Today, I’m working in a warehouse-type office space in Kings Cross. There’s lots of floor space around which you can whizz your chair when no-one is looking, and large open windows out of which you can throw yourself when everyone is paying attention again. Once in a while it’s a relief not to have to work at home, with all the distractions ones own living-space brings – you know: bed, sofa, carpet, lino, anything one can sprawl on and quietly doze off on top of. One of my tasks today is to write an advertorial for a well-known brand of sports car. Among the information I’ve been given to incorporate into said advertorial is that, from a BIK Tax perspective, the “hybrid saloon” in question is in the 21% band, which equates to substantial tax savings against its peer group of competitors. No mention of whether you can get two suitcases in the boot or what colours it comes in. Apparently it also has “quiet manners” and it can “anticipate difficult situations and make the necessary corrections”. So I guess it might come in useful next time you have a blazing drunken row with your partner over whose turn it is to buy the toilet roll.

Radio 1 is on in the background. I don’t like to keep abreast of the modern music scene, as you know, so it came as something of a surprise to hear, in the last half hour, songs based on Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy”, Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”, and Phil Collins’ “Another Day In Paradise”. Extraordinary. If the public’s lusting for anything connected with the 1980s is as acute as the Radio 1 playlist would suggest, I look forward to the imminent return of the Rubik’s Cube, Betamax videocassettes, Ian Botham, Game For A Laugh and the ZX Spectrum. No Scritti Politti on Radio 1, though: I guess it’s just not 80s enough for them. Odds on scooping next Tuesday’s Mercury Music Prize have shortened slightly to 16-1, according to Bill Hill.

Any votes for obscure 80s tracks which deserve to resurface in the chorus of some lame Eurodisco hit this winter are hereby invited. Mine goes to Matthew Wilder’s “Break My Stride”. Not many people can rhyme “rocky” with “cocky” and get away with it; Wilder certainly didn’t.

[EDIT: Christ, Jo Whiley does a feature indistinguishable from Simon Bates' "Our Tune". Sickening.]