Back to whatever it is, then. Who am I again? Dickon Edwards? Well, it could be worse.

New Year’s Eve 2007 was a heady DJ stint at the Last Tuesday Society Masked Ball, 1AM-3AM. I deliberately timed my journey so midnight would see me alone on a tube train. Out of sheer curiosity, really. Complaining about a cliche of enforced jollity is now a cliche itself, so that’s no use. Getting an offer of DJ work sorts the problem without favouring one set of friends over another. Work can be an alibi from the terror of decision. Problem solved.

Would there be a countdown over the tube train’s PA speakers? Would revellers charge through the compartments and hug everyone at the stroke of Big Ben? Actually, no. I did hear a countdown to midnight over a radio speaker, but it was the one in the driver’s compartment, just about audible through the locked door to the first carriage, where I was sitting. So now I know Tube drivers wish each other Happy New Year over their intercoms, as they work through the night. Indeed, on the only night of year when the trains don’t stop running. God bless them for that.

Found my way to the Arts Theatre, which by now was resembling the opening scenes of the movie Bright Young Things. People draped over packed staircases everwhere, all in elaborate masks and dinner dress. I was handed my own free bottle of champagne, plus a glass, plus payment in advance (always a plus), and left to get on with DJ-ing. Can’t really complain with that.

That Nicole Kidman version of ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ from Moulin Rouge sounded too cluttered after all. I even checked the decks in case another song was accidentally playing at the same time. That sums up Moulin Rouge – like several records (and indeed films) all playing at once. Like the film, the music demands absolute surrender, not joining in. But the rest worked fine: Garland, Sinatra, Minelli, Bassey.

Became a bit of a drunken idiot after I finished, talked a lot of rubbish to strangers, finished the champagne, tried dancing with the prettiest person in the room, forgot how to stand up and dance at the same time, ran away, woke up at home with mysterious bruises. So, a New Year’s cliche after all. But it suited me fine.

***

Photo of Mum in the Suffolk Free Press here. Radio Suffolk are putting her on a show where she has to choose her favourite records. She asked me, ‘What’s my favourite records again?’

Which seems funny at first, and very Mum, but it does make more sense than carrying around a personal Top Ten list in your head all the time. Or in the case of Room 101, your least favourite things. The more one thinks about it, the more silly it is. You don’t HAVE to have a Favourite Film Ever, or a Favourite Song Ever, to get through life. But lists – and their more glitzy cousins, awards – are always interesting, and TV schedules and magazine supplements would have an awful lot of space to fill without them. In 2007 there was a programme celebrating the anniversary of the BAFTAs. An award that gave itself an award.

What you’re meant to say graciously (and rightfully) about awards is that it’s not about winning, it’s about celebrating what’s on display. Awards and Best Of lists are filters and signposts to help make sense of the crowded menu, to pass on recommendations, alert people to something they might like. Just as Mum’s MBE is on one level a celebration of quiltmaking, hardly the most hyped craft in the world.

***

List Culture is now mixed in with Feet Of Clay culture, to the point where BBC3 has just broadcast something called The Most Annoying People of 2007. The show was in two parts, each lasting over two hours. As if it was Schindler’s List. Which in a way, it was.

But this time there’s a sense that even those steeped in such celebrity love-to-hate worlds are themselves getting cold feet (of clay). At the end of the Extras Christmas Special, Ricky Gervais (also on that BBC3 list) finds his thinly-veiled autobiographical character undergoing a career low: appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. He breaks down, and makes a speech to camera about it all:

If it all stopped, people wouldn’t take to the streets going ‘Oh quick! I need a picture of Cameron Diaz with a pimple!’ They wouldn’t care, they’d get on with something else. They’d get on with their lives… And f— you, the makers of Big Brother. You can’t wash your hands of this. You can’t keep going, ‘Oh, its exploitation but it’s what the public want.’ … And f— you for watching this at home. Shame on you. And shame on me. I’m the worst of all.

All of which is opening Mr Gervais up to accusations of hypocrisy, given his own love/hate obsession with celebrity, but I admire him for it.

It also reminded me of Stephen Fry’s appearance on Room 101 a few years ago, in which he put the show itself onto the list of things he most dislikes, thus cancelling itself out. Why spend energy and time celebrating dislikes, when you could spend it on the things you like instead? There’s letting off steam, there’s cathartic release, and there’s moaning for its own sake.

If 2008 could see more contribution per se, rather than grumbling as a contribution, if there could be more celebration of contributions, of liking things honestly, without resorting to gushing or craven comparisons (eg ‘I love Amy Winehouse because at least she’s not Jordan’), of ignoring and boycotting annoyances rather than celebrating how you dislike them, it wouldn’t be a bad year at all.

Gossip itself is natural enough. From Lives Of The Saints through to biographies of Ted Hughes through to Heat magazine, it’s all curiosity of a kind, it’s all finding out what happens next. Just with varying levels of dignity, pettiness and mean-spiritedness. Tabloid gossip is oral history by undignified proxy.

Indeed, Mum’s craft goes hand in needle with generations of women sharing tales of personal folklore, family goings-on, errant relations and so on. The novel and movie How To Make An American Quilt plays on this, being less about the fabric of quilts than the fabric of relationships and telling tales. I’m not saying the Daily Mirror’s 3AM Girls should put out an embroidered version of their gossip column, but… actually, that would be fantastic if they did.

Of course, much of this advice (moaning about moaning) is me advising myself. Here’s hoping. And here’s to a year of contribution and creation.