An attempt to take an arty photo in the hotel room mirror, after a party at the outrageously ornate Stockholm Governor’s Palace.

Hair, lips, suit. Everything else differs according to the viewer.

The Tessin Palace is rather… what’s the word? Palatial. Painted ceilings and panelled walls dating back centuries. Pricelessly beautiful clocks, portraits of bewigged nobles, antique chez lounges in every endless room. Trompe l’oeil canopies above a mini-maze in the courtyard.

‘The law requires me to live in this palace,’ Governor Per Unckel says in his speech to the Poetry Festival people. ‘It is not a law I have much difficulty complying with.’ But he says this in a genuinely abashed way rather than boastful. I rather like him.

For some arcane reason, I spend most of the dinner discussing the work of the band The Fall, plus explaining the meaning of the English phrase ‘blotting your copybook’, of all things. The idea that artists are not allowed to do anything at all once they’ve created a perfect work. The apparent pointlessness of Orson Welles’s other films, after he’d made the greatest film ever made. Paul McCartney unlikely to play a concert without some number from the band he was in over four decades ago. That Joseph Heller quote about not doing anything as good as ‘Catch 22’ (‘Yes… but neither has anyone else.’) Compare to Ray Davies:

Rude hack interviewing the Kinks frontman about a recent tour: How can you bear to crank out ‘You Really Got Me’ or ‘Waterloo Sunset’ for the millionth time?

Ray Davies: That’s like asking an actor if he ever gets tired of Shakespeare.

That’s the way to do it.

***

I speak to a local poet, Sofia Stenström, born and raised and living all her life in the city. She says this is the first time she’s been inside the historic palace. And I remember how I’ve still never been inside Buckingham Palace.

Discussed with Niklas and Ylva about how so many Swedish pop acts write and sing their songs in English. From Abba onwards. How often is the complement repaid, I ask? Which UK acts have recorded songs in Swedish?

Robyn Hitchcock did one. In addition to predicting a Swedish pop star via the spelling of his name. The Stranglers, too. Big in Sweden, they did a Swedish number. Any more? Do email in.

I’ve hereby sworn to record a new song in Swedish myself. It’s the least an English artist invited to Sweden more than a few times can do.

***

Niklas says I should have called the previous entry ‘Dickyn’.

***

Did another national TV interview this morning. Spoke about dandyism as decadence (cue the absinthe) and dandyism versus decadence, by way of Baudelaire’s great ecrivain-dandy quote (‘Dandyism is the last spark of heroism amidst decadence’). Considered various latter-day media definitions of decadence. From Facebook photos of drunken girls in the Daily Mail, to the New Burlesque club scene. Point me at a TV camera, and I’ll connect Tallulah Bankhead to Amy Winehouse at the drop of a post-modern trilby.

‘Are you a tragic figure?’ was one question.

Inescapably, I said. But the hours are good.

Have been getting all kinds of funny looks on the streets of Stockholm today. Just realised that, given the fresh bleaching, and lack of cutting, my hair is starting to look like Robyn’s. As in the Swedish pop star, currently doing well in the UK. Perhaps they think I’m her transvestite tribute act. At a distance. In the dark. In another world.

Thought I should do the Stockholm tourist bit properly today. Stood around dithering in a bookshop, choosing between the various guides. Rough Guide. Lonely Planet. Berlitz. Eyewitness. Eventually I left without buying any of them, because I suddenly realised I had a discount voucher for another bookshop on the other side of town.  I also realised I’d used the time I could have spent on a museum or attraction on browsing through guidebooks about which museum or attractions to see. There’s a very clumsy analogy about my life somewhere in there.

Am on the fourth floor of a rather nice hotel in Stockholm, with free WiFi.

Am fully blond once more, ready for my close up in a couple of hours’ time.

At 8am, Gatwick was crowded and noisy and too hot for a big winter coat. But the staff were nice and helpful, getting me checked in at one of those automated kiosks so I didn’t have to queue. Sterling Airlines let me carry my guitar onto the plane, pleasingly enough.

Landing in Arlanda, I’m pleased to see little scatterings of snow on the runway. And my big coat now makes sense: it’s -2 degrees C.

Am stopped going through customs – my first time – but only to be asked where I’ve come from.

‘London… and nowhere else?’

‘No.’

‘Okay. Thanks. You can go.’

I wonder why this makes all the difference? Still, my rubber glove day is postponed once more.

Another item ticked off the life To Do list: at the Arrivals gate I am met by a taxi driver carrying a sign with my name on.

Arrive at the hotel and am given an envelope containing the festival schedule, map, plus a formal invite to a buffet dinner tomorrow at the Palace of Tessin, being the Residence of the Governor of Stockholm County. Complete with coat of arms.

Am about to do my roots for Sweden. Letting my hair grow to Byronic tousles is fine, but the roots must be always be attended to. Particularly when one begins to resemble a badger who’s inexplicably been cast in a 1970s rock opera.

I’m not due to perform in Stockholm until Friday evening (Royal Dramatic Theatre, Elverket stage, Performance 2), but am been flown over tomorrow in order to attend rehearsals. Gatwick this time. Sterling Airlines. Just me and my guitar.

Three short sets to do:

1: Me and the novelist Martina Lowden. She reads her words, I back her on unobtrusive (I hope) ambient guitar. Ms L has quoted from my lyrics and blog in her novel, hence the collaboration.

2: Me solo. It’s a poetry festival, so I’m doing a couple of the wordier, poem-like Fosca songs.

3: Me and Friday Bridge. I’m guest vocalist for them once more, but this time I may also play a bit of guitar, seeing as I have mine with me, all amped to go. Niklas has emailed me the chords to an FB song. I balked at one of them, thinking it was some devilish new tonal invention. Or that I was so out of touch with the pop world, I’d even missed out on the discovery of a new chord.

Me: Um, it says ‘H’ here. What notes are in the chord of ‘H’?

Niklas: Oh, it’s the same as ‘B’. I think they changed it to B in Sweden in the mid-80s… I might be excused since I studied music theory for an old Polish teacher and he refused to call it B.

A bit of Googling reveals there used to be an ‘H’ chord in Germany (meaning ‘B’ in the UK), while ‘Bb’ was named ‘B’. Various European countries used this alternative notation for centuries, but it’s finally starting to die out. Bach used the old system to spell his name in a fugue. I do like how a simple email query can expand one’s education so. Particularly after a lifetime of thinking there was no such thing as the ‘H’ chord.

***

More education, this time re the motto on the first £1 coin.

‘An ornament and a safeguard’ would be a better translation! It refers to the milling on the edge of the coin, which was designed to stop people clipping bits off coins when they were actually made of gold and silver
– Laurence Hughes

Aha. Makes slightly more sense than ‘a treasure and a safeguard’.

***

Tomorrow, after I’ve settled in at the Stockholm hotel, I’m going to be interviewed by Swedish Public Service TV. They want my thoughts on Decadence & Dandyism in relation to fashion. Hmmm, I said. Okay. It turns out they also want me to film myself. Never done that before. Deep breath.

Meanwhile a Dutch national broadsheet has sent me a fairly serious email interview for an article on modern dandies. I’ve taken far too long doing the answers, treating it like a school exam paper, as if they’ve asked ‘examine and discuss’ or ‘show your work.’ And then I delete it all and start again. This is what often happens when I’m left to my own devices. I can get a bit lost in my own head, and am not sure where to stop.

With the interviewer present (or on the phone), I can be kept on track, or made to explain further when an answer hasn’t quite satisfied. Or convinced. Either way, I just sit there and talk and enjoy it. (and we’re back with Tom Sawyer once more. One secret of happiness: make your job feel like it’s not work).

When I’m asked by an interviewer to come up with something by myself, as in these latest two requests, I have to stop and think more consciously about what’s expected. Have I properly understood the brief, or barked up the wrong dandy tree entirely? No,  mustn’t think like that. Just do my best and hope for the best. Try not to overdo it or show off. And enjoy it.

Because I’m not complaining. These are requests from professional journalists for national media. And this is what I’m meant to be doing. So I must… show my work.

A long letter from Tom Stoppard. Sadly, not to me personally: his signature is printed on. It’s to the members of the London Library, of which he’s the honorary President, correcting some misconceptions about the subscription increase. One wouldn’t think this would be of interest to non-members, but it turns out there’s been some ‘misleading press coverage’. By which he means a piece in the Spectator and letters to the Times Literary Supplement.

He regrets that 34 members of the Library have instantly resigned, while a further 100 have written to say they’re considering leaving come the next renewal, but hopes the letter will persuade them to come back.

Sir Tom apologies for not being at the AGM:

I had a play opening in New York, which entails the duty of attending the previews and finding fault with anything except the script.

But the sackcloth stops there, and he signs off as a firm supporter of the decision:

To be a member of the greatest independent open-stack lending library in the land for just over a pound a day is not an offer for which we need apologise.

***

Wednesday: to the Bank of England Museum with David Barnett. It’s one of those many London museums and galleries that I’ve always meant to get around to. Highlights include the notched sticks used as receipts for the Bank’s first deposits in the 17th century, lots of Gillray and Cruickshank cartoons, and the real gold brick which visitors can handle, albeit through a hole in two perspex boxes.

I can’t even pick the brick up, but David – who is skinnier than me – has no problem. This spurs me on somewhat, and two more tries later I just about manage to turn the thing over. It’s not as light as it seems in films like The Lavender Hill Mob and The Italian Job.

Some facts learned from the museum:

– early bank notes were so easy to forge, the death penalty was extended to include counterfeiters. An example of how punishments can be set not to fit the crime, but to cover the shortcomings of crime prevention.

– the spindle on the which the metal strip is added to banknotes is called a Dandy Roll.

– the ‘folding green’ £1 note became blue during WWII, due to fears of enemy forgery

– I really miss the £1 note of my youth, the nice little green one with Isaac Newton, replaced by the £1 coin in the mid 80s. ‘Decus et tutamen’ said the usurping £1 coin along its side – ‘a treasure and a safeguard’. Handy for my O-Level in Latin at the time.

I also remember the first time I saw a £20 note as a child. It was a thing of real beauty: blue and red, with Shakespeare on the back against a scene from Romeo and Juliet, all in exquisitely detailed thin and tiny lines.

To my childish eyes, it seemed not just an impossible amount of money, but helped instill the notion that Shakespeare was an ultimate role model. I knew that the £50 had Christopher Wren, but the amount of £50 and the whole world of architecture seemed an impossible, even frightening level of responsibility. Shakespeare – and £20 – was a more possible ideal.

I still get nervous on the occasions I handle £50 notes today, and try to get them changed or banked or spent as quickly as possible, before I’m robbed or accused of being a forger. And I know I could never be an architect. Well, if I DID, I’d be the one who made the Millennium Bridge wobbly, making things that have to be ‘corrected’ before they’re allowed near real people.

I wonder if the children of today look at the current top notes – with Adam Smith on the £20 and John Houblon on the £50, and think about becoming economists or bankers respectively.

***

In the evening, I head to Chelsea for Xavior Roide’s Quentin Crisp Walk, for which I’m a kind of consultant. Well, I help him with the addresses and nuggets of interesting detail. There’s six of us – Xavior in lipstick and vintage spiv hat, resembling not Mr Crisp but one of his friends in the Black Cat cafe in the 1930s.

The rain absolutely drenches us to the bone, but we press on. 129 Beaufort Street is still there: the bedsit where Crisp lived from 1940 to his departure for New York in 1981. It’s currently for sale, and I’m tempted to phone up and ask how much. Probably more than an art school life model of today can afford, I’ll bet.

Some of the residents in the adjacent flats emerge and have to squeeze past our party. What must they think of this group of men in lipstick and funny hair, taking photos on their doorstep? An awkward moment, but they don’t say anything. Shame, as I was all ready to point out the history of their building for them.

Eight years ago this evening, I want to tell them, Mr Crisp died. And your building is where he spent most of his life in London, where he wrote The Naked Civil Servant, where he had (for once) enjoyable sex, thanks to the influx of American GIs: ‘Never in the history of sex was so much offered to so many by so few’. And in the 1971 documentary (also on the Naked Civil Servant DVD), he is interviewed at length in the bedsit, yet to be famous, talking about waiting for death at the age of 63. ‘It can’t be long now.’ He died in 1999, pushing 91.

‘They don’t look very Quentin-compatible, do they?’ whispers Xavior as the current residents of Quentin’s old address glower at us as we stand aside. But of course, they’re hardly likely to be flamboyant bohemians. Synthetic jackets, jeans, minimum risk clothes. Economists and bankers, maybe. It IS Chelsea.

Taking in ‘Darkest Pimlico’, where Denis Pratt first dyed his hair and name (the name ‘Quentin Crisp’ a suggestion by his friends), we end up in Old Compton Street, standing outside Swanks Menswear at No. 72, formerly the Black Cat cafe.

***

My own appearance on the walk is free of make-up, purely through lack of time. But I like to think the late Mr Crisp might be interested to know that earlier in the day, I was jostled by Holloway youths for the way I look (ie having dyed blond hair, pretty much), and had ‘Batty Boy!’ shouted at me. A 2007 tribute of a kind.

This was while walking down to the bus stop with David B, at about 1pm. We found ourselves in a quiet side street where the only other pedestrians were a handful of shouting teenage boys, walking towards us. Possibly school boys on their lunchbreak. No way of avoiding passing them. David and I continued chatting, though by this point I was just thinking, ‘Please don’t prove to be stereotypes.’

But of course, most teenagers can’t help being stereotypes of one sort or another. Geeks, Ravers, Punks, Emos, Nerds, Swots, Goths, Chavs, Hoodies. Rebel against your elders, but conform to your peers. The phase of feeling cheated in life, the safety of childhood gone, the cold world of work beckoning, the confusion of choices. No wonder some feel the need to react with aggression or violence.

Except I get this treatment from some so-called adults too. And it’s not because they’re in a gang. I’ve had a lone youth glower at me in the street and hiss ‘Batty Boy!’ as well. And this was in expensive yet liberal Highgate.

At the moment of passing, one of the Holloway number is shoved against me by one of his friends, like a game of Hoodie Dominoes. The old schoolboy trick to scatter blame: troublemakers yet cowards.

‘Oy, watch where the f— you’re going, blondie!’

But they’re walking away at this point, so I’m clearly safe from any proper harm. And one of them shouts ‘Batty Boy!’

I feel like turning and blowing them a kiss. But I can see how that might backfire.

Still, it seemed fitting for a day of celebrating Quentin Crisp.

***

Still royally fed up with this mysterious stomach ache. Have seen the GP, and have had blood taken for yet another test. This time, they think, it might be a food allergy. I’ve been asked to keep a Food Diary, noting everything I eat and drink. Which is pretty depressing.

Food is either boring or embarrassing. What’s good for you (vegetables) is boring to write down, what’s bad for you (chocolate) is embarrassing to admit to.

Am now on a diet not just without meat and fish, but also without caffeine or gluten, in case it helps. No let-up in the pain yet, but of course I want an instant improvement, rather than after two or three weeks. I have visions of Julianne Moore at the end of the film Safe, allergic to absolutely everything.

Veteran TV producer Verity Lambert has died at 71. She helped to give the world one particular British TV hero.

He’s a favourite of mine: unusual, long-lasting, famed for his outlandish appearance, his sense of stylish outsidership, and his non-violent response to encountering evil wherever he goes. And he celebrates an anniversary this week.

I mean of course… Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant.

Mr Crisp died 8 years ago on Wednesday. The DVD of the Naked Civil Servant – the single most influential film on my life – includes a commentary from Ms Lambert, who executively produced the film for Thames TV in 1975, after it had been turned down by everyone else.

Without her I wouldn’t be the man I’m not today. Thank you, Verity.

(Oh, and thanks for that Doctor Who programme, 44 years old today. I rather like that, too.)

I rent out the BBC series Jekyll on DVD. It’s a perfect example in how to keep the viewer gripped for six one-hour episodes, so much so that I have to watch all the episodes together in one evening, going to bed at about 3am. I salute the makers for holding one’s attention so, particularly in these days of so many alternatives fighting for slices of people’s leisure time.

I would equate Jekyll with the 80s series Edge Of Darkness – which I also watched in one six-hour VHS session at the time, utterly gripped. One is left yearning to see what happens next, to the point of chemical addiction. Except when Edge Of Darkness went out, there was just the three other channels, and no Web.

Ten years before that, it was a case of ‘what’s on the other side’. A recent documentary on Abigail’s Party puts its cult success into context. The Mike Leigh play went out at a time when ‘the other side’ was on strike, so there was literally nothing else to watch that evening. Likewise The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp putting his entire celebrity down to the biopic of his life going out against the news on a dull weekday evening.

It’s the eighth anniversary of Mr Crisp’s death tomorrow. Xavior Roide is organising a walking tour of his London haunts and abodes, including the Chelsea bedsit which he famously failed to ever clean. ‘After the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse’ still the one line people tend to quote, assuming they know of him at all. He lived in the same bedsit for forty-one years. By which point he quipped that the cockroaches had applied to the council to be rehoused.

‘If it had been released as a proper movie’, he said about The Naked Civil Servant, ‘the only people paying to see it would have been gay men. Oh, and liberals wishing to be seen going into and coming out of the cinema.’

Jekyll‘s basic story isn’t quite enough to fill six hours, but writer Steven Moffat always manages to add rather than dilute: the window-dressing approach to TV writing. But where slick USA genre shows like Heroes can sometimes take themselves too seriously, forgetting that a dull character with super powers is still dull, Moffat knows that unexpected moments of comedy are as gripping as unexpected developments of plot. If they’re done well.

In one episode of Jekyll, a stock thriller character – a random soldier ordered to shoot Mr Hyde – is suddenly given a whole backstory in remarkable, unexpected flashbacks. We learn why this normally anonymous mercenary loves the now dated Crazy Frog ringtone, how he was hired via a blank cheque (literally), how he was trained to be a ruthless, unthinking machine, and why he’s been kept aside purely for the task of killing Mr Hyde for some time. We then cut back to the present scene, where Hyde quickly throws the soldier off a rooftop, and he’s never mentioned again. It’s so unexpected, and so brazen, that the viewer can only be left glued to the screen, wondering what could possibly happen next.

***
Other favourite British TV, more of the moment: the new series of The Mighty Boosh. A kind of cute surrealism, a la Vivian Stanshall: baffling to some, charming to others. A scene where Noel Fielding is selling wares to a queue of trendy youths, all decked out – like Mr Fielding himself – in cartoonishly dyed hairdos, painted faces, neck scarves and colourful, effeminate, shiny and skinny 80s-ish clothes, leaves me thinking about Romo (again). The eternal appeal of the dressing-up box. Perhaps the laddish Britpop fashions of the 90s will shortly take their turn as the least lovely decade in the last fifty years, as the 80s and 70s did before them.

***

The press on the Tutankhamun show in the papers this week refers to the relics’ last major outing at the British Museum in the 70s, complete with vintage shots of raincoated visitors queuing around the railings in Bloomsbury. It is History as a Greatest Hit. Though the broadsheet consensus on the Egyptian nick-nacks this time hints more at a tacky cover version, or a desperate remix. One should never put too much store on reviews, of course, but when the ticket price is extravagant (£20), and the venue out of the way (the former Millennium Dome, now tackily rebranded by a mobile phone company as The 02) these things do tend to make up one’s mind, just as they can do with West End shows.

For books or films or albums it’s different. Not only are they more affordable, but with the crowd element removed a bad critical reception of a book, film or CD is more likely to make you feel the critic is not right for the work, rather than the other way around. With a play or exhibition, it’s much harder to feel a personally favourable connection, when there’s an unfavourable consensus. Though I still wish I’d seen that Mike Read-penned Oscar Wilde musical, before it closed after one disastrous night. If only for the novelty factor.

***

Kept from the diary due to either feeling too tired or too ill. Sometimes it’s as if I can only exist in one of three states:

1) asleep,

2) awake but so tired I don’t feel up to writing, instead killing the hours wandering around in a sticky-eyed state of dreamy wooziness, or

3) awake but wracked with a painful ailment that just makes me want to go back to bed and hope I’ll feel better the next day.

This latter state has been the case for much of the past six weeks. The ailment in question is the weird stomach pains which my GP thought was IBS. Have nearly run out of those IBS pills he prescribed, which don’t seem have had much effect, to be honest. Also ran out of the expensive high-strength Manuka honey, which seemed to make things easier. Either that, or I was distracted enough by its sweetness. Sometimes, a spoonful of sugar becomes the medicine’s stunt double.

Definition of healthy: the state of being sufficiently distracted from one’s unhealthiness.

As soon as I visit someone or the phone rings, I’m fine. Or I forget about it, so I might as well be fine.

I wonder if it’s something psychological, linked with anything that resembles work. I also wonder if it’s an ulcer, an infection, or a dietary allergy. Gluten or lactose, that sort of thing. Pains triggered by eating too much of something, or not enough of something.

But most of all I just think: Ouch.

***

Am staying in Claudia A’s flat in Upper Holloway once again, cat-sitting Sevig while his owner’s out of the country. Am enjoying the little upgrades from a bedsit: the extra space to pace around in, and having my own bathroom, though the hot water seems to be on the blink.

Friday: I set up my guitar and amp and compose some suitably ambient instrumentals for the Martina Lowden set in Stockholm. I have the TV on in the background, only stopping to turn up the sound for the Doctor Who sketch on Children In Need. Peter Davison and David Tennant together, an indulgence for the older fans (surely baffling for the kids), but with a poignant twist that manages to give it depth amid all the chummy frivolity of the occasion: Tennant’s Doctor is a loving admirer of his younger yet older self. Meeting one’s hero, where the hero is one’s own past self. You don’t tend to associate Children In Need sketches with philosophical musings on being. Though having said that, I suppose the now traditional sight of BBC newsreaders doing comedy dance routines could lend itself to an essay on Baudrillard.

***

Saturday – to Hampstead Heath, where I am filmed by Jenn Connor for a sort of video postcard back to her friends in California. The idea is she bumps into her friends around London and asks them about what they love about the city. I natter on about the Heath and its history as a happy accident and a place for all kinds of recreational pleasure across the class divisions, including of course gay cruising.

By way of historical context, I bring along a make-up compact. In 1918 a man was arrested on the Heath for homosexual importuning, his possession of a powder puff cited as admissable evidence for the prosecution. In fact, the court records for interwar London are full of such cosmetically-based arrests, and the Historical Journal recently published a fascinating essay on the whole subject (currently online here).

Which reminds me.

A year or so ago, I attended a Scritti Politti gig in Kilburn with Tim Chipping. By this time, Tim had become more conventionally presentable than he’d been during the blue-nailed, writing-on-faces, glitter and boa days of our band Orlando. Seeing him in minimum-risk jeans, t-shirt and trainers, I’d assumed his cosmetic days were now a thing of the past. Or so I thought.

The venue had a security guard on the door – one of those who insists on searching bags for knives, drugs, bottles of drink, cameras, recording equipment, and anything else they might like the look of. While going through Tim’s bag, the bouncer pulled out a case of foundation, studied it, and asked what it was. He even asked Tim to open the case and prove it was indeed the more legal kind of habit-forming powder.

Granted, it was make-up for correction rather than decoration; for looking healthy rather than gaudy. But make-up all the same. The bouncer’s mixed sense of suspicion was hilarious. He seemed vexed that it was no longer 1918. As for me, I was delighted that one happy echo of 1995 had yet to fade.

(A: So now you’re over 35, are you going to stop wearing make-up?
B: No! Because I’m over 35, I have to keep wearing make-up.)

Am now booked to appear at the Stockholm Poetry Festival on Nov 30th, flying there for rehearsals and TV interviews on the 28th, back on Dec 1st.

I’m performing three times: once as Dickon The Singer-Songwriter, singing a few Fosca songs solo, twice as guest vocalist with Friday Bridge, and thrice as backing musician for novelist Martina Lowden. She quoted from my lyrics and blog in her novel, hence this new pairing.

***

Another item ticked off on my life’s To Do list. I have joined the Colony Room Club in Dean Street, Soho. Like most private members’ clubs, you have to have your name recommended or ‘put forward’ by current members. In my case, it was Sebastian Horsley and Sophie Parkin.

So now I have somewhere stylish and historic to take friends for a drink when they want to meet in town. I fall off Dean St, ring the buzzer, give my name, and upstairs I go. And the first time I buzzed, I did feel something of a buzz.

Up to the infamous little room with its bottle-green walls, photos and paintings of past staff and regulars (not least Muriel Belcher), amid the ghosts of Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Bernard and now George Melly. It’s the bar that’s in the Bacon biopic Love Is The Devil, where Derek Jacobi proposes his much-quoted toast:

‘Champagne for my real friends. Real pain for my sham friends.’

Have slightly fallen off the wagon as a result. Slightly. Knew it couldn’t last, but the period of complete sobriety has made me more of a slower, more moderate drinker, and far better at knowing when I’ve had enough. Honest. Oddly, I appear to have completely gone off wine, beer, lager and cider, and now will only drink spirits or champagne.

The current Colony owner, Michael Wojas, has written a new essay about the club for a charity book, Making Links. It’s about notions of modern community, from online enclaves to Soho drinking clubs to inner-city schools. Other contributors include Gordon Brown and David Cameron, incredibly enough.

In the Colony last night was Salina Saliva Godden, who I said hello to, and Cathal Smyth of Madness fame, who I don’t know but do admire. I’ve just remembered he did once email me about a club I was DJ-ing at, so maybe that’s the ice-breaker for next time.

***

Earlier last night: with Claudia Andrei to the launch of the latest novel from Dedalus Books: Pleading Guilty by Paul Genny.

Mr Genny is a barrister turned novelist, writing about the changing ways of the modern courtroom. The tricks and dodges, the politics and petty hypocrisies. In this way he’s a little like John Mortimer, but with a more decadent bent.

In fact, when Mr Genny gave a speech about the writing of his novel, he reminded me of John Mortimer’s advice to writers in Where There’s A Will. Keep busy, keep your day job, particularly if it gets you out of the house and brings you into contact with fiction-ready people (I’m mindful of Mortimer’s meeting with an assistant hangman). Avoid the easy deletion of computers, and trust instead in pen and paper, where the joy of looking back over crossings-out becomes evidence that you’re getting somewhere. And write quickly, but rewrite slowly.

The launch was held in some legal chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was a couple of doors along from Sir John Soane’s Museum, that curious attraction popular with discerning foreign visitors, yet overlooked entirely by many Londoners.

For some bizarre reason, the chambers’ walls sported expressionistic paintings of characters from BBC TV comedy: Del Boy and Rodney, Morecambe and Wise, Basil Fawlty and Manuel. I asked if it was because the lawyers in question worked for the BBC or some TV comedy company. ‘Unlikely’ was the answer. Maybe the QCs just really, really liked classic TV comedy.

‘Where IS our host tonight?’ asked Mr Genney in his author’s speech.
‘He’s away in St Albans,’ came an answer from the legally-inclined crowd. ‘Losing a murder.’

Saturday evening: the White Mischief event at the Scala. A glorious, utterly packed gathering where for once I felt under-dressed. Lots of Victorian costumes: cleavages and corsets, top hats and high collars. One person wore a huge mirrorball on their head, another sported a mantelpiece clock as a hat. One gentleman was decked out in proper Jules Verne attire: waxed moustache, beard, frock coat, and a small riveted rocket strapped to his elegant back. And there was at least one panda costume. Not sure if pandas feature heavily in the works of Jules Verne (Around The World In Eighty Bamboo Suppers?), but as a rule I think most occasions can only be improved with a panda suit or two.

Managed to catch a few of the live acts, my favourite being the 1927 Cabaret, a whiteface performance like a kind of living silent movie, with piano accompaniment and animated projections matching the live goings-on. I also enjoyed Skinphony in the foyer, a tableau vivant of costumed ladies doing all kinds of vampiric things to each other in slow motion, not least the attaching of strings to spinal hooks for something called a ‘flesh harp’. And this was just what you saw on the way in. There was also a kind of ornate little wooden parlour set up, which was either a time machine or a kissing booth, or both.

I installed myself in the DJ cage for the Moon Room, and opened with Danny Elfman’s ‘Ice Dance’ from Edward Scissorhands (which sounded perfect and glorious – one of the bar staff even came over purely to complement me on my DJ-ing). Continued with various attempts at playing something stylish (Ute Lemper – see below) to being a shameless crowd-pleaser (Prince’s ‘Raspberry Beret’). Did the usual tactic of playing to the girls rather than the boys. Never DJ for boys. Get the girls dancing, and the boys will follow. One must only DJ to the girly side of boys.

DJ’d from 8pm till 1.30 in the morning, punctuated by the live acts and the high-kicking compere Mr Dusty Limits. Some of the acts in the room were bands with 30 minute sets, others were cabaret turns lasting 5-10 minutes. I totted up my DJ-ing time, and it came out at about three and half hours by 1.30am, by which point I was running out of both stamina and appropriate music.

I did try to find one of those in charge to ask if it was definitely all right to finish my stint at the decks and clock off, as the schedules seemed to indicate 1.30 was the room’s winding-down time. But the only organiser I could locate at this late hour appeared to be locked in a hedonistic embrace with an undisclosed other. It was one of those snogging positions where you can’t quite tell where one person ends and the other begins. I decided against interrupting such stabs at raw joy in this cynical world, and went to join my friends at the bar.

Actually, it might not have even been the organiser in question: when you see a couple heavily snogging, the urge is to look away rather than confirm identities. One thinks of the time-honoured ruse in romantic comedies: one character needing to hide their face at once:

‘Oh no – Edwards is coming! Quick, kiss me!’

In fact, this was pretty much the abiding spirit of the occasion. I’ve never seen quite so much snogging and groping at one gig, in spite of or perhaps encouraged by all the quasi-period costumes on display. Certainly, the Scala’s sweltering temperatures can only have nudged matters along such Bacchanalian paths.

Dusty Limits seemed impressed by my music collection, praising my choice of Ute Lemper’s version of ‘All That Jazz’ . Not just hers over any other singer’s either. It’s choosing her proper solo recording over the one she did as part of the Chicago revival’s London soundtrack. Oh, the sequined anorak-ness of it all.

DL: (looking at my laptop) Wow, has someone really released a pop song about Jacques Derrida?

DE: Ah yes. Scritti Politti.

As in early 80s Scritti, just before their proper pop hits. From the Rough Trade album Songs To Remember, which also features the song that gave Wet Wet Wet their name. And yes, I do live alone.

Said hello to Rhodri and Jenny, Lawrence, Charley (in blonde wig), Sarah PV, David RP, Ella and Davina, and Lucy M. Caught a black cab near the glowing new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, with Charley and Lucy. The driver had a hint of madness about him, but no one died.