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Sunday 3rd September 2006

Though I find this weirdly intrusive I have decided to make my FitDay page public. Go on, snoop away and look at the food I am eating. Letting you know what I am eating seems like an invasion of my privacy, which might seem strange from someone who details their private life online every day, but I will leave it up for the moment as an incentive to stop me gorging on inappropriate or embarrassing food. And yes I have eaten a yoghurt most days so far, but that's only because they are an excellent source of calcium. At the end of a year period we will be able to work out just how many yoghurts I eat on average and then we can send an email to all Sainsburys' staff to let them know just how much I like/don't like yoghurt.
The public nature of the page now means I will have to forgo those vital sexual activity burnt up calories. I don't fancy letting you all know how often I have sex or for how long. Mainly because it's not very often and for not very long. You should be able to work it out from the discrepency between my actual weight loss and the supposed calories burned. You may need to wait a few years to spot this difference. If I get too many weird emails about my food intake I will make my page private again. So if you're getting off on knowing what I eat, then you'd better keep that to yourself. Fatboy fan Steve Berry is competing against me. Check out his progress here. He's not the bloke off of Top Gear. He's a bloke who has just written a book about games from the 1970s. Do you remember the 1970s? I do.

I had been looking forward to my return to the Andrew Collings show. But today my cab hadn't arrived by 2pm. There have been some cab problems in the past and a new producer has just taken over, so I thought there was a good chance that there had been an oversight. Not wanting to let down 6 Music or the tens of listeners to the show, I decided I'd better get out on the streets and hail my own cab.
Safely ensconced in a black taxi I rang my mum and dad to see how there week has been. I told my dad I was on the way to the show. "It's not on this week," he told me.
"How do you know?" I asked. I mean how likely is it that the producer would have told my dad this, but not me?
"It's not in the Radio Times. Something else is on."
He got my mum to check the Radio Times and she confirmed that the station was covering some festival or other this week. That would certainly explain the lack of cab. But other weeks it hasn't shown up, or has shown up when I wasn't on. I got a call in Tobago to tell me the cab was outside my house. I felt it was unlikely that I was going to be able to use it.
I was still at a point where I could have asked the cab to turn round and take me home, but in a few moments I would be on the A40. Should I trust my mum and her Radio Times or should I go with the instinct that surely someone would have told me about this?
I conceeded that it was possible I had been told of this and had simply forgotten. If I had been told at any point during the Fringe then it was likely to have slipped my mind. Maybe it was mentioned after the final show I did before I left. That seemed like a long time ago. I tried to ring Andrew Collings, but his phone was off. Evidence perhaps that he was on air? Or just taking the day off? I texted the old producer hoping she might respond in time. I didn't have a number or name for the new producer. We were just about to get on to the A40. I was pretty sure I was wasting my time. But I didn't want to let anyone down, so we pushed onwards.
I was late (if there was a show, incredibly early if there wasn't) and the fact that no-one was ringing to see where I was suggested that the quest would be fruitless. I got to Broadcasting House pretty convinced I was going to find an empty studio and sure enough upon arrival Andrew Collings was not in his seat playing something by the Arctic Monkeys or the Specials. He was (unbenownst to me) in Brighton having a lovely day off. In his seat was a middle-aged man who was eyeing me suspiciously through the studio window. I don't know who he was. Maybe the producer of the show that was replacing us or maybe just some BBC employee who was playing at pretending to be Andrew Collings and imagining playing something by Morissey or Robots in Disguise. I didn't stop to question him. I went for a coffee instead - a double espresso, check fitday and you can see it listed. I don't like this at all.
I bought a newspaper and read it and imagined the funny things I might have said about the news stories if Andrew had been around. Maybe I should have gone back upstairs and said them to the Andrew Collings wannabe. He would probably have loved that. He could have pretended to be offended by my cheeky remarks whilst at the same time goading me on to further atrocities. We could have taped it on a tape recorder and then played it back later on, pretending it was actually on the radio.
It was all a bit like turning up at school and finding it was a Saturday. I still don't really know if it was all my own stupid fault, but suspect this was the case. No harm was done in the end. I would probably have talked about AN Wilson being duped by the fake Betjeman letter. I could have had some fun as the first letter of each sentence spelled out "AN Wilson is a shit". I wouldn't have been allowed to say "shit". But then I could have been funny getting round that. There's no point thinking about it now. It never happened. Ah what comedy gold might have been spun today if cruel circumstance had not intervened?
I went home and tried to write for TWTTIN instead. And if you want to know what I ate for dinner then you know where to go to look.
You are a freak.


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