Hair today

The big day of the On the House tv interview. Serious preparation needed. Most important thing to get right - appearance!!!!!!!!! Topping the list of appearance concerns is hair. Never go on tv like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards! Solution: wash and blow dry and then dump load of hair gel on head and leave to set hard. (I cracked my head on a shelf in the office before heading off to Tyne Tees TV and nearly shattered my hair!)

Next appearance issue: get the tie right. The blue one, which strangely went with my blue shirt. Then put on posh suit, grab background papers from last night and head into central London.

A 25 minute train journey gave me the chance to read all the papers again - useful since I had forgotten so much of what I read last night.

And then, just to make sure I remembered it all, I read them all again in the office. Sorry boss, I know you read the blog. Misuse of work time. Stay behind tonight Jonathan and catch up!

Then off to the Millbank studios, a great trek of, well, just one minute's walk from the office. I was on the programme with Roberta Woods, Labour MP for Durham City, and hopefully the prospective former MP for the constituency given her rather slender majority over the Lib Dems.

So 15 minutes on ID cards. The programme includes a sketch from Yes Minister in which Jim Hacker was resisting (quite rightly!) the introduction of ID cards.

Alas, the programme goes out tonight at 11.30pm. No doubt the army of voters in the North East will definitely be staying up late to experience the delights of JW on tv (not)! Mind you, given the timing of this, people coming back from the pub will catch it. And after five pints and a vindaloo, no doubt even I could sound devastatingly interesting!

Meeting this afternoon with Transport 2000, the campaign group that has an uphill struggle against the current government to turn Labour rhetoric on public transport into reality. I again returned to the problem of the possible closure of Dunston and Blaydon railways stations. Then we got sidetracked into a discussion on Grand Central's plans to run trains from Sunderland to Kings Cross before being shunted into a further discussion about other rail services. Then we reached the terminus of the meeting......I think that's enough train puns for today!