Tuesday, 31 March, 2009

We are performing on the platform of Dent Station. I brought swimming trunks & Gary Wilmot snorkel & there was no need. I got the cast to take up violins, euphonia &c. and emulate crow calls but without the transparent sherbet bonbon. Filmed it all & that should enable me to receive a Lump Sum of £9,348.27 from the Arts Council. Heaven knows it’s needed. Interesting conversation with Geoff Boycott at the bar afterwards & he says Britain is now in the same situation as the Falklands & we have to peer hard and long over Peter Mario spatulas – the ones Ted Moult gave me in 1975 – to ensure we are not overrun by treacherous outside forces. I have decided to extract a leaf from the book of the vile Mugabe & print & spend my own money. If the shops don’t like it then hee haw. If Britain wants donkeys it should move to Spain .

Sunday, 29 March, 2009

Dreared about Margate before realising that the clocks had gone forward and I could have gone back an hour ago! Rushed back home & got in at 6:03 A.M. Read the Papers. All this humbug about Anarchy Riots has not worked! Everyone behaved themselves peacefully. More coarsecut coddish cant about the Goody woman so I flipped right past that. Radio was noisy whereas on Sunday it should be silent so I switched it off in hope of humble worship. Took me nine minutes 11 seconds which is a record for Sundays! I had to use the Brillo pads afterwards though. Cliff picked Bryan & I up at 12:00 Noon & took us to Joe Allen’s where we pondered the lunacy of the Russian bishops & wondered whether Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s legacy has truly been squandered. Cliff thinks Pat Boone should engender a Military Takeover to remind me of importance of Christian message. Far too late for that now, I’m afraid. Otherwise Tony Orlando would still be having super hits & not Florida Gags or whatever these New Pop Stars are called. Must remember to de-soup the dace for Gloria & Elaine next Sunday. Sondheim never heard the end of it last time. I had to parade outside the Courtauld on yellowing stilts for 4 x days full. It was an outrage.

Saturday, 28 March, 2009

Margate is malodorous muck but one has no choice in such matters. Saw a pink seagull descending, Magritte-fashion, atop a discarded poster advertising Ted Rogers on the Pier. Wonder whether Fripp will be interested in fashioning a tabletop nestloop but what do I know about Stoke Newington these days? Went to Harry Ramsden’s for mirth chips but they were vile. At matinee all anyone was talking about was this new Dizzy Rascal song about “Going Bonkers.” Well aren’t we all? Made up a bit of business with the gramophone arm and gratis grinder that Clement showed me back in 1968 & that got a few chortles but Dame Bill was not impressed. “The build-up to the Grail opening was totally botched,” he butched. “We really have to work on this before taking it back to London .” I opined that it needed at least five years of polishing in the provinces but realised I wasn’t going to get back to Suffolk for early retirement that way. Great Yarmouth will have to do. For tea it was mirthless cod & Yarwood. Reluctant tradiola. Albert Steptoe. The amazing versatility he conjured out of a grey clothes peg.

Friday, 27 March, 2009

Struggled with 2 x bulging suitcases on foot to Victoria Station for Train to Brighton to start this lousy rotten stinking tour. The Socialists are planning to riot again so let’s hope a fascist dictatorship is in place by the time I return. It is appalling how brave Fred Goodwin is being victimised. If this Government had any guts it would empower banks & lenders to foreclose on all Credit Users immediately & that would teach this country a robust lesson about living within its means instead of making Super Savers like myself suffer. On the Train I gazed at pictures of the reformed S. Ballet. Big Tony as usual too big to fit into the picture so has to bend down & grin. Gary looking ravaged. Martin really is a sneaky dish in that smart suit. Got v. aroused but no dust allowed on the windows in this carriage alas. Keeble College Oxford looks like my window cleaner. Probably IS my window cleaner come to think of it. I lent him £10.00 Sterling back in the Apollo days so consider my obligations fully discharged.

In Brighton we worked up a routine where I performed “I Love To Go Swimmin’ With Wimmin” in a brave knight of armour’s suit & several strategically pumped nasturtia but Kenwright put the doorstop on it straightway. “This speech has to be done seriously” she intoned. Dunno why he engaged me then since I am here to raise laughs. Fuck knows the strippy show needs it. Audience of 28. First act went well but we lost them during the drear interminable Frances de la Tour/Googie Withers dialogue section & never really got them back. Only 1 x curtain call. I am not going anywhere near London with this play in its present state. Dreamed fitfully of Martin Kemp fuelling piston peanut tubercles rather than sitting on sofas. Wettish trad but the red overpowered the nascent pink of cumulative Cortazar.

Thursday, 26 March, 2009

While sipping icy petrol cuboids in my kitchen, viewing the benign sight of the Post Office Tower & Tussaud’s dustbins & listening to the Faure-esque calm of side two of Metal Machine Music I reflect that I am only able to live this leisured life because of carpoboom bahtat like Golf My Vicar’s Teetits and Roxy Music. Read Rilke’s Sonnets To Orpheus and the majestic lush of the rising consonants (“Vacillating at the heart’s dark crossroads/He beholds no temple of Apollo ” – ‘tho I’ve spent a lifetime trying), queerly celebratory in their manifest melancholy, nourished me no end. I gazed at my febrile figure in the mirror & was understandably stimulated but then Bryan came in: “Haven’t you got a matinee to go to at 2?” and I rushed out of the reverie & back to the dull boards where I tapdanced my way out of trouble using a hair’s breadth brush. Only the finest vermillion. Audience of seven. Five of them were comp tickets for nurses. This does not bode well for Brighton. I see that idiot Big Tony Hadley has been persuaded to rejoin Spanner & Mallet. I s’pose that’s the Venezuelan trip up the Andes & no mistake. Thought of Gregory Corso and the missed camel bumps. Took all of sixteen minutes & 49 seconds before result arrived.

Wednesday, 25 March, 2009

Total fucking dopehedron paleocrapist nightmare in rehearsals today. Kerry Katona mumbled her way through Act I & missed virtually every cue & I remonstrated with her in front of the company: “We could have had Frances Barber, you know!” She stormed offstage & locked herself in her dressing room. It is an outrage. I knocked on her door & she stood there sobbing. “I know you think I’m a thicko…I know bloody well that I’ve only been put in this show to get punters in…but I can act…and I have to pay off my taxes…I am intelligent, you know!” I comforted her with apposite words from Nietzsche & that seemed to soothe her over to lands of crimson. Secretly I was taping the sobs ‘cos they’ll go well with the aquatic banjos at the Whitechapel Gallery. Then at 5:17 PM Kenwright stormed into my dressing room. “I’m sorry but I have totally had it with you,” he snorted. “You have done nothing but complain ever since you’ve been in this show…you complain about the delivery of the other cast members, you complain about there being no 100 Rehearsals sign outside the Gents’, you complain about the decrepitude of the alto bullroarers and I am sick of it.” I was startled since I have never done anything to offend anyone else & always mean to please but managed to placate him with Eric Morecambe’s sonnet about Nell from Camberwell. Every time the stupidity of others undermines & detonates my enviable competencies and I end up having to apologise to the idiots for THEIR idiocy! If you want to do anything in this world properly you have to do it yourself. To bed with anxious traditional. Barber poles & Francis Bacon in an Angus McBean Guinness head with confluent pliers.

Tuesday, 24 March, 2009

Feeling gaily light-headed today ‘cos I went out wearing only the raincoat! Happiness always spells doom so I must be watchful. Brandreth rang to say that he couldn’t keep the boxes full of copies of Another Day On Earth in his flat any more. I hope he rots in hell. At 10 AM the boxes arrived – Brandreth sent a taxi! I covered them with pearly puce paper so it now looks as though I have a 1972 fridge in my front room. He is a good man.

At midday: to LBC to speak of forthcoming Venezuela trip with Big Tony Hadley. Typically the idiot DJ played 30 seconds of “Gold” and nil seconds of “King’s Lead Hat.” I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t mix me up with the New Seekers as happened in the old days of Steamed Wireless. These days Stewed Prunes are an uphill task. Big Tony kept his countenance & spoke well & again restated his wish to obtain a safe Tory seat in the next election. He would certainly be a lively and fertile addition to the dead House of Commons we have at the moment. I really am looking forward to this Venezuela trip I must say. Rang Laurena asking her to get me out of Venezuelan trip as quickly as possible. It’s always the same. I loathe this wholesome cowardice. I keep throwing a brick at it but it keeps coming back purpled. These days are like the last days of the Gulag. Found Derek Nimmo’s old scarlet cummerbund in my 1956 desk drawer. Traditional straightaway. The bishop and the Fry’s Chocolate Cream, but in electrical blue.

Monday, 23 March, 2009

Tube to Pimlico to meet Big Tony Hadley. He’s hardly changed in the 45 years since last I saw him & we warmly embraced. If only Gordon could have seen us. He said Martin Fry was busy & anyway he thought I should have first pick of the orange feathers for fending off tubercle vendors. It’s touching of him to think of me this long since the Aldwych days. After that it was back to drookitdrear Greenwich for dress readings of this rotten play & we have to play it in Brighton on Friday. Out of season. I could ring William Gaunt for some Twiglets but that thrill is long gone. Reg Holdsworth and the parrot hatch. Tradiola. It was as inevitable as Hardy.

Sunday, 22 March, 2009

Roxy now in open revolt. I fancied the Tyrolean hats & shorts & thigh slapping to “Never Understand” was pushing it a bit too far but if I didn’t they’d still be doing skiffle & there’s no room for that today. Laurena has sent me this TV pitch where I have to go to Venezuela and walk from coast to coast with Big Tony Hadley. I said I’d think about it. Certainly it would do me good to get away from Bryan & his Eustony sulks & I owe TH a favour from the spreadeagled HMS Belfast days.

Saturday, 21 March, 2009

First day of Spring. It’s a disgrace. The world in freefall collapse & birds are singing their stingingly sanctimonious cant. Looked around properties in St John’s Wood & Abbey Road &c. & there are a few nice things wch might just be affordable but Bryan says it would make his Archway Raffia Wednesdays that bit harder to get to. Why do I bother. I should jettison them all & live the slowly decreasing life of an ageing yellow libertine that I thoroughly deserve. That and Jack Douglas. Back in Town: blasting Pop Music which was lacking in jelly wet. Rushed back from M&S & it was traditional Shatner plumbing but I thought it was green paint & screamed & screamed until I had washed & cleaned the entire room & house & street thirty times. Alan Hollinghurst didn’t tell me about this.

Friday, 20 March, 2009

Went to Putney to try & wake up Nyman. People already taking up space on the Bridge for the Boat Race. I wanted to chuck them all in. Nyman not 100% on dubstep Bernie Winters tribute triptych; thinks any impact will be lost if we do it in Herne Hill but where else can we go? Birmingham Ship Canal has been done to death. Went to Police Meeting in Strand-on-the-Green where I talked abt Evan Parker & the Bishop, Cornelius Cardew’s curtain-downing Guinness misfeed & Siobhan Fahey not emulating Edith Evans to Jack Palance’s disappointment. I was gently reproved for the language. They pay their money & they get what they pay for. I am not Selfridge’s. At least I can do all the material again on Jonathan Ross. Roxy not wearing green lycra I prescribed & I prevailed to their merry disgruntlement & produced bird costumes for this baile funk version of “Captain Beaky” whereupon Mackay lay on the ground & howled hushedly for fully 46 minutes. I should be able to get a CD out of that.

Thursday, 19 March, 2009

Every time I labour for this dog Kenwright he has a gungy tank or custard pie or something for me to ridicule myself & look stupid. I refused to go into either today or any day. He can try & sell this play on Jack Douglas’ name alone but he knows better. “You REFUSE to be acceptable!” he yelled in mock-aghastitude. I reminded him that my puffs of smoke were as nought compared to a Noel Edmonds or Genghis Lawrence. “You’re ALWAYS bringing up Singapore when you’re in a corner!” I have no idea what the babbling brook is nooking on about. Bryan thinks Donald Peers would have directed it better & I have to agree; he was no Clifford Evans but he knew his timing and tension/release Chekhovian balance. A hell of a lot better than that dainty old fraud of a fuckhelmet Rex Harrison that’s for sure. Liam Neeson in an appalling state on the News so I must ring him. I warned him about developing Ronald Pickupitis back in the 801 years but he wouldn’t listen. Went to Cinema and watched Slumdog Millionaire wch was a fractious Communist borephlegma. Not a patch on Ramsbottom Rides Again. Traditional. Arthur Askey when the boot straps caught in Sabrina’s ninth pear. All turquoise candelabras and spent Kennomeat.

Wednesday, 18 March, 2009

I am fed up with people comparing me to Vanessa Redgrave. She’s got nothing to worry about rly. My principled stance is taken in full foreknowledge that it will be ignored by the cruel, odious world. In rehearsals today I worked up some bits of business with a cheese grater & euphonium mouthpiece but talking anti-Oedipus & the necessity of disposal with Dora Bryan is an uphill struggle. It always is. London basking in beauteous sunshine but dirty “Plane Stupid” Socialist protesters held up the 11 bus by two full minutes & should obviously be used as extraneous axle grease for the London Wheel. Generator hum in the kitchen was v. arresting & I looped it backwards for upcoming Ronan Keating project. There’s nothing like fizzing static to let you know that the first cuckoo of summer is imminent. Thought of Acker Bilk but the waistcoat was purple semi-denim. Trad but it was only ten seconds. It’s appalling.

Tuesday, 17 March, 2009

More windy winebagging from this dreary Roxy mob. I brought lime green Lycra suits & deelyboppers & got them to go through “Flashdance” & Hot Chocolate’s “Girl Crazy” while doing the Jane Fonda/Mad Lizzie moves. New post-industrial economy sprightly exercising; reconstitution of man’s relationship with nature, abandon the spent cities & smell the rustling trees. Bryan drew the line at doing Black Lace’s “El Vino Collapso” even tho’ he was perfectly happy to do it with Patrick Cargill & Roy Castle on Eighties Record Breakers back when he had better things to do than tie one set of door knockers to the next one. Advanced osteoarthritis is no excuse. Raymond Burr did alright. In the evening, to Jon Hassell’s sprawling house in Arkley. Impossibly opulent & exotic looking – every room is like a film set! It was good to see my chums Roger Whittaker, Faith Brown, Alan Skidmore, Wayne Dobson, Peter Greenaway, Suzanne Danielle, Graham Stark, Linda Lusardi & Max Eastley I must say. Roger agreed that lycra Roxy was economically sound. To bed at 4 A.M. Too tired for traditional, even though Leee John inevitably sprang to both mind and undertow.

Monday, 16 March, 2009

Woken up by knock on the door. It was Bryan . “Is that your full morning suit?” he asked, indicating the terrible heap of rags hanging over the banisters. One kept one’s countenance. I feel I need to cleanse myself eighteen times a minute. O, why do I keep disgracing myself so deplorably? Carry on like this & I’ll be little better than the other Euston wastrels. On foot to Stolid Sound Studios in Dean Street to do this voiceover for Andrex. To my delight dear old Mollie Sugden was there too. We reflected on this terrible Jade Rooney-Myerson anti-culture of today. Without talent and means it’s a one way trip to the ill-lit skip & no Socialist Democratisation of the Media will reverse that. The agonising grind of my coffee grinder reminds me that I must invest in a Gaggia machine. Traditional. That febrile froth, cream arising from the salt of the earth; only needs waistcoats & I’ll provide me own sauce.

Sunday, 15 March, 2009

Peered at myself in the mirror & thought I looked alright for forty two. Then I remembered I was past sixty. Still I was elegant and sufficiently acute of curvature discretion to get nine minutes out of myself. I am arresting in volar thrust profile it has to be said. Fripp rang. Something about wanting to be free. What does he expect me to do about it, for heaven’s sake? I’m not Keith Tippett. Chris & Gwyneth haven’t rung me in ages so I dressed in full morning suit & walked sweating up to Hampstead. It’s a disgrace. When I arrived dear Maggie Smith was with them & embraced me warmly. Spoke of Donald Wolfit as the Gary Windo of Theatre. They asked me whether Shane Richie working with Akon was a good idea. I said I’d ask David Toop for confirmation. Staggered out at a quarter past midnight & got cab back home. Traditional. No Wolfit, no Wayne County and that’s a fact.

Saturday, 14 March, 2009

Up with dreadful shoulders at 8 A.M.! Very decadent!! London sprightly in the nascent & premature spring so I went for a walk & realised as painful as this life is there ain’t another one coming so I have to make the best of it & the fact is London is me & Bryan is me & discreet ants make the basest bread & one just has to accept that instead of ambient Guardsmen fantasies. That having been said Paul Gambaccini said hello to me as I swept imperiously past Broadcasting House. Dovetailed up back streets & back inside for fervent tradiolathon. Chins and Johnnie Taylor. It’s all doomed.

Friday, 13 March, 2009

To BBC to rehearse for this lousy Comic Relief dribblage. It was Bryan ’s idea – “O, Lord, I have to have some pleasures in life at me age! Otherwise you might as well lie down and die!” I corrected her firmly by saying it was “lay down and die, not lie down” but to little avail. Tennant ticking away like a worried timebomb. I said I’d like to tick off his ticks & send them to Gavin Bryars & see if he can’t construct a lamp oratorio out of it but he was behaving terribly. Couldn’t keep his paws off Davina. I said this was not how Gielgud plied his trade. I’m hard on David ‘cos he’s a v. talented actor & was v. good when I cast him as Contrabass Bullroarer #78 in my 1981 production of Entertaining Mr Sloane On Apollo at the Lyric but he needs to learn discipline. Wackiness will only get you so far in this business. Ask Graham Parker.

Said hello to this girl group called the Sundays or something – the name is unoriginal but they probably weren’t even born in 1989. They were all v. nice and kind even tho’ the racket they made – some old Vince Hill tune, whoever the hell he was, I must ring Trevor – sent me screaming from the studios. Still, they’re young; keep going & honing and they’ll become as stylish as the Four Degrees. We went on at thirty five after midnight and did 40 minutes of “The Bogus Man” with aerobics which threw them all, I must say. I grinned inwardly & must remember to tell Mike Oldfield. You can’t be doing Balearic all your life. Didn’t do Richard Wattis any good.

Thursday, 12 March, 2009

To Wardour St. for rehearsals. Immediate resistance from everyone else concerned when I issued them with identical mustard yellow jerseys and gave them some 19th century folk songs to perform but I prevailed. “All modern music is impure,” I informed the quivering wrecks, “and we must retrieve an essential Thursday afternoon continuum spirit.” Manzanera protested about the lute and so did Mackay with the crumhorn but they gritted their teeth & we went through a satisfactory “In My Liverpool Home” & “Lay For My Nadger” & they saw my point. Bryan encouraged the shift. “I did Carrickfergus years ago, what’s wrong with you feeble nellies?” he chuckled. Thompson muttered something about this being worse than “the fucking Fleetwood Foxes.” I’ve no idea what he was babbling on about. Took Prof Susan Greenfield & Bradley Walsh to Joe Allen’s for lunch where I outlined my plan for a new TV quiz show about corporal punishment. They agreed that I should approach Dale to host. Afterwards: sped to Goring & Streatley with Dan Lanois where we voiced some mallards. Acutely sunny but fundamentally uninvolving. Back home at 5 O’Clock, as Dan predicted. Bryan was sitting watching The Weakest Link and sporting a red nose. I can’t leave him alone for a second. Tradiola. Donald Peers’ insouciant jowls and a jejune array of puce condiment sets.

Wednesday, 11 March, 2009

Didn’t manage to sleep at all thanks to German idiot upstairs and his blaring gramophone. I wouldn’t have minded but it was all Holger Hiller and no Holger Czukay. No wonder people are driven to become Terrorists. I fear this world shall not outlive me. I wonder if I should tape and sample the core collapse.

To Wardour Street for Roxy tour rehearsals. Why did I agree to sign up to this crusty old tin bath of a reunion? It’s bad enough having to deal with Bryan day to day, sorting out his pension, cooking his meals, when the truth is Roxy didn’t pay me enough money to be able to afford a home help. “Everyone thinks we’re living in luxury in huge mansions,” Mackay commented, “but I had to borrow Brendan Flowers’ pen to sign an autograph for him and Eddie Riff counts for nothing at the Post Office counter I can tell you.” “You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” Brianna whined in the background but he always does that when he wants attention. Ran through a few tunes and it was OK but hardly the Spinners. On way home we bumped into that ancient derelict Jimmy Tarbuck waddling down Essex Road ! “They’ve flown me up from Weybridge for a telly,” he said & we greeted him warmly. Back home for the News and it was all Mass Shootings and this Myerson somebody or other. Apparently it’s a drug family. Typical Socialist BBC; always focus on the deprived and depraved, never attend to the small glories of the aspirational. Wouldn’t have happened in Wheldon’s day. Slight stomach ache radiating to chest left at 8:46 PM; may have overdone the raspberries on the lamb cutlets. Humanity has had it & there’s no doubt about that. Went to bed thinking morosely of Kenneth Connor and a distressed camel. Had to spray the bed & bedclothes & pillow cases & pyjamas with DDT etc. straightway afterwards. It’s a disgrace.

Tuesday, 10 March, 2009

Up at 5 to catch the 6:03 train to Swindon for this wellies and lemons business. Brian Cant and Tinchy Stryder (dish) were there too & looking glum. I had to sit in this stinking rowing boat with a hole in it for fully four hours & they didn’t even offer me a Dandelion & Burdock afterwards. Tried to dry me bum in the launderette but the police came straightway & I beat a hasty retreat. One has to remember that when one is out of Town it is Ten Million Years B.C. still. Where is my faith? O, there’s no denying, I lost it in Swansea in ’49 and it ain’t coming back either. Got back in at 5 O’Clock & did haddock Mornay & potato wedges for Bryan & Guinness & Cheesecake for myself. Watched Extreme Fishing With Robson Green. This show has a real touch of class which sets it apart from the other tat trash that’s on. Bet his boat never gets a hole in it. And that he gets paid properly. Moving scene at end when the errant cod wandered back to the farm & the remorseful Robson – it taught us a real lesson about the relationship between humans & animals. Fripp rang halfway through but I didn’t answer. That’ll be the end of his Christmas brackets then. Traditional. James Blunt & the Bachelors with a minty ironing board.

Monday, 9 March, 2009

This play is Torbay tat and that’s all there is of that. Kenwright says the Royalty Theatre would prefer to stay dark than have us. I warned of this Reverse Racism in my diary entry for 2 February, 1951, but did anyone take any notice? Manzanera in a strop ‘cos he has to cancel session on Friday to come in for extra rehearsal. I said if he doesn’t like it he can stuff it and we’ll get Joss Ackland instead. He really has changed from the pale, innocuously insouciant youth who used to sit on Cale’s lap at parties and pretend to be Nookie the Bear. But those days are prematurely ashen. Homily from Kenwright at 3 PM regarding cast relations. I am continuously baffled by these Homilies as I never intend anyone any harm. Byrne hasn’t rung me for ages. All because of a boiled egg. To bed for traditional antics. Wilfred Pickles chopping up some pork. But the wall was lucent lemon.

Sunday, 8 March, 2009

This Comic Relief is so much bogus phlegmatic profiterole piffle. One bathes in baked beans and one is supposed to keep one’s countenance because it’s all for this mysterious miasma known as the Greater Good. Well, the profit motive certainly has taken a battering these last few months but I can’t see anything viable coming in to replace it. This Socialist Pseudo-Fun has to stop. We will not die happily and deliberately ignorant Rashkolnikovs. Listened to Gold Radio Bottom To The Top Show where they play old charts. This week it was somebody called Rolls Royce. Well that’s a stupid name for a start. Do people realise how long it took for me to come up with the name 801? Especially since it was never my idea in the first place. Dismal drear-oh ballad or whatever it was. The rest was hideous Punk Rock like the Brotherhood of Men. 1978. Why am I not in this list? I wrote a stern letter of reprimand to Lord Reith before retiring to bed. Tradiola medium. Those arresting eyebrows.

Thursday, 26 February, 2009

Awake since 7. Birds won't shut up. How I wish they would perish. I should take a shotgun out onto the roof and shoot 'em. Tape it for this future project where I have to go to Swindon with lemons and wellies. I shall do no such thing. Phoned video company who sent tickets for Paddington. It is an outrage. Bryan still grumbling because I washed his curtains when he went out to Archway yesterday lunchtime. It was all "you just want to find work." It's a disgrace but one is expected to be charitable to the old. Cameron's son dies so that is excellent news. A Tory victory is sorely needed - will see those prancing old Barri Chatt socialist queens getting the boot they deserve. Hop on the 274 but driver loudly derides me for having my flies open. I did them up approximately 0.75 seconds after he pointed it out so he was obviously a sad pervert. Heigh ho. To Joe Allen's where I gave Han Bennink and Patrick Mower lunch. We sat outside afterwards and watched the ducks until an over officious policeman moved us on. He obviously didn't fancy me - clearly he is a sick, dessicated individual. Dodged up side streets and walked home for tradiola. Thought of George Eliot.

Saturday, 7 March, 2009

I reflect on my hapless position as a sensitive prince trudging through a wasteland of mud and puddle beggars. I remember when I was in Memphis in 1975 trying to persuade Col Parker to get Elvis to record "Seven Deadly Finns." Then I remembered I was actually in Maidstone, looking for some William Empson first editions in the local Oxfam.

Friday, 6 March, 2009

There is all this talk about a Sun Box Set. I've no idea what they're talking about. It seems to be more of that Rock and Roll which has led to the degeneration and barbarism of society today. Walked from Whitechapel to Dunwich on foot and reflected how far more utterly civilised the values of my youth were. Depressing Graffitti to be seen everywhere. This is what happens when a society rejects Christian Values - the necessity to serve a Greater Good, hence National Service - for unexamined and unrestricted materialism. You can kick the money lenders out of the temple but they'll only go and build a bigger one next door & then end up buying the temple anyway. Money is no good without civilisation. Elvis bestrode the world but he'll never be a Leonard Woolf.

Thursday, 5 March, 2009

To Sainsbury's to purchase the U2 record. I didn't get a copy in the post. I haven't spoken to Bono in months. I wonder if he's gone off me. On sale for £9.97 but if I'd bought Daniel O'Donnell as well I could have got it for £6.97. It's so tat it might as well be Val Doonican. Couldn't find my bits on it anywhere. It's a disgrace. Rang Laurena and asked her to get me out of the U2 setup. It's just so dismal and dull when compared with the happy atmosphere I get with the Coldplay team - the old spirit has evaporated and their conversation is so dire one just wants to MACHINE GUN them. Also Adam continually says "ekcsetera" which sticks in my craw. Rang Stanley to see what he was doing. To Il Barbino for lunch. It's changed to Robert Dyas. Heigh ho.

In the afternoon, to HMV to look for Val Doonican records I could deconstruct. The only recordings available were on Compact Disc not Vinyl or Cassette and one was driven out of the shop altogether by their irritating habit of playing loud pretentious bang music when one is searching and needs to concentrate. So I went home & took down Bryan's curtains & washed them & washed the walls. Filthy dirty brown from his Capstan Full Strengths & I had to refill the bowl thrice & every time it was filthy brown. He came in halfway through & the whole deadly circle began again: "Oh, Gawd 'elp us" and "You just want to find work" and "It's my flat & I'll smoke if I want to." I sharply retorted that she could do as she liked as long as I wasn't there at the time. Got Cumberland Pie and wine gums and sat down to watch Morecambe & Wise on Dave and that calmed things down a bit. Tradiola. Ernie's cunning wink. I'm weak I'm afraid.

Wednesday, 4 March, 2009

I abhor this bogus Pop Music business and its feeble flaccidity. In rehearsals today that tawny tit Manzanera started niggling away unprofessionally at my delivery until I could take no more. "Oh yes," sneered Kenwright, "you're just sore because I've taken all your nice, clever little bits away, all your little theories and squiggles...I do not want this to be a Brian Eno play...that is not what I want...none of these lines can be thrown away...I want to draw out the play's essential SERIOUSNESS." This from someone who's directing a dredged-up slice of boom knicker slapstick Swansea Rep tat. Departed Greenwich in a suicidal state. A bunch of tourists came up to me and smiled "Hello, Brian!" and I told them to fuck off and darted up Vine Street dreaming of sailors. In my protracted decline solitude is the only answer I'm afraid.

To South Bank Studios to do Whose Goldfish? Gary Wilmot was on my team & Willem Brueker & Maureen Nolan on the other. I recognised Michelle McManus' fish straightway but kept schtumm. Total ITV rep tat but as Laurena warned me I have to be less choosy about the work these days. Watched ELP Live At Montreux 1997 with Bryan on Sky Arts & we marvelled at how much higher the standards were then & went to bed singing "Forty Thousand Sailors On The Tee At Bali-Bali" & other old favourites from the Twenties. Traditional. Greg Lake's serrated yet serenely elegant neck.

Tuesday, 3 March, 2009

To freezing bollocks community centre in Greenwich for first day of rehearsals of this new play The Rhodium Fly. Kenwright had a go at me straightway when I dropped the book. "It weighed 20 tons and you dropped it on my fuckin' foot!" he belched. This is where he lacks grace. Dreared thro' scenes and EVERY suggestion I made was rebuffed. I wonder why they bothered casting me at all. I took out my Oblique Strategies box but Annette Crosbie was all sighs and "put it away, Brian." Doodled some riffs for Cale on my oscillator that I bought from Phillips Electrical in 1969 for £1.19s/6d but was censured for not sticking to the script. I hate this lousy rotten show and I hope the show and everyone in it dies on its stinking arse. Bought some specially inscribed presentation plates for BK and cast. Staggered home thro' slush only to find Bryan in a state 'cos he burned the Greggs cakebox with his fags. "Well I don't know how THAT happened" he mumbled. One finds a face to meet the face. I'm stuck with this old decrepit and it's flattening and tiring, it really is. Went to C&A for lamb chops only to find it had changed into Primark. If I'd known that yesterday I would have got some extra Zantac. Watched Extreme Fishing With Robson Green (dish) and I retired to bed thinking of thrusting casts. Tradiola but I cut me big toe so I have to remember that I can't keep getting away with it.

Monday, 2 March, 2009

The ceiling fans kept me awake all night. I'd only wired them up to tape them so I could sample their rhythms for the Gyles Brandreth/U2 thing but I'll have to have a word with the porter about it. I can't move again. Not twice in 25 years. Bryan all in a tizzy 'cos he can't find his tweezers David Whitfield gave him in Singapore in 1947. Well it was a sight more than DW ever gave me but some people are never going to be happy. Met Chris and Gwyneth in Regent's Park and we set up deckchairs - £5 per five minutes! Very expensive!! - but cloudy, wet afternoon spoiled by that awful bore Wiley with his Ghettos Blaster wanting me to hear more of his beats. Worse even than the ones AN Wilson showed me last week. Went to Paris Theatre to record Just A Minimalist. Patrick Pulsinger was my team captain and on the other side it was Ron Browz and Lance Percival. God, Ron has gone to seed - a far cry from the dashing young man of those dazzling Morocco days. I was indecent. Hopefully David Hatch will edit it out tho'. Bed at eleven. Thinking of Mandalay and then David Davis' speech about Britain becoming a Police State. Traditional. Those uniforms.