Feeling curiously fragile and anti-social lately. Well, more than usual. Extreme Garbo-itis. Trying hard to conserve money, which is rather whittled away when going out and buying drinks. Even two drinks an evening makes rather a dent in one’s resources when living on National Assistance. Which is a pity, as I keep being invited or alerted to all kinds of nice events.

It’s made harder now that I’m no longer working regularly at Archway Video. Still, I’m earning dribs and drabs by doing pleasant computer-based work for them, such as updating their website, typing work, compiling charts. All of which I rather enjoy and do so in the comfort of my own room whenever I like. Mr Benson has got me doing similar work for him too. I’ve just transcribed an interview he did with Quentin Crisp in 1996 for Gay Scotland Magazine, so he can put it on his website. I’ve been listening to his original interview tape for reference. Talk about work one can take pleasure from.

It’s such a cliché for writers to carp on about sub-editors distorting rather than enhancing their words, but the published article does contain a particularly baffling revision on the part of the magazine staff. In Mr B’s hand-typed manuscript, as on the tape, Mr Crisp quotes Saint Theresa:

St Theresa said, “We must treat all people as though they were at least better than ourselves.” Isn’t that a wonderful thing to have said? But God is so angry. All that power, and so mean with it. If I were God – and I never understand why I’m not – I should say, “Shop around, I don’t think you’ll find a better bargain than here.”

In the finished magazine, however, the quote reads “We must treat all people as though they were at least better than themselves.” Thus changing the whole sense of the saint’s message.

Perhaps the sub-editor thought ‘ourselves’ was a typo; that the quotation was just too humbling to be correct. Magazine Sub-Editor Finds Saint’s Words Too Saintly Shock.

And I’m back on the dreaded Life Laundry again, selling heaps of CDs and books on Amazon Marketplace rather than Ebay, where one can just look up the item, see what other people are asking, and muse on whether it’s worth selling your own copy, or just chuck it out.

Today, someone in Mottingham has bought my copy of Kylie Minogue’s Enjoy Yourself, original PWL CD version. I thought ‘Mottingham’; was a typo, but it appears to be somewhere dark in South London. They need all the vintage Kylie they can get down there.

Someone else in Dorset has just bought my copy of The Divine Comedy’s Promenade. It’s the original Setanta release, with a bonus 2nd CD EP of “A Promenade Companion”. I sold it for £5.99, a price off the top of my head, and it went within minutes of listing it. So I have a horrible feeling I’ve ripped myself off. I suppose I should obtain a Rare Records price guide, but I can’t be bothered. So it serves me right if I lose out. Moreover, I’m aware that just because one prices an item at what it’s worth, doesn’t mean it will actually sell quickly, or at all.

Still, I cheered up when I saw a book I’d purchased for 50p in some dusty basement currently listed on Amazon for £200 ‘Sandel’; by Angus Stewart. The bestselling novel of unconventional love, says the cover, by a photo of a solitary naked young man against a black background. “Coolly witty” – Sunday Times. “Bizarre, accomplished” – Times Literary Supplement. So says the jacket in 1970. Mr H thinks it would never get re-published in the Current Climate. Where Mr Jonathan King is regarded by some newspapers as several degrees worse than Mr Milosevic.

So, gushing over homoerotic rarities aside, I’d like to recommend the following events, even if I can’t attend them all myself.

Tonight: Mr Martin White, accordion master, playing at The Book Group, a comedy night hosted by Robin Ince at the Albany on Gt Portland Street. Also features the excellent comedian Dan Antopolski.

Thursday:Kash Point at Moonlighting, 10-3. Theme of which is Leigh Bowery Tribute Night. I rather thought every Kash Point was just that, but this occasion features the late Mr Bowery’s widow Nicola in her first Minty performance since, oh, 1892.

Friday: The Boyfriends at The Islington Bar Academy, N1 Centre. A very English, very London guitar band featuring some of the capital’s most charismatic male specimens.

Saturday: Kenneth Williams – TV Gems and Rarities, presented by Mr David Benson. 8pm, The Plough Inn Theatre, Wood Street, E17 / Walthamstow. Then Club Bohemia 8.30pm-2am, Buffalo Bar, Highbury Corner. If I go to the former, I’ll miss the marvellous band The Irrepressibles at the latter. I’ve seen them before, though. The singer has a wonderful falsetto croon, slightly reminiscent of The Tiger Lillies.

Being unsure how The Tiger Lillies spell their name, I check the Web and find an amusing unkind review of a Boston concert. It’s a fine example of how a bad review for some can be a good review for others. A good note to leave this entry on.

The Tiger Lilies [sic] weren’t much better-they were worse. A white-faced eunuch with an accordion strapped to his chest came out on stage and began singing falsetto songs about children masturbating and other trite Theatre Major shock matter that seemed more like an obvious (unskilled) perversion of a Tim Burton children’s book and Marlene Dietrich’s back catalogue than anything original or conceptually redeeming. Well, they are from Britain, so I guess they at least have some sort of excuse.

A recent cover of Time Out Magazine features a close-up portrait of the actor Sean Penn. Only instead of a photo they've used a hand-drawn coloured-in artist's sketch. It's truly awful, like one of those courtroom drawings. I try to work out the reasoning. Perhaps the artist is a Name. Names are usually enough to excuse all kinds of evils.

Then I see displays of the magazine cover at kiosks in Piccadilly, right next to those stalls of street artists displaying similarly poor black and white portraits of Bob Marley, Tom Cruise and other celebrities. Which I suppose tourists must buy in numbers great enough to justify this ridiculous practice continuing. So perhaps the Penn cover is a sly jokey reference to this. The implication being: you're not a true Hollywood star until you're a bad drawing in Leicester Square.

Mr Penn is not known for always getting sly jokes. According to the Time Out article, he reacted badly to being lampooned (as one of a group of knee-jerk Anti-Bush liberal actors) in the spoof movie Team America. He responded by personally offering to take the creators out to war-torn countries with him. "When we return, make all the fun you want". Then at this year's Oscars, he took umbrage to a Chris Rock joke about Jude Law's screen ubiquity.

So perhaps the Time Out cover is in itself a deliberate Joke Sean Penn Might Not Get.

Or maybe it's just a very bad drawing per se, and I'm thinking too hard about things again.

Last night: with Daniel Clift to the Jacksons Lane Community Centre. We see David Benson's brilliant one-man stage show, "Think No Evil Of Us – My Life With Kenneth Williams".

It's the same play he's been doing since 1996. He revises it slightly to keep it 'current'(the ghost of KW makes references to weapons of mass destruction at one point) and improvises around it (asking the audience halfway through if they want an interval or not, based on a show of hands).

The show defies your expectations all the way. Portrayals of the 'Carry On' star are blended with excerpts from Mr Benson's own arguably more interesting life, featuring his mentally ill mother who was eventually, as the euphemism goes, 'taken away'. Sample quote from her: "It's only the voices in my head that keep me sane." The show is at turns, hilarious (most of it), unexpectedly erotic (a shower scene from Mr Benson's schooldays) unsettling / tender (the sections on Mr B's mother), and tearjerking (a KW death scene – the one moment where it seems he really is possessed by the spirit of Mr Williams).

Mr B connects directly with audience members when he speaks of his formative years as a zealous fan of classic BBC comedy . Yet it was Spike Milligan, not KW, he wanted to be. At this point in the show, he says "Now, I know not everyone is keen on Spike Milligan. (addresses young woman in front row). You, madam – your expression suggests you don't like Spike Milligan, do you?"

Woman: (deadpan, far too quickly) No.

It's the voice of a thousand wives of Goon Show obsessives.

Elswhere, he recounts one vivid scene from the age of five. The Benson family are seated at dinner when his mother suddenly hurls a fork in the child Benson's face. The boy is sent to his room, but after a few moments can't resist peeking in through the door. He sees his parents locked in a standing grapple, the father holding back the mothers' fists above her head.

Father: (<i>still struggling to keep being hit</i>) What did you do that for? You could have blinded him!
Mother: He was trying to KILL ME! (<i>spies the boy looking in, voice switches to light motherly cooing</i>) Hello David! Come in, give your mother a hand!

This last line gets a big laugh. Black comedy doesn't come much blacker than this.

Mr Benson plans to keep touring 'Think No Evil Of Us' sporadically, so if the show plays at a venue near you, I highly recommend you see it, Dear Reader. <a href="http://www.thinknoevil.com/index.htm">Check the On Tour page of Mr Benson's website</a>. Londoners can see him at Highgate tonight (Sat March 5th).

I can also recommend the BBC double CD album <a href="http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/0563529369">"The Private World Of Kenneth Williams"</a>. Here, Mr Benson reads entries from Mr W's diaries, punctuated with appropriate clips from the BBC radio and TV archives. This was the programme recently broadcast on Radio 4, but the CD version has about a third more clips and readings.

Afterwards, I go to the club Stay Beautiful to see the band Client. Perfect glacial pop music for a snowy London night. Far too many gorgeous young people there. One has the conflicting sensation of lust and resentment. I say hello to Ms Davina, Mr Price, Mr Gullo, Ms Seaneen, Ms Anwen, Mr Sarll, Mr Jeff Automatic, Ms Hazel & Ms Groom, Ms Laura, Mr James Nemo, amongst others. Then I leave in time to catch the last tube home.

That's the right party etiquette: arrive at a point when most people will be there, say hello or make eye contact with everyone one is familiar with (easier to do with contact lenses), then don't outstay one's welcome.

I am accosted by a drunken Default Man who insists on comparing me to someone in front of his similarly Nike-wearing mates. Business as usual, except it's one I haven't heard before:

"Hey Niles Crane! Where's Daphne? Har har har!"

Mr Clift enjoys Client, whose new songs are even better than the ones from their second album, 'City'.

DC: The singer's voice really reminds me of someone.
DE: The chanteuse from Dubstar, perhaps?
DC: Yes, exactly.
DE: It is she.
DC: That would explain it.