And Then He Said

Went into central London last night and ended up at the National Portrait Gallery, partly to look at the collection of Tudor paintings and partly to visit the BP Portrait Award exhibition. The Tudor stuff is rather amazing – the originals of some of the most famous images in British history, familiar to anyone with…

At least when the content management system at the Royal Mail crashed, it didn't do it at one o'clock in the morning… Or, if it did, I wasn't there to see it. Still, home now. Have been since about 2.30am in fact. Have found some notes I took at Saturday's screenwriting course about my fellow…

So, here I am at the Independent's offices in Docklands, waiting for the first sports pages for tomorrow's paper to drop so that I can rip the stories out and put them on the site. Despite the website having moved to a different part of the building it's very much a case of deja vu…

Today we went to Guildford. Well, it's something you have to do before you die, isn't it?

We've been doing the TV filming thing again, going to see two sitcoms filmed on consecutive nights. Last night (Thursday) was our second shot at Everything I Know About Men. We'd seen one episode of this already and were impressed enough to want to see more. It's created by Fred Barron for the BBC as…

The best summary of the Butler Report I've so far seen is Jonathan Freedland's comment piece in the Guardian. On who, if anyone, the report actually criticised: Lord Butler did not thrust a dagger into the prime minister or anyone else yesterday. Instead he presented parliament, press and public with an elegant, walnut-encased, velvet-lined box…

I was stuck in traffic a few days ago, in that horrible bit of road by Harrods where two major routes from out west merge into one and there are roadworks, so that seven lanes suddenly drop down to one and you can spend half an hour travelling 100 yards. For a while next to…

This email just came in: Dear Andy, Thank you for applying to take part in 'The Apprentice'. Unfortunately you have not got through to the next round of interviews. We have been overwhelmed by the quantity and calibre of applicants, and the selection process has been difficult. Please note that our decision is final and…

So there I was a few minutes ago, in the middle of watering the balcony, back in the bathroom to refill the watering can for the nth time (where n tends to infinity) when I felt a tickling behind my ear. I flicked at the tickly area irritably and a ruddy great spider came sailing…