I have spent the weekend not doing the things I should have been doing. Most specifically, I’ve not worked any more on researching the book. Or writing the damned thing.

I’ve not been idle. I’ve now made two batches of toffee: one butter and one treacle. I’ve visited Andrew and looked at the 22 staples in his leg. I’ve tidied up the huge box of cables in the bottom of my cupboard that has been like that since I moved here. In fact, since before I moved here as I specifically recall moving it out of the flat like that when time was getting tight, promising that I’d tidy it up in due course. That’s almost 18 months ago now.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, I’ve started to copy my tapes to MP3. It’s a daunting task. There must be miles of magnetic ribbon waiting to be copied, and already I’ve found some cringeworthy candidates.

There’s appearances on BBC Essex, BBC Three Counties, BBC Southern Counties, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC London, TalkSport, hours and hours and hours of stuff on LBC, Link FM, Pilgrim FM, news-reading and adverts.

And one advert in particular, which I’d completely forgotten about. Probably with good cause: Tango.

The fizzy drink people wanted to run a campaign of unknown nobodies doing the voices of the better-known nobodies who had already been doing a series of instantly-recognisable ads for pop for the last three or four years. Somehow, I’m not sure how, I was one of the chosen nobodies.

It really is quite terrible.

Fortunately there is all sorts of useful and highly listenable stuff in there, too, to the extent that my iTunes now boasts volume 1 of Paperweight by Stephen Fry, The ‘Best’ of Rambling Syd Rumpo (of whom nobody will ever have heard) and the Julian and Sandy double tape.

There is no longer any room for Tango adverts, I’m glad to say.

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