Yesterday I did some radio. It'll be like falling off a log, I thought. But as the moment came closer, I started to fret. I'd speak too fast. Worse, I'd dry. Two of the interviewees were hitting eighty. One of them ill. And in a studio oop north. The third, we'd established, was a reluctant talker. In my drawer were four valium. Left over from the Stanstead episode in August. Why not take them I thought? They kill the nerves when I'm flying... A mistake. Listening later to the abortive verbal mess that constituted a prime time half hour, a bull in a china shop came to mind. There were so many 'sort-of's, it could have been a half hour special on sort-ofs. "You didn't sound like yourself," my mum said politely during a Nokia post-mortem. I know! I wanted to shout. I was in a tranquillized haze! And I hadn't had any coffee! Over late night raspberry martinis, one of my mates was a little more precise. "You sounded irritated." I was too squiffy to care by then. Funnily enough, after I'd slunk out of studio, tail between legs, I went to a voice control seminar. "Your emotional connection is in your solar plexus," said the instructor. Ah, I thought, That's where I went wrong. I've been connecting all day through my arse...