Wednesday September 20th 2000

And now, Celebrity Ansaphone Messages. This week: Jamie Theakston:

“Hi, this is Jamie. I’m not in right now, but whatever it is, I’ll do it. BEEP.”

Maybe I should just watch less TV. Clearly it’s getting to me. Mr Theakston seems to be on everything. Except the phenomenally successful Big Brother. Which reminds me of “The Living Soap” palaver of yesteryear.

“The Living Soap”, unlike Big Brother, was not at all successful. In fact, it was an unmitigated disaster, meeting a new pitfall every week. Which made it all the more interesting to watch. It appeared on BBC2 in the early 90s and was inspired by the success of the US show “The Real World”, where a houseful of young people would be filmed as they went about their lives, and the results were broadcast weekly to the nation.

But for reasons presumably to do with national differences in character, innate exhibitionism and attitudes towards being on TV between Americans and the British (see also Jerry Springer), The Living Soap proved somewhat more short-lived than its US counterpart. In America, everyone is on TV, indeed prefers to discuss their life-changing marital disputes on air, and no one bats an eyelid when a camera crew follows someone in a supermarket. In Britain, we have a much more complicated attitude to television and the art of being on it. We are both resentful of other people being more famous than us, while obsessed with celebrity gossip and still secretly dying to be on TV ourselves, if only to shout “hello mum” (and nothing else… no TV-as-confessional fans, us). If the events shown on a docusoap have already happened sometime ago, (as in “Paddington Green, “Airport” etc), things tend to be straightforward; reality stays fairly real. If it’s ongoing, though, and not sealed hermetically from the outside world like Big Brother, disaster is guaranteed.

So once the first edition of The Living Soap’s Manchester house full of first-year students appeared on the box, the occupants’ “real world” was turned into a farcical contrivance of reality. People did turn a hair when a housemate and their attendant camera crew walked into their local pub. The house’s location was quickly discovered and besieged: a brick thrown through a window proved particularly memorable. One of the show’s “stars”, an Asian girl called Spider, thought that the missile was a racist attack on herself. That might have been true, but no less likely was the possible reason that, thanks to the programme’s mercilessly edited portrayal of her, everyone in the country thought she was a bit thick.

In fact, all the students quickly became aware that the country saw them as self-deluding, naive stereotypes (it’s difficult to be a teenage student on TV and not look a naive idiot), and the numbers in the house started to dwindle. The inital lure to a student of living rent-free and poverty-free for a year in exchange for being filmed had lost its appeal. Even starvation and homelessness seemed more attractive than being on TV, if it had to be on such terms. Dan, the “Nasty Nick” of the house, was a wily and charismatic middle-class Tory boy who saw what was happening, and got out fast. His place was taken by Colin, a camp opportunist who knew exactly what was going on, and allegedly signed secret sponsorship deals with various firms to product-place their pizzas or trainers to the cameras as much as possible. Previously the show had been no fun for the housemates, but great TV for the rest of us. Once Colin moved in, it just wasn’t fun for the viewer either. The jig was up. The housemates moved out, few wanted to move in, the series spluttered and died months ahead of its intended one-year time span, finally reduced to a couple of late-night “highlight” specials narrated by that student nostalgia icon, Brian Cant.

Since then, British docusoaps (with the exception of Big Brother), are filmed in blocks of entire series before being broadcast. The main subjects also tend to be at least 29 and hence have worked out who they exactly are and how to present that persona to the cameras, so it will survive even the most brutal editing. “Nasty” Nick knew exactly who he was and what he was doing. And unlike Colin, he had the decency to be in his early 30s. British TV viewers prefer to love-to-hate someone who’s not too young, rather than someone who’s actually young, who they just hate. For being young. Still, the joy of watching young adults being beastly to each other in their formative years on TV has turned up again on Channel 4’s “Shipwrecked” programme, earlier on this year. It was a kind of updated version of “Minipops”… As far as TV exploitation goes, you’re a child until you’re the wrong side of 25. After that, don’t fret, you can still go on nostalgia programmes and talk about how great Space Dust was.

Saturday September 16th 2000

October 2nd sees the release of at least three Decent British Pop Albums. Oh yes! Aside from the Fosca debut long-player (from which John Peel has already played “The Millionaire Of Your Own Hair”) , there’s the latest offering from Spearmint, “Oklahoma”. A few of the songs on “Oklahoma” were previewed on the tours I played with the group in my role as Other Guitar, not least an electrifying ditty called “The Locomotion” (no, not the Kylie-covered one), plus “Oklahoma” itself (no, not the Rogers & Hammerstein one) . I’m agog to find out if the recorded version of the title track will use the sample from a late 70s disco hit whose name escapes me, as said hit seems to keep cropping up on TV shows such as “I Love the 70s”. I now always associate it with my time in Spearmint.

The other recommended release, out the same day, is “The Handy Wah Whole” – 2 CDs of the best of Pete Wylie, covering all his singles from the early 80s till the present. A testament to one of the most criminally unsuccessful pop stars ever. My unplayably scratchy 7″ copy of “The Story Of The Blues” can finally be replaced. Thank you, Mr Record Company, whoever you are.

The current Top 40 in this futuristic year 2000 has to date featured versions of A-Ha’s “Take On Me”, Cyndi Laupers’ “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, one song sampling Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax” , another sampling the same band’s “Two Tribes”, one remixing Gary Numan’s “Cars”, one new dance version of Madonna’s “Dear Jessie”, one dance version of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”, a girl group created by OMD (Atomic Kitten)… There have been times where I’ve been criticised by lazy, myopic fools for being “too 80s”. Clearly I’m not nearly 80s enough, or I’d be at Number One by now. If only for one week, like nearly every other Number One this year. Make room! Make room!

Still, the new Teenage Fanclub single reminds me that the 60s will never end. And why should they? If your band uses guitars, you’re drawing on something from the 60s or 70s. If your band uses synths and sequencers, you’re drawing on something from the 80s or 90s. It’s that simple. The only original factor that you CAN bring to your songs is your own splendid, unique persona. Which is why I’m constantly surprised so many current bands insist on being quite so very persona non grata…

Thursday August 24th 2000

I’ve come to a decision: Radiohead are a national embarrassment and must be shot at once. Or at least deported. To Middlesborough.

Don’t get me wrong (said in my best Alison-Steadman-in-Abigail’s-Party voice). I actually quite like a couple of their songs. But as an ideology, they are singlehandedly ruining British music and British youth, by inspiring impressionable sixth-formers all over the country to equate faux-angst overcooked wailing, bad lyrics, entirely devoid of wit or humour (even Cohen has wryness, even their beloved U2 and REM don’t take themselves too seriously), and plumping for general self-deluding po-facedness with some ill-conceived idea of actual worth. Radiohead gave us Muse and JJ72. Thanks. Radiohead would explode if placed near a Motown record. Diana Ross’s “Touch Me In The Morning” contains more angst then they’ll ever contrive to disport.

Even their name is taken from a late Talking Heads song. A really naff one. Early Talking Heads would be fine… So why, then, are they allowed to live, worse, actively encouraged, unanimously, by the biz? Simply because they are at the heart of far too many people’s livelihoods: too many people in the Serious Rock Industry have vested interests in the perpetuation of both the band and all they stand for, every dour, dreary trapping. Result being: that dreaded phrase “Much Awaited New Album” everywhere I read, every week for the past year.

Not much awaited by me, dears. You’ll be the first ones up against the wall when the pop revolution comes. Small black schoolgirls on Tottenham buses are laughing at you.

Until that day of reckoning, Radiohead are continually held up as a precedent, nay, an acceptable, even preferable role model for glamour-free white boys with their irony-free Marshall amps and eyes set on the corporate Alt-Rock stadium career trajectory. I’m too fazed to even yawn.

Dear Susannah Yorke, if you genuinely hate your situation so much whilst being so concerned about cruelty to others in the world, please do us all a Benefit and stop making music. Signed, the entire population of Tibet.

Thursday August 3rd 2000

This week’s Most Hated Thing: men who spit loudly and manfully in public urinals. Why do they do it? Repressed foreplay for cottaging?

There are rumours circulating about certain band rules we have in Fosca. Yes, the one about the ban on trainers, long hair and facial hair is true. Every rehearsal, any band member caught “slumming it” has to run four laps of the car park chanting “Cleanse! Tone! Moisturise!” before we can begin. It keeps the grooming standards up for me and my doughty pop sentinels of love.

My dancefloor moves are entirely inspired by a lifetime of buying underwear in charity shops.

I’m reliably informed that Daphne & Celeste, the Proper Chart Pop Stars That Ageing Indie Boys Can Also Enjoy, have bought the Orlando album. I’m not sure to be more impressed by the fact they wanted to own a copy, or by the fact they found a shop selling it. Apparently they refer to me as “Dickly.” Which makes me sound like a cartoon dog with its own strip in the Daily Mail. Named and shamed!

I’ve had an interesting evening at the Borderline venue in London, where I had hoped to catch an excellent set from the Trembling Blue Stars, but instead found myself loitering at the back of the venue chatting to one David Gedge by the t-shirt stall. For some reason I got into a heated argument with him about which Altered Images songs The Wedding Present had covered. I was sure that, in addition to “Happy Birthday”, they had also recorded a version of “See Those Eyes”, while he insisted the track I was thinking of was in fact “Think That It Might”. “I should know, I was there”, he said with threateningly conclusive zeal.

Thankfully, I managed to swiftly change the subject by relating a recent comment my next-door-but-four-neighbour had made on listening to Fosca. They had maintained that my vocals strongly resembled, to their ears at least, “a gay David Gedge”.

“I don’t know about that”, the Gedgester retorted. “I mean, if “This Boy Can Wait” isn’t laced with latent homoeroticism, what is? Now push off, you’re casting a louche shadow on my Cinzano.”

And, do you know, he was right.

Wednesday 12th July 2000

Hello again. It’s your Host with the Least. And today you find me harbouring graphic designs. On a graphic designer.

I’ve been asked why I’ve adopted the soubriquet of “Dickon Angel”. As usual, it’s never one sole reason. I was in a bar with Stevenson earlier this year when I decided on it. I was discussing how less and less I felt like “Dickon Edwards”, especially now that the other Dickon Edwards, an actor, had started cropping up in magazines: he’s even the same age as me, has an equally sexy square jaw hinting at unbridled manliness within, and who has the temerity to also come from East Anglia. I occasionally receive e-mails getting the two of us confused. Plus I felt more and more that the human “Dickon Edwards” was dead, and engraved on his hypothetical tombstone were these words:

“Here Lies Dickon Edwards
Cancelled due to Lack of Import.
Still, at least he never worked with Dave Stewart”

With my new white suit, and being a fan of “Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)”, the original series with Kenneth Cope mind you, I toyed with the thought of being my own ghost.

But for some reason I’d also been watching a lot of films which had angels in: “Barbarella”, “Wings of Desire”, “Dogma”, “It’s A Wonderful Life”. Suddenly, the analogy was obvious. Angels appealed more than ghosts: they had never been human in the first place. Angels had never “gotten a life”…

And I thought how much more I identified with the concept of being an angel (a fallen one, naturally) than as a human. Specifically, angels as lonely, pontificating, sidelined observers, lurking in the wings (rather like… online diarists), doomed to never take part in the action, in the Real World, while still stuck with actually being in the damn thing, being at its mercy, watching on, watching on…

Orlando was a failed attempt to affect the Real World, directly speaking to people from my point of view, with my then current concerns as a fellow human, albeit a pretty strange excuse for a fellow human: a human with no life to speak of. Fosca songs, however, are more removed. After wailing “I coulda been a contender!”, I’m now resigned to being a Non-Participant in the grand scheme of things, and yet I’m still here, still a Big Fan of the world, still hoping to influence it, if only in a very small way. And so, my own present existence being little more than a vacuum (abhorred by Nature, it says here in Magnetic Poetry letters on some Islington fridge), Fosca songs are inspired by other sources: either by observing people I know in modern London (helplessly!), or finding my own childhood and memories of growing up in Suffolk have started to haunt me more than they used to, as if my distant past has taken up the section in my brain really meant to deal with my present life. But, of course, for me there is no present life. And so, when not in Samuel Pepys mode, I find myself in Brideshead Revisited and A La Recherche… (the Ladybird version) mode. One of my most abiding and happiest memories was playing the Archangel Gabriel in Bildeston Primary School’s nativity play. I was the only boy who wanted to be an angel rather than a Shepherd or Wise Man. I led a choir of girl angels. I can even remember the dance moves.

It’s since occurred to me that the bar in which I made this decision to go with “Dickon Angel” was the Heavenly Social…

Oh, all right. The real reason is because I was hoping Robbie Williams would be loving me tonight…

Matt from our record label wants me to go out and shamelessly network with the movers and the shakers on the London music scene, securing much-lacking reviews and publicity for the Fosca records. I did it before with Tim for Orlando, up there in the networking-as-an-art-form stakes with Menswear, so why can’t I do it again now? I feel like telling him things are different, I’m not a inside participant and face on that scene anymore, I’m an External Angel, old thing. But that would sound silly on the phone. To put it Wildely. Because Fosca had zero press coverage at the time, Matt asked me to unearth a handful of glowing Orlando reviews to help convince the shops to stock the record, much to my chagrin. Since then, Fosca has finally made its press debut in Melody Maker this week, albeit as a standout track on the Shinkansen label’s various artists compilation album, “Lights on a Darkening Shore”. The rest of the album gets damned, but we emerge relatively unscathed (it’s like Romo all over again…), made officially Okay To Like, and get called “beautiful.” Not a bad start.

Sadly, it really isn’t enough to just make records, send them to journalists, even with nice personal covering letters reminding them of that promise they once made that time you rescued their Pomeranian from a hedge, and be confident of a review, even a damning review. The message comes back that the record isn’t getting a review, because it isn’t “important” enough. Promotion, or rather, the right kind of promotion, is sadly as important as the music. The right Press Angle, the right PR backing, the right press officer, the right media pitch, the right deal, the right people behind you, the right “buzz”, the right radio airplay (the Fosca single being played by John Peel thrice and counting? Not good enough!), the right pre-sales orders interest from the shops, the right midweek chart position, the right Received Opinion, the right consensus, the right target market in the right media campaign, the right amount of money behind it all… all just as important as the right vocal take, the right chord change, the right lyric… And in, say, Coldplay’s case, why bother making an even half-decent record if you’ve got the publicity part sussed? My dog can write better songs than Coldplay, and he’s a snappier dresser. He just hasn’t got the right PR.

The upshot of this depressing state of affairs is that you get critics writing about bands with piles of money behind them (or piles of money about to be behind them) , saying they’re “promising”… “this time next year they’ll shine, or at least be on a Shine compilation”…. “the fifth album will be a corker, probably”… Meanwhile there are exciting groups out there NOW who already are delivering their potential, in spades. But there’s no money behind them, so they’re Not Important Enough to get written about. I realise this is not a wholly original complaint, that it’s the Order of Things, it’s the Name of the Game, but that doesn’t stop me gritting my teeth in foppish frustration behind my fluttering fan. I don’t want to be a kind of powdered Billy Childish for the rest of my life, but if the Arab Strap fits…

And here I’d like you in indulge me in quoting a Sondheim song about this dilemma, “Putting It Together”. It’s the version sung by Barbra Streisand on “The Broadway Album” (I once parted company with a guitarist because he said Moonshake were better than Barbra Streisand, but I digress). This one goes out to the New Wave of Ikea Rock: Coldplay, Doves, My Vitriol, Crashland, Badly Shorn Beard… etc etc ad badly-dressed over-rated corporate lager-sponsored major label alt-rock three-year-development deal festival tour-support-funded-free-CD-stuck-on-the-cover nauseam…: You have to advertise your music as having money behind it, so it can get a decent expensive promotional campaign to advertise it further, and one day, if you’re very lucky, you’ll get chosen to soundtrack an Ikea advert on TV. In order to pay back all that record label promotional campaign money that they couldn’t recoup. Serves yer right.

Instant Karma’s gonna get you. As that Nike advert used to go.

Be NICE, girl
You have to pay a price, girl
They like to give advice, girl
Don’t think about it twice, girl
Art isn’t easy
A vision’s just a vision
If it’s only in your head
If no one gets to hear it
It’s as good as dead
Putting it together
That’s what counts
Takes a little cocktail conversation
But without the proper preparation
Having just the vision’s no solution
Everything depends on execution
Link by link
Making the connections…
Drink by drink
Taking every comment as it comes
Learning how to play the politician
Like you play piano, bass and drums
Otherwise you’ll find your composition
Isn’t going to get much exhibition
Keeping at a distance doesn’t pay
Still if you remember your objective
Not give all your privacy away
A little bit of hype can be effective
Long as you can keep it in perspective
Even when you get some recognition
Everything you do you still audition
Art isn’t easy
Overnight you’re a trend
You’re the right combination
Then the trend’s at an end
You’re suddenly last year’s sensation
All they ever want is repetition
All they really like is what they know
Bit by bit
Putting it together
All it takes is time and perseverance
With a little luck along the way
Putting in a personal appearance
Gathering supporters and adherents
Even if you do have the suspicion
That it’s taking all your concentration
The art of making art
Is putting it together
Bit by bit
Beat by beat
Part by part
Sheet by sheet
Chart by chart
Track by track
Reel by reel
Stack by stack
Meal by meal
Deal by deal
Spiel by spiel
and THAT
is the state of the art.

Rachel’s had a complaint from one of the hapless victims portrayed in her diaries recently. I am terribly jealous, it’s been ages since anyone’s complained about mine. I’m clearly being much too nice. Kenneth Williams used his as a weapon. “If you’re nasty to me, it’s going in the diaries, you know.” But his were published posthumously, and after the publisher’s libel lawyers had gone through them with a fine-toothed blue pen. The thing about online diaries is that your thoughts about others are instantly in the worldwide public domain. One can try and be a World Wide Wellington and just say “Upload and be damned!”. But a certain amount of care and tact has to be employed if it’s people you still want to get on with. Thankfully for me, I prefer keeping my friends as semi-strangers, and strangers as semi-friends. And after my former attempts at Getting On in Showbusiness failed, I’m really past caring about offending anyone now.

However, I tend to only get complaints from people who are hurt that they’re not in the diaries.

Watched a programme about the comedian and actor Alan Davies. Many women are interviewed about how sexy they find him, and how he’s a “perfect modern man”.

Some men, like Robbie Williams, are widely as attractive to both straight women and gay men. Mr Davies, though undoubtably charming, charismatic and cuddly (if not actually side-splittingly funny per se…it’s just the affable way he tells ’em), is rarely to be found in the readers’ polls in gay magazines. Gay men are still Men, and so tend to be far more aesthetic and mercenary (and obvious, I’m afraid) in their choice of desire than women. And Mr Davies, despite being found in possession of a Nice Smile, has Brian May curly hair and shapeless mumsy clothes. Anathema to the streamlined silver dreams of your average 21st century fag. Not when there’s Adam and Becks and Jude and Ryan and Matt and Ben and Robbie.

You seldom find men lusting after someone mainly because they’re “kind” or have “kind eyes”.

Not that this necessarily puts women in any better a light. I’m reminded of a rather cruel quote by Alan Bennett: “One inscription at the cemetery reads HE WAS KIND…which is the sort of thing women who don’t like sex say of a forebearing husband.”

I’m in a good mood, because John Peel played our new single the other day. I feel a bit guilty about not liking football now, typing this in a cybercafe while the England-Germany match is going on. Quite a quiet atmosphere outside in Holloway Road. Mainly women and Australians. For some reason.

Go to The Good Mixer for the first time in about three years. A few Britpop clothing types there. Except, of course, it’s like the Mods and Punks in Carnaby Street. They’re now either waxing nostalgic or are tourists (of one sort or another), pining for the good old days when Echobelly and Menswear were all the rage. Actually, Simon Menswear is still standing outside, still the Friendliest Man In North London. No one is wearing nice three-button suits, though, so I guess I’ll have to see that new film, “Gangster No.1″… Start wondering if I could be a stunt double for Spike in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. I’ve even got an unconvincing British accent. Despite being born and braised in East Anglia, this week someone asks me if I’m Swedish. Again.

The next Fosca show is on Saturday August 5th, at The Verge, 147 Kentish Town Road, Camden, London. It’s as part of a club night called The Fanclub.

Friday 9th June 2000

Summer, my least favourite time of year.

I visit the Fig-1 gallery, to see its latest installation… Will Self. The frog-headed novelist is roped off like any other exhibit, and is seated at a desk with a laptop computer and an endless supply of cigarettes. As he types and creates a new story, a large screen on the adjoining wall displays his efforts. He wears wraparound shades, so one cannot stare him out, and attempts to speak to him are strictly forbidden. I sit and watch for a while, hoping he’ll “fictionalise” me as he has done most of the gallery’s visitors. After a while, he types, “…and I hate that phoney Warhol hunched on a bench.”

Hatred, it’s that lovable emotion we all share! Blind misanthropy, it’s the great leveller! Pick one of the new 21st Century stereotypes, sorry, tribes, and vent away! And in this sticky, thin-aired city, where the pollen count rises and the tolerance level plummets accordingly.

Pick one of my own bugbears on this stifling day:

1) People with henna tattoos. On their way to “Glarstonbree”, then a fortnight in Goa. The ones who have children purely so they can take them to festivals and get their faces painted.

2) People who ride their bikes on the pavement. At top speed. Yes, I know it’s dangerous and so inconvenient to cycle in the road in London, but I choose to walk on the pavement because I was just hoping not to get run down.

3) Skateboarders. Especially ageing skateboarders. With the worst clothes, the worst haircuts and the worst music. Call that a noble, athletic sport? Give me bare-knuckle boxing in a Somerset barn any day.

4) Street artists in Leicester Square. Ah, yes, just the thing I need: a badly-drawn sketch of Bob Marley. How did I get by before?

5) People with mobile phones that play a tune. And then let it ring out for a good minute or two before answering it. In the cinema.

6) Jester hats. England team football shirts. Ill-advised shorts. Bared pink English Bad Flesh. Never mind your mad dogs, Mr Coward…

7) The film people who won’t return our record label’s umpteen calls and faxes so we can clear a short sample of dialogue from “Liquid Sky” for Fosca’s little album. For those interested, it was going to be from the scene where Margaret is talking to her old college tutor on her roof, shortly before he has his cold and loveless way with her… “I’m nobody’s victim… It’s only fair I warn them this pussy has teeth.” (Hats off to Bloomsbury Publishing and the author JT Leroy, though, for kindly letting us use a quote from his novel, “Sarah”, on the sleeve).

So I take comfort in the only way I know how. By surfing to Ask Jesus, typing in a website of choice, say “http://www.nme.com” or “http://news.bbc.co.uk”, and reading the results…

Tuesday Ist May 2000

“Hats are always funny”, said Tim Baxendale to me yesterday. “If you put a hat on the monster from Alien it’s immediately funny.”

Yes, it’s the Dickon guide to the vibrant, colourful, glamorous, futuristic, state-of-the-art UK Alternative Music Scene. Cut out and keep. Notebooks out, plagiarists!

Stereophonics:
Three bowls of porridge looking for a spoon.

Muse:
I’d like their records to be played at my funeral. And not before.

Idlewild:
I can have no room in my life for a band whose vocabulary does not incluced the word ‘moisturiser’. Eric Idle is wilder.

Gomez:
A band that would be greatly improved by death.

Primal Scream:
Free Satpal Ram! Jail Bobby Gillespie!

Embrace:
Useful… for putting up shelves.

I’m sorry, I’m in that kind of mood. Things like the “All Tomorrow’s Parties” festival line-up depress me immensely. A festival named after a song from the Warhol Factory days. But no Superstars, Pop Artists, transvestites, deviants and iconic Germanic blondes to be found here. Just badly-dressed indie-schmindie Real Ale fans playing. White boy indie post-rock. And again and again and again. Bad Beards and worse clothes. Sports clothes. Badly-cut sideburns. Ruddy skin. Stubble. Did Karen Carpenter die for nothing? Don’t they remember The Associates? Ivor Cutler? Orange Juice? It is possible to come from Glasgow and not be quite so very dour.

The thing is, the actual idea of having a music festival in a holiday camp is terrific. The problem is, the camp element seems to stop right there. It’s the Lack Of Variety Club. This year the acts and films were chosen by Mogwai. Who, let’s face it, are not the world’s greatest Abba fans. They balk at the mere mention of sequins. Mogwai and their dour little friends Must Be Stopped. With Knives. Next year it’s the turn of… Tortoise. The future’s so dreary I’ve got to wear mascara.

It’s all very well me sitting here and moaning about it. But I’m also doing my bit in the Pop Wars. Putting my neck gladly (and gaudily) on the line myself. And so… here’s some new records of my own, by way of an alternative to the Alternative.

The new Fosca single. “The Agony Without The Ecstasy”. All 2 minutes 50 seconds of burbling synths, MIDI magic and sparkling auto-harps. AND you can dance to it. Out on CD only (no 7″ elitism here) on Shinkansen next month. Release date JUNE 26th. Backed with “Confused And Proud” and “Weightless”. More aphorisms to scrawl on your satchel while gazing vainly across the room at the one who won’t gaze at you. The album, “On Earth To Make The Numbers Up”, follows in August. Unlike Orlando, the new Fosca releases should be available in France, Spain and America as well as the UK. And we’re working on Sweden and Japan. Next stop, Madison Square Gardens…. in Hemel Hempstead.

I had one of those internet questionnaires recently.

WHAT’S ON YOUR MOUSE MAT?: It’s got a plain red cotton layer covered in shameful grime, so it currently resembles a late Francis Bacon.

FAVOURITE BOARD GAME: “Drabble” It’s like Scrabble, but the loser has to impersonate Margaret Drabble for a day.

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK WHEN YOU WAKE IN THE MORNING: Oh no, not again.

FUTURE DAUGHTER’S NAME: Dickonia.

FUTURE SON’S NAME: Dickon Garden City

IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED, WHAT WOULD IT BE?: I’d quite like to join Asian Dub Foundation. Seriously! But do you think they’d have me? Last week, and this is true as well as handy for the purposes of a bad pun, I was snogged by a very cute Asian boy, smudging my make-up. I was then wearing, wait for it… Asian Rubbed Foundation.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SNAPPLE?: Are you an American? You must be very proud.

FAVOURITE MOVIE(S)?: This week it’s Liquid Sky. All-time it’s The Naked Civil Servant.

WHAT IS THE WORST THING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN?: “The Horse Whisperer”. I had to gnaw my own elbows off to survive.

WHAT ONE THING IRRITATES YOU THE MOST IN PEOPLE: Not obeying my every command.

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO BE RIGHT NOW?: New York.

WHAT IS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT? : To date, winning my Marksman badge at Colchester Barracks for the local Scouts. Deadeye Dickon, they called me. I’m actually quite handy with a .77 army rifle. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, would you? I’m a dab hand at using the crosshairs to kill people whose hair makes me cross.

Apparently these diary entries are printed out by one reader and read in the girls’ toilets at her school.

Monday 24th April 2000

Yes, the album is mixed and finished. Yes, it’s the record I’ve always dreamed of making. Yes, in Alex Sharkey I’ve found the best collaborator since Tim. Yes, there were times in the studio when Ian and Alex stood back to back, both playing vintage synths simultaneously. Yes, the record label like it. Yes, it’s coming out soon. Yes, there will be a single before then, in late June.

Amd yes, we are playing gigs again. Saturday May 27th. Club V, Upstairs At The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, London N5.