I admit it, it was vanity made me do it. I went on the ICA website to look for a listing for a panel discussion I’ve been asked to take part in tonight, something about DIY media. It’s not there, but this was: The London Nobody Knows, the 1967 film based on the books of my favourite London author, Geoffrey Fletcher, is to be shown, starting from tonight. I’ve never seen it, and I’m sure it won’t live up to the excitement of buying the book of the same title in a junk shop and following its author’s cynical, romantic eye around the crappy parts of London via his strangely wonky, Paddington Bear-ish sketches, but I would urge you to check it out, if you like London like I like London.

So obsessed was I with Fletcher at one point that I phoned up Penguin books to see if they could tell me if he was still alive. They said he probably wasn’t, but I wrote him a letter anyway, to go in a fanzine about urban decay. Anyway, someone who’s put a Fletcher obsession to better use is Bob Stanley, who once wrote this very nice piece about him in the Guardian, using the lovely word ‘irascible’.