So the car picked us up from the office far earlier than I thought it would, and we were at the hotel by half two. The set was still being built in the Titanic-like ballroom, and all the upstairs areas were knotted together in a nest of wires for the cameras, computers and mixing stuff.

So, we sat around drinking coffee while the technical people hit things with hammers and got the cameras lined up, and waited for Nicholas Parsons to arrive so we could do a run-through of the script.

Seems he’d been kept waiting, so he was in a bit of an ‘I’m a star’ mood by the time we got down to business and kept snapping at the behind the scenes people and then launched into his own personal rehearsal while they were trying to sort things out.

It was a shame, as I don’t think I’ll be able to listen to Just a Minute any more after that, and I’ve always enjoyed it in the past.

Anyhow, we got to the end of it - twice - and there was just time to run upstairs and change into the tux before everyone started to arrive.

In the event, we ended up getting underway a bit behind schedule. The weather was awful and so many people were coming from the Expo on the other side of town that they got stuck in traffic. So, half an hour behind schedule, I was doing my intro, and dragging Westie up on stage to surprise him with his birthday present.

It went quite well, apart from the bit at the beginning where they didn’t switch on my microphone. Fortunately a lot of hand-waving from the front couple of rows had them rewinding the autocue so I could go back to the start, and eventually hand over to Nicholas Parsons for the actual awards.

He had a tough job. There was a lot of talking from the tables - probably because everyone had been kept waiting so long - and so a lot of shushing from him on the stage, but towards the end it was getting very difficult to hear him. Still, the commedian was excellent, and everyone seemed to have a good night. The bar stayed open until three this morning, and by half past I said goodbye to the last swaying stragglers, then went slowly up to bed.

You can always rely on Chris to get the crowd dancing

Julian, Brad, June and Me. Karen at the front

Julian, Ruth, Ben

I could have slept for a week, but had to be in a meeting at ten this morning; not even time for a coffee or a cup of tea. I ended up fighting to stay awake through five back-to-back Powerpoint presentations. It wasn’t easy.

The afternoon was far more pleasant. I stopped by at the office to check my mail, then went on to MacExpo in Islington. If the number of people there is anything to go by, next year should be a good one for the Mac, as it was far more crowded than last time around. There was a good crowd at our stand, where Keith and Chris were dispensing advice, and Roxio was dispensing free boxes of MacUser-branded popcorn. Upstairs in the MacUser hospitality room it was chocolate cake and tea, and a steady stream of readers with questions to be answered.

I wasn’t intending to stay long. Harriet was leaving, and so having drinks in the impossibly crowded, and very loud Wax Bar, but after getting stuck in a protracted and largely irrelevant demo of some software and then traipsing back over to the west end it was gone seven by the time I arrived and last night’s lack of sleep was quickly catching me up…

I stayed as long as I could, but sloped off around half eight and, after a brief diversion to look at the queue of people sleeping on the pavement as they waited for the Apple Store to open tomorrow morning, I rode the train home thinking only of bed.

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