When I finally dragged myself up it was to go into Newbury to meet up with Jon and buy Joel's 21st birthday present. We ended up - after a lot of thought which brought me to the conclusion I couldn't work out what to buy him - giving him some Our Price tokens and a magnum of Champagne. I bought Kylie's new single for myself.

After that I headed back to Jon's for something to eat and a bit of a chill. More email from Martin. Grr.

Joel pointed out that the last time he ever went to Our Price he bought "Bucks Fizz: Greatest Hits" on cassette for 29p. With the value of the vouchers we bought him, a chart comeback is imminent. Fear him.

One of the researchers from Planet Wild called me to say she was in Dublin and ask whether I could remember all the names of Westlife, which I managed - although I stayed silent for a couple of seconds before answering to make it sound as if I had to think about them rather than to appear a sad muppet case who's been memorising boyband names. The deal was that when they got chatting she was going to get one of them (we specified we didn't want Mark with the bunny killing eyes) to give Jon and I a call but it never happened. Clearly, international lines were busy. They must've been traumatised by not being able to get through.

Although Janice (I think that's what she said her name was) hasn't seen any rushes of the Channel 4 stuff, it's apparently a scream. Julie sent me email for New Year telling me she'd make a Jayne McDonald out of me yet. Oh shit.

After Head of the River, we moved on to Northgate which was as thrilling as ever. (No, really) Esther, Joel's sister (think Bible, not talk show, apparently) was thoroughly impressed. Oh yes.

I think I didn't molest Gareth too much. He seems to be having difficulty reconciling what people are telling him about his other half, so I pointed out that if people have time spare to comment on his life, theirs is clearly not interesting enough. Either that or they're jealous. Or both. I thought that was quite profound considering it was 3am and the champagne had been free earlier, but in retrospect it was hardly inspired.

Jon drove. Very kind of him concsidering Northgate is difficult enough to deal with whilst drunk, let alone whilst being sober.