To the Prince Charles Cinema, for a live DVD-style commentary-screening of The League Of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse. It’s just like watching a DVD with the audio commentary on, except the actors are in the front row of the cinema with radio mics. It’s a strange event, but then the Prince Charles is a cinema famed for its umpteen ‘singalong or shout-along’ screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and more lately Singalong The Sound Of Music, where the audience are provided with their own puppet nuns.

One might imagine a ‘shout-a-long’ event for other films. For Revenge Of The Sith, the entire audience could scream throughout “please hurry up and turn into Darth Vader so we can all go home and get on with our lives.”

Here, there’s no puppet nuns given out. But I do get two free drinks. A ‘glass’ of wine turns out to be a generous beaker filled almost to the brim, so I am more than happy. Cheers to the League Of Gentlemen.

What most intrigues me about the LOG is how they’re unashamedly self-mythologising when chatting about their own work. Like the makers of Spaced and Shaun Of The Dead, they are obsessive fans who create obsessive fans. It’s narcissistic (an adjective I only ever use as a compliment) and deliberately self-aware cult entertainment. It knowingly feeds and encourages a following of disciples, because the makers themselves are the same sponge-like fan of culture, popular and highbrow. During the live commentary, they allude to anything from The Shining to Sartre’s No Exit to Ms Fern Britton’s weight.

Hearing them ramble on for 90 minutes over their own movie is perfectly engaging and enjoyable, as I generally enjoy DVD commentaries anyway. In my more perverse moods, I find comedy commentaries can be funnier or more interesting than whatever’s being commented upon. As for the actual LOG movie, it’s not entirely my cup of tea all the way through, and I would never place it in a time capsule as representative of the LOG at their best (for me, that would be a selection of episodes from the TV series). But I do find many of the jokes genuinely amusing, many of its ideas genuinely inspired. He said ungraciously, sipping on their free wine.

I suppose a live commentary has the added frisson not just of playing to an audience, but also being free of any editing for libel. Not that I can recall any salacious gossip from the evening.

An audience also provides a quick way of testing the best jokes – or rather the jokes that work best even when talked over. Going by this crowd, the movie’s clear highlight is the ejaculating-giraffe scene towards the beginning. Further references to it solicit an equally fulsome response. “Calm down. We don’t want to milk the giraffe… Oh, I didn’t mean that, either…”

There’s another big laugh when they mention an idea for a spin-off sitcom featuring Herr Lipp as a plumber: ‘Lipp Sinks’. They’re joking, which is a shame given the paucity of real spin-offs which do get made, like Joey or The Green Green Grass. Sitcoms where you have to spot the joke in Episode Four.

As audience members take their seats before the screening, I hear something which instantly reminds me I’m in fanbase territory. People are loudly swapping the addresses of websites.

The movie DVD’s poster campaign relies upon two favourites from the TV series: Papa Lazarou and the ‘Local Shop’. This gives rather a false impression, as both are barely in the movie at all. Seems a bit mercenary, given the film is about the LOG trying to move away from their past TV success. But perhaps that’s the point of the ad.

Place: Glam-ou-rama Presents Club Bohemia at the Buffalo Bar, Highbury Corner, London.
Event: Night Of A Thousand Ziggys / Performances by John Howard and Shard / Simon Price’s Birthday
Date: London September 24th 2005.
Photographer: Brian David Stevens.
Other nocturnal peacocks frozen in time here.

Yesterday: to the Kafka-esque Benefits Agency building in Euston, to prove I’m still eligible for the government’s kindness and am not pulling a fast one. It’s where you have to sum up and justify your entire life. This is who I am, you say, this is what I feel my vocation is, I haven’t managed to make a living from it. So please can Mother Government not cut off her paltry if starvation-preventing payments? No problem for me, as I’ve done this so many times before. Which IS the problem.

How do I feel at the age of 34?

I notice things I didn’t before. Never mind policemen getting younger; I feel there’s more young people around full stop. And I think I resent them for being young. When really I’m resenting myself for not feeling older in any other sense than not having died yet. And for not having attained what I feel should be the position of a 34-year-old. There are compensations for being 34. It’s just that I don’t have them.

I don’t know many other 34-year-olds. I suspect this is because the average 34-year-old doesn’t want to know me. When I do keep company, I find it tends to be with those a few years younger. Or older people who are a bit unconventional. Actually, I need to find a few more of those. One can only care about the love lives of young people so far – before they call the police.

Not that I’m ungrateful for the company and readership of the young. It’s just that I worry if they’ll still be about when they’re 34.

Cut to the next decade, and a typical 34 Year Old. “Oh, Dickon Edwards! I remember him. But I’m over that phase now. Sorry, I have to go, we couldn’t get an i-Babysitter for tonight…”

So, 34 and still living on state benefits. Which are never enough for ‘living’ in any real sense of the word. Added to which I’m in debt, with the bank charging me £35 this week for a bounced rent cheque, due to me not paying close enough attention to my budget. £35 is half my weekly income. I had to laugh.

I look around and see people of my own age or younger who are so much further ahead in life. I look at adverts in the press for flats and houses and again, I can only laugh. It’s the sums written down. Thousands of pounds, hundreds of thousands of pounds, millions of pounds. I wonder what’s it like to have that sort of money. What must it be like to have savings? What must it be like to NOT rent a furnished bedsit on housing benefit forever? Will I ever know? I’ve been like this for years now. No signs of changing. Just signs of ageing.

Admittedly, living in a cheap room in one of the wealthiest areas of London probably aggrandizes such thoughts. Down and Out in Hampstead and Highgate. But I can’t deny there’s an inner voice that cries, this is not as it should be. Not now. Not at 34. Not you…

Teenagers try to survive, full stop. Working out who you really are isn’t the number one priority when you’re trying to breathe. At school, you’re surrounded by people you’d cross the street to avoid in later life. Yet you have to get along with them daily at the most fragile time of your life. The best advice to a teenager is to take cover, and to hang on.

Twentysomethings can breathe a little, meet as many different people as possible and try every social sphere available. They find out who they really are, and what they’re best placed to be doing with their life, and have fun doing it. They care about what’s going on, but also about Getting On.

By 34, you know what you care about. You can follow the news and the trends in music or fashion if you like, but it’s finally okay to focus upon what only matters to you. You’re meant to have worked out who you are, and be in some kind of stable career path. Or at least able to say what you do. You’re meant to have savings. You’re meant to have a flat. You’re meant to have a direction. Maybe a loved one or a family. You’re not meant to still be living alone on benefits with no sign of ever signing off.

I sometimes feel I appear to be living like a heroin addict, without the heroin. So when I wear short-sleeved shirts in hot weather, I’m pleased that people can see I’m not a junkie. Though I’m far more pleased they can also see I spend some of my benefit money on chemically removing the hair from my arms. And yes, Veet is such a silly name for what used to be Immac.

One recurring dream: I am running in a race, but impossibly left behind. I stop to catch my breath and wonder: is it worth continuing? Ah well, I never cared for Games. Can I be excused with a note from a doctor? From Life? (answer: yes). And does the racetrack have a bar?

In another, I’m in a relay race of great writers, songwriters, actors, wits and artists. The baton is handed to me – and I promptly break it.

I look in the newspaper Vacancies pages, and it’s like the Properties pages again. An alien world, a world for other people. Not me. Experience X required. Qualification Y required. Would suit a young graduate. Competing, hustling, bullying and networking required. If you’re not young, then you’re expected to have experience and references. And if you’re not young, and you don’t… It’s hard not to feel utterly useless, worthless, hopeless, suicidal.

So it’s just as well I don’t feel those things. Even a depressive narcissist has a sense of self-preservation. It’s called a mirror.

I badly want to get off benefits and earn a modest living doing something I can do well. Which I think – I hope – is writing, or rather writing the way I write. It’s just the thought of hustling and ‘talking myself up’ that drains me. What I want is someone to get in touch, rather than spy something and have to fight for it. The latter is just not me.

It’s all true. I’m afraid I genuinely believe the world owes me a living. And I laugh again.

Cricket is in the air. The England team have won the Ashes, beating Australia for the first time in a rather astounding 18 years. On Archway Road, the off-licences and pubs have offers on English champagne, their pavement blackboards and computer-printed sheets of A4 in the window bedecked with celebratory St George’s crosses.

Just as there was with rugby last year, I feel there’s a fair-weather fans’ trend, people only getting into a sport when their country’s team becomes capable of winning a major prize. Popularity, like success, has a snowballing effect. Fair enough – it’s the timeless urge to want to join in, to get into the party, to have a share of the zeitgeist fun, to belong, to not want to miss out.

My entire philosophy is based on resisting the rush to join in with whatever seems terribly popular at the time. In many sci-fi tales like Night Of The Comet (a great 80s b-movie, by the way) or Day Of The Triffids, most of the human race is left blinded, turned to dust or turned into zombies by taking part in some mass event like watching a comet. Those that miss out for whatever reason find themselves among a surviving minority, charged with continuing mankind – or not – on their own. It’s possible that I read a little too much into these silly stories.

Nevertheless, one must never be afraid to not join in. There’s no need to follow the cricket if you’re not that way inclined. Similarly, there’s no need to get married and have 2.4 children, or 2.4 cats, or 2.4 iPods, to watch a comet, to tune in for Lost, to wear trainers, to rush out and buy a few more Coldplay records just in case no one else does.

Relax. Other people WILL do all these unpleasant things for you. And they will INSIST! Look upon the rest of mankind as your unpaid stunt doubles.

What an incredible sentence to write. It’s nice to remind myself I am who I claim to be. If I woke up tomorrow and found myself to be Judi Dench, I wouldn’t know what to do. One for the Dickon Edwards section in future books of quotations.

Look upon the rest of mankind as your unpaid stunt doubles.

This default against-the-grain pose of mine is, of course, ridiculous, and I don’t always embrace it myself. Many popular things are actually rather good and should be tried at least once. And many unpopular or (as the euphemism goes) “cult” works remain unloved by the masses for a very good reason. But if you believe in Mr Robin Hood’s principle of redistribution of wealth, you must recognise that much of the modern world’s wealth is the Currency of Attention. When most heads seem turned in one particular direction, looking to one side can be no bad thing. Other experiences are available.

For my part, I have tried to get into cricket in the past. But like bisexuality and bungee-jumping, it’s not for everyone.

Fowler: Are you trying to be clever or something?
Judd: I don’t have to try. I am clever.

The above dialogue is from Another Country, the film that most springs to my mind whenever anyone mentions cricket. In one scene, schoolboy Rupert Everett umpires a match. He deliberately skews the proceedings in order to favour bowler Cary Elwes, with whom he is in floppy-fringed love.

Perhaps this year’s England team are just much better-looking than the previous 18 years’ lot.

I don’t know, I’m not looking in the same direction.

Sunday – A nice rainy day, so time to get out and about. I saunter off to Barnes for walk with Ms Nina Antonia. She is the author of books about parent-baiting androgynous rockers from the 1970s: the New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders and most recently the doomed teenage star-that-never-was, Brett Smiley, in “The Prettiest Star – Whatever Happened To Brett Smiley?’ This week she will appear on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour talking about this latest and I think most accessible work. You don’t have to know about Brett Smiley to enjoy it, because it’s about why Brett Smiley isn’t famous in the first place. It’s a more universal tale of thwarted and frustrated dreams, and of a pop fan’s own teenage dreams (of escape, of self-realisation) projected upon hubris-tainted pin-ups.

It’s also about what I consider to be historically essential to pop music – the reaching out of the Deliberate Weirdo to fragile teenagers’ Inner Weirdo everywhere. The appearance on mass family TV of an exotically androgynous performer, confusing and scaring the parents while enticing those who never realised they were of a different stripe. It’s the most redeemable moment in the film “Velvet Goldmine”, where suburban teenager Christian Bale sits in front of the TV and points at a Bowie-esque pop star on the screen. He gasps, watches, then shouts back to his appalled mother and father on the sofa, “That – That’s ME, that is! That’s ME!”

I wonder now if that same cry manifested itself in living rooms last week, when Antony and The Johnsons won the Mercury Prize. The Importance Of Being Publicly Weird can never be underestimated or indeed under-promoted. The Kaiser Chiefs, Maximo Park, and their New-Britpop kind are all very well, but when Antony & The Johnsons appeared, I imagined a million “What the hell is – THAT?” expressions on more than a few sofas. Elsewhere, tender and solitary hearts fluttered with the relief of a new connection, a new projection, a new representative.

All pop music should never just be about pop music. Because it never used to be. A while ago there was always at least one artist comforting those that felt they were the only unusual ones in the world. There’s not been enough of that lately. So hats off to the Mercury judges.

Thinking back to Mr Smiley’s musical failure, I feel Ms Antonia’s book is released from the pitfalls of a genuinely successful artist’s biography, where the readership is limited to a book-buying subset of the subject’s fans. I don’t care how beautifully-written a Coldplay biography might be; even if Harper Lee were to suddenly emerge from her sequestered world to pen it, I would never consider a life lived without an Exclusive Coldplay Interview to be a life unfulfilled. Chris Heath’s study of Robbie Williams, “Feel”, might be a rare exception, critically acclaimed thanks to Mr Heath’s eminently readable fly-on-the-wall style. But even so, I had to put it down after a smattering of pages, because I just don’t want to spend time lurking around Robbie Williams. He’s not unusual enough – even though he thinks he is.

=======

In Barnes we pass a car showroom that specialises in those zeitgeist-gobbling 4-by-4 SUV vehicles. I’ve never gotten close to a whole fleet of the things before. They really are more similar to tanks than jeeps. So palpably unnecessary in leafy London suburbs, they seethe with sadistic imperial I’m-All-Right-Jack (or George W) smugness. A firm reminder, as if there weren’t enough, that whether you visit the USA or not, the USA will always pay a visit to you. Enormous fender grates, ripe for easily scraping off the bodies of slow-moving environmentalists. I wouldn’t go as far as Mayor Livingstone’s unkind labelling of London SUV owners as “complete idiots”, but when apologists speak of “increased personal safety” for their children, I can’t help thinking of similar arguments by those who want to keep handguns under their pillows. Still, stopped in my strolling by such a silent and gleaming flotilla of status symbols, I cheekily ask Ms Antonia to pose among them.

A couple of notable paper-based fanzines to recommend.

The High Horse.
Impressively screen-printed to resemble an ancient newspaper, the HH collates writings from various London types about absolutely anything at all. Philosophy, buses, music hall, burglars. My own contributions have been a short story in issue 2 about Tube advert-inspired madness, Constantin Underground; while an article on my narrowboat activities, Tossing Upon The Spume, appeared in issue 4.

Priced £1.50, copies of the HH are available in London at the ICA bookshop, Reckless Records (Berwick St) and Rough Trade (Neals Yard).
For mail order details, write to: thehighhorse@hotmail.co.uk.
Website: www.thehighhorse.net

If Destroyed Still True
Autobiographical board games, angsty cartoons and tragicomic tales of drinking and snogging one’s way across the world. All from the charming desk of Ms Nine of Edinburgh. She’s on her second print run already. More details at: http://jinxremoving.org/

My 34th birthday is this Saturday the 3rd. I share it with actress Pauline Collins (the star of Shirley Valentine), Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, and the anniversary of the outbreak of World War 2. Today I discovered I also share it with the TV presenter Fearne Cotton, who did for Live 8 viewers’ consciousness what Mr Hitler did for Poland.

Traditionally, I never hold any kind of organised gathering for the celebration of my advancing demise. This year, though, I have decided to spend the evening in The Boogaloo, not least because it’s the nearest bar to my bed. Possibly the best London pub to feature the soundtrack albums for Performance and Bugsy Malone on its jukebox.

I shall be there from about 7pm to closing with my friends Mr Smirnoff, Ms Tonic, and Ms Sense Of Increasingly Wasted Potential. All human friends, kind strangers and wary acquaintances are invited, but only if their hearts are genuinely inclined. I hereby absolve all Slaves of Token Birthday Duty from their burden. I adore company, but find dutiful company far more depressing than comfortingly sincere solitude.

Photo: DE comforting himself with sincere solitude at Cafe Royal, Edinburgh, August 23rd 2005. Taken by obliging barwoman.

Edinburgh diaries to follow. I’ve been laid low (or rather, laid lower) by a summer cold for the last 7 days. It now seems to be taking its leave and I’m keen to get on with getting things done.