Sunday

Sunday. The day of the first official meeting. 11am the Balmoral Hotel.

Things don't get off to a good start, after Vanessa has a hissy fit. I should explain yesterday she was supposed to move in to the house with me and Paul. I had 7 phone calls in the space of an hour. First she couldn't open the front door. Two phone calls to explain the door is just stiff. Me and Paul managed to work this out for ourselves. Then many more calls because she clocked she'd got the smallest room, and I have an en suite bathroom with all the trimmings.

So far I haven't had time to use the jacuzzi, and to be honest I don't really care much about the size of the room. The smallest room is bigger than my room back home for gods sake. So I agree to move. I also sort of agree to be home sometime after midnight, after seeing Phil Nichol, to move my stuff.

One final call to say she couldn't close the front door. As I said to Anthea who was mediating between us "how can I put this, you remember how the door was stiff when she couldn't open it. The same applies..." Anthea laughed, she suspected as much, but Vanessa was adamant there was a problem with it. I offered to go back to the house to help her, but she worked it out in the end.

As some of you will have realized by now, I didn't go home just after midnight, after all this is me we're talking about and it was Saturday night. It was more like 4am. Still technically after midnight.

Come Sunday, Vanessa is absolutely fuming. She pulls Anthea, the Perrier production assistant to one side, and is going mental for like 15 minutes. She's saying things like "it's a child's bed" - it's a single. "I have a bad back" - she's a liar. If we swap, she must have clean bed linen - because obviously she might catch something if she doesn't. "Must have taxi's to and from the house" - the house is a 15 minute walk away from Princes Street, but I guess her 'bad back' affects her walking ability.

Anyway, Anthea comes over to me and apologizes for Ness's behaviour, she has bent over backwards to help find Ness accommodation at short notice none of which has been suitable, hence her moving in with us. Generally everyone on the panel has sided against Ness because they all know what a pain in the arse she is.

So anyway that's the bitching part of Sunday. We all sat around a table, with a legal secretary, and convened as a committee to discuss the Perrier nominations. Everyone had to introduce themselves and declare any interests. John for instance has many, he is afterall the head of radio entertainment for the BBC. Paul got the piss taken out of him when declaring not interests, mainly because he has spent the previous 2 nights on stage with MC Russell Howard at the Late n Live show. And is now Russell's 'friend' slash 'favourite heckler.' Russell is in the running with his own show. He was also asked to declare if he'd slept with anyone yet. You might have seen him go red if it weren't for his freckles.

Then we scuttled through the list of 260 odd acts, weeding out the majority fairly quickly. Then went through all those left on the list again and weeded out any more that weren't really top 5 material or great newcomers. Until we managed to get a long short list of about 22 acts.

It was all quite good spirited. Everyone has got their own top 5's, and many people had to concede some of there's after there was no other support for an act. When we got to Penny Spubbs for instance, I was convinced I would have to fight to get it out. (It's an awful show, but has had a lot of people fawning over them, because they are talented pretty girls.) But after I spoke up strongly against, several people backed me up, and it was out with relative ease on the first round. Get in.

I only lost a couple of my top 10, and majority of my top 5 are still in. Two of them I reckon have a strong chance of being in the agreed 5 nominations, 2 others are definitely in the running for newcomer at least. A lot of the big names have gone. Poor Graham, Channel 5ives head of comedy, he must have argued for 8 or 9 acts, saying they were definitely in his top 5. Each time they were kicked off the list. I asked him if he was adding in acts to his top 5 every time one got kicked out. Everyone laughed at that. Bless him, he's shit at arguing his point and was getting walked all over.

Having agreed the top 22, it is now necessary to make sure we have all seen all of these by Wednesday, so that when we sit back down again to whittle them down to 5 Perrier nominees and 5 Newcomers we can all argue either for or against. During our Sunday meeting quite often there was only half the panel who had actually seen an act. I luckily have seen the majority and have only 4 or 5 to see.

After the meeting we all went for a meal, paid for by the Perrier people. It's quite funny, we are now spending quite a bit of time talking to one another, trying to work out alliances, and whose supporting who on what, and getting everyone's top 5's. Wednesday I imagine is going to be very interesting.

Once we got off the subject of the actual list, a few of us got chatting about comedy in general. It's here that I hear the best news possible. Sarah, who works at Paramount Comedy Channel, admits to being a massive Dylan Moran fan. A friend of hers knows him and she has had chances to meet him but has always been too scared. And this is where she drops her bombshell. She said did know that he's left his wife and kids. She has promised to find out for me if he's seeing anyone at the moment and where he's hanging out. He lives in Edinburgh.