Email from Tim Chipping. The ICA Artist Tino Sehgal has read my diary entry about him, presumably searching the web for mentions of himself. It was only a matter of time before Mr S realised his life is just a part of the Work Of Art that is this diary. It’s the ultimate Pro-Choice argument. You’re not a proper human being until you’re in Dickon Edwards’s diary.

Sadly, Mr S gets paid for his Art. While I do not get paid for this thing. Yet.

Surely it must just be a matter of time. I’ve kept this web diary for eight years now. That must count as some kind of ‘experience’. I suppose I just have to Hustle. It worked for Ms Belle De Jour.

Successful Art is ten per cent inspiration, ninety per cent prostitution.

Speaking of which. Piece in The Guardian the other day about bands of the past who were touted as Next Big Things, then failed to deliver. Orlando are included.

I knew about this beforehand. One of the writers (the piece took two people to write, never a good sign), contacted me. I told him that if Orlando had gotten some publicity in The Guardian in 1995, rather than in a piece in 2005 about publicity-hyped bands that failed, maybe we wouldn’t have failed. Not what he wanted me to say in the piece, of course.

But it’s the un-simple truth. Orlando were only hyped in the Melody Maker, nowhere else. That was the whole problem. We’d have loved a few crumbs from the Guardian table back then, when it mattered. So our first ever appearance in the newspaper is instead ten years later, in a piece about apparently having too much press. I thought The Guardian was meant to know all about the nature of irony.

Of course, the real reason for our inclusion is that they couldn’t get Terris, Tiger or Gay Dad. And to be fair, Melody Maker readers of 1995 have, like the writers, probably moved to The Guardian now.

I hesitated to help the journalist, wanting like anyone else to Be In The Guardian, but only on My Own Terms. It goes against my whole philosophy to be part of any crowd. That was another problem with Orlando, too. Roped in with Romo in 1995. Roped in with Adorable in 2005. Journalists – or rather, their editors – always want there to be A Pitch, A Reason, An Angle. A way to box things together, compare, organise, present, explain. Because if something can be explained, it can be explained away.

But I realised it wasn’t me the journalist was after, just Someone From The Band Orlando Who Acts Vaguely Human. So I gave him Mr Chipping’s number.

The piece came out with no mention of my name, and Mr C’s quotes, he tells me, pay scant relation to what he actually said. Shame. Still, it could have been worse. And it was a nice photo of Mr C.

And good to see coverage of the divine Ms Virginia Astley, too. I’m reminded that in 2003 Rough Trade re-issued her wonderful album, From Gardens Where We Feel Secure. This is as good a time as any to recommend it. Available to buy here. You’ll absolutely adore it. I suppose it would now be called ‘Ambient’ music.

I don’t mind Orlando being roped in with her at all. She’s another original that wanted to give the world something they weren’t getting from others. Unlike Adorable and Five Thirty, who were just Bandy Band Bands, and don’t deserve to lick the impeccable, well-chosen boots of Ms Astley and ourselves. There’s always another Five Thirty just around the corner. That’s the whole problem.

Ah well. More people read this diary than read The Guardian.

(Told you I was good at attracting attention)

No, I withdraw that claim. But the diary does seem to have a talisman-like effect on all kinds of people, good and bad. I wonder. If I type the the words LOVE, WEALTH, and SUCCESS here, and publish them online, will they too eventually look me up?

I’ll settle for ABILITY TO GET MANY THINGS DONE QUICKLY. Find me. Find me, please.

Even though I now screen the comments on my diary, I still receive a few messages from, how shall I put this nicely, the sanity-challenged and ill-wishers. Not quite death threats, not quite stalkers (though the line is sometimes blurred) but certainly sinister little calling cards, or anonymous attacks. It makes no sense. I'm not rich, I'm not famous, I have no money or property and I live in a bedsit. It's like I've inherited the detriments of being successful and famous without the benefits. Why do they do it? Is it something about me? If so, can I convert this something into attaining actual fame and success, so I can then hire my own personal bodyguard?

Actually, the latter has always been a bit of a fantasy for me. I think it may even be a fetish. Having one's Honour Defended by someone who can Take Care Of Things physically. Any gender. I need an Insecurity Guard.

I just have to remind myself that, if one replies to such comments, it's an insult to the well-wishers and kind friends one IS lucky to attract, who probably would prefer the attention. Who send me proper <a href="mailto:dickon_edwards@hotmail.com" target="_blank">emails</a>, but whom I often don't get around to replying to. Contain the fear and the worry, convert it to positivity. Use it for positive ends, and for attending to kinder friends.

Onwards and upwards.

<IMG align=left alt="Portrait of George Romney." src="http://www.dalton-in-furness.org.uk/dalton-online/history/photos-plates/romney-s.jpg" border=5>I'm playing DJ next Thursday, in Cavendish Square, once home to Lord Nelson and the painter George Romney.

Club Night: 'How Does It Feel To Be Loved' – A Central London Winter Special.
Date: Thursday February 3rd
Venue: The Phoenix, 31 Cavendish Square, W1G 0PP. Three minutes walk from Oxford Circus tube
Time: 8pm – 2am. D.E. set between 10.30pm and midnight.
Cost: £3 members, £5 non members, membership is free from the site: http://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk
Music: 60s girl groups, 80s indie, and any other jolly selections that I think could fit in.

Also starring: The Sarah Records Jukebox from 8pm.

Mr O'Boyle invites me to see the band Yeti at the Boogaloo. The place is packed even more than it was for Bright Eyes. Yeti are a pleasant group of young men, two of whom are the Other Two in the Libertines, the popular UK combo of late.

Yeti aren't entirely my cup of tea, but they have a pleasant enough jangly-guitar line in pop-rock. The singer wears a large wide-brimmed hat. One song, "Insect Eating Man", is impressively rendered in a Bonzo Dog / Scarlet's Well style croon. Mr Shane McGowan joins them for a version of "The Israelites", wearing a top hat.

I have one glass of wine, then switch to Perrier. My new routine. Nothing to do with trying to be more healthy. I enjoy a drink, but have had enough of being drunk. It's also cheaper.

No more cigarettes, either. My last smoke was a rather nice long and ultra-thin foreign cigarette kindly given to me by Ms Sophie of the Boogaloo staff two months ago. Possibly more than two months ago. That I can't remember the exact date helps immensely. None of this "34 days since my last cigarette" nonsense. It's in the past, that's enough.

An unintentional last cigarette, but I'm glad it was that one. As the days went on, I found I wasn't missing smoking after all. Perhaps I was never really addicted in the first place.

I took up smoking at the age of 27 in order to make buses come sooner at bus stops. I quit at the age of 33 because I've finally realised photos of me smoking look like I'm trying to be someone I'm not. The End of that story, then.

Struggling at AV. The whole shelving system has been changed, so just as I was getting used to knowing where things were, I have to re-learn all over again. I feel the kind of grief associated with moving house.

Customers asking for Clive Owen or Mike Leigh films now, thanks to the Oscar nominations.

One customer moans about something I'd not noticed – that Channel 4 hardly ever show subtitled foreign language film these days. They just shove them onto Film Four, their digital subscription channel.

We discuss <b>The Barbarian Invasions</b>, Mr Arcand's recent sequel to <b>The Decline Of The American Empire</b>. It then occurs to me that the only reason I watched the first film was by accident, idly flicking through TV channels in the late 80s or early 90s, and catching it on C4 at about 11pm. I was intrigued, so I watched it.

Now, the channel's idea of late night foreign culture is by filling the same slot with live footage of Brigitte Nielsen cleaning her teeth. Even fans of Big Brother themselves complain about these pointless live feeds on the terrestial channel, as the sound is muted whenever anything interesting happens.

The BBC are just as bad. I look through the Radio Times trying to find one foreign language movie on the BBC that's not just been shoved on their digital channel BBC4 in the hope no one will watch it. They market this channel as "a space to think". Presumably this means all their other channels are for absolute idiots, and they're pleased to encourage things going this way.

Apologists would tell to me to subscribe to BBC4 and Film Four and shut up. They don't seem to realise the whole point of public service broadcasting, at a time when terrestial is still considered Proper, Superior and Default TV to digital, which is Option TV.

One shouldn't hide away acclaimed, thought-provoking TV and film from the possibility of accidentally flicking onto it, staying there, and being transported somewhere new.

Quentin Crisp talked about his success being entirely due to The Naked Civil Servant being shown at a time in the 70s when there were only three channels, and one of those (BBC2) was not transmitting most of the time.

He imagines a couple at home.

"What's on the telly?"
"The queers."
"What's on the other side?"
"The news."
"Oh. As you were"

"And this," said Mr Crisp, "is the spirit in which The Naked Civil Servant was watched."

If The Naked Civil Servant were made in 2005, it would be shoved on BBC4 or Film Four at 3am and left there to die. It would be for the most part unwatched, except for a few gay men and dedicated liberal arthouse film fans. That it was instead seen by millions of Normal People accidentally, who weren't seeking it out deliberately, is crucial.

These days, there is no Other Side. There is just This Side Of The Camera, and That. And one must pick which side they're on.

Good taste and intelligence shouldn't be an OPTION. If they gave me the keys to TV today, I would put all the makeovers and reality tv shows on the digital only channels, the foreign films and plays on terrestial, and see what happens. Would there be complaints? I really doubt it. I have more faith in the intelligence of the viewing public than current channel bosses. Though admittedly that isn't very hard to do.

Branding thinking as a minority interest is a dangerous use of media reponsibility. I wonder where it will lead us.

I go to see <B>Enduring Love</b> at one of my favourite Odeons in London, the Wardour St branch. To gain entrance, one has to take an ordinary tower block-style lift to the third floor. It's like visiting someone's flat rather than a multiplex cinema.

This is a New British Film, an adaptation of a 1998 novel by Ian McEwan. His stories win big, dinner-jacketed literary prizes in print and make small, creepy little films on celluloid. The film version of The Cement Garden is a particular favourite of mine.

So as the Odeon lights dip, I am cheering it on from the sidelines, hoping so much that Mr Daniel Craig, who's in nearly every scene, won't let me down. Which is appropriate, as that's exactly what his character is so obsessed about. Has he let down a stranger whose lethal fall he's witnessed? Or his girlfriend? Or himself as a Good Man? Or has he let down all three? It doesn't help that an unkempt loner, Mr Rhys Ifans, has started to follow him about, living purely to deliver Mr Craig to God's Love. By way of his own love for Mr Craig.

No wonder Mr Craig gets through so much wine in the film.

Enduring Love is at the mercy of its own opening scene. Mr Craig and his girlfriend, Ms Samantha Morton, are having a nice sunny picnic in a coruscatingly beautiful open field, somewhere in the Oxfordshire countryside. All seems perfect. But they've barely opened the first of the movie's many bottles of wine when a big red helium balloon drifts into the field and changes their lives.

The balloon's grey-haired pilot is being dragged helplessly along the ground by its anchor rope, and there's a terrified young grandson in the passenger basket. Mr Craig chooses to do The Decent Thing and rushes to help, along with some other male Samaritans, including Mr Ifans. At first, this enormous, silent, angry symbol of Man Versus Nature is brought under control. It's clear at this point – and entirely relevant – that Mr Craig has become the default leader of the group, being the fittest, strongest, quickest-thinking and most sensible Man in attendance. The other Men have deferred to him instinctively, while Ms Morton has chosen not to get involved at all. Oh, the rich symbolism of it all! That Mr McEwan's original novel is on the A-level syllabus should surprise no one.

Then the camera cuts ominously to Nature's Point Of View. We become <i>the wind itself</i>, rushing into the field, scooping the balloon and all the manly rescuers up into the air. A man is killed – and it may or may not be the fault of Mr Craig.

It's a scene that's at once terrifying and awe-inspiringly beautiful in its silent execution (in every sense). Balloons are beautiful, noiseless and graceful things, even when they're killing people. Lesser film-makers would have used CGI and an intrusive soundtrack. So all credit to the director for choosing to film a real balloon and keep the scene heart-stoppingly free of a composer telling us how to feel. If only they gave out awards for Best Opening Sequence, Enduring Love would clinch every one. Saving Private Ryan would come second.

Sadly, one must consider the rest of the film. After reeling from this startling opening of beauty and horror, a brilliant depiction of Mr McEwan's imagination; we are wrenched away and dropped head first into Enduring Love London. Which appears to be a depiction of Mr McEwan's own life.

It is a London of nice white middle-class types, with their successful careers as artists and academics, having countless dinner parties, wearing glasses in bookshops and meaning it, typing away on laptops, appearing in The Guardian, and having lunch at the Tate Modern to discuss being on The South Bank Show. I'm not making this up.

I start to wonder if the director, who also made Notting Hill, is referencing and sending up Richard Curtis's notoriously idyllic version of London. After the emotionally exhausting first scene, perhaps he wants to have a bit more fun than the original novel permits. Cue sly insertion of a Peter Cook joke (see my earlier diary entry).

To consolidate this theory, he has cast Mr Nighy as someone funny (like he was in Mr Curtis's Love Actually), and Mr Ifans as a scruffy Welshman who gets in the way (like he was in Notting Hill). At one point Mr Ifans sinisterly sings the Beach Boys song, God Only Knows, which soundtracks the final scene of Love Actually.

Also, Mr Craig's Tate Modern dining partner is played by Mr Andrew Lincoln. Who was in Love Actually playing a kind of… stalker. There, he dealt with his camcording infatuation of Ms Keira Knightly by showing her cue cards, then walking away saying "Enough" to himself; his stalking days apparently out of his system.

No such cue cards and unlikely London snow for Mr Craig. He hides his Blue-Eyed Sensitive Boxer looks and well-toned physique behind a nice pair of glasses (this means he is An Academic), and tries to get over the nasty Big Red Round Thing of his recent past. But the accident eats away at him, he sees red spheres everywhere, he acts obsessively, and when Mr Ifans starts stalking him, he over-reacts significantly, shouting "Keep away from me – or I shall <i>gut you like a fish</i>!"

Now, Mr Craig is such a physically wonderful actor, so at home within his own skin, that we entirely believe he could rip the skinny Mr Ifans apart with his bare hands, let alone require a fish knife. It's hinted that his sense of Potential Violence is a direct influence on Mr Ifans's later actions, that by doing so he has changed Mr Ifans from a sad, harmless sort who just needs professional help to a dangerous violent threat to him and Ms Morton. That it it may be Mr Craig who is the truly dangerous one. So it's just a shame that the film then plays this down in favour of a cliched kill-or-be-killed struggle for a kitchen knife, turning it into just another sub-Fatal Attraction thriller. Bring back the balloon, I say.

I leave the cinema so unsatisfied that I pop into Borders and buy the Ian McEwan novel, hoping it contains a better ending. Which, I'm pleased to report, it does. The book finishes with a letter, giving us a terrific insight into Mr Ifans's character that the film denies us. It also posits the thought-provoking idea (also suggested in the Peter Schaffer play "Equus") that Deranged Love outstrips Normal Love in terms of pure, poetic passion, in terms of certainty about one's lot, and that this may even make it an enviable state of mind.

To be fair, the film doesn't entirely leave this theme out. In a scene halfway through, the two men accuse each other of being "lost". But that's as far as it goes; there's no follow-up. No last letter. Never mind the men: the real loss is this film's potential.

The film does improve on other aspects of the novel, though. Mr McEwan's balloon as he originally meant it is grey, not red. For all its faults, the film would be a far less poetic animal if the makers hadn't made this crucial revision. I wonder if their choice of red might not be a knowing adult twist on the 50s French film "The Red Balloon", which also had a small boy and a red balloon with a mind of its own. Or perhaps it's a nod to Don't Look Now, another film with a tragic opening scene, a sinister use of scarlet, and a bloody ending with a big knife.

I note that Mr Craig's character in the novel is pushing 50, fat and balding, unlike the rippling thirtysomething he is in the film. In the book, Mr Ifans is a wealthy, ex-public school English-accented Londoner living in a huge house in Hampstead; as opposed to Welsh and living in a small flat in what looks like Kilburn. Quite why they asked Mr Ifans to keep his accent is beyond me – he's played Peter Cook with convincing enough Posh English tones. Did they really prefer a slightly sadder Spike from Notting Hill?

The Fatal Attraction knife of the film isn't in the book either – there's a gun (in fact, a whole sequence of gun-getting), a small pen knife, a shooting in a restaurant and a suicide threat. All of which are omitted by the film, and I just can't understand why. The movie could only benefit from them.

Ms Morton's character has also been changed for the worse. In the book, she's a sensible literary biographer. In the film, she is a Guardian-featured artist who makes bad clay busts of Mr Nighy and Mr Craig, tempting audience members of a certain age to start whistling Mr Lionel Richie's "Hello".

One final complaint. After the impressive lack of music in the opening scene, the rest of the film resorts to featuring one of the most inappropriately tacked-on cod-classical scores I've ever heard at the cinema. Backing music is meant to enhance a film. Here, it grates and distracts.

My conclusion to you, Dear Reader, is to see the film for its opening sequence and excellent acting all round, then read the novel immediately afterwards to wash away the movie's baffling shortcomings.

Otherwise, Enduring Love will only endure in the mind as Love Actually meets Fatal Attraction… on Chardonnay.

After viewing Mr Nicholson Senior's art at the RA, I sit in Borders Books Cafe, Charing Cross Road. The cafe is now a Starbucks, so I only use it if the one in Foyles (still an independent family business) is full-up. And then, as I do in all Starbucks, I only ever order tea. Tea drinking as a revolutionary act, I like to think. The joke's on me, as their tea is revolting. Clever, very clever.

A young couple seated near to me are talking loudly to each other about "gigs".

It is only after some time that I realise it's not concerts they are discussing.

Neither is it "gig" as in "job", used in a spirit of matey modesty. As in "I got the Spielberg gig".

They are, in fact, discussing different types of <i>iPod.</i>

2005 London in a nutshell.

I watch the movie Enduring Love at the Odeon Wardour Street. At one point in all the intense psychological goings-on, there's a rather good joke that's not in the original book by Ian McEwan:

<b>Joe (Daniel Craig):</b> You're mad!
<b>Jed (Rhys Ifans):</b> They said that about Jesus.
<b>Joe:</b> They said it about a lot of mad people as well!

Then I start to think. Where have I heard this line before?

<b>Dudley Moore:</b> You're a nutcase! You're a bleeding nutcase!
<b>Peter Cook:</b> They said the same of Jesus Christ, Freud, and Galileo…
<b>Dudley Moore:</b> They said it of a lot of nutcases too!

<i>- from BEDAZZLED, the late 60s Cook and Moore movie. Script by Peter Cook.</i>

Mr Ifans played Mr Cook in the recent biopic "Not Only But Always", which includes scenes from the making of "Bedazzled". I suspect that has something to do with it.

I feel far too pleased with myself for spotting this.

Two films recently watched, with a few things in common.

The Station Agent. Quiet little US indie-flick. Music by queer indie muso (Mr Stephen “Hedwig And The Angry Inch” Trask), former Dawson’s Creek actor in cast (Ms Williams), Ms Patricia Clarkson (from Far From Heaven and Dogville) excelling in a main role. Like Mr H Macy and Mr Nighy, she must give hope to actors everywhere that, even in these youth-obsessed times, Movie Life can really begin at 40.

Here she’s a scatty, coffee-spilling artist who befriends Finn, a trainspotting loner. Finn inherits a disused railway shack, where’s he’s happy to be left alone by people. Entirely understandable, given the unkind reception he gets from strangers due to his restricted stature. Children shout “where’s Snow White?” as he passes them on the street, while a shopkeeper takes his photo without asking. I’m not convinced people would be THAT outwardly cruel in real life – and these moments are my only criticisms of an otherwise brilliant film.

The DVD box blurb cunningly evades using the word “dwarf”, leaving it to the sleeve photos to make Finn’s – or, rather, the actor Mr Dinklage’s – most distinguishing feature apparent. The Daily Mail would probably call this sort of thing Political Correctness, but it’s really DVD blurb as Good Manners.

I’m reminded of Thora Hird’s fading resident of an old people’s home in Mr Bennett’s “Waiting For The Telegram”.

“Then we start doing these exercises, naming folks. I’m quite good at that… Rene, Mary, Hilda. And then I get stuck. She says, “Describe, Violet. Say, the lady in the yellow frock.” I said, “The black lady.” She said, “No, Violet. It’s better to say the lady in the yellow frock.”

“I says to Francis, “It’s a complicated business, talking.”

The best character in the movie, though, is Joe: a gregarious Cuban hot dog salesman. He is an almost puppy-like boyish man who lights up the screen, his absence equally palpable in the scenes without him. Reminiscent of one of the more cheering characters in Dickens. Joe Gargery in Great Expectations springs to mind.

These three well-written characters mope around quietly in the leafy New Jersey wilds, along with Ms Dawsons Creek and a bored loafing schoolgirl, for 90 minutes. They become tentative friends, the tentative friendship is challenged, a lasting friendship is confirmed. It’s a tried and tested basic story, but with memorably original characters. And it’s so easy on the ears. Nothing explodes. No car chases. Actually, there is a train-chase. But it’s quite a quiet train-chase. A marvellous film.

Pieces Of April Another quiet little US indie flick. Though as with the other film, I use the word “little” purely in terms of budget and duration. Pieces Of April takes a mere eighty minutes of one’s attention.

Again the music is by a queer indie muso (Mr Stephin “Magnetic Fields” Merritt), again there’s a former Dawson’s Creek actor in the cast (Ms Holmes), and again Ms Clarkson is present and correct.

Here she’s an unkind mother riddled with breast cancer. Rather than improving her character, even making her saintly (as cancer films tend to do), her illness has rendered her even more unpleasant. When asked if she has one single nice memory about her estranged eldest daughter (Ms Holmes), she cites an incident that turns out to be her other daughter. She also takes delight in showing her mastectomy photos to her own Alzheimer’s-stricken mother. Not something one sees very often in the movies.

Ms Clarkson spends most of the film holding court in the back seat of the family car with her loving but long-suffering relatives, on the way to visit Ms Holmes in New York. Despite having to stop to vomit messily in a service station bathroom, one hand on the sink, the other guarding her chemotherapy wig, Ms Clarkson is very much the vehicle’s strongest spirit. She uses her cancer as a whip to order others around, or to belittle them with impunity. Terminal illness as an extreme form of passive aggression. Once again, not something too common in films.

Meanwhile we get to spy on the car’s destination: the minimum-rent NYC flat of eldest daughter Ms Holmes. She is preparing them a Thanksgiving meal. It will be a final attempt, the poor father hopes, to make one pleasant memory between mother and daughter, before mother dies. But as soon as her live-in boyfriend goes out, her oven breaks down, forcing her to seek aid from the mixed batch of residents in the other flats. This being the metropolis, her neighbours are complete strangers to her. This being a rather well-written film, they’re all characters that could get films of their own, even if their dialogue amounts to a few lines of turning Ms Holmes’s appeal down.

One such neighbour is a slightly strange, immaculately-dressed man played rather well by Jack from Will & Grace. Far less camp than Jack, far more… worrying. His only companion is a pampered pug dog constantly cradled under one arm. At one point he holds Ms Holmes’s uncooked turkey to hostage, as punishment for her lack of manners. She calls the police to report a kidnapping.

Needless to expatiate, Mr Jack’s character is the sort of part I’d love to play myself.

Despite the subject matter, Pieces of April is frequently genuinely funny and genuinely moving without resorting to crass sentimentality. Like The Station Agent, it’s the perfect film to watch if one is feeling pessimistic about The Soul Of Man, and indeed The Soul Of American Screenplays. Hats off to the makers of both films.

I get in and turn on the TV to see what life is like in 2005. Brigitte Nielsen and Bez From Happy Mondays are standing silently next to each other at the bathroom mirror, cleaning their teeth. I turn it off, lie on my bed, and feel like I am the last man on earth.