It's a London thing

London. What a place. It's 6 months since I was passing through en route to Utah and after the sleepsville of Salt Lake and the north-east coast of Scotland, it's quite an experience.

Admittedly, arriving at 7.30pm on a Friday night into King's Cross was probably not the best reintroduction to my former home. Busy, noisy, stressful, push, shove, ignore your fellow man - all in the seemingly intensely urgent quest to get where you need to be and finally get the week over with.

But also, what a place. Funny Women's Awards on Friday night at The Albany. Iain's friend Helen is a new role model. Part-time classical music producer, part-time Royal Albert Hall tour guide and full-time aspiring comedienne who spends every spare night gigging all around London, the comedy capital of the world. She's doing a show at the Fringe so if you get up to Edinburgh this year, check her out.

Sunday night at the filming of Brendon Burns Live with Rachel and her interesting flatmate Jude, who came here from Dublin in 1971, squatted in Peckham and it all went from there. I'd have loved to have been part of that scene, I'm not sure it's possible to do that anymore. Way too much money needed nowadays. Brendon won the Perrier Award at the Festival last year. It's good stuff, not all laugh-out-loud funny, but thought-provoking. Jude is a friend of Brendon's and told me all his stories were true. He turns his own pain over his breakdown and booze and drugs problem into such fabulous comedic material. One of my favourite lines: "What really gets me is these people who buy cocaine and fair trade products. Wake up, you wankers!" That probably needs a little context and a stronger delivery than I can manage in words. But oh so true. If he looked more closely in their fridges he'd find milk thistle extract to help detox your liver and Alpro soya milk because dairy is bad for your sinuses (along with the cocaine, of course). Credit allows debit = balance?

Sunday afternoon in Selfridges, gazing in sheer wonder at these Vertu mobile phones, a snip at around £10,000. Selfridges is really one enormous toy box for adults. It is truly a sensory delight. We tonged our hair with the best new irons on the market, discussed Laura Mercier products and grimaced at revolting Gucci handbags.

I'm typing this on a MacBook Air, which is so responsive it practically works through thoughtwaves, in a beautiful pad in Marylebone, just opposite Madonna's London residence. Alison is allowing me to live a little of her highlife. I have some of her cast-offs to try on shortly. Cast-off is a very loose term, we are talking Missoni dresses and Armani suits here which I can have on loan as part of my back-to-work project.

Oh consumption, consumption, consumption. Guzzle, guzzle, guzzle. I both love it and hate it all at the same time. It confuses me.