PinkyB

Ok, I'll bite. What were you doing at Prince Andrew's 20th birthday party in Florida?

A friend of mine once saw Leslie Phillips come out of a Chinese restaurant in Soho, dressed in a navy blazer with gold buttons, and with a nubile young woman on each arm, whereupon they all jumped into an open-top red MG that was parked on double yellows right outside and drove off at high speed. What a legend!

There's a full-blown effin' ceilidh going on out there now. (Weeps...)

Did you go to Monkey World, Michael P? It's a great zoo, who wouldn't enjoy spending the day looking at monkeys? Although I remember that when we were there, one of the chimps started, ahem, entertaining himself while staring at all the people watching on the other side of the glass. "What's that monkey doing, mummy?" "Never mind dearie, how about we all have ice creams?" (desperately) "Let's all have ice creams!"

Well, we know where to come for the explosives now, obviously...

I worked for a summer in H Samuel, the shit high street jeweller's, at the time they were owned by dodgy businessman Gerald Ratner (remember him?) I don't know why they employed me, really, because I was completely unsuitable for shop floor work, being congenitally unable to scrub up nicely. They realised this soon enough, mind you, because they stuck me in the dead zone that was the gift counter, selling velvet-covered musical jewellery boxes with dancing ballerinas that would break the second you got them home, twee china cottages, and those dreadful pewter dragons with red eyes that some people inexplicably collect. Trying to talk up such unmitigated shit ("It's suitable for kids of all ages, from 8 to 80!") nearly killed me. Amusingly, though, while I was there, they employed a very smooth guy from Manchester in a shiny suit who had all the gold counter girls a flutter, and who several weeks later turned out to be an international jewel thief wanted by Interpol. Of course, they only found that out when they came in one morning to find all the diamonds had been nicked in the night. I laughed and laughed and laughed...

I think everyone in London is out in their garden this weekend! To be fair, we were yesterday evening too, but there are young kids staying with us so at least it was over nice and early. I fully expect both of these parties to go on into the wee small hours, and even if they don't, Scottish Bitch will be full of gin and come out and rail at how crap men are, the bastards, all on her own. Oh, joy.

Oh, wonderful. The students on the other side are now having a barbecue, with soundtrack by Eminem's latest album. What's the maximum number of Nurofen you can eat in ten minutes? Does anyone know how to get the smell of burnt sausages out of curtains? Febreze?

Thank god for that!

What do you do when there's a hosepipe ban?

As a fireman, or on stage with Jase in stockings and suspenders?

Well, I COULD do that. Or I could neck a couple of Nurofen, shove in the earplugs, pull the sheet over my head and pray to the merciful jesus for sleep. Hmm, what to choose, what to choose...

Sadly, men in uniform has never done it for me. I prefer the "dragged through a hedge backwards" look.

I know, it's really very bad, but for some reason there's no Come Dine With Me on this evening and I have an appalling headache, so can't cope with anything more heavyweight. Jesus. Now they're having a singalong on the bloody programme as well!

(slaps head) Oh, NOW I get that "fireman's helmet" reference!

Did they make them wear tiny skirts at the same time? You couldn't get away with that now, there'd be tabloid outrage. p.s: Didn't know you were a fireman, was this before or after you worked with Jason Donovan in The Rocky Horror Show?

Ah, no, I didn't have tits in 1985. As you were.

When was this, Daizie? You might have done mine!

Oh dear lord no! Whinging man-hating Scottish neighbour is having a party in her garden and someone has just got out the guitar for a singalong. My ears, my poor ears! (shakes head, checks earplugs are ready to go for later, turns up volume on "Inspector George Gently")

Or Cockney rhyming slang, maybe? Dandelion farmers. Dandelion farmers. It just doesn't sounds right. Why would anyone want to farm dandelions?

Can you have that? I know it's your game, but...!

I always rather hoped I'd see something about it in the local paper. "LOCAL BUSINESSMAN ARRESTED FOR SICK SWEET STUNT" "I felt crushed and devalued" said one horrified customer. I was immensely pleased to later discover that he'd gone bankrupt, the filthy old bastard.

My great-granddad apparently had a life-size photograph made of him that he put up on the inside of the door as a kind of warning to his kids every time they left the house. He ordered it off a door-to-door photographer, something you don't see much of now for some reason. Mind you, he does sound like a character (read, tyrant) from what I've been told. He worked as a drayman in Wandsworth, delivering barrels of beer to pubs with a horse and cart, and more often that not, stopping to sample the goods at every stop he made. Handily for him, he was eventually fired and thus free to spend all of his afternoons in the pub without pesky work getting in the way.

Oh, and not indie-band related, but I've just remembered I once stood in a coat queue at a Marie Claire Christmas party in front of the very lovely Julian Rhind-Tutt from Green Wing. We exchanged some amusing banter about leaving so early that most people were still putting their coats in rather than taking them out, and having drunk too many free White Russians. I may have laughed just a little too loudly at his jokes, so aware was I that I was in the presence of a comedy hero, while simultaneously pretending I had absolutely no idea who he was.

More late 80s/ early 90s minor indie band claims to fame: I once touched the hem of Tim from James's trousers. I once wrote a fan letter to the Soup Dragons and got a reply from the bass player (his name escapes me now, I'm afraid), enclosing a free badge. I once saw Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream in the Virgin Megastore on Western Road in Brighton, counting his own LPs to see how many copies of Screamadelica had been sold. Loser.