On BBC London's book review programme last night, there was a segment featuring various literary editors recommending their "favourite books to take on the beach" (cliche alert, yawn). The literary editor for Elle Magazine turned out to be Eithne Farry. Last seen being the Shouty Punk Rock One out of Talulah Gosh.

She recommended that novel by Louise Wener, formerly in Sleeper.

Ms Farry added that by writing about being in a band from the perspective of a man, Ms Wener was being very clever and unusual. I don't remember anyone saying that about the Adrian Mole books.

She also praised the new novel for adults by Daniel Handler, who's in the Magnetic Fields.

Recently, Martin Rossiter out of Gene was on one of those many TV programmes about decorating.

Alan Bennett head-butted me on the nose the other day.

The night before leaving for Leeds, I decided to listen to the latest spoken word CD, "Hymn", by that city's favourite playwright son. Its cover features, like most of his CDs, a head-and-shoulders portrait of the author. It was on a pile of albums on a high shelf, and I couldn't be bothered to get a chair to reach. So I jumped up, basketball style, to grab it, but only succeeded in dislodging it enough for the CD to topple off the pile towards me. Being the world's worst sportsman, I failed to catch it with my open hands and instead inadvertently blocked its fall with the bridge of my nose.

So I spent Leeds and the rest of the week with a big red bruise on my nose. Sometimes a predilection for wearing heavy make-up has its practical uses too. I've been kicked by strangers at bus stops, but this is first time since school I've been hit full in the face. And by such a distinguished giant of modern literature, too.

It was the sort of thing that happens in some of Mr Bennett's less recent plays, the ones featuring jokey references to writers such as "Me, I'm Afraid Of Virginia Woolf". In "Forty Years On", one character delivers an extremely silly monologue about the Bloomsbury Set, and Virginia Woolf in particular : "I was distantly related to the Woolfs via an alsatian cousin".

Morrissey fans will recognise that the first song on his first solo album took its title, "Alsatian Cousin", from this same quote.

This Saturday teatime, there's a documentary TV series called "Art That Shook The World". Last week it was "Pet Sounds". This week it's Orlando.

Okay, it's about the Woolf book, not my former band who, indeed, did their amusing best to shake the world. Still essential viewing, though.

The Leeds festival was a lot of fun. For the last couple of songs, the venue's system couldn't handle our drums channel and blew a fuse, but by then we'd played most of our set, so it didn't really matter too much. People seemed to enjoy us, and we enjoyed them enjoying us.

We were memorably introduced thus:
"Possibly the greatest band ever named after a Tracy Chapman song…. Please welcome: FASTCAR!"

Of the other bands I saw on the day, I enjoyed The Boy Cartographer (Scottish, Pastels-ish, ponytailed bassist notwithstanding), Big Eyes (slow, sit-down instrumentals, beautifully played, perfect for a Sunday afternoon), and The Starlets (More Scots, very clean, very young, very Bluebells-ish). Had to go for a lie down when The Hotwires came on (very Blues Explosion garage rock, ie very fashionable right now), and was sorry that I couldn't stay for Tender Trap and the other groups due to catching the last train back to London. Next time I'll search out for a floor to stay on: I do love festivals. As long as I'm performing at them. Otherwise, I just get envious.

Much of the DJ-ing in the bar area was sublime, too. Orange Juice's "Breakfast Time" (Postcard version) next to Alexander O'Neil's "Criticize". Pure class.

My responses to a recent Chickfactor poll about behaviour at gigs:

<i>Couples who make out: stop. if it gets you in the mood, save it or stay home and listen to the record. sorry, that¹s not in the form of a question. comments?</i>

I tend to get couples BREAKING UP at my gigs. So I'm doing something right.

<i>in what circumstances do you feel it¹s okay to ask to be on a friend¹s band¹s guest list? why/why not?</i>

If it's a small gig, the band have day jobs and the door price is cheaper than buying a couple of drinks, I think it's fair enough to pay one's way in. If the show is a big venue and the band are drinking nectar from the navels of Brewer Street rent boys between songs, I only go if I can get in free. Basic Robin Hood tactics, really. If the show is sold out and the only way of getting in is by being on the list, then that's fair enough too.

<i> tall people: are you at all self-conscious when you stand in front of people half of your size? does it occur to you to ask if you are interfering with someone's view, especially if you shift mid-show? do you move if someone politely asks you to?</i>

I nearly always manage to have some twit in a ponytail standing in front of me at most gigs. It's even happened at Pulp shows. I try to move, but they usually follow me about.

<i> do you ever notice people cutting in line and acting like they¹re sidling up to their friends? ok or not ok?</i>

Entirely fair enough. If someone has reached the point where they have to pretend they have friends, who am I to deny them?

<i> when, if ever, is floor sitting acceptable at shows? why/why not?</i>

Only if such people reserve the right not to mind when I trip over them.

<i> are there different rules of etiquette for chichi sit-down concerts than for beer halls? why/why not?</i>

Moshing is less common at seated gigs. Still, I saw some kids moshing down the front at the Magnetic Fields' set at the Royal Festival Hall. Despite the lack of drums of any kind, they danced away.

<i>for musicians: under what circumstances are requests acceptable? why/why not?</i>

Only if they can see the set list better than me.

<i> is it rude to refer to artists you don't know by their first names? why/why not?</i>

I prefer to refer to everyone as Mr or Ms. I hate that showbiz fake camaraderie. I have no fake friends. I have hardly any real friends, either, so perhaps I should revise my attitude.

<i>are you self-conscious about stage banter? aware that people came to hear music, not jokes? </i>

I try to start up conversations with my bandmates on stage. It's the only time I ever speak to them and I forget what conversation sounds like otherwise.

<i> when (if ever) is appropriate to sleep with one¹s band members? crew? roadies? other people's band members?</i>

Only if you are in Fleetwood Mac.

<i> have your fellow band members ever given you a hard time about what you wear onstage? </i>

I ban the wearing of trainers in my band. This makes us the most experimental band in Christendom.

<i> what do you think of people asking to be on the guest list? just part of the game or do you find it inappropriate?</i>

I don't mind, as long as they return the favour. They rarely do, though. I'm not important enough to their careers. So I have to gatecrash their aftershows using my fabulous technique and embarrass them for the self-seeking showbiz whores they really are.

After subscribing to the increasingly tired-sounding <a href="http://www.popbitch.com">Popbitch</a> for so long, I've now found a new and slightly more satisfying email newsletter of rock and pop anecdotes: <a href="http://www.rockingvicar.com">Rockingvicar.com</a>

Much of the veracity is dubious, but it makes for an entertaining read.

Sample anecdote:
"Simon Bates was reliably inane in his presentation of the 'Golden Hour', but perhaps never more gloriously fatuous than when he spoke as follows: "It was the year we lost Sir Ralph Richardson and gained THIS from Kajagoogoo."

Promo copies of the new Fosca album have apparently been sent to every suitable publication under the sun, but I don't hold out much hope for a review.

Idea for new song: "The Heart's Own Press Release". Utter lack of press as analogy for one's own lifelong ostracisation from life, and from love.

"And whose fault is that…?"

After listening closely to the lyrics on the debut album by <a href="http://listen.to/tendertrap/">Tender Trap</a>, I start to wonder if one particular song is about me.

At Leeds, I confront Amelia and Rob about this, and they come clean:

"You don't mind, do you?"

Needless to say, I'm delighted.

Here's the tracklisting of the album. See if you can guess from the titles which song it is:

<b>Fin
Oh Katrina
You and Me
Face of '73
That Girl
Talk in Song
Chemical Reaction
Son of Dorian Gray
Emma
Dyspraxic
Love Is Red/Green
Brown Eyes
You Are Gone (So You Should Go)</b>

Go on. Take a <i>wild guess</i>.

Feeling very excited about tomorrow, when Fosca play a Leeds indie music festival called <a href="http://indie.flunka.com/index.php?topgroupid=999999999&subgroupid=6&groupid=9">"Gojonnygogogogo 2</a>" (presumably a reference to the League of Gentlemen 'card game' sketch).

We've only played one other festival before, the outdoor "Benno" affair in Sweden last year. It turned out to be our best-received gig to date. The stage was in a forest clearing next to a vast and silent lake, and we got our own chalets. After our set went down so well, I celebrated by going skinny-dipping in the lake by moonlight. This remains one of the rare times in my life I have been close to truly happy.

Sadly, the venue for this Leeds festival, Joseph's Well, is not next to a vast and silent lake. But it is round the back of the Leeds General Infirmary. Just in case.

I note that there's a festival of events and gigs coming up in London called <a href="http://www.ladyfestlondon.org/">Ladyfest</a>, "designed to celebrate and promote the achievements of women".

Going by the list of bands playing (The Gossip, Babes In Toyland's singer, Spy 51, Linus, Tender Trap), it's seems more akin to the edgy, underground Riot Grrl scene of about ten years ago than to the more commercial likes of Lilith Fair.

Although some of the festival's workshops are women-only, the bands playing aren't. Out of curiosity, not to mention my usual boundless vanity, I muse about whether Fosca would be eligible to play. Going by the genders of band members, Fosca are 75% female. Since Kate joined, our songs are created as a group. Most of the instruments on the new album are played by Kate, Rachel and Sheila. However, I suspect it would be hard for us to qualify for playing festivals of women in music, due to the male 25% – me – being the lead vocalist, rather than, say, the drummer. The lead singer of any band is always perceived as the group's ambassador, regardless of who creates the actual music.

In fact, Fosca are a rare reversal of the old girl-fronted band line-up cliche. We're three girl musicians backing a boy lead singer who wears more make up than the rest of them put together. I modestly like to think this is a refreshing change, in a world of umpteen bands and dance acts where dressed-down anonymous male musicians back glamorous female singer. How often is the reverse true?

Men in female-fronted bands were once given a designated term by the mid-90s music press: "Sleeperblokes", after the Britpop band Sleeper. Everyone knew the girl singer's name (Louise Wener) and what she looked like, but when forced at gunpoint to name any of the rest of the band, or pick them out from a crowd, few could oblige.

Sleeperblokes were there – <i>are</i> still very much there (Garbage for one) – to make up the numbers in photo shoots, to keep the singer company, and, oh yes, to do the icky manly business of playing the actual music, when not putting up shelves and reading road maps. This set-up is commonplace. But the reverse is extremely rare.

Why is that?

Comments in the usual box, please.

Especially if you can name ANY other band (that's released at least one album) where, like Fosca, a male singer is backed entirely by female musicians. NOT just female backing singers. NOT where there's an auxiliary male musician drafted in on drums for gigs only. And NOT that Robert Palmer video.

Perhaps Fosca are shyly, and indeed slyly, radical. For this reason.

And for the fact we have a ban on any band members wearing trainers.

Fosca's gig intro music, by the way, is Lesley Gore's "Sometimes I Wish I Were A Boy".

When people ask me what I "do", I sometimes reply that I collect unsolicited remarks from strangers in the street.

The most common comparisons are "OY! Andy Warhol!". Or "OY! Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!". Once it was "OY! Kim Novak in 'Bell Book and Candle!' ". That last remark was from an aging American gay man, needless to say.

It all depends on what culture they've been exposed to, and how old they are. Sometimes the commentators may only know of one famous man with bleached hair, even if I couldn't be less like him in other respects if I tried. Yesterday I got this response to my appearance from some schoolgirls in Archway:

"(shrieks) Look at him! Ewww! EMINEM WANNABE!"