2002-05-19 - 9:52 p.m.

Much as I usually shun Fancy Dress Parties with unabashed enthusiasm, last night�s was unavoidable since people were heartlessly using it to celebrate their birthdays. The theme, in deference to the upcoming Jubilee, was �1977� and it was little wonder I struggled for a costume given the two or so hours� ceaseless searching I put in. Star Wars and any theme on Dead Elvis (they all involved papier-m�ch� toilets) were too tricky to pull together, and Generic Punk was banned. I almost went with Generic Skinhead (OK, they were fascists but they were In The News!) but thought better of it (you might as well go as a Klan member, right?) and had to pathetically settle for just my most retro clothes. Although I did get a few annoying �so what have you come as?� jibes, I didn�t look too out of place as hardly anyone had made the effort, though there was a great Denis Norden (don�t ask) and one of my friends impressively came as all four members of Kraftwerk.

Other stand-out guests included the cowboy who came handcuffed to a real, live prostitute. Yes, you read that right. I didn�t realise they were the fashion accessory du jour, but it must be what all the kids are wearing round Hoxton. They left fairly early on, leaving a girl who was evidently his girlfriend to drink herself first into an incoherent, then semi-conscious, then tearily-vomiting mess. All I got out of her was �I can�t believe he�s done this AGAIN.� She was pretty, and I gentlemanly held the saucepan for her as she performed her technicolour yawn, though her offers of a post-evacuated stomach snog were politely turned down.

For some strange reason, all the rest of the girls there turned out to be same-sex oriented (I�m unsure as to the proper collective noun for dykes � I toyed with �A degeneres of lesbia�, but I�m not one for reducing people to cultural stereotypes. Ahem.) and it was fun watching some of the less observant males persevere in the face of insurmountable odds � um, I don�t think even your level of expertise in �ironic� breakdancing is going to win that girl over, Mr Boogaloo.

I won the crowd over by �spinning� the big band version of �Creep�, which is always a surefire winner, though it did seem to induce further yacking from Handcuffed Hooker Boy�s girlfriend.

I awoke couch-bound in South London, the flat�s incumbents enjoying a particularly feisty bout of hangover sex. I popped a bit of Bill Hicks into the VCR and settled in for the duration. It�s rare footage of some TV exec�s interviewing him with a view to offering him a show on British TV. They�re both morons and pissed to boot, so Bill runs intellectual rings round them with some aplomb. As they get drunker and drunker, the possibility that someone might want to retain some integrity in the face of huge wads of cash seems more and more incredible to them. The laboured conversation is almost painful to watch and dumb fucking guy says �Can�t you just tone it down a little?� and the dumb fucking woman says �Don�t you want to win over mainstream America?� and Bill just replies, �Not if it�s this fucking strenuous, no!"