I dunno. I go for years without encountering anyone famous, and then 5 or 6 or 7 come along at once. Last night's trawl around the less glitzy bars of Notting Hill featured Ian Wright tucking into a plate of oysters at The Cow, and… well that was it, actually. But still not a bad tally. One.

I was about to go through the bars and their merits, but then realised that as I have to review them anyway, I'd rather not do it twice. They all had their moments, particularly pleasant was the Portobello Gold – but as it was the last one on the list, inebriation may have affected my judgement. Also, the fact that I chose to go to these places on the coldest night of the year, mid-week, with traffic sitting in ice-hampered queues all over town, may have contributed to the blissfully quiet and peaceful atmosphere that was prevalent throughout. It can't be like that all the time. Especially at the Prince Bonaparte. Once Johnny Vaughan has filmed a cider commercial somewhere, it's never the same again. As we all know.

I was taken for a posh lunch earlier by the editor of the Observer Music Mag, who suggested gently that they'd like to drop the Guitarist Wanted column and try something else instead. A shame, as I thought it was a good idea, and my first regular newspaper thing… but maybe it had a limited shelf life. And the reader(s)* of this journal will know that I didn't always enjoy attending the auditions. So now I have to try and think of something else, on a level playing field with other people pitching for the same space. That's the lot of the freelancer.

Over lunch I was also told that after the first column had been printed back in September, they received a series of furious calls, emails and letters threatening legal action – not from the band I auditioned for, but from the owner of the rehearsal room in Mill Hill, which I had described as “smelly, hot and damp” (the room, not the owner.) They countered that their rehearsal room was not “smelly, hot and damp” and as I had described the location of the place exactly (“a series of decrepit shacks under the M1 flyover”) they would lose business as a result. A dubious basis for legal action, so I repeat my claim here, and add that the sneering looks I received from the staff at reception when I spoke to them were the kind I thought had been copyrighted by men who work in guitar shops on Denmark St. In my opinion, they were arseholes. There.

So. Two more left, one on Sunday, and one at the end of February. There's one I wrote that won't be used. Seems a shame to waste it.

Bass player required for London based band. Original music. Regular gigs and recording. Single released. Influences. Cocteau Twins, The Smiths, The Sundays. (From LOOT).

There were portentous signs as soon as I arrived at the rehearsal room, located in the industrial hinterland of Acton. The girl on reception looked at me with the kind of contempt that teenagers reserve for a parent who has come to collect them from a party two hours early. “Nah. No band with that name in here.” I calmly pointed them out in her book. There. Sunday, 5pm, Studio 8. Cloudbase. Irritated, she adopted an ‘I told you so’ voice. “Yeah, OK. Studio 8’s over there.” I opened the door to find 3 members of Cloudbase looking even more nervous than I was. Andy, the guitarist, gestured towards a drumkit. “There’s supposed to be a drummer, but we don’t know where he is.” Obviously well-prepared for musicians going AWOL, he set up a drum machine and strummed the opening chords of “Blue Love”, the first track from their CD. I’d spent the afternoon committing it to memory, and easing myself into that mid-eighties indie mindset by refusing to eat meat, listening to bands with names like “The Cups” and watching footage of the miner’s strike.

We all mucked in, Jane’s soaring, pitch-perfect vocals, Kev’s lush keyboard sounds, and my 3 note bassline, lifted from the first page of chapter 1 of “Beginner’s Bass Book 1”. Andy’s phone buzzed. It was a text from the absent drummer. “Can’t make it. Don’t you ever rehearse in the week?” Andy took it with good grace, having worked his way through several drummers and bass players over the years. “We had one bassist who went to Italy to join a reggae band,” he said, clearly still incredulous. I asked how their gigs were going. “Oh, God. Do you remember St Albans?” Jane asked. Andy’s hangdog expression indicated that he did, only too well. “It was absolutely packed, and then just before we went on, the audience just evaporated. Not one person stayed. Oh, and what about Guildford?” This drew a shudder from Andy as he relived the moment. “We were shown into this empty function room. I asked where the PA was, but the guy didn’t know what I meant. He opened a cupboard and showed me a reel-to-reel tape recorder.” His honesty was disarming, but I wasn’t sure if I could commit to a band who had permanent possession of rock’s wooden spoon.

Casual probing about his musical past unleashed further tales of woe. “I auditioned for The La’s, but I didn’t get that job. Then I was supposed to audition for Pete Shelley, a hero of mine, but I got really nervous and stayed at home.” Andy then joined The Caretaker Race, who were described by the NME as “sitting on a pop goldmine”. They promptly split up. “Then I was Johnny Marr for a while in a Smiths tribute band called Band In Glove, but the singer was a bit unhinged. He actually thought he could hear Morrissey speaking to him, telling him to do things. And one day Morrissey told him to leave the band, so that was that.”

As we slipped gently through another song, twinkling with Andy’s Marr-esque guitar licks, I ruminated on the resilience required from struggling bands. Obstacles to success are strewn in your path on an hourly basis, ranging from having your van stolen – containing several guitars, carrier bags of unwashed stage gear and a peacefully slumbering drummer – to excitedly receiving your new CD fresh from the pressing plant, only to discover that it features James Galway’s “Meditations” instead. I asked Andy what kept them going. “Oh, you know. One day something will happen.” For their sake, I’m hoping that the “something” is a record deal, and not a return gig in St Albans.

*joke ©