There’s an old rock’n'roll maxim that states that if you’re in a band, you should never agree to play at a party. Actually, it’s a bit pompous to call it a maxim, it’s more of a rule of thumb. And it’s not actually that old, I think I might have made it up by myself on the way to work. But it’s a piece of advice usually worth following. Someone – usually someone you want to impress, or someone vitally important to your career in the civil service – will say “oh! well, I’m having a party in a couple of weeks, maybe your band could play?” And, caught up in the excitement and dazzled by their winning smile, you say “Yeah, of course, it’ll be great!”

But it’s unlikely to be great. People organising a party usually have no idea what they’re taking on when they ask a band to form an integral part of the evening. They underestimate the space you’ll need to ram all your equipment in, they forget that singers don’t come with their own amplification unit built in and actually need some form of PA, they underestimate the amount of noise you’re going to make, and above all they overestimate the amount that the attendees of said party will actually give a shit that you’ve bothered to turn up.

A quick scan through The Keatons diary reveals three such errors of judgement, including the quite marvellous: “16 Feb 1988. Dave’s housewarming in Kenwyn Road. Takes all day to get the gear to an unbelievably shit party. Dave gets off with a fat girl and we can’t find him when we’re supposed to start playing. Afterwards Ken can’t get his drums out of the flat because it’s full of pissed idiots. He was furious. You’ve got to laugh, really.”

Anyway, last night 2/3 of Scritti Politti played at a housewarming party, except it was more of an officewarming for a radio production company. Ourselves and the Rumblestrips were scheduled to entertain the throng, along with Gilles Peterson on the decks. Obviously, this was a cut way above the usual party. Everyone there was thoroughly delightful, there was a stage, there was a lovely PA, there was free booze, food, elephants, golf, everything you could want. Except, of course, we were at a party, and we mainly play quiet and sensitive material, and, with this fact in mind, we were scheduled to go on first, but even at 7pm people want to have a chat, and who can blame them, really, but we were trying to play along with a backing track, and the backing track was drowned out in the monitors by the general level of hubbub, so the tempo started drifting, and I had to start hissing “hup-2-3-4″ to the rest of the band with my ear craned downwards towards the tip-tapping in my monitor, which would have been horribly embarrassing, but in fact no-one was paying too much attention, so it was all just fine. We were playing right by a window looking out onto Brunswick Place, and halfway through “The Sweetest Girl” a group of girls – you know, bigger girls, older girls, scary girls, the ones who tease you at school and call you Rubbery Marsbar – walked past and started flicking the Vs at me. I didn’t know what to do, so I just carried on and went “bowwww, bowwww, bowwww” into the microphone over the middle 8, as I was supposed to. Complete bloody professional, me.

My friend Leila has a book coming out. She’s started putting up videos on YouTube of her doing selected readings. If you like funny, beautiful people – and let’s face it, who doesn’t, except those who suffer from acute jealousy on a minute-by-minute basis – you could subscribe to her channel, or even buy her book. When it comes out.