Clare Teal: Long and winding roads driving us to motorway madness

Something was happening in London last week. I don’t know what it was but ALL the hotels were booked solid, last week of course being the week we were working in London Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Having already covered near on 1,000 miles the week before, Muddy and I were getting a bit fed up of the M4’s teenagery behaviour – general lethargy interspersed with sudden hissy fits.

On Wednesday we drove from Bath to London to do a live session and interview with Robert Elms for BBC London Radio. This lasted about 20 minutes. We then drove back to Bath in order to have a lovely dinner with our hero, which he was cooking! We’d just pulled up outside the flat when he called to say would we mind if he went out for a curry with his mates instead. “Of course not darling.”

Over a boiled egg, we answered the emails , packed and set off back up the M4 to a hotel in Cookham Dean, darkest Berkshire – the nearest place we could get to London, excluding the £600- per-night room at the Ritz of course.

Sat navs don’t work in Cookham Dean, nor do mobile phones. Just after 10pm we finally found the hotel. The alarm went off at 5.30am, we stumbled back into the car and map read our way to the M40 (pleasant change) and headed for BBC TV Centre to have a chat on the Breakfast telly sofas with Sian and Charlie.

From there we headed across town to a lunch meeting in Islington. Upon arrival I promptly walk into a glass door, nearly snapping my hand off (jazz singers and mornings not a winning formula) so spent the rest of said morning (it’s still only 10.30am!) sitting in a café eating danish pastries with hand wrapped in ice.

After lunch (shouldn’t have eaten those pastries) we head back to Bath. “What’s for dinner?” our hero merrily chirps. “I think there’s a curry in the freezer.” “Hmph I had curry yesterday.” Friday’s trip up the M4 was relatively painless. We arrived at the beautiful Cadogan Hall in Chelsea in time for rehearsals.

Today we’re off to Epsom (M4, M25, A24) Wednesday London(M4, A4) Thursday Radlett (M4, M25, A41) Friday Southport (M4,5,6,58 A570) Saturday Bath – a big bottle of wine and a takeaway.