 2003" src="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/brentford1/misc/d.jpg"></img>

(photo by <lj user=mzdt>)

A reminder of the Fosca show this Good Friday, April 18th:

It's Downstairs at The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, London N5 1RD. Tel: 020 76071818.

This is the Strange Fruit Easter Special, effectively a mini-festival featuring Ballboy, Bearsuit, Fosca, The Wandering Step, Slipside, and The Cut Outs, plus DJs.

Advance tickets £8, on sale now from Ticketmaster, Stargreen and other agents.

Doors 6pm, first band 6.15pm, Fosca onstage 8.30pm.

More details at http://www.strange-fruit.co.uk/easter.htm

Health Warning: Fosca's performance may include the wearing of bunny ears.