Monday 30 July 2001

I'm typing this on the flight back from Los Angeles, after a very busy and fairly sleepless six days gathering material about film music for the Radio 3 series Stage & Screen with presenter Tommy Pearson. There have been plenty of memorable moments, but some that spring immediately to mind are ... Lalo Schifrin playing us the Mission Impossible theme on the piano in his study, and telling stories about Frank Zappa; our realising that the quiet unassuming bloke we were talking to in the isolation booth at Todd AO studios was the film director John Woo; going out to dinner and completely failing to notice that the extremely glamorous and energetic person sitting next to me was Beyoncé Knowles from Destiny's Child (that's enough namedropping. Ed.); and finding four copies of Colin's Kisses prominently displayed in the Virgin Megastore at 8000 Sunset. OK, this last one isn't quite so Hollywood, but it cheered me up.