Friday evening. I’m in the Queens pub in Crouch End with some friends. Charley S, Anna S, Suzi L, Rhoda B. Also at the table are friends of these friends: Ms Miriam, and the bleached-hair couple Ms Francesca and Mr Rory. And later we’re joined by Ms Miriam’s friend Mr Steve (it helps that to me he has a slight resemblance to Miranda’s boyfriend Steve in Sex & The City), and later still, Ms Seaneen and Mr Rob.

On introduction – or even re-introduction – I have a little difficulty getting the names right of some of the Friends of Friends. It’s always been a problem for me. My brain works in such an odd way that if I’m not in regular contact with someone, their face and name can just fade from memory completely. Someone I’ve met only in clubs looks completely different to me if I see them in the open air, or in daytime. They can be terribly annoyed with me if I can’t recognise them or recall their name.

It’s as if there’s only a limited amount of names and faces I can store in my memory, and too many of those spaces have been taken up by people on TV or in magazines or figures from literature and history, who don’t even have the courtesy of knowing who I am in return. I know how to spot AE Housman in a crowd, and indeed know exactly where he lived when he wrote A Shropshire Lad. Yet visiting my friend Anna S’s for my haircut yesterday, a place in Archway I visit fairly often, I still have to take a piece of paper with her address on. Admittedly there’s a blue plaque at the former building, and none at Anna’s flat. Though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. “Dickon Edwards came here to have his hair cut”.

Despite meeting in the pub’s beer garden, we all have to move to a table indoors as the evening progresses. It’s currently deceptively sunny during the day, but really rather chilly after five. Charley looks positively upon these changes of the season, rejoicing that she’s just seen her first swift of the year. By way of contrast, Suzi L bemoans the first flying ant.

At one point in the evening there’s a sudden cloud of potential violence, as a man at the bar shouts at the staff “Don’t tell me what to do! No one tells me what to do!”

It looks as if he might throw his pint glass at someone – anyone. Or do worse. But thankfully he just storms out the door and the atmosphere is calm once more. What’s particularly unusual is his appearance – not your usual pub troublemaker in sports wear, with a convict’s haircut and a face that’s permanently screwed up in knife-edge anger at the world. This forty-something gentleman has long, almost pirate-like brown hair and an expensive black suit over an arty black jersey. This being Crouch End, he could well be a playwright that’s just had a terrible career setback. Or a hugely expensive divorce settlement that’s not gone his way.

Also in the pub I bump into Emily Dean. Which is a bit of a coincidence as it’s the same day her sister sends me a clipping from her rather fun ‘Giving Fag Hags A Voice’ column in Boyz Magazine. It says terribly nice things about me. Here it is. (click on the image to view the page as a PDF file).

You can see the white marabou shrug worn by her sister in the photo, the one donated by one of their mum’s oldest friends, the glamorous 70s pop star and hit songwriter Lynsey De Paul. One of my earliest TV pop memories was watching Ms De Paul and Mike Moran performing Rock Bottom, their Eurovision Song Contest entry for the UK. This would have been 1977. Other people remember Punk Rock, I remember Lynsey De Paul. Much as I love the Sex Pistols, between clothes passed on by Johnny Rotten and clothes passed on by Ms De Paul, I have to say the latter is more ‘me’. So I’m absolutely delighted to be in the presence of her shrug.

Rachael Dean adds:

“Over the years Lynsey has given us some classic pieces. Favourites include a peacock blue velvet, jewel- encrusted, bell bottom jumpsuit and a pair of bell bottom jeans with red feathers and beads sewn along the seams, and a couple of floor length mink coats (very Joan Collins in The Stud).

I’m in heaven amid such descriptions. Just typing the words ‘Lynsey De Paul’s white marabou shrug’ gives me an almost criminal sense of pleasure.

I once saw an early live version of Little Britain, where Matt Lucas played a male police officer called Inspector Lynsey De Paul. It was joke you either got and found funny or didn’t, like their naming of council estates after contestants from the 90s comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway, or calling a pub The Scarecrow And Mrs King. It’s a kind of Half Man Half Biscuit approach to comedy: names and references which can surely only make a limited amount of people smile.

Equally, last night’s Doctor Who had the Doctor ‘reversing the polarity’ of a wicked machine. This reference to the Jon Pertwee days would have made no difference to the viewing experience of most normal people, but the hardcore Doctor Who fans of a certain age would have been terribly pleased.

The Boyz photo is from a DJ gig I was booked to do for the Dean sisters, the same evening I returned from Tangier. I think I look pretty good considering I’d been awake for nearly 72 hours and had just flown in from Africa. I haven’t smoked since then, so the photo also features my last cigarette. Well, up to now.

I’m fairly sure this is my third appearance in Boyz Magazine, the lively if naughty weekly magazine supplied free to gay bars and clubs in the UK. The first time was as part of the band Orlando, the second as part of Fosca in a piece on Club V, and now I suppose this is the Third Age Of Dickon Edwards: dandy and occasional DJ until I can find something else to be Best Known For. Not that I’ve quite finished with Fosca, though.

The editor of Boyz used to be a chap called Hudson, who wore a Parka and was very much into indie music and guitar rock, rather than the more stereotypical choices of the average gay club attendee – techno, Kylie, trance, disco. Essentially, repetitive dance music made by computers for sweaty gentlemen to frolic to. Though the 90s did see the coming of clubs like Popstarz where Uranist boys were allowed to enjoy Blur and The Strokes, I don’t think the tide was ever completely turned in this direction.

But it did mean that for years Boyz happily featured indie guitar bands alongside the latest news on whatever DJ remixes were ‘having it large’ in the clubs. There’d be an interview with some band, and then a large pull-out photo of a young gentlemen appearing only as Nature intended him, for the purposes of what society used to call Against Nature.

The last section of the magazine was always a generous helping of pages containing adverts for the kind of pleasures one would expect in a colourful gay publication. The bands come and go, and the DJs come and go, but the adverts always stay the same.