Hollywood Fatwa

I've been writing all day... In fact I've been writing much longer than all day because I got up so damned early this morning. I was wide awake at 7.30am and because the sun was streaming through the windows I thought it might be fun to get up. I felt sick all morning as a result.

I've been writing music for the Egyptian cafe sequence in the White City film and am terrified that I've written a sort of musical equivalent of Mind Your Language. I've been studying Arabic music quie carefully but there's always a risk when one attempts to pastiche a style of music that goes hand in hand with religion that one might cause offence, particularly when one's natural affiliation is with Jewish music! 

Nathan listened to it and asked if they still dished out fatwas. I think he was joking. He was straining home-made bullis gin through muslin at the time, so I'm hoping he wasn't listening too carefully. Imagine being given a fatwa for writing music! 

We're about to sit down to watch Paul Hollywood's breadmaking programme, which is basically porn for housewives. All that slow motion kneading and sticky liquids falling from above can be rather off-putting! The producers of the programme do it so that women of a certain age can imagine him doing the same to parts of their bodies that never see the sun. They go wild when he rolls his sleeves up in preparation. Nathan says he's got hands like feet. 

In recent weeks I've been compared rather often to Paul Hollywood; a comparison I'm not exactly insulted by, despite being a clear ten years his junior! It's funny how one goes through life being compared to people who are in vogue. In my early 20s I was always Morrissey, in my late 20s, they called me Joachim Phoenix and in my mid-thirties I was always compared to Derren Brown. Whatever next? Clive Dunn? Terry Wogan?