Last night, I spent eleven hours in a nightclub.

The first eight or so of those were as part of a shoot for "Kash Point TV". I have no idea whether this is for cable, Internet or tea-towel, but I am grateful to Kash Point for letting me in free so many times, feel the club is the best in London, and am happy to help them out in any way I can. I trot along to the venue "Moonlighting" in Greek Street at 4pm, and do not leave until 3am.

During the shoot, I play a dancer in a video for the artist Crazy Girl, help out with a bit of make-up, button pushing, sound mixing, and even a spot of emergency microphone repair. I also perform a couple of short "Dickon Edwards – Letter From Hysterica" monologues to camera. I draw on my diary, but it quickly becomes apparent that writing to be read and writing for speaking to camera are very different genres indeed. This is my debut as a spoken word solo artist. Foolishly, I thought that the combination of being able to look striking and write striking things to read out would be enough. It is not. I am a mass of nerves, and will be quite understanding if my footage is not used.

But I will do it again, and do it better. It has made me want to work harder on the art of speaking in performance. I'm keen on trying one of those Open Mike nights at various London performance-poetry or alternative comedy nights. Dickon Edwards – stand up comedian? Why not. I'll try anything once, except bungy jumping and bestiality. Of course, I would be careful not to be one of those wretched two-a-penny blokey comedians who point out the difference between cats and dogs, the trouble with their girlfriend, or something to do with Star Wars. I would not certainly not try and appeal to the audience as if I was one of them. My own observational comedy would have to be along the lines of "Don't you really hate it when you're sawing up the body and the blood won't scrub off the walls?"

If I DID try something like that, I wouldn't tell jokes or even try to make the audience laugh. Just make their attention toward the stage vaguely worthwhile. Give people something memorable they can't get elsewhere. It would be more akin to Mr Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues, with Thora Hird as David Byrne. I think they call it character-based comedy. In my case, it would be as The Tragicomic Character Of Dickon Edwards.

I know comedy doesn't have to be funny – I have seen "Coupling". But I am an admirer of humour that is more unusual and engrossing than laugh-out-loud funny, whether it's the Kids In The Hall, the third series of The League Of Gentlemen, or the fourth series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. I still haven't seen "Nighty Night", but I am told it's My Kind Of Thing. I also enjoy the show-and-tell style of performance verging on anecdotal monologue, from the late Spalding Gray and Laurie Anderson's more wry pieces, to Dave Gorman, and Richard Herring's Talking Cock show.

It's true I am cruelly disfigured with a comedy speech impediment, and am given to gabbling, nervous stutters, and people asking me to repeat myself. But I was gratified to recently discover that, as unlikely as it could possibly sound, the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, lately in the news for refusing an OBE, has a similar vocal affliction to me. Yet he manages to perform his work fluently and articulately. So it's just a case of practising like mad. And then practising more. And then trying out the work at open mike spots. Perhaps that's how I should bill myself – Dickon Edwards: A Speech Impediment A Bit Like Benjamin Zephaniah's.

Back at Moonlighting, the Kash Point TV shoot finishes as the Kash Point nightclub begins, the last weekly KP ever. The club will return in the summer, on board the Tattershall Castle boat, but will be monthly, perhaps even members-only. I think this is entirely advisable.

I keep Mr Matthew Glamorre company as he puts on his own make-up, a process of titivation (not transformation, mind) which takes even longer than my own. Truly someone I can learn from. Tonight's Kash Point theme is Hat Night, with champagne and prizes for the most exotic form of Easter Bonnet. I myself wear a brand new top hat made personally for me by Bid. He once made hats for Alice Cooper.

Little Richard, one of the club's resident Superstars and described earlier in this diary as Kash Point's dancing Pillow-Biting Lobster, tonight wears an all-over hat suit. It is a creation of his trademark gaffa tape (does he buy the stuff in bulk?) and cardboard, dotted with silvery spaceboy domes and topped off with a long horizontal box enclosing his entire head and extending the best part of a metre before him. To speak to him, one has to press one's face against the end window of the headpiece's viewfinder and peer deep inside. Naturally, he spends some time on the dancefloor like this. Watching him drink a bottle of beer is a sight to remember.

The winning hat-wearers are a couple decked out in lights and arrows, but mention must be made of French Thierry wearing a colourful silky butterfly hat affair, and very little else below the neck. Likewise the gentleman with a gigantic foam letter "A" on his head.

Once again, having a costume parade packs out the club to the rafters, and I am told all sorts of horror stories going on at the door upstairs – even death threats from people refused entry. Mr Glamorre and his brave crew do their utmost to ensure the badly-dressed are directed elsewhere, but some always manage to slip in. Even a guest DJ does the equivalent of playing badly-dressed music. There is a strict ban on any four-four music one might get in Normal Clubs, and when the DJ puts on "Gay Bar" by Electric Six, Mr Glamorre storms onto the mixing desk, slams the fader down, and firmly tells the DJ , face to face and terrifyingly serious, "NO. SHIT." Quite right too.

What we do get towards the giddy end of the night is Mr G performing Minty's "Useless Man", which is always a sign he's in a good mood. And the last tune played at Kash Point Weekly is "One Singular Sensation" from "A Chorus Line". Perfect music for top hat wearers.

I make it back to my bedsit at close to 5am, thankful that my next appointment isn't until 3pm the next day, and in Highgate too.

I wake up at just after 3pm, realize the time in horror, and dash outside. Ms Claudia Andrei, photographer and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1902588118/qid%3D1081537769/026-5023342-2176401">"Transgender London: London and The Third Sex".</a> who I have kept waiting, remarks that I look as if I've just crawled out of bed. She is entirely correct.

She brings an interesting bit of news for those who think I look vaguely like David Sylvian, the singer with the band Japan. Though I quite like his music, I am not an expert on it and have never made any deliberate attempt to emulate his 80s look. Or indeed anyone else's. But after the umpteenth such comparison, I can't help but be intrigued to hear that Ms Andrei has recently shown her photos of me to Steve Jansen, also of the band, who in turn has shown Mr Sylvian. The response from the latter was that he was "amused".

I wonder what Mr Sylvian thinks of "Coupling".

Work continues apace in the <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/">Scarlet's Well</a> camp. Tickets for the London Spitz concert <a href="http://www.wegottickets.com/gig.asp?3025">are now available to buy online</a>, and the fourth album, "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse" is released on May 3rd. It may not trouble the Real Charts, but it will delight those in search of some… luminous creatures in their pop music.

In rehearsal, we're now tackling a few select Monochrome Set songs alongside the Scarlet's Well repertoire. The Spitz show will be Bid's first UK gig in eight years, and the spreading of a little happiness to M Set fans who never got to see his old group in concert seems only fair. I wonder what it must be like for the under-25-year-old members of the Scarlet's Well band when one's lead singer teaches you a new song to play, saying, "Here's one I wrote a few years before you were born…"

The new album is sold in typically luxurious Siesta Records packaging: gaudy digipak with full colour 16 page booklet. Visually and aurally, it's utter joy on toast:

<img src="http://www.bid.clara.net/swell/booklet-dreamspider.jpg" alt="">

When I'm trying to get the album reviewed, the expensive artwork means I can only send out promo CD versions in simple cardboard wallets.

But this is fair enough, I feel. The full package is too beautiful to give away en masse to indifferent whelks of no woman born. Some PR campaigns, like the one for the new Morrissey album, won't even let journalists own a copy of any kind. They have to go to the record company's own office, listen and take notes. When Taylor Parkes reviewed the last Morrissey album in 1997 for Melody Maker, he had to make do with a cassette. It's interesting how the more "important" an artist is, the more paranoid their record company is about losing sales to bootlegging. Yet they are exactly the sort of artists who can afford to lose such sales.

One more interesting way of getting a full, proper shop copy of "The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse" for nil pounds is by entering the Caption Competition at the SW website, featuring our esteemed accordion player, Mr White (<lj user=martylog>):

<img src="http://www.bid.clara.net/forum/bamboomartin.jpg" alt="">

Oh yes! Feel free to devise your own caption and post it on the new Forum at http://www.scarletswell.co.uk

To Bethnal Green for the wedding reception and party of Ms Esther and Mr Paul. The venue is the local Working Mens Club, but despite my being a man in make-up allergic to most forms of work, I am allowed inside without there being any kind of anti-matter explosion. I am Worst Man at a wedding.

Bethnal Green at night initially seems scary. But then, I find most modern life scary, walking as I do with a fearsome tremble in my step, ready for the next attack from my fellow man. Very unfair on my fellow man, I know. And in the case of Bethnal Green I feel I owe the area a silent apology. The strangers I meet on the street from tube station to venue are far more polite and friendly than those in the apparently "safer" area of Muswell Hill. At the cashpoint on Bethnal Green Road there is an exchange of "After you", "No, after YOU" which goes on for quite some time.

To consolidate my faith in the better aspects of humanity, the reception is a rather joyous and extremely touching affair. In his Best Man speech, Mr Alex Kapranos remarks how the couple are genuinely, palpably, visibly, impressively in love, and this is something with which no one can argue. Real Love, indeed.

Early on in the evening, the DJs play The Glitter Band followed by The Smith's "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" – a rather inspired segue, give the latter is a lesser Morrissey hit musically akin to the style of Mr Glitter's hits, as well as being appropriate to the noted lengthy engagement period of the couple. Certainly more appropriate than Freda Payne's "Band Of Gold", a song inexplicably popular at weddings, given it's about a marriage breaking up.

Performing live is Ms Sophie Heawood and her impromptu band, formed to sweetly serenade the newlyweds with "Chapel Of Love". Ms Sophie sat next to me at the wedding service (it was the only free seat) but thankfully appears to have suffered no ill effects. She is one of the visionaries behind the new magazine <a href="http://www.planbmag.com/">Plan B,</a> which I've promised to write for. I started some things, and unlike Mr Morrissey I do intend to finish them.

There is also a set from a chap called Ben who wears a cowboy hat and sings in a Leadbelly bluesy- country fashion. Despite, or perhaps because of the occasion, he decides to perform some gloriously inappropriate songs for a wedding reception. One is "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", another is "Goodbye Cruel World", the unsubtle suicide song from Pink Floyd's The Wall (arguably the world's least subtle album as it is), and then <i>another</i> song from the same album, "In The Flesh", the one about a rock star whose Nazi-rally-like arena concerts have made him such a paranoid crypto-fascist that he wants anyone he doesn't like the look of shot at once. It all seems deeply incongruous at first, but it transpires that at least one of the couple is a fan of the album.

One observer might interpret playing such covers as a wry jab at the groom's newfound status as an internationally successful rock star (his band Franz Ferdinand are playing a cavernous arena near you), and a possible warning that he had better not let it all go to his head. On the evidence of this occasion such fears are entirely unjustified. Though Mr Paul and his bandmates are now no strangers to Top Of The Pops, this is not a Celebrity Wedding festooned with the rich and famous, just friends (and a few Friendster Friends) and family. Many here are worryingly skinny indie band types who clearly could do with a few extra slices of wedding cake.

I suppose the one person there, apart from the band, who IS a celebrity of a kind is the DJ Mr Erol Alkan, who turns up to play a wedding set, and he is someone regarded by some baggy jeaned magazines as one of London's most fashionable DJs. But, like the groom's band, he is neither outwardly different or embarrassed by such success, being undoubtably grateful – though, crucially, not boastful (only that way lies accusations of Selling Out) – for being able to make a living from doing what one enjoys and would do regardless.

Now, this is a position to which we all aspire, and goodness knows I aspire to it myself. Being finally, securely able to make a living from Being Dickon Edwards is really something I'm striving to do at present – the only vague "goal" I have beyond basic food and shelter. I am quite happy to reside hand-to-cheap-lipglossed-mouth by myself in a London bedsit for the rest of my life, where there is no room to swing even the skinniest indie form of cat. The world is a stage, and this is my dressing room. What matters to many thankfully doesn't matter in the least to me – owning a flat, speaking fluent Mortgage or Pension, making money, a, dare I say it, lifelong Love Life, or even a nightlong Sex Life. All those things are pursuits which other people seem happy to engage in and perpetuate, though they are as alien to me as terrorism, war and bungy jumping.

But I am happy for such people, if they are happy in turn. All I do want is to be able to answer the dreaded Frequently Asked Question, "What do you do?", with something approaching a confident and definite description. My interviewer may not be able to keep a straight face when I reply "I Am A Professional English Eccentric", but that doesn't matter. My own face must be deadly serious. In fact, what's important is that I am able to not stare at my shoes at this moment, as attractive as my shoes are.

Ideally, I could get paid for writing this diary for a publication (one which kindly puts its content online as well as existing in paper form), as it does seem one thing I find myself doing anyway, which strangers seem to enjoy. If I could get this diary sponsored by Prada, then my life would be complete.

But back to the wedding reception. When I said it was refreshingly devoid of Celebrities, I didn't for a second mean to imply that it was full of Ordinary People. Heaven forfend. Superstardom in the Warhol sense of the word has always been my preferred state of being. Though that's rather unfair on another act performing tonight, Mr Simon Bookish, who unlike many of those notorious peacocks draped around the Bacofoil walls of Mr W's Factory in all those silly films, actually has talent.

Mr Bookish is unlucky enough to have to suffer a day job, which he tells me is something to do with Amnesty International. From all accounts, it sounds like torture.

So the sooner he can make a living from his Art, the better. He not only is capable of singing for his supper, but singing for The Last Supper. Charismatic, engaging, and always a joy to watch, he is one act on "The London Scene" that I fully recommend. If anyone deserves to be on Top Of The Pops, it is Mr Bookish. I can imagine the bored parents of England spitting out their TV dinners in mock-outrage, secretly glad that the TV programme is once again sporting music where "it's just Bang Bang Bang" and "you can't tell if it's a boy or a girl". That, after all, is what Top Of The Pops should always be about. And what pop music should be about.

Tonight's Bookish Set includes a cover version of the homoerotic Franz Ferdinand song, "Michael", performed in his trademark style of intense electronica and direct interaction with the crowd. By that I don't mean he starts fights with his audience, but acknowledges their attention and repays it mutually, dancing with them, or to them, performing as if all that exists is that one location, that one point in time. It may be back to the office with him on Monday, but upon a stage, or in front of it – his real work is done.

Afterwards, Mr B remarks how strange it was singing "Michael" knowing that the person the song is based upon, the real Michael, is in the room. The muse in question is pointed out to me. He is wearing white dancing jeans – what else?

Another song on the Franz Ferdinand album is a similar example of the Artist As Magpie, taking from Life what should be preserved in Art, or in Song. It's the track "Jacqueline". When I first heard it, I wondered it it were based upon a Scottish indie girl called Jacqueline I've met a few times, whose old London flat is still in my address book. I am happy to have this confirmed by Mr Kapranos – it's the same girl.

Again, it's like the Warhol Superstars, immortalised in song by Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side, or by The Monochrome Set's "Goodbye Joe". "Michael" and "Jacqueline" are Franz Ferdinand song characters based on real people, but they also represent a modern archetype, a mini-scene, made up of stylish outsiders that are mini-celebrities in their own social circles (or even just "famous" for one other person), past and present. Social Legends, if you like. And it's the duty of The Writer, and The Songwriter to record this.

Whether it's Alan Bennett writing down the utterations of The Lady In The Van, or Christopher Isherwood making more use of Sally Bowles's life than she ever did, paying homage to The Secret Celebrity is a common theme in all the best art, music and literature. Mr Paul would, I imagine, have a Franz Ferdinand song written about him if he wasn't already in the band.

I try to use this public diary in a similar manner to Mr Isherwood, documenting not just my life, but the lives I see around me at the places I am invited to go. I often spend hours upon a single entry, and try to take pains not to write anything or photograph (badly – I Am An Out-Of-Focus Camera) anything I think might offend the people unwittingly dragged in. There's only been three occasions in this diary's seven year history that I have received requests to remove a reference to someone, and I've happily complied each time.

At the wedding party, I told Mr Kapranos about my diary. In the same way that (I think) he checked with the real "Michael" and "Jacqueline" if it was okay to immortalise them in song, I said I hope he didn't mind I'd written about the wedding. I added that if there was anything in my diary he objected to, I'd remove it at once.

To his undying credit, he shrugged and replied "You write what the hell you like, Dickon." Truly, a living saint. Franz Ferdinand records are available to buy now, folks.

For me, and I suspect Mr K understands this too, the greatest honour is to be written about, photographed, or even sung about, as has happened to me in the case of "Son Of Dorian Gray" by the band Tender Trap. One of the greatest sadnesses of my life was the time Momus told me he'd written a song about me… only to not release the thing. Even if it's unflattering, inaccurate, mocking or cruel, attention has been paid. Your mark has been made on the consciousness of an Artist, no mean feat in this world of a million distractions and corporate advertising inciting you to pay attention to anything but a person with no PR agent.

A quick glance at any magazine rack or TV channel will tell you that many so-called Real Celebrities fail to evince the slightest degree of anything interesting or intelligent whatsoever. Indeed, their careers are so carefully stage-managed, they cannot give a single answer in a single interview without a Press Officer being on hand to consult first, in case any signs of Personality are allowed to leak out.

Mr Warhol said in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. He was slightly wrong. It is now the future, and everyone is on television, which is an entirely different thing. As it is, that quote is so over-used and over-interpreted, that someone really should have shot him for saying that.

People who would make much better celebrities are, more often than not, entirely unknown beyond their social circle. Looking around and chatting to the people at the wedding reception, seeing "Michael", thinking about "Jacqueline", I could see many more such unsung superstar types in abundance. Perhaps they will all have songs written about them one day. Perhaps many of them already have.

In this sense, it was a Superstar Wedding indeed. It finished with the superstar couple themselves given a proper send-off outside their flat by the gathered crowd, covering them with rice and "Chapel Of Love" in a multitude of harmonies. Happy Honeymoon, Paul and Esther.

A very modern day. I receive a free digital camera in the post, which I suppose is a fairly modern thing to receive. It is in response to a coupon I sent off months ago for some product whose name escapes me. It does not have one of those handy screens at the back where one can instantly check the picture, and has no flash facility, but then it is free. I look upon it as a sort of digital Lomo, the analogue vintage toy camera favoured by arty sorts, and take it with me to my first engagement of the day.

Today's engagement is a wedding. It's the second wedding I have been invited to in my thirty-two years. The first was of my cousin, who married a TV chef from the Carlton Food Network. I feel a little sad that I'm not invited to more weddings. It's true that I rail and rant against coupling of any kind when given the air space, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good wedding. At base, after all, I am a romantic. A new-new-new romantic.

I received my wedding invite via Friendster.com on the Internet. This, surely, makes it a very modern wedding indeed. A marriage made in Friendster.com.

The couple in question are a Ms Esther and a Mr Paul. Mr Paul is the drummer in the band Franz Ferdinand, who are that rare thing – I band I like who manage to be liked by real people too, even though they don't wear trainers onstage. My faith in humanity is tentatively restored.

Despite being Scottish, Mr Paul has not brought his weather with him, and today appears to be warm, dry and gently pleasant. Spring finally starts in London.

Like any self-respecting fictional scientist, I try out the camera upon myself first, in Moorgate Tube station:
<img src="http://www.fosca.com/friday-april-2nd19.jpg"></img>

The ceremony takes place at Bromley Public Hall in Bow Road, well within the sound of Bow Bells. This is deep within London's East End, and so signs of this kind, a few steps from the hall, almost have a sick, romantic tinge of their own, if you're in a dark, Kray Brothers mood.

"Mug me, mug me do! It's been so long since I last felt the touch of a man…"

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/friday-april-2nd15.jpg"></img>

Inside the registry office, Mr Paul is sporting a rather fetching hat with a feather in its band, and signs the marriage register with the gorgeous Ms Esther. Then, fully bonded within the eyes of The Law, they retire to the grounds outside for more photographs. I have rice in my pocket ready to throw. An American Girl tells me this is bad for pigeons, and makes them explode. This makes me throw the rice with more gusto than ever.

Many more photos are taken, some with myself ("Okay, now, let's have all the people who like The Monochrome Set").

I spend time chatting to everyone who will speak to me, and retire to the nearest pub with Franz Ferdinand's manager, Mr Cerne. Apropos of nothing, he shows me the latest list of Franz Ferdinand merchandise awaiting approval. It includes mugs, dart flights, and underwear for both genders. I suggest he adds pens and ties – not ties with a logo (far too tacky), but ties in the logo's striped colours, a la Eton. If such articles become reality, you heard it here first.

Disembarking at Highgate Tube Station, I call in at the Boogaloo for an ill-advised additional drink:
<img src="http://www.fosca.com/friday-april-2nd20.jpg"></img>

My flu appears to have vanished, and I am keen to go out tonight. Club "Soul Mole" at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm it is, then.

<p><i>Postscript, April 6th.</i>

I originally illustrated this entry with more equally atrociously blurred photos from the wedding, but on discovering they had been featured elsewhere, out of the diary context and without my knowledge, I thought it was better to remove them. Also, on reflection, my photos really didn't do the occasion an iota of justice. Far superior snaps were taken by others present. So, my apologies.</i>

Hit rather heavily by a bout of flu, I find myself confined indoors for most of this week, and have to give any clubs a miss for the time being. Which includes Kash Point tonight, much to my chagrin.

Snuffling and coughing, I remember that it’s time to set the world to rights with another instalment of the Scarlet’s Well Mp3 Singles Club.

This rather beautiful, jaunty uptempo track is as good at relieving cold symptoms as anything Mr Beecham might muster. Titled Big Dipper On The Spearman’s Floor, it’s sung by some of the motley Hesperus crew walking back to Mousseron from the Underworld… via the sea bed. The Spearman being the sea god Neptune, the Big Dipper being the constellation of The Plough.

Bid takes lead vocals on this one, and it features a rather gorgeous E-Bow-like soaring instrumental break.

Link:

Like the previous mp3, it’s taken from the album The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse, released on May 3rd on Siesta Records.

In the current issue of Q Magazine, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex suggests a track listing for the ideal Art-Rock CD compilation. He includes The Monochrome Set’s “He’s Frank”, written by Bid circa 1978, and played by me at the club Stay Beautiful when I DJ’d there. From the same songwriter twenty-six years on, “Big Dipper…” may not be Rock enough for some, but it’s definitely Art. And I know what I like.

More info: http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/

Big Dipper On The Spearman’s Floor

Can you see the Dipper, the twinkle of the Dipper
Look up to the ceiling of the vasty deep
It points the way to where we’ll find our sleep
If you hear a fiddle, the scraping of a fiddle
Coming from the hull of a passing yawl
It’s just a jolly, praying for us all