I had a call from 5 Live on Sunday afternoon asking me to talk knowledgably about internet addiction on the Richard Bacon show. Quite why they came to me I’ve no idea, I mean, it’s not as if I spend all my waking hours pointlessly looking on Wikipedia about the Test Match career of James Ormond or anything. Anyway, I had to turn down the opportunity because I felt “simply dreadful”. In my own time-honoured fashion I put my chances of survival at somewhere between 5% and 10%; of course, it turned out to be a cold. But a pretty ferocious one, by my own standards, and it’s seen me graduate over the past 36 hours from a box of tissues to a handkerchief to an old Steely Dan t-shirt. I’m sure Walter & Donald would be delighted to know that I’m firing out torrents of mucus onto the dates for their “Two Against Nature” tour.

I went to see Danny Baker present a show of light orchestral pieces last week, including a live performance of Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter” using a real typewriter, which was pretty special. In the bar afterwards I saw Elaine Paige, which was great, although Barbara Dickson wasn’t anywhere to be seen, so I sang to Elaine how that looking back I could have played it differently, learned about the man before I fell, but I was ever so much younger then, and now at least I know I know him well, and you know what, the bitch didn’t even sing back.

On Saturday I went to a 21st birthday party at a golf club in Enfield, which took me back to those glorious days of my youth when I’d stand pathetically in darkened rooms illuminated by glitterballs and gaze wistfully through my fringe at girls I’d never get off with. I ended up walking around the room taking photos of the happy occasion, until Jenny pointed out to me – quite rightly – that I looked like a pervert and I should really stop, like now, no really, right now.

I remember my 18th birthday quite well. I was about to go off to university, but for some reason my term started a week later than that of all my friends, so they’d all buggered off and I remember having about as low-key a pint as it’s possible to have with a chap called Stuart at this Dunstable hostelry.. As I remember, my 21st was spent in a recording studio near Old Street making a Gag record, followed by a terrible party where the members of Gag sat on my stairs making repeated references to a piece of green plastic on said stairs and calling it “the length”, while I stressed out about the fact that my girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend was, for some reason, going to be attending the party, a fact that seemed to make her far more excited than the fact that I was already there. Yuk. If my father is reading this, I demand to know why a golf club wasn’t hired for me. Not really.

Tonight I’m going on a long-planned trip to The Ivy to sneeze over slightly famous people and fail to apologise afterwards.