Author: James Aylett

Did I read this morning that on Thursday, George W Bush will be sitting down to a nosh-up ‘overseen’ by Nigella Lawson? I’m not sure what disturbs me more, that a TV chef gets to meet the executive leader of the United States of America … or that Nigel Lawson’s daughter has to decide whether to poison him or not.

On a related note, were I one of the fourteen thousand police officers who are being used to guard against grandmothers during Bush’s visit, I’d be sorely tempted to roll into work, look over my assignment, and then walk out again with the words “let the fuckers get him”. Perhaps they could all transfer to Cambridgeshire Constabulary and help find out who keeps nicking our bikes.

I’m currently listening to Beethoven symphonies, and I keep on being distracted by very small melodic phrases which I’m sure are the main themes of various blockbuster films. Unless I’m very mistaken, Herr Beethoven didn’t actually work for Warner during his lifetime, which means that either people are going around blatently ripping them off, or I’m mistaken.

The latter I’d be prepared to accept – the phrases that trigger my memory flash past pretty quickly, to be replaced by more recognisable Beethovian fare.

Am I perhaps just now coming to realise a huge fraud of which everyone else is already aware? Is perhaps all film music ripped off Beethoven? Can I hear the strains of a well-known quartet in Lord Of The Rings? His late piano sonatas in Schindler’s List? Because that last riffle at the end of symphony number five is sure as bloody hell in Star Wars …

I’ve had a couple of dreams recently featuring Stewart Lee. But not the real Stewart Lee – instead some paragon, with giant blond hair, a huge imposing air about him, and an idea for a TV series he’s going to write with Matt Holness. Depending on the dream, I am invited either to go round sometime (which my short-term memory immediately records as ‘tomorrow’, but is actually ‘tonight’) to hash out some ideas with them, or to a party to celebrate what he’s currently doing, which comes across as another TV show while actually being a group of people in a pub. I never make it to either.

Strangely, although it’s definitely Stewart Lee and Matt Holness in the dream, neither looks anything like they do in real life, making me wonder if it’s actually all an extended experiment by the government, or possibly a very strange joke by unscrupulous friends.

I wake confused, and unrefreshed. There must be a way of ridding my head of unwanted comedians.

Apparently we were featured last night on (of all things) ‘Airport’, ITV’s reality TV show. It seems that some footage of us from the Royal Mile this summer was used in the ‘this is Edinburgh‘ section at the beginning. Presumably there weren’t people wandering round airports subjecting innocent members of the public to bizarre psychoanalysis in the hope that something interesting might pop out. Although we live in an age of authoritarian security, so maybe there were.

If anyone happens to have the clip on tape – or, better yet, if anyone knows if we can get the raw footage from ITV somehow – then obviously we’d be vastly grateful, before descending into a fug of self-admiration. Can we perhaps just pay our ten pounds and get the footage under the Data Protection Act?