My contretemps with the Hoxton venue owner wasn’t entirely represented by the dialogue set down in the previous entry. As with most arguments, there was more to it than the argument itself. I could sense he just didn’t like the look of me from the start, as one does, and I suspect he happily gave a free drink or two to performers he did like the look of. Particularly young women. It was a reminder, apart from anything else, that I’m not for everyone. You find that some people take a complete dislike to you above and beyond the call of duty, continuing to hold their position even when you try to befriend them and be nice to them, and listen to them.

I think the more you try to change someone’s opinion, the tighter they cling to it. People DO change their minds, but prefer to do it themselves, in their own time. The best you can do is shut the hell up. And give a friendly smile. And they may come around.

Rather than go into a doomed talk with the bar owner about the nature of work and fun and getting paid, I should have just said I didn’t have enough money to pay for the drink, apologised, and asked for tap water. He was hardly going to change his mind about his no-free-drinks rule, at least for me.

People rarely say “Oh, yes, you’re right, I’m wrong” in arguments. Which is such a shame, as most arguments descend into purely soliciting that very response. Once the different positions have been stated, that should really be it. A third party needs to then step in and change the subject, whether it’s the host of a panel TV programme like Question Time, or a moderator on a web forum. Otherwise it goes on and on and rarely ends tidily or happily. And it stops being about the argument and more about personal pride. Names are called. Apologies are demanded. Coats are gotten by everyone else.

There’s a wry internet adage known as Godwin’s Law, which states: ‘As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.’

I would add a new law along these lines: If someone doesn’t like you instinctively, they’ll look for reasons to justify it. Try not to give them any false ones by accident. Better to be disliked for what you are than for what you’re not.

But this also works the other way. If someone likes you instinctively, they’ll look for reasons to justify that too. There’s a Wendy Cope poem that goes something like, ‘You’re my favourite poet. And I quite like your poems too.’

However, it’s hard to dissuade people who like you for being something you’re not, if it’s something flattering that you can’t complain about. I’ve been called ‘flamboyant’, which I really don’t think I am compared to some of my more glitter-loving friends who go to clubs such as Stay Beautiful. But next to the average man on the street, I suppose I must be. Depends which street. Perhaps not Old Compton.

Equally, I’ve been called terribly clever and knowledgeable about all kinds of subjects. Which is nice, but isn’t entirely true. I know little bits here and there, particularly anecdotal connections and nuggets of trivia which light up the odd wirings of my mind. Some people are startled to discover I never went to university or even took ‘A’ levels. I evince the arrogance of the auto-didact. Which is just the sort of ridiculous thing someone like Dickon Edwards would say. It’s just as well I am me. And as Victoria Clarke says, ‘at a mere £10 a year, rather good value…’

Which brings me back to my rather rambling point about the Diary Angels.

Yesterday, I meet Victoria Mary Clarke in the Highgate Wood Cafe for a chat, and I tell her about the diary patronage scheme, which she suggested in the first place, echoed by another reader. She’s delighted about its success so far, consents to being on the Diary Angels list, and thinks I should contact a couple of her friends in the media about it. It might make an interesting story for a newspaper or even one of those ‘And Finally…’ TV news items. Particularly if you tie it in with the tenth anniversary of blogging, and the fact that this is the UK’s longest-running blog, until someone writes in to tell me otherwise. No one has, so I suppose I must be.

Not that I think the diary’s apparent Guinness Book Of Records-baiting longevity matters in any useful sense. It’s just another of those little nuggets of information that light up the odd wirings of my mind. Like the fact that the actress Hedy Lamarr, star of Samson And Delilah, invented WiFi. And Lord Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program. And there was a Canadian film about her starring Tilda Swinton which I’ve seen. And tripsolagnia means sexual arousal from having one’s hair shampooed. And I can help out my German friend Claudia when she asks:

They started this really funny 4-part series on BBC4 called Diary Of A Nobody – starring Hugh Bonneville as Mr. Pooter – a pompous Edwardian character who chronicled his daily life. Usually consisting of all sorts of mishaps. Do you know anything about this Mr. Pooter – what was so special about him that they would make a series about his life?

I tell her that Diary Of A Nobody is a work of fiction, a classic of British humorous writing from the late 19th century (so not Edwardian, strictly speaking, but it’s only a few years earlier). There’s even a word – ‘Pooteresque’, which means to be pompous and self-important in that very English, lower middle-class way. One running joke is that he lives in Holloway, which was then – as now – an unassuming, working-class to lower-middle-class district of North London. He is frequently looked down upon for it by those to whom postcodes matter more than personality, an element of Englishness which very much endures today. He also represents an early version of a familiar archetype in British comedy and tragicomic drama: the self-deluding, self-regarding and pompous protagonist. As seen in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads (which has clearly inspired the BBC4 adaptation), or Michael Palin’s Arthur Putey character from Monty Python, or many of Mr Palin’s Ripping Yarns heroes, or Tony Hancock, or Adrian Mole, or Alan Partridge.

Pooter’s co-creator George Grossmith was also a famous comedian and actor of his day; he was in all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas as the one who gets the patter songs like ‘Modern Major General’ and ‘I Have A Little List’. He’s portrayed in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy as a haughty star with his own dressing room and a secret drug habit, and was played by Martin Savage. Who in turn is better known as the overly camp scriptwriter from Ricky Gervais’s Extras… and so on.

All these little bits of information, whether useful or useless, just spill out of me.

(The generosity of the Diary Angels has spurred me into increased productivity. But no daily diary entry should be longer than 500 words. I shall stop at 1, 205 and continue tomorrow. Which is a very Pooter-esque thing to say.)