Gimme Food and Newspapers

Another deadline, another rewrite, another hotel room. Blackpool this time. My room faces the sea and I sit and watch the tide come in and go out. There is an A4 pad on my knees and an inky pen in my hand, but not a single creative thought in my head.

I am rewriting a film, or rather I am failing to rewrite a film. I've lost count of the drafts I've written over the past four years. I think it's eight, but it could be nine. I think constantly about Four Weddings and a Funeral and screenwriter Richard Curtis. Mr Curtis wrote seventeen drafts, but this knowledge fails to comfort me.

I wish there was a big meaty part in my film for the star of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Hugh Grant, but there isn't. My male lead is a forty-five-year-old tortoise-fancier who is disgusted by sex and cuts his own hair – hardly Mr Grant's style.

I get up and pace around my room. I'm feeling slightly claustrophobic because I've only just vacated the suite down the corridor. Two friends came for the weekend and the suite worked out cheaper than booking three rooms.

‘This is where Mrs Thatcher and John Major stay when they visit Blackpool,’ said the charming Mr Price as he opened the door of the Westminster Suite. I had a sudden vision of Mrs Thatcher and John Major strolling along the Golden Mile, arm in arm, wearing Mr Blobby baseball caps. Had I fallen upon a scandal that would bring down the government? Unfortunately not. Apparently, it was strictly Margaret ’n' Denis and John ’n' Norma.

So, after the spacious glories of the suite in which there were four rooms to pace (five including the shower), I am reduced to the confined pacing of a tiger in a politically incorrect zoo.

Unless breakfast is included, I never eat in English hotels. I will eat at transport cafés, at caravans in lay-bys, but never in hotels. I suspect that the ingredients that go into hotel kitchens are marked ‘Unfit for human consumption. Hotel use only’

Whilst in Blackpool, I ate in Harry Ramsden's fish and chip emporium four times. I hate queuing, but the thought of that succulent fresh haddock inside that light crispy batter had me standing in line. (By the way, Harry, please do something about those two sets of doors. Trying to get a wheelchair through them is like trying to get Lady Olga Maitland a place in heaven.)

The fourth time I was accompanied by my parents and my sister, who had come to give me a lift back to Leicester. ‘Didn't tek you long,’ said our young waiter, looking down admiringly at our clean plates. We don't mess about with food in our family. We could speed-eat for England. Is it in the genes, or is it a primeval fear that our food is going to be snatched away from us?

Incidentally, has anyone ever finished a ‘Harry's Challenge’? I saw a few foolhardy blokes order it from the menu, only to see their jaws drop when it was put before them. A ‘Harry's Challenge' consists of a piece of haddock the size of a small child, surrounded by a pile of chips the height of a minor Welsh mountain. A lake of mushy peas sets it off nicely. Nobody I saw rose to the challenge.

Back at the hotel, I gloom out of the window at the sea, count the seagulls, watch the horizon for ships, paint my toenails cyclamen pink, and think until my head hurts. I allow myself no distractions; there are no books in my room, no magazines, and I don't turn the television on. However, the hotel pushes a complimentary copy of the Daily Telegraph under my door every morning. I must admit that my lip curled the first time I saw it lying there. We all have our prejudices, and one of mine was that the Daily Telegraph was read only by crusty old colonels with politics to the right of Genghis Khan. It's no secret that my politics are to the left of Lenin and Livingstone, so it came as a shock to find that I was actually enjoying the Daily Telegraph. It made me laugh, it was well written and it was critical of the present government.

I still have the Guardian delivered, but I now sneak out and buy the Daily Telegraph for pleasure. What next? Will I start foxhunting, wearing pussy-bow blouses or calling for capital punishment in schools? Watch this space.