So some dirty thieving bastard has had it away with me money and I have been right royally ripped off. I bought some concert tickets from eBay for a gig at the end of next week, sent the money in March but was told the tickets would be sent out as soon as the guy received them from the promoter. So, I waited, and waited…and waited. I thought it was a bit odd that nothing had come through so I emailed the guy. He said that the venue had changed because Wembley Stadium was so behind schedule (which turned out to be true) so I waited a bit more. Then I emailed him last week and got no reply. So I logged onto eBay to find that he is "no longer a registered member". Now have I lost my money because I put my trust in a fellow human being not to do a runner with my hard earned (OK, I admit, I don't work THAT hard) cash? Or is that God's way of telling me that at 36 I shouldn't be going to see Take That in concert? Either way I am mightily pissed off.

Writing, writing, writing… God, this is almost like a proper bloody job. Worked for so long today that I realised that I had been invited to a drinks party in Soho and it had started 2 hours ago. Now I'm all for turning up fashionably late (in fact when I go to parties my lateness is just about the only fashionable thing about me) but by the time I thought about having a shower and a change of clothes it was about 11pm… Now there's a sign of getting older; I remember when I used to work front of house at the Adelphi Theatre while I was a drama student. The show was Me and My Girl and by the time that had ended and we had waited for the theatre to empty it was about 10.30pm. Then several other 'party animals' and I would stay out until the early hours usually catching a bus home at about 5am with a top deck full of cleaners going to work. And I did that three or four times a week (AND on a student grant!); these days a good midweek night out for me is a steady jaunt around Frien Barnet Tescos… hmm, I wonder if they're still open.

A few months ago I attended a lecture by Armando Iannucci at The Royal Television Society. It was entitled British TV Comedy: Alive or Dead? I believe it was a condensed version of a series of lectures he gave at Oxford University. One of the clips he showed was from an ITV series from 1979 called "End of Part One" (coincidently starring, among others, Sue Holderness who I have been working with) and it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. There's no point describing it here because I wont do it justice but suffice to say it had me screaming and crying with laughter; much to my embarrassment, surrounded in the lecture theatre by every high level TV executive known to man. I must point out that I was not the only person laughing, but when I find something that amusing I seem to have less vocal inhibitions than others. How on earth was something this surreal and hilarious (you'll have to take my word for it, it was) allowed to be on at 5pm, ITV - the Little & Large slot for gods sake (yes, I know L&L were BBC but you know what I mean). Surely people watching TV at Saturday teatime wouldn't appreciate it?? Hmmm, what was the point of all this… oh yeah, I know, I had a dip into my new complete Laurel and Hardy DVD box set today and was once again reduced to a screaming mess watching Stan and Ollie, this time clean up a house to music in "The Music Box". Were things allowed to be this funny in 1931? I refuse to believe that the audiences of that era were sophisticated enough to appreciate every nuance from the legendary duo. Did they really understand every hapless gesture from Laurel, every pedantic twitch from Hardy? Of course they did, because not everyone feels the need to analyse comedy, they laugh because it's funny. Which begs the question, why the fuck are people laughing at "My Family"?

Well it's still too cocking well hot but I've managed to recover from yesterday's fatigue and I think I might be able to string more than a couple of sentences together (although I can't promise they will be either humorous or interesting). Been writing since early morning today so come about 6.30pm, what with the heat and me being a rather work shy Yorkshire pudding, I decided to lie down in the bedroom for 10mins. I had put the TV on and soon fell asleep; when I woke up I was thrown completely by seeing Noel Edmunds and Deal or No Deal on the box. Had I slept until Tuesday afternoon? Had I fallen into such deep slumber that I had actually gone back in time and it was now two hours before I had gone to sleep? No, turns out that the inevitable has happened and Deal or No Deal has gone primetime (as well as still running in the afternoons) and quite right too; I think two half hour helpings of DOND a day should be the absolute minimum on channel 4. It did remind me, many years ago, of the time my Nana fell asleep one very hot Sunday evening at my parents house. It was the middle of Summer and my Nana was having her usual post Sunday dinner nap, four cardigans on, head tilted back, mouth open and making a noise like a broken espresso machine. My brother and I were obsessed with the film The Sting (as I still am) and we whooped with joy when we were allowed to put it on yet again. It was better watching it with other people because my brother and I would take much pleasure in irritating them by joining in with most of the dialogue, "You see that fella in the red sweater over there? His name's Donnie McCoy. Works a few of the protection rackets for Cunnaro when he's waiting for something better to happen. Donnie and I have known each other since we were six. Take a good look at that face, Floyd. Because if he ever finds out I can be beat by one lousy grifter, I'll have to kill him and every other hood who wants to muscle in on my Chicago operation" and as the credits rolled my Nana stirred and her eyes gently focused on the telly. By this time the film credits had ended but he video tape was still running (we had recorded the film from the TV a few Xmas's ago) and we now had a BBC logo covered in snow and the presenter wishing us "good night and a very merry Christmas". My Nana's reaction still makes me laugh, "fucking hell, how long have I been asleep?". Yes, my Nana swore like a trooper (no wonder writing for Catherine Tate's old woman character came so easily) and although I still don't know if she was trying to raise a laugh or was genuinely confused, it remains one of my few vivid teenage memories from family life in Hull. Right, it's cooled down a bit now, I'm off back to bed as soon as I can find my collectors edition DVD of The Sting.

Too hot… can't write. No, but seriously, it's actually too hot to write anything. I know I've managed this much but apart from that… it's just too hot. Not only is it too hot there's no air. No air to breathe… and I love breathing, it helps me get through the day. No… it's no use… can't go on… must stop typi-

En-ger-laaaand, En-ger-laaaand! Oh, isn't it all too, too exciting? The World Cup is upon us once again and it's time to drink too much alcohol, fly scraggy, wind battered St George's cross flags from the sides of white vans, paint our faces red and white and talk endlessly in pubs about football in words of no more than 2 syllables (except, of course, "metatarsal") or, if that seems all bit too involved, just run out into the street and punch a foreigner. I don't follow football that much (as I have mentioned here before) but do enjoy big matches with a sense occasion like the one today so settled down at 2 o'clock with the rest of the nation for 90mins of excitement. Well we got about 45 mins of excitement followed by another 45mins of "oh no, somebody has gone into the dressing room at half time and reminded them that they're actually rubbish". I know a few names of the England team, Beckham, obviously, Michael Owen, erm… somebody related to Ian Wright, Theo Woodcock who is on the team despite the fact he has never actually played football before or hasn't left school yet or one of the two… erm, don't tell me, errrr… Ian Rush? No, that's not right… Oh yes, the one that looks like an advert for electronic tagging, Rooney, Wayne Rooney. Oh my god and that new one, the one who is about 9ft tall; where in the name of Basil Fawlty did they find him? He looks like a daddy longlegs in football socks, I've never seen anyone look so hilarious running around a football pitch since.. well, since I last tried it. So England won (though not very convincingly) and the agony is prolonged a bit longer until the inevitable happens and we have to sit watching people like gary Linekar bang on about "what went wrong". Nothing goes wrong; as a football team England are not the best, that's all there is to it… Fast forward to the end of the tournament as Sir David of Beckingham lifts the cup (why do they call it a cup? How would you drink out of that?) and a red and white face painted Derren screams and punches the air knowing "we" could do it all along….

Drove into town in the blistering mid morning heat, thankfully kept cool by the air conditioning (it seems to be stripping the skin from my throat but at least it stops me sweating like a pig). Was meeting Barry Humphries at 11am to work with him on a new project; I won't go into details because it's not my venture and just because I'm stupid enough to put my day to day thoughts and plans on the internet for all to see it doesn't mean I have to do the same with other peoples. They say 'never meet your heroes', I assume because they can only disappoint but not in this case; I had a lovely afternoon and it was an incredible honour to spend some time with one of my comedy heroes (and that aint gonna happen very often, most of them are dead). After that I went into Virgin and bought more dvds that I shall never get around to watch; oh it's not a bad life, I'll admit that much….