Thank you

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I am currently in a state of shock, since I have a readership on a scale that I have never experienced before. This will no doubt lead to an unbearable arrogance, swiftly followed by a sudden terror about the various personal details I have revealed on here coming back to haunt me.

However, an even greater honour has been bestowed upon me. Rupert Thompson, manager at Summerhall and my former editor at The Skinny, has decided to apologise for missing an appointment with my radio show by putting on a special party for my birthday on Saturday. It's so good that he is having to charge people to come in, but the line-up includes John Osborne, who got a bunch of records off John Peel, Kevin Tomlinson who is a total mask genius, and The Fitzrovia Radio Hour, who robbed half their name off my show. The event is called the Nabokov Arts Club and it has been selling out in London for five years. And they have decided to make my birthday party their first visit to Edinburgh.

The Vocal Orchestra will be singing "Happy Birthday" to me - it might some like a typical beat-box choir, but the whole set will be exactly the requests that I have put in to their orchestrator Schlomo. Kate Tempest is going to rap about how great I am: it might seem like the pieces are about all different people, but my personality contains those multitudes. Then Molly Naylor, who has already paid tribute to my family background by writing a Love Letter to the Public Transport System (the Viles are an old railway family) will be offering some of her intimate monologues.

I am sure Nabokov Art Club were thinking of my love of the blues when they invited Jonny and the Baptists, although with a name like that, perhaps he was thinking of my own backwoods religious upbringing. What makes me most excited is that if I wanted a dream night out, and it didn't involve Polish theatre (Theatr Zar are arriving...), it would be a live arts club.

Do come, pay on the door or get a ticket in advance. I'll be the one blowing out too many candles.