Griff Rhys Jones’s diary: I am now less of a celebrity than my daughter’s dog

In order to promote the Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia festival, I am trying to persuade Jason Morell, the director, that he must help me come up with stunts. ‘It’s stunts that will get us into the meeja,’ I tell him. So we launch the ‘Dylan Thomas Fitzrovia Breakfast Challenge’. Gary Kemp, Tom Hollander, Owen Teale and myself swallow a glass of beer with a raw egg in it — the great Celtic bard’s preferred nutritional morning kick-off. We are supposed to film it and challenge three others to do the same in aid of inner-city charities, and thus news of our festival will spread like a west African disease. Nobody else wants to do it. My other ideas have been a parade (‘Bermondsey Poets Say Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night’ etc.) and a ‘Great Welsh Cake Off’. Sounds good? Nikki, our organiser, rings me late on Sunday night and tells me that my parade has been banned. We will have to stick to ticketed events, lard and flour.

So I have a party for the festival in order to be companionable and make people fiddle about with social media. Parties always start with me on a ladder replacing light bulbs. If it wasn’t for these infrequent social occasions I would never maintain my house at all.

I was first drawn to Fitzrovia because it was a neglected part of London, and I liked it that way. I have worked here for 40 years. Now the developers are coming in, so we need to preserve the bohemian mix. The square mile from the BBC to the British Museum has been the creative hub of Britain for a 150 years. Arthur Ransome wrote a book about it. Dylan lodged in 12 Fitzroy Street, not far from where Constable lived, where the Camden Town group exhibited, where T.S. Eliot