Last year the director of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival started noticing me at lots of Free Improvisation gigs, and when I became an e-list TV comedian, he wondered if I might be able to help program and promote a new strand of experimental jazz during the festivities. I agreed, and suddenly the promotional duties are piling up, as Stewart Lee’s Freezone is scheduled for the weekend of April 30th to May 2nd, with four events over three days. Today I travel to Faversham in Kent to interview the saxophonist Evan Parker for a newspaper, as he is playing in Cheltenham on May 1st. I used to do a dozen or so arts features a year for papers, between about 1999 and 2006, when I wasn’t really making a living out of comedy and theatre, but I never liked meeting my heroes. Indie rock types especially were often so pretentious it put you off their music for ever, but Parker is an affable and straightforward sixty-something who explains his often confrontational and convoluted music clearly, and without any degree of ego. After we’ve finished, he takes me to the home of his new acquaintance Henry Dagg. Henry, a maker of unusual musical instruments, lives in an old factory where he has gone thousands of pounds and thousands of hours over budget on a commission called The Sharpsichord. The solar powered, stainless steel machine turns a giant roller, with over eleven thousand hand tooled holes in it, from which protruding pins strike upon the strings of a massive metal harp. It’s a labor of love, a humbling work of art. Afterwards we have a pint of local bitter in the pub and I leave. Today has been one of the most pleasant days of work I have ever had, marred only by doing stand-up at a Charity benefit at the Comedy Store at night, where I watch a young new comic called Ahir Shah appropriate a few of my trademark moves to an audience that don’t recognize them. He makes me feel like a shark that has to keep swimming.

Tuesday 13th April
I spend all day trying to write another newspaper piece for the Freezone strand of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, a sort of layman’s definition of Free Improvised Music. Publicising the Cheltenham gigs is a full time job this week, which is odd for me, as I’m normally reluctant to promote my own stand-up or theatre work. Lots of the musicians I have met helped me with quotes for the piece, but it was a difficult brief and I don’t know how much sense the piece I submitted made. I hate the thought of misrepresenting anyone, having been misrepresented in the press so many times myself. At night, my wife stayed in with our son, writing up her new act in which she is an Ant stand-up. I sat in a pub for two hours and read a book by Alex Cox about spaghetti westerns, cover to cover. I have been doing stand-up nearly every night for the last six months but now I am winding up the last tour show, before writing a new one. It is amazing to have time to read again.

Wednesday 14th April
I took my three year old son to London Zoo while my wife worked. We watched the otters being fed and saw caterpillars fashioning their pupae. At night I went to see the subversive comic book movie Kick Ass with my friend the performance artist Ben Moor, a fellow comics geek. It was great, but we agreed that although it looked like the work of weirdoes, it was the work of The Man, who now knows how to market what was once alternative to paying customers. Having read the Alex Cox book, I spotted an in-joke about Hayes code violations during the final, spaghetti western themed, shoot-out. How strange it is to suddenly know new information, after six months without a moment to absorb anything. We went to the pub afterwards and people kept interrupting us who recognized me as a comedian. I never used to mind this too much but these days, when everybody in the country has a camera phone and a twitter account and a blog, you’re instantly accountable, and so have to be careful how what you say and do might be reported or misinterpreted. It makes me paranoid and uncomfortable and it’s impossible to relax.

Friday 16th April
I work all day on the Evan Parker piece and then, after our son is in bed, my wife and I watched a DVD of the low budget horror film Paranormal Activity which, despite a schlocky ending, was genuinely terrifying, brilliantly written, with a superbly understated cast and a great use of surveillance camera style footage. We never have time to go to the cinema anymore, and when we do get a babysitter we try and see something live and unique, rather than pre-recorded. Since we had a son I feel like mass culture is passing me by. It’s surprising how little you miss it.

Saturday 17th April
Next year I am programming a weekend of Arts events for a big London venue. I have an idea of doing a day of forgotten films relating to the Loch Ness monster, in the hope of securing a big screen showing of the little known Werner Herzog vehicle, Incident At Loch Ness, in which the mysterious auteur plays a knowing parody of himself. With a view to this I have bought the 2001 B-movie Terror Beneath Loch Ness off Amazon, and Ben is coming round to watch it, as he loves rubbish things. This Loch Ness is clearly a Californian lake, all the tourists and tour guides are conveniently American, the Loch is bizarrely patrolled by The Coast Guard, people pay for booze in brightly lit Scotch pubs using American dollars, and at one point a sighting of the monster is reported to ‘the authorities in Glasgow’, where, presumably, there is some kind of Scottish office of cryptozoology. A mere two supposedly Scottish characters supply unconvincing local colour. But in a week of thinking hard about the abstractions of Free Improvisation, in which the rules are unclear and the value of the end results are always subjective, it is oddly relaxing to see something objectively poor. Happily, there is a DVD extra of a documentary during which the cast and creative crew incriminate themselves further. Lysette Anthony, the only name in the picture, declines to be interviewed, but can be seen waving from a distant golf cart. I make Ben asparagus and pasta and check on the sleeping child. Next week I am back on the road with the last few dates of the If You Prefer A Milder Comedian… stand-up tour. This week has been a strange interlude of normality, hanging out with my son, going to the cinema, watching TV with my wife, reading, and drinking with friends. And I saw the Sharpsichord and wrote three articles on improvised jazz. Even a normal week is strange.

Stewart Lee’s Freehouse –
Friday 30th April – Christopher Cundy and guests
Saturday May 1st – Evan Parker and guests
Sunday May 2nd – Gail Brand, Mark Sanders and guests
8pm, The Playhouse Theatre, Cheltenham
http://cheltenhamfestivals.com/jazz/