I buy loose, seasonal vegetables instead of the expensive, packaged, air-freighted varieties that look so seductive, and just the cheapest butter and cheese. I know that small stores are often better value than supermarkets Commercially produced snacks are a waste of money. It's the kind of place where you suddenly find yourself standing tongue- tied beside Jarvis Cocker, being elbowed out of the way by a Finnish blonde in search of an autograph, then rescued by John Brown, the publisher of Viz. Funny thing - in Ireland I rarely get an erection...") and a virtual obsession with large female bottoms.

Given Mr Eno's transmedial celebrity, the place was full of writers (Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi) as well as rock journos and installation artistes. "I've bin talking to a literary agent about writing a novel for loads of cash, an' I've started it. But you know...." He gave a tragic sigh with which Balzac would have sympathised, "You have to stay in so much."Barely 24 hours later, I was in media diaryland again, at the Royal College of Art where Brian Eno, the former keyboards maestro with Roxy Music (he did the der-der-dit-der-DONG middle bit in Virginia Plain), legendary record producer and one-man fan club of airport music, was launching A Year with Swollen Appendices, his chronicle of 1995, complete with batso speculations ("28th May Woke at 4.30. "It's cranberry juice," he said, "I'm allergic to alcohol." Blast. It is, clearly, in danger of becoming the voice of the Establishment."Yeah," said Brown.

"'Course, we didn't believe for a minute we'd win it again." He sniffed. "Otherwise we'd never 'ave dropped acid at four in the afternoon...." Hmmm Had it affected him badly? "Not at first. We met at the Ritz, and decided the only way to get through the evening was by being out of our heads By the time we got to the Dorchester, we were flyin'. They were carrying chocolates around on trays of dry ice and we slung the ice in our glasses of red wine, so they were steaming like in Dr Jekyll's lab, and that started gettin' very weird, and then I was fantastically sick everywhere and ended up sitting outside the Dorchester among the flowers...." No change there then Was he planing more serious projects? "Oh yeah," said Brown. Last week it won Magazine of the Year award for the second year running. At the Planet I met James Brown, dreadlocked editor of Loaded magazine, that shockingly adolescent celebration of lager, footie and young women Getting Their Kit Off. Another illusion shattered.Thank goodness there are some people who act up to their media image.