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When the sun is in the right place, there are parts of Hertfordshire that look almost exactly like the Windows XP backdrop. Although nothing coming out of Microsoft is likely to be nestling next to an electricity pylon. Mind you, no self-respecting Home Counties hillock is owned by Bill Gates.

Anyway: the point is that it’s staggeringly beautiful, and last night, for the first time in quite a while, I actually enjoyed the train ride home. The south of England is remarkably beautiful when it bothers, and I was filled with warmth and joy.

Then we pulled into Cambridge, where it was pissing it down. If I didn’t know otherwise, I might think that God wants me to move to Stevenage.

It is a delight to announce that The Uncertainty Division feature (albeit briefly) on a DVD of Edinburgh Fringe highlights, The Cut of the Fringe, to be released in May 2004.

The cast of Out of Your Mind feature in three places: track 3, “Royal Smiles”, contains three seconds on Andrew Pontzen shouting “But we don’t know who put it there!” at the top of his voice from the top of a stepladder; track 14, “High Flyers”, features a whole seven seconds of James Lark trying to give a flyer to a foreign couple before they turn away disinterested; and track 17, “Fringe Benefits”, has a fleeting glimpse of Andrew Ormerod in hot pursuit of Laura Stewart. (Sadly, James Aylett doesn’t appear to feature anywhere on the DVD at all.)

If the DVD is successful, a special double-disc release is planned for later this year; it is hoped that this might include a whole show from Out of Your Mind, although slightly disappointingly the show the DVD company have chosen is the one James Aylett joins the woman’s army, arguably not one of our finest.

More details are available at http://www.cutofthefringe.ap.fls.org

It is so easy to get distracted on a sunny day. I have been being distracted all day by thoughts of running in fields like Julie Andrews, or winging through the air like a bird.

But the biggest and most surprising distraction was Andrew J. Wood, a man who wants money from my office. At first I was drawn to his website out of a curiosity as to how kitchen worktops can be described as Ecclesiastical Stonemasonary. Even in a Vicarage, it would be pushing the definition.

But on inspecting his website and the history of his business I became more intrigued by the question of what exactly Cyril Wood thought he was doing in 1922 when he became a Stone Mason. With a name like Wood you surely become a carpenter – you’re just making life difficult if you go against the grain (pun intended). Was there a reason for the decision to pursue stone? Was he being deliberately perverse? Perhaps he was fighting willfully against a lifetime of people telling him, “so, I suppose you’ll be going into carpentry, Master Wood!”

Maybe Cyril Wood might have enjoyed the film I went to see last night, which was about somebody else fighting against a life of carpentry, who went terribly off the rails and ended up getting horribly beaten up. I went to see it because it was an 18 and had the word “Passion” in the title, so I thought it would have lots of sex in it, only as it turned out it didn’t have very much sex in it at all.

“We’re here to memorise some guy” said James Bachman, towards the end of Footlights’ final tribute to its longest-serving, and probably most important, member, Dr Harry Porter. And we were, and we did.

James Casey has written up his impressions of the night, and there’s not much more I want to add (not least because James, I suspect, managed to get more sleep than I did – even though I by no means stayed until the end). I had been thinking, sometime in the afternoon, that I might skip it, or at least not stick around afterwards – feeling a bit ill, feeling a bit tired. But I didn’t, because talking to lots of nice people is curiously addictive (it probably releases natural opiates into the brain, as all good things do), and because it’s much easier to stay and talk than face a half hour walk back in the cold. And so much more enjoyable.

My comment (quoted in James’ entry) that David Mitchell’s unexpected pyrotechnics were “the only particularly notable thing” to happen misses the point that it was all the unnotable things that were such fun. Daniel Morgenstern’s quiet joy at the ADC cocktail named after him; Jon Taylor relating tour show tales; nobody quite understanding why the ADC bothered to put out brochures asking for money when almost everyone there was an impoverished actor. Just enjoying good company, really.

As it happens, I didn’t actually see David on fire; he was remarkably quiet until he’d recovered. He seemed fine when I left, thankfully.

So: thank you to everyone involved, to everyone I talked to, to everyone who made it a good night. And to Harry, for being who he was, and bringing all those people together.

with Revd Ian Thompson
(recently elected Patron of FUD)

Och – deeeairrry productssss, eh? Wha’s the point o’ a warrrrm cup o’ milk, I say, wi’oot a dram o’ whisky or two to wassshhh it doon? Eh? Eh? We all love a wee bit o’ caek, but wheeerrr’s the joy in caek wi’oot beeerrrrr? If a wee laddie were tae ask me if I was inclined tae consoom cheese productsss, for instance, I’d be a-tellin’ he, “Och, wee gorgeous laddie, wheeer’s ya flagon, och aye?” and a-fillin of his tankard, metaphorical or otherwise I’ll a have-ye, tee hee hae ha hoo!

And that Atkins lassie – At-SINS more leik, in me oon humble opinion! She just spoots nonsense oot of herrr wee mouth, not that ye’ll get a lot o’ sense oot of Angela Tilby, meind yoo, and she’s less than wee if you noo what I mean, aye.

Bent leik drums, eh? Eh? till a’ their weel – swall’d kytes belyve; then auld deeeairrry productssss, maist like to rise, be thankit hums. Is there that owre his milk ragout? Or cheese wad straw a sov, or creeem caeks wad make her spew wi perfect scummer, looks down wi sneering, scornfu’ view on sic a dinner? Sic on ice-creeem? Wha? And hoo cairees anyhoo?

So – here’s tae us, wha’s like us, damn few, and they’re a’ deid – mair’s the pity!

Okay, this is genuinely brilliant: I am processing a project proposal to develop sniffer bees. Because they’re cheaper than dogs.

Give ’em the money, says I.

Over the last week or so, work has been somewhat hectic, for a variety of reasons. We’re gearing up to enter new markets, announce new products – all the sorts of thing that keeps Tangozebra in the news as the next big thing (apparently).

Anyway, we’ve been identifying new roles that need filling, whether internally or by hiring new people. As part of this process, I’ve made a list of administrative things I need to do. It’s about a page long which, in my experience, is about the largest it ever gets. Or at least the largest it ever gets before I forget things.

Which brings me to my point, which is that up to about two hours ago I was carrying this list around in my head. There are other lists, including development ideas for current products, and thoughts and ideas about new ones that will be starting soon. And lists of things nothing to do with work, like “sort out auditions for the new UD show”, and “buy some new boots that don’t leak”. Where does it all go?

Assuming each list is at most a page long, and that I have perhaps twenty lists at most, we have maybe ten sheets of A4, written on both sides, living in my head. Of course, they won’t fit just like that – they’ll have to be folded. Some crude measurements suggest that we need to fold them twice, at which point they’re about the same size as the horizontal cross section of my head. Leaving space for eyes, ears, and all the stuff around my mouth, I reckon there’s a good three inches of space of that size at the top. A rough estimate shows that ten sheets of A4, folded twice, will take up about half an inch – so I have two and a half inches of space, or a little over half an inch of full-sized A4 for all my non-list thoughts. That’s about the size of, say, Extreme Programming Refactored, or slightly smaller than Government and Politics of The United States, to compare with two volumes that are to hand. Which is presumably where the notion that everyone has a book inside them comes from – that’s what you can fit into your head.

Of course, if the pieces of paper are scrunched up, there won’t be any other space at all. If this is the case, where do my thoughts go?

One of the entries on my administrative list is ‘tidy my desk’. I suspect, when I get round to this, that I’ll find yet more things to do. I can’t win.

with Rabbi Lionel Blue

In a hedonistic age, it is perhaps unsurprising that dairy products are now seen with such frequency. Cream cakes are displayed on television adverts and in shop windows. Ice-creams are paraded on the top of vans. Milk is left on the very step on which we ascend into our own homes.

We have become acclimatised to dairy products. They are all around us, inviting us, tempting us. Perhaps we even have too many dairy products.

But have they brought us happiness?

Everybody is searching for happiness. Happiness is what we seek. A quest, a goal. A never-ending hunt for contentment, fulfilment.

And on one level, perhaps the dash of milk we allow ourselves in each mug of tea gives us a moment of pleasure and makes the tea taste nicer. Nobody denies that crackers taste less dry with a chunk of brie.

But we have not found in dairy products the fulfilling, permanent happiness that we perhaps want to expect. I recall the first time I allowed myself the indulgence of consuming a bowlful of profiteroles, when I was in my mid-40s. “Is that it?” I recall thinking, as I wiped away the last vestiges of cream from my sated lips.

It was only much later in life that I realised we only find the true potential in dairy products when we allow ourselves to digest as much as we ingest.

I have found, for example, that dairy products have played a vital part in keeping my strength up in what has been a rigorous a glittering stage career, particularly with regard to my skills as a tap-dancer. I could not have performed in the number of pantomimes I have managed to do, without some form of digestion where dairy products are concerned.

But ingestion is important too. I recall once on Give Us A Clue being asked to mime the film title Confessions of a Milkman. I responded to this challenge in the way that seemed most appropriate, by dropping my trousers and draining a glass of warm milk. How Sue Pollard interpreted this as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids I have never been sure; perhaps in a Biblical sense she saw milk as very much linked to honey.

We all seek our promised land. I believe, in being a tap-dancing panto-producing personality, I have at least attained a degree of alliteration.

But it is also worth bearing in mind that, whilst a Mini-Milk used to cost a mere ten pence, it is now as expensive as a Cornetto used to be. And it may be my imagination, but it seems that they are even more Mini than ever before.