Have applied for a job at the insistence of Charley S, who forwarded the advert. Staff Music Writer at Time Out magazine, London edition.

Needless to say my hopes are at ground level. I suspect they’ll be inundated with applications from more aggressively networking types. But it’s a writing job, I could do it, and I do have something of an unusual, toe-dipping background on various London scenes over the years. I like to think I can produce entertaining, unusual musings on music of all stripes, which people would go out of their way to read. So I give it my best shot.

As for music of all stripes, I’m off to the Royal Albert Hall for Ligeti at the Proms this week. On the bus to the venue, my iPod Nano will be playing… actually, what AM I listening to at the moment? Let’s see.

Cocteau Twins. Dory Previn. Dresden Dolls. Dressy Bessy. The Hidden Cameras. Joy Division. My Bloody Valentine. New Order. Nico. North Sea Radio Orchestra. The Supremes. The new Edwyn Collins single. Philip Glass. Prefab Sprout’s first album. Talulah Gosh. Virginia Astley. The Breeders’ session for John Peel, circa 1990. Xiu Xiu’s incredible cover of the Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Don’t Cha’. Alan Bennett’s diaries. A radio dramatisation of Clive Barker’s play, The History Of The Devil. An audiobook of Saki stories. And the most recent edition of Radio 3’s Late Junction, featuring classical, folk, avant-garde, experimental jazz, new tracks by David Sylvian and Robert Wyatt, and field recordings of birdsong.

Though I have little interest in many of the latest radio-friendly alt-rock sensations clogging up festival bills, I like to think I could write knowledgeably about them, if required. I’m a research junkie: my brain lends itself easily to the location, absorption and recall of new information. If anything, I overdo the research in my all-or-nothing tendency.

For the time I interviewed the directors of Brothers Of The Head, I went to the British Library and read the obscure, out-of-print novel their film adapted, and took notes. Then I read every single interview and article about their work that I could find, and put together a huge file on them that would lend itself to a book-length biography, never mind a 2,000 word interview. Oh, and I read a new book on professional interview technique, which couldn’t hurt. So I can do it, when I want to. Even if I overdo it.

I’m also experienced in reigning in the Dickon-ness in favour of a house-style, homogenised hack approach; playing to the zeitgeist gallery and using ‘we’ to mean ‘me. It just means a small acting job. Still, any job is an acting job of sorts. Even the ones where you’re cast as yourself.

The advert asked for a short critique of Time Out’s current music coverage. A lot of publications do this. ‘How would you improve things?’ they ask. I wonder what they really want to hear?

Last time I applied for a similar full-time position for another magazine, they asked the same question. So I launched into a list of suggestions. Not only did I not get the job, I notice not one of my mooted revisions was even slightly taken on board. The magazine seems pretty much the same as it always was. So maybe the right answer is to posit a few very minor tweaks, nothing radical.

Or maybe it’s a trick question? That you’re really meant to say: ‘I couldn’t possibly question the decisions of the present editors. The magazine is perfect as it is. You have always been right, will always be right, and I look forward to obeying your every command, for money.’

What most bugs me at the moment with Time Out is the pointlessly cynical tone of many of their reviews, where they praise one artist by burying another. Last issue, a piece on the band Dragonette mentioned the singer’s appearance on Basement Jaxx’s ‘awful’ ‘Take Me Back To Your House’ hit. It’s Time Out‘s ‘awful’, not mine. Over the page, there’s a tiny, 50-word blurb on an artist that still finds it important to take a pop at Mika, by way of unfavourable comparison. What’s good about this artist? They’re like Mika if he was good, goes the gist.

But I like that Basement Jaxx song, and I like Mika. So these snidey digs are not only unhelpful, they backfire entirely. There’s more to music criticism than simply assuming the reader is on-message with your own specific dislikes. It’s a cynical style more used to web forums and blog comments, and has no place in a listings mag for a city that represents a wealth of tolerance and possibility for those who love it.

Time Out has a job to provide filters and signposts for the capital’s confusion, but narrowing choices shouldn’t mean narrowing minds.

So that’s what I told them in my application. They did ask.