As predicted it was a heck of a day, from my 6am alarm call to going to bed at home at about 1am feeling a but dirty and sad. It was a bit too much to pack into 19 hours and I could have predicted that I would have ended it all feeling blue.
But mostly it was a fun and interesting day and a taste of the kind of life that I imagine Russell Brand lives on a daily basis, though without, I am sad to report, the copious amounts of sex that he partakes of to get through it all.
Luckily all went well with the flight, despite it being the first day of a new air traffic control system at Heathrow, which the pilot tactfully informed us had been heralded with cries of doom and gloom.
So I was at Broadcasting House in good time for Loose Ends and managed to get through the throngs of especially eccentric autograph hunters without being recognised. These fellas make Simon Quinlank look normal and I resent them. Not as much as the ones who do it by email, as at least they are getting out of the house, but still too obsessive and strange to just want autographs, without knowing who you are getting them from. Stew and me used to sign each other's names for these hits and noone ever noticed!
I always like doing Loose Ends, you meet a good variety of people. Today included Faith Brown with her almost unfeasible bosoms, Roger Cook, who has pretty big ones too, Anthony Horowitz and annoyingly cool, annoyingly talented, annoyingly young and annoyingly gorgeous band 6Day Riot, who you should definitely look out for, especially if you enjoy being annoyed by people who are everything you are not. I did 3 and a half minutes of my less offensive material (which I now realise is about all the less offensive material I have). It seemed to go down well and I felt like the insane morning flit has been worth it.
Then it was back through the throng of signature seeking weirdos, who were luckily so mesmerised by Faith Brown's breasts that they didn't even question whether I might be a celebrity.
I had time for a quick drink and some of the food that is layed on for the contributors in a nearby pub and then was whisked off to appear in the new BBC4 show, "The Book Quiz" hosted by David Baddiel. I was on a team with Joan Bakewell, the thinking man's crumpet as she is doomed to be forever known as. She is still an amazing and beautiful woman and was very open and friendly and I decided that if I ever get back to 1976, once I have exhausted myself with Jenny Agutter, I will look up Joan and marry her. You know if she wants to. But why wouldn't she? I would have travelled back in time for her... And Jenny. But I probably won't mention that then.
On the opposing side were John Simpson and India Knight, both very charming, particularly John, who kindly pretended to be excited to meet me.
Although I had been told the show would be more a celebration of books than an intellectual test, the quiz did turn out to be pretty hard and exposed my ignorance of most things literary. Joan, of course, picked up the slack and I managed to be amusing as well as unread and it was a lot of fun. Certainly not as humiliating as
my Fullstops experience, though it did make me wonder what I have done with my life. All the others were so well read and erudite and knew about authors that I hadn't even heard of. Still I managed to make some predictable jokes about Dick Dewey the hero of "Under the Greenwood Tree" so there was a point to me being there.
I was flagging already by this point of the day and still had a gig to do in Twickenham at the Bear Cat Club. It can be quite a tricky venue,
, but tonight things were a bit trickier and there was a rubbish heckler at the back, who I laid into quite effectively, but then lost the audience with an ill-advised Virginia Tech joke. I won them back with the gay bit, but then decided to see whether I could lose them and win them back again. Everything just ground to a bit of a halt and I was too tired and grumpy to do things well. It was a slightly depressing end to a full day.
I went home and finally got to bed feeling a little blue as I said. But some sleep sorted me out.
