You're Michael Palin

I went to London today and on strolling out of Leicester Square tube station I found myself walking next to someone. I tried to overtake and he did the same so we continued to walk parallel to one another. I glanced sideways and saw that it was Michael Palin.

'I have an overwhelming urge to tell you that you're Michal Palin,' I said. 'But you probably already know that.'

'Yes, indeed,' he said with a smile, downing his espresso.

He was as charming and as forgiving of irritants like me as you you would expect.

Later in the day I went to see my good friends Chris Riddell and Dave Simonds at the new Guardian offices on York Way near King's Cross station. I used to see them every week for years, and though I do not in any way miss the work we used to plough through at the Economist, I certainly miss that contact and the laughs we used to have (between bouts of impotent rage and soul-crushing despair). Dave still works there, and probably has a better time of it without me having a hissy fit every week.

Dave and I actually still work on the same publication - the New Statesman - but the wonders of modern technology mean that I do not have to physically go to the offices and send my strip as an email attachment.

Christopher Hibbert

I called Helen Szirtes today to talk about her notes on my latest book. Helen has been great to work with on my Bloomsbury books and I'm very happy to be working with her again on this one. Now I need to knuckle down and get on with the changes.

I was very sorry to read of the death of Christopher Hibbert. The challenge in writing historical fiction is to feel comfortable in the period in which you are setting the book. For this to be the case you need lots of information about the details of life: what do people wear, what do they eat, how do they eat and so on. If I have a character stepping into a street, I want to be able to visualise that street, the buildings, the people, the animals, the smells and sounds. The more convinced I am of these things, the more convincingly I will describe them in my book.

There are certain writers who bring certain periods or places or peoples to life. N A M Rodgers' books on the British navy are fantastic. I am constantly delving into Liza Picard's books about London. More than anything you need to feel secure in the historian's knowledge, and I trusted Christopher Hibbert's expertise completely.

Hibbert wrote really well about the eighteenth century, a period I have explored a few times, with my Tom Marlowe adventures for Random House and with Jail-breaker Jack, my non-fiction book about Jack Sheppard. It was Hibbert, together with Roy Porter, who helped me to get a feel for this extraordinary period in British history.

Hibbert wrote a wonderful book about Jack Sheppard called The Road to Tyburn, which was reissued a while ago as a Penguin Classic History. It is not only a fascinating piece of social history, it is also a very fine piece of writing.

Being too human

I watched Being Human last night on BBC3. Oooh it could have been good. But it wasn't. Not really. . .

The opening section had promise. I really liked the idea that the vampire character was first bitten in WWI. It was wonderfully random. But the 'laughs' are weak. The section where Russell Tovey rushes around a wood searching for a place to transform, constantly bumping into other people was just embarrassing. And the use of music is awful - like Scooby-Doo, but worse.

The lead actors are good. The leader of the vampires is particularly good because he does not conform to the usual goth stereotype. Aidan Turner as the vampire and Russell Tovey as the werewolf are fine - Turner is weirdly more lupine than Tovey, but Tovey's perfect because he looks like a puppy. Lenora Crichlow as the ghost isn't great, but that's not her fault.

I realise that the BBC probably spent its entire special effects budget on the werewolf transformation sequence (and incidentally, isn't it about time someone came up with a new spin on this? American Werewolf in London was a long, long time ago) but is she a ghost or not. If she is a ghost how is she sweeping the floor and making cups of tea. We can see her, but if we couldn't, would we see a cup floating about? How does Tovey hug her? Is she solid? Because if she can move things around and be touched then isn't she actually just a flatmate?

She's a ghost. I want to see through her! I want her to walk through walls!

Production values are always going to be a problem in a programme like this. It was never going to have the gloss of Heroes. But that can be a good thing. Heroes has ended up chasing its own CGI tail. It can be all about the writing.

Strangely this concept echoes something I have had on my computer for a while. My idea was better (of course) and rather than put me off, it strikes me that perhaps I ought to have another look at that. . .

The streets are full of goths and geeks

Joad called yesterday and I don't think I gave him nearly as hard enough a time over the Esquire article. I'm getting soft in my old age.

I also got an email from Sarah Odedina about my latest book with a long - very long - letter from Helen Szirtes. I have a month or so to get the book - the one that was called Ghosts but which is at the moment called The Secrets of Hawton Mere - sorted out and another draft sent off.

And I enjoyed John Stewart's spin on that expediency issue of Obama's speech. Admonishing Fox News on the Daily Show, he said that 'If we don't stick to our values when they are tested then they aren't values, they are hobbies.' Excellent.

Meanwhile, I have been writing bits and pieces of new stuff. Having had a couple of years with my head firmly in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, I am moving on. That isn't to say that I have exhausted the possibilities of that world, because I don't think that is true at all. I just want to do something else.

I bumped into John Clark today and then, five minutes later, Peter Kirkham (and then the whole delightful Kirkham clan). Peter was telling me that he had met someone else who went to Gosforth High School (as we both did - though at different times). And he reminded me - I think he's already told me and I'd forgotten - that the wonderful Kathryn Tickell went there as well. If you don't know here, seek her music out. And if you have never heard the Northumbrian pipes, you are in for a treat.

I like bumping into people. It makes you feel like I belong here (which I often do not feel at all). This is nothing against Cambridge. I don't think I have ever felt that I belonged anywhere. It probably comes from moving around so much as a child. I am reminded here of the Elbow song, Station approach, whose line, 'The streets are full of goths and geeks' I was just quoting to Peter as a particular favourite.

But it was the line, 'I want to be in a town where they know what I'm like and don't mind,' that I was meaning.

Neil Adams

I went to London today and bought a copy of Death Ray magazine to read on the train. They have kindly listed me in their roundup of the things they liked in 2008. As well as this welcome plug for me, it also contained a tribute to the great comic book artist Neil Adams.

I was in awe of Neil Adams when I was a young reader of American comics. He seemed to be able to draw anything, and his grasp of human anatomy was fantastic. The way he used light and shade was something new and before its time and he is particularly good in the way he uses and renders blackness and shadow. While most artists were still outlining, he was modelling. His design of the Batman image is still among the most elegant. He helped make DC comics cool. Adams' drawings for Deadman, Green Arrow and Green Lantern are so vivid.

I also bought a copy of Esquire to read on the train home (Obama on the cover, natch). I only ever buy magazines like Esquire or GQ when I am catching a train. And there, nestling between gadget reviews, preposterously expensive shoes and cheesy glamour shots was Professor Joad Raymond looking very suave and sophisticated and far too good-looking to be an English professor.

Joad could have been telling us about early newspapers or Milton (and I would have read such an article with great enthusiasm) but instead he was one of a group of people 'with an interest in fitness' (Joad is a marathon runner) who were supposedly having a chat about the current financial malaise seemingly on the grounds that the words physical fitness and fiscal fitness sound almost identical after a couple of glasses of Rioja.

I eagerly await the article featuring nurses talking about the health of the economy and goalkeepers chatting about the importance of saving.

Honey, where's my super suit?

I stayed at home today in the warmth. It was a lot easier to write with fingers that were warm enough to actually move.

Just before 5 I turned on the TV for Obama's inauguration. It took all my will power not to switch it off again when faced with the sermon that preceded it. The mistake in the oath-taking added a frisson of excitement of course. Nice to hear non-believers acknowledged, though Hindus must have been a little cheesed off that they don't seem to count at all. Once you start with lists, it's like a best man's speech - you've got to put everyone in.

The speech was a good one, I thought (written by the 27 year-old Jon Favreau). The man can talk, you have to give him that. But actors speak other people's words beautifully. It is seductive, but it actually means very little if you don't follow through. Only time will tell whether there's more to him than being a Frozone lookalike - 'Honey - Where's my super suit?!'

Of course, not being Bush will take him a long way with most people. And you still have to pinch yourself when you see that a black man is now president of the United States of America. Whatever happens, that felt sweet.

My son came back from school, having just missed the speech and instead wandered into the godawful poem that followed it. I'm sorry Elizabeth Alexander - but it was! And poets should not be allowed to read their own stuff. But I'm not sure anybody could have breathed life into it though. I certainly wasn't about to persuade my son that it was desperately important that he listened.

We watched the speech again on the six 0'clock news and it was fascinating, as always, to see what they chose to show and not show in the highlights. History is now made by TV news editors.

The portable Poe

I went to the studio today and was on my own the whole time. There was plenty of evidence that John had been in. He had painted out every painting he had ever done and started some new ones. I haven't seen Andrew or Lynette since New Year's Eve. It was so cold. I was there for hours and my feet were blocks of ice by the time I left. I need to find a new studio!

Edgar Allan Poe was born 200 years ago today. I have spoken before of my admiration of, and fascination for, Poe's strange and hallucinogenic writing. I'm not sure - but I think I saw the Roger Corman movies before I read the stories and I would not have seen those movies until I was well into my teens. I may have read The Raven at school.

I certainly remember that there was a vaguely transgressive feeling to reading his work. It seemed (and still seems) so unlike anything else, and so dark. Poe is often thought of as florid and otherworldly (and he is both those things) but there is also an incredible honesty at work in his writing. It is like listening to his deepest fears and darkest desires. It is often assumed he was an opium addict but alcohol was his drug of choice and his ultimate undoing.

He knows how to start a story. These are the opening words of The Tell-tale Heart:

True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them.

Listen to how modern that sounds and how strange. It makes me want to pick up my old Penguin anthology of his stories - hilariously titled The Portable Poe - and read those stories all over again.

So here's to Edgar Allan Poe. Thanks for the nightmares.