Got a phone call today asking if I was free tomorrow to spend a day writing with Barry Humphries. Surely writers aren't "asked" if they want to spend a day working with Barry Humphries, aren't they just told where and when to turn up? Anyway, the where is an office in Soho and the when is 11am tomorrow morning. Not exactly sure what the project is but I do know it's for his character Dame Edna. I always associate Dame Edna with huge TV comedy show stopping moments like when she would abort her celebrity guests down trap doors on her shows or like the other week when she appeared on a charity version of blind date on TV and said to Roger Moore, "I bet when you heard me clunking down those stairs you thought it was Heather Mills McCarney didn't you?". That line literally stopped the show with wave after wave of laughter mixed with screams of disbelief. The show had been very middle of the road until then and once again Dame Edna left the host (this time Patrick Kielty) utterly speechless. I read recently that she (Edna) did it again on Sharon Osbourne's US TV chat show when the Dame presented the X-Factor judge with a gift of a purse made out of a kangaroo's scrotum. Tomorrow promises to be an interesting day.

A superfluity of cds arrived through the post today. A vast range of styles and genres that make up my car crash musical taste. Complete Madness - Madness, Beyond The Sea The Best of Bobby Darin, Surprise - Paul Simon, The History Boys - Alan Bennett (something to listen to on long journeys in the car), The Best of Acker Bilk, The Definitive Jimmy Scott and, wait for it, The Best of Chas and Dave. Now, not that I need to defend any subsection of my musical taste (Christ alive, if I did I would be writing this all night) but I feel I must explain. Last year one of the sketches I wrote for The Catherine Tate Christmas Show was for The Old Woman character with Charlotte Church. Catherine had the brilliant idea to have Chas and Dave play after the old woman's line, "What a load of old shit" (re Ms Church's singing). So on the day of recording during the rehearsal at BBC TV Centre Chas and Dave walk in. Pandemonium. Everyone over 30 (and that very much includes me) was running around saying, "Chas and Dave! It's THE Chas and Dave!". Poor Charlotte Church (who had been there most of the morning) didn't have a clue who Chas and Dave were and must have thought two tramps had wandered in off Wood Lane (sartorial elegance is not the overriding impression one gets when meeting C & D). So we rehearsed and danced to C & D play "The Sideboard Song" and the memory of every party my parents ever had in their house came flooding back. A few weeks after the recording a load of us from the show went to see Chas and Dave at The Shepherds Bush Empire. We had an amazing night; in the circle were stood we could see the incredible cross section of people that make up the C & D fan base. Below us, the stalls seats had been taken out and there were rowdy football fans moshing and throwing their beer over each other to songs such as 'Margate', 'Gertcha' and 'Rabbit'. Seated in the circle there were an incredible mix of fans from Oxbridge-looking students with their glasses, corduroy jackets and long scarves to a woman who must have been at least 85 who sat throughout with her coat on and handbag on her knee singing the lyrics to every song. The finale was the legendary "Aint No Pleasing You" (legendary in our house anyway) with Me, Matt Horne and Catherine Tate with our respective partners in a long line arms around each others waists with Chas and Dave's wives and their kids all singing and dancing to two blokes who are sometimes considered by the uninitiated a bit of a joke. Well I for one had one of the best nights of my life. No joke.

Dentist again today. When Pam Ayres wrote the poem "I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth", I wonder if she had me in mind… Actually my teeth have never been better, all manky metal fillings changed for white ones, two wonky teeth at the front straightened and generally polished and spaces filled. (Five house points for me for getting the words 'wonky' and 'manky' in the same sentence). The annoying part is if I had brushed my teeth more and eaten less sweets when I was a child I wouldn't have so many fillings to replace and if I had worn the braces on my teeth I wouldn't have paid thousands, yes, thousands to get then straightened. All this for someone who smiles about twice a year. At this point I am reminded of one of my favourite jokes,

Man: What can you recommend for yellow teeth?

Dentist: How about a brown tie?

Oh, how I laughed when I first heard that as a child. On my own. Without showing my teeth.

More intensive writing today, really loving the fact that I'm making a living from being a writer; it's weird, I can't say this was never a dream of mine as I never thought for one moment it could happen. I know the vision I have for my series 'Benidorm' may be not quite be what we end up with but I'm certainly going to make every effort to make the show the end result is as near to my initial idea as possible. A script goes through many different people after the writer, the art designer, the actors, the director, the editor, everyone has their own interpretation and their own input which goes to towards how a show finally turns out. As I look back on The Catherine Tate Show some sketches I wrote were nothing like I imagined they would be, sometimes for better, a few times for worse. Occasionally characters I created surprised the hell out of me due to their popularity, a couple of times the end results really made me laugh when I had initially thought they were just 'fillers' and going to be a bit of an embarrassment. One of the many characters I came up with for the show was Derek Faye (and his long time companion Leonard Mincing), it took a while to convince Catherine that her playing a man would work but what we ended up with was, in my opinion, a great collaboration of funny scripts, incredible make up and brilliant acting. I was even more pleased to hear of some extra publicity for the show today when a complaint to the BBC about the character of Derek being homophobic was rejected by BBC governors. http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/June06/gay05062.php . You can't please all the people all the time but with over 5million viewers (a record for BBC2) for the Christmas Special last year I think we must have done some things right.

So, back to the writing now; as I near the end of this current episode my crap three finger typing can't keep up with the dialogue in my head… I've never been this excited about acting, maybe that's because I've never really had a good part to get my teeth into? The obvious answer, of course, is to write a part for myself in a show. Too late for the series I'm writing now, maybe the next show? What am I talking about "the next show"?! Let's see what happens with this one first….

Sunday 4th: Just heard a song on the radio and found it on the web; I think it's amazing. Father and Daughter by Paul Simon (just ordered the new album it comes from, "Surprise"). The lyrics, from a father to his daughter, are beautiful...

"I believe the light that shines on you will shine on you forever
And though I can't guarantee there's nothing scary hiding under your bed
I'm gonna stand guard like a postcard of a golden retriever
And never leave 'til I leave you with a sweet dream in your head.

...there could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I love you".

Listen to it here; track 11.

Two people rang me tonight to say they had seen the VW Golf commercial on TV, the one I did the other week. You notice I didn't say they had seen me in the commercial because, of course, those of you who have been reading my blog regularly (yes, both of you) will know that my character is carryong a secret camera in his bag so you only hear my voice. On the subject of commercials I've done a lot ads over the years and last year I did one for Dyson cleaners for the USA. Although the ad was for quite a lot money I was more excited about which thrilling location I'd be whisked away to for the filming; New York? L.A.? Maybe somewhere mad like the Arizona desert?! The excitement didn't last long when I found out it was to be a one day shoot in Kentish Town (North London). However, I looked up the director, Nicholas Barker, on the net and watched some of his ads on his website. There are lots of very funny TV commercials on his bit of the web but I think the one that made me laugh most was this one: Cheesey Bread. Enjoy the ad (check out some of his others too on www.nicholasbarker.com ) and wach out for me in the VW Golf ad; well, don't watch out for me, you wont be able to watch me in the ad, just listen for me, although you do see a bit of my hand at some point… oh OK, I'm boring myself now.

Drove to Teddington Studios this afternoon in the lovely sunshine listening to Matt Monro. It was the recording of one of my episodes of John Sullivan's sitcom, The Green Green Grass. Went early to avoid the traffic but there wasn't really any so I decided to taste the delights of Teddington for me tea (northern expression meaning dinner or evening meal). I ended up eating in Pizza Express, so I could have been anywhere really, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh; I do think it's a shame that every high street in the UK is going to end up looking the same and I thought about making a one man protest by eating in the local family run restaurant; but it looked shit so an American Hot with a mixed salad it was! After my early dins I went into the studios canteen and said hello to John Sullivan, Julian the producer and some of the cast; then got lost trying to find dressing rooms to annoy people that had escaped me by not going into the canteen then before long it was time for the recording. I was given the choice of either sitting in the gallery (where the director, vision mixer etc sit) or in the audience; being a supportive type of guy I opted for the audience seat; mainly so I could laugh very loudly for the soundtrack when my jokes were met with inaudible indifference from the 200 or so Only Fools and Horses Fans. The show went well and after a drink in the studios bar (not the nice one round the back near the river, a horrible, atmosphere-less one I'd never been in before that looked not unlike a school canteen) I whizzed off home and straight to bed… Gone are the days when after a studio show it would be out to a club to party until the early hours. Although it's not quite the same being at a TV show recording in the capacity of writer rather than performer; there's not quite the adrenaline rush from playing to an audience. At the end of the first week of filming for BBC sitcom Perfect World in 1999 Paul Kaye, Nina Wadia, myself and a couple of production people went out to some bizarre night club which seemed to be part of a shopping centre in Ealing (this was after getting very pissed in the Ealing Studios pub). Must have been a good night because I can't remember a thing about it but I fear those days are long gone. In saying that, all the location filming for 'Benidorm' is going to be in Spain, Benidorm itself, in fact - now that would be just rude not to go out and get blathered during that…. Watch this space.

Much writing on my series 'Benidorm' today. So much in fact that my eyes are hurting from the computer screen. How often is one supposed to take breaks when staring into a monitor? I imagine it's every couple of hours or so but of course I've never been told because I work for myself and as I was constantly being told as a child, "you've only yourself to blame". Yes, I do have only myself to blame and do you know what, I quite like that. Supposed to be a nice weekend coming up, I shall probably spend most of it in the park playing with my little Charlie (steady…), I'll blame myself for that too.