Off into Soho first thing this morning to be at the recording of the voice over for my cats and dogs advert. Into a small cobbled Mews where there was some odd photoshoot going on with scantily clad women in fishnets and men dressed as footballers.

First time I'd seen the advert and I'm really pleased. It conformed exactly to what The Gnome and me had intended and looks fab. The dog actor did a great job at playing "Wilfy" the main character and the location (the FB's stairs) worked perfectly. The voiceover talent was excellently emotive, and we were done in less than an hour.

Then went to work, in time for a long lunchtime swim and a pretty chilled first day. The Gnome is on holiday.

After work had an impromptu beer with the FB, which ended up with us hooking up noisily with Matty and Taranjit in a pub called the Raven (which they'd been ravin' about for ages). As I was standing at the bar a man next to me accidentally knocked over a barstool which caught my already blackened toes. Ouch. However a good time was had by all, and we wandered up to Chiswick High Road to strap on a tasty Vietnamese nosebag.

Home by taxi with the FB to an empty house (and its soon to be famous stairs) as Max is in the South of France with the FB's mum, and signs of her absence are everywhere: like the bizarre mechanical contraption, of unknown purpose, that the boffinish FB is assembling on the kitchen table. He has also been rebuilding his pimpmobile, which now needs an onboard computer to coordinate all the things it can do.

Below the sound engineer, the voice talent off in a sound booth while the dog actor looks down appealingly.