RECORD BREAKERS

Come the weekend the lack of sleep does tend to catch up with me. If I'm not with the Dark Lady at the
weekend I'll go home, potter around until about 5 or 6 in the evening then amble off to the pub for a couple of hours with the local paper and a bag of nerdy music magazines.

Then refreshed I'll totter back home again to some wholesome food with mountains of vegetables and catch up with all the TV I've recorded. It's usually some of the excellent music documentaries on BBC Four. Although they seem to specialise in using the same couple of people to present everything. You are never more than five minutes away from Alan Yentob.

They could do with trawling the talent pool a little more in my humble opinion. By which I mean hire me to do stuff! It has always been the trouble with the TeeVee. They can't see further than their latest "pash". Which has never been me…much to my irritation, amusement and - at times -frustration. At one point I began to think that Phill Jupitus actually lived in my telly he was on so much.

At this stage of my "career" this is actually a minor gripe. I've grown used to my lowly station in life and frankly it doesn't fuss me much nowadays. Although the recognition and the buckets of cash would be welcome.

Last Friday there was a slight change of plan as I set out to have a "couple of pints" with one my oldest and best friends, the writer and film maker, Bill Shipton. We've known each other for getting on for forty years now and we should both realise by now there is no such thing as "a couple of pints"! He is possibly the funniest man I've ever met and a brilliant raconteur so the time always flies by.

I met him in the pub at around 5 and looking at the timeline for various messages I received during the evening I set off for home at 11.23!

No wonder the inevitable happened when I returned home.

Normally on a Friday - not having been back to bed since I rose at 1.00am - I'm usually able to wolf down some food, watch a bit of telly then, before I can go upstairs to bed, I drop off to sleep and wake up cold and cramped on the settee at about 2 in the morning.

The Dark Lady (who is used to me complaining that I keep falling asleep in the chair) suggests all sorts of remedies. Such as a TV in the bedroom so that if I do fall asleep I'll be in the right place.

Or maybe I should set the alarm on my phone so I can rouse myself at a reasonable hour if I do nod off. Or if I forget to do that she even suggested I let her know when I'm leaving the boozer so she can wait an hour, then ring to wake me to tell me to go to bed.

"Nah, don't worry, I'm fine," I protest…before doing the same thing again.

I can look through the recording of the show I was watching the following morning and see at what point I nodded off.

"Remember it. Remember it. Remember it....gone"!

The transition from wakefulness to sleep happens in a matter of seconds.

Friday night and I beat the Alex Lester slumber sofa record.

I'd just forked down the last morsel and BLAMMO! I was gone. I came to cramped and cold with a crick in my neck at 4.30 the following morning.

Perhaps I should move the bed downstairs.