Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 12 July 2006

I got a call from Matt Rowe, the pop song mastermind behind the Spice Girls when they were brilliant, and numerous others since. He was quite excited because he had tickets to see The Wiggles at Hammersmith. The Wiggles are my favourite band, and I think his and quite possibly Sophie Ellis-Bextor's. In fact probably anyone with a child between the ages of two and five would rather see The Wiggles than anyone else. The Wiggles are the best in high-quality entertainment for the under-fives.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 05 July 2006

My sister got married on Saturday. I guess she married "up". Her father-in-law collects paintings by Canaletto. My father collects coils of rope. Mind you, my mother did once have her bottom squeezed by Damien Hirst. Love is blind, though.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 28 June 2006

It doesn't take much to turn heads and get tongues wagging in the country. I knew Camilla had arrived because Blackie, who mows the lawn on Fridays, came to tell me there was an Evo 8 parked outside. "Top of the range!" he said with a big smile. He used to play drums for Hawkwind, so he must have seen some far-out freakiness over the years, but the car, which is the third fastest on the road, had set off an electrical storm in his brain.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 21 June 2006

The house is full of women. It's not really my house since the babies came home. The maternity nurse is in charge now. Maternity nurses are the crack commandos of the nannying world. They seem to be made out of pure maternity. In Denmark, when you have twins, the government sends you a maternity nurse and that is a terrifying thought. There is no way we would be sane, if it wasn't for the help, but the loss of control must be absolute when you can't even claim to be the employer.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 14 June 2006

Two babies came home today after eight weeks in intensive care. It was a close squeak. We'd turned a dozen heads by the time we'd got from the hospital door to the car. We hadn't even got in the stupid car, and everyone's looking at us. "Twins," people said to each other, and pointed and stared.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 07 June 2006

There's another roof off, and a whistling workman around every corner. All week I'd been watching them from the window and by Friday I couldn't resist it any longer and joined in with the decorators. Putting paint on things is very calming. It smells nice. Soon I was whistling too.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 31 May 2006

If all goes well this morning, I'll get "The Entertainer" ticked by Mrs Swann, my piano teacher, meaning I'll have finished Piano Book One. It's taken about 18 months of lessons. Learning how to fly only took a year. Mrs Swann says the biggest challenge has been teaching me to play quietly. As she points out most weeks, piano means "soft". Once you hit 30, life becomes one long and sometimes difficult quest for soft, I suppose.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 24 May 2006

The big house up the road just changed hands for 25 million. In Miami, that would get you something pretty on the water, but it wouldn't be enough to get you beyond the wealthy suburbs. If you wanted to impress other rich people, you'd have to spruce the place up with an art collection or a planetary observatory. In the Cotswolds, 25 buys you a potager, a parterre and an orangerie, a chapel, a hamlet and gardens laid out by Humphrey Repton, the first great English landscape gardener. In Miami you'd be living between Lenny Kravitz and Ricky Martin. Here you'd be looking to me and Jeremy Clarkson to make up the numbers for dinner. I did go there once and it is the most beautiful house I've ever been to for dinner.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 17 May 2006

In between writing an opera and building a picturesque cheese factory all week, I've been looking for a frog. Geronimo is two and he's having a "See frog?!" phase. I've checked the wells regularly and the pond, but nothing's turned up. One was hopping across the road on Saturday night and I stopped the car and went back, but couldn't find it.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 10 May 2006

They shoot rooks don't they?

Alex James: My twin miracles

Published: 06 May 2006

When his partner went into labour three months early, it struck terror into Alex James. Here he describes how, with the help of a crack team of NHS specialists, his babies won their battle to survive - and he was as awed by the wonder of the hospital as the wonder of life