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…