When I talk to people about The Friday Project, they often talk of envy. Envy at being able to choose my own hours. Envy at being able to meet exciting and interesting people. Envy at flying back and forth across the Atlantic to meet those self same people. Envy at getting drunk with comedians and strippers and calling it ‘work’. Envy - that is - based on an incomplete picture.

Picture the scene - midnight, in the office, catching up with a ton of work surrounded by the remains of a Deliverance at-desk meal. Only Lily Allen, Nick Lowe and a cuddly Eeyore for company. Sweating off Satan’s own hangover after last night’s Firebox party (highlights: free sweets and cake; a ‘fun’ electric shock game that could blow the balls off a horse when played with beer-wet hands; after-party at Soho House in the company of Jon Cusack; noticing post-it note stuck to Soho House till simply bearing the scrawled words ‘John Cusack!’). Machine coffee. That’s my evening.

Of course a cynic would point out that the reason I have so much to catch up on is because I spent the last week in New York, getting drunk with comedians and strippers and calling it ‘work’. But one shouldn’t listen to cynics. Especially not envious ones.

So yes, New York, New York - so good they make you queue for three hours at immigration and take your fingerprints before begrudgingly allowing you stay for 90 days. I had a blast in the way that one only can when one is alone in a foreign land.

It was a trip of firsts - I had my first Philly cheese steak; my first Tacho Bell (on Savannah’s recommendation. She’ll tell you herself, she’s rarely wrong on culinary matters); my first experience at nearly getting locked out of my hotel room wearing slightly less than a towel.

It was also a trip that nearly ended in my death. Only a vengeful God would schedule a fuck-off huge lightening storm for the very moment my plane was due to lift off the JFK tarmac. I’m a huge fan of flying - and the approach and landing are two of my favourite experiences in the world. But taking off? Taking off I can live without. As was very nearly the case.

Still, probably my fault for being so anti-American about American - Nazi* - Airlines last time and switching my allegience to Virgin. A vengeful American God. George is right.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The purpose of the trip was meetings - and meetings did I have plenty. It was a pleasure, as always, to have dinner with the Pretty Matches folk - including new boy Ben who is living, breathing proof that some Americans do know how to talk about football.

Then there were meetings with publishers and retailers large and small. Tons of them. Nothing I’d be commerically-un-savvy enough to reveal here, obviously, sufficed to say that TFP’s mission to be the world leader in Publishing 2.0 is progressing more nicely than ever.

Finally, with Richard arriving in to town on his way back from Chicago, how better to end the trip than with a Glasshouse event. A great event, well organised by the charming Caroline and with just one - no, two - tiny flaws.

The speakers.

The speakers were a special kind of wrong. A wrong so wrong that you almost expect God’s hand to emerge through the ceiling and drive his fingers through both of their wrong eyes, straight into their wrong brains. Wrong, wrong, wrongity, wrong-wrong.

In theory, these speakers - I won’t embarrss them by mentioning their names here - Guy Garcia and Jon Cropper - were supposed to be talking about how black and Asian Americans are becoming a major consumer group and how companies should learn to cater their ‘offerings’ to them. Fair enough.

In practice, the talk could have been called ‘Welcome to America - spend all of your money on high priced consumer goods and you’ll fit right in!’ being as it was a show-and-tell on how not-too-clever ad people were given hundreds of millions of dollars to persuade ‘the people who clean your pool’ that their lives will be better if they buy a fucking Nissan. Pronounced Neeesan, incidentally.

Well, they’d only fritter it away on health insurance and sending the kids to university.

Happily, while the majority of the crowd lapped up bullshit about how a giant Japanese car maker’s goal was to ‘raise optimism post-September 11th’ (I shit you not), there were enough Brits in the crowd to provide fair-and-balance. The mop-haired fellow from the British consulate was particularly articulate in his bulldozering of their house of crap. Heated debate ensued, and then we all went up to the ‘pool deck’ to get drunk and eat steak. Super wicked.

But as that Barclays photocopier-filler once advertised, it’s not all work, work, work. Far from it. Night two looked like being spent alone in my hotel room watching Comedy Central until an email from Laurel Touby binged into my inbox. Bing! ‘Come and watch my husband’s band in Williamsburg’. Well alrighty then.

A quick L train ride later and I’m standing in a sweaty club with the queen of Media Bistro, watching a Business Week journalist thrashing out some absolutely joyous guitar while a drummer who looks like the dog from the Banana Splits, wearing two pairs of glasses, beats the crap out of his drum kit. Brilliant. And on the way home we stopped for frozen yoghurt.

Night three was the World Cup final, watched in a faux Irish pub, surrounded by braying yanks, punctuated by texts from Mimi the stripper.

Ah yes, Mimi - there can be no better form of post-match recreation than drinking vodka (’Ketel One, Lime, Crackling ice’) in the East Village with a Welsh Cambridge-grad pole-dancer, while mocking American football fans (so much whooping, you’d swear both Jerry Springer and Oprah were on the pitch) and comparing the not entirely dissimilar worlds of stripping and publishing.

“I lost $600 today because I wouldn’t suck cock”

Yeah, I have days like that.

And now, having ridden out the lightning storm, I’m back. At my desk on a Saturday night. Listening to ‘Cruel to be Kind’ at an insane volume and writing this to displace the mountain of emails in my inbox, all of which need to be replied to before bed.

Still, at least only about half of them are idiotic emails meant for The Friday Night Project. This one’s my favourite. Just arrived..

From: PursDrr@xxxxxx.com>
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 01:15:37 +0100
To: viewers@thefridaynightproject.co.uk
Subject: (no subject)

cunt

More envy, I expect.

...

* Although at least they offer more lebensraum than other airlines

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