Last night I played in ‘Songs In The Key Of London’ at the Barbican: a night of London-inspired songs performed by lots of different artists. I got to do the guitar solo in ‘Our House’ by Madness, which is something I used to sing along to even before I played the guitar. Elvis Costello turned up during the interval so there was an impromptu rehearsal of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ in his dressing room, with Squeeze, Green Gartside, Robyn Hitchcock, Madness, The Blockheads and Andy Serkis (Gollum) all crammed in. Totally bizarre. When we played it onstage (for the first time), picking out that beautiful melody to a packed house was just a tingly experience.

There have been a couple of other multi-artist shows I’ve been involved with recently. In January there was a tribute to Nick Drake, which is going to be on the BBC soon. With all these things there is a 2-day rehearsal (for around 26 songs), and there’s always a few moments during the concert when you turn a page and see a chart that you’ve forgotten to make notes on, and have no idea what to do. On this occasion the calm precision of the music itself seemed to diffuse a lot of the potential tension and, with the exception of the night that was filmed, it was pretty relaxing.

We went straight from the last Drake show to Heathrow airport and headed to Sydney, to do Hal Wilner’s Rogues Gallery – a collection of sea shanties – in front of the Opera House. We arrived at the first all-day rehearsal almost insane with tiredness, and by the end of the second day everyone was pretty destroyed. Rehearsals continued through the soundcheck, with Tim Robbins, Peaches, Todd Rundgren, Pere Ubu and many others working through their piratical renditions. 30 minutes before the show, the sky heavy with rain and caffeine in my bloodstream battling with the galss of wine I’d tried to calm mu nerves with (bad idea), I went onstage to check my stuff, and realised I couldn’t see. So I went and had a lie down and was quickly surrounded by worried-looking faces, and a paramedic, and then it all got a bit needlessly dramatic. In the end Dr Adrenalin did the trick and, like hearty sailors, we all pulled together and guided the ship through the storm.

After that, it was off on tour round Australia with Marianne Faithfull. To stave off the madness that I feel descending every time I have to spend days waiting around in airports, I got to work editing the huge amounts of material amassed for Brett Anderson’s next album. I whittled 12 of the 30-minute improvised jams down into songs, and the result is, I think, one of the best things I’ve ever been involved with. There is a tangible excitement to using completely improvised performances in structured music. The only time those riffs have ever been played, at the ‘moment of conception’ as it were, become the final document. This process was so intense and satisfying that I got to really enjoy the release of doing a gig in the evenings. During the encore at the Opera House, when it’s just Marianne and I onstage, I remember she looked at me with the strangest expression – sort of triumphant and defiant and kind at the same time. We don’t talk about a great deal offstage, but at that moment I really understood what she was trying to tell me – that she may be a bit eccentric and have a gravelly voice (up to that point the Australian press had been vicious), but look at her now: playing to a packed Sydney Opera house, completely in her element, with the crowd eating out of her hand.

When I got back from Australia I was persuaded to go on tour again! This time round the UK for a week with Kathryn Williams. We recorded her album live last year and she wanted to take the same band out on the road. It was a really wonderful experience, being with lovely friends and playing music with extreme delicacy and awareness, which is demanded wordlessly by Kathryn’s own performance. So minimal, but so rich. Kathryn is extremely pregnant at the moment so it was rather gutsy of her to take on the strain of a tour. She even insisted on staying up with me til 1:30am doing backing vocals for the Chris Difford album.

That project is nearly finished now – just vocals to do. We had anoterh few days tracking instruments at Jools Holland’s extraordinary private studio in Greenwich. It’s like a miniature village from the 1930s, and features two hyperactive cats who are very friendly and like to destroy the soundproofing when you’re not looking. I did some strings with a wonderful violinist called Emma Smith and tried a new approach – instead of arranging like I usually do, I kept an idea in my mind of what it should be, and then worked with Emma to get close to it. In other words, lessening the amount of control. I found the results were a lot more interesting and unexpected – stuff you would never think of writing down. Plus it got me out of copying parts.

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