I don't know whether I'm in favour of the current proposals to improve Gay rights in the UK.

At heart, I think it's a good idea. I think it's a very good idea. The recognition of civil partnerships between same-sex couples removes a systematic prejudice in British society, which can only be a good thing, can't it?

The downside is that the current proposals do not extend the same civil partnership rights to heterosexual couples.

Let's look at it from a high-level viewpoint, though.

• Heterosexuals have the option of marriage as a declaration of partnership and this leads to certain rights being granted. They have the option not to marry.
• Homosexuals will have the option of declaring a civil partnership, and this will lead to certain rights being granted. They will have the option not to do this.

In essence this is exactly the point being made by Jacqui Smith, Minister for women and equality.

Ah, but this is putting gay partnership on a par with marriage, isn't it? It's marriage by another name. And that's undermining the sanctity of marriage. Can't do that.

So, how about reinventing it as Marriage-Light. So it's like marriage, but not. It's just registration of a partnership, with much easier dissolution, or something that differentiates it.

That keeps heterosexual lobbies happy. Couples who want to get married can still get married, straight couples who don't want to get married can still get the equality of treatment and the legal rights, but without any of the additional stuff that makes it a marriage (I'd like someone to tell me what that difference is, though). And gay couples can register their partnerships. Everyone's happy. The sanctity of marriage is preserved. Oh joy.

Except that's still two different systems. And someone, somewhere, will object to it.

No approach is going to make everyone happy. But any approach that makes most people happy will, in one way or another, involve the registration of gay partnerships.

Today's "Friday Five" is about hair. But I don't do the Friday Five thing, so I'm not going to go in to great detail about hair disasters, or whether my hair is curly or straight (depends on where you're looking, to be honest).

I'm going to address, albeit incredibly superficially, the ginger question.

I'm going to tackle the question by the cunning plan of splitting up and approaching it from two directions. Half of me is going to walk into its lair, tease it a little, and try to lure it out in to the open. Once the issues are fully exposed, the other half of me is going to drop a metaphorical barrel on the debate, allowing me to finally unmask the truth.

Ginger hair. It's associated with a number of things. It's associated with a fiery temper, with an uncontrollable individuality and impetuousness. It's also associated with Chris Evans and Geri Halliwell, with Judas Iscariot, and with Irishmen.

While some of these are obviously undesirable associations, none of them in and of themselves really justify the vitriolic ribbing that people with ginger hair receive. In some cases it's also untrue - sitting in an office in Ireland, and looking around me, I can't see a single person with ginger hair.

Fact about ginger haired people: They're prone to having pale skin and freckles. Nothing wrong with that. Some of them are quite attractive. Some aren't, but who says that you have to be attractive?

There are attractive ginger haired guys out there, though.

Anne Robinson is a bit ginger. So is Prince Harry. And Mick Hucknall. So were L Ron Hubbard and Arthur Lowe.

Interestingly, though, browsing through red and proud, it's hard to find a guy who is succesful, red haired and incredibly shaggable. It's far more common among women. Very odd thought.

Anyway, closing this ramble...

Seth Green.

For three days in 1997, I worked in a call centre.

It's a confession - and one that needs qualification - but it's essentially true.

My company was going through a major piece of restructuring, and they sent out a mailshot to all of their customers. We knew that this was going to generate a lot of phone calls, and because all of our staff were busy on the restructuring, we outsourced the calls. We wrote a script, we trained some people, and for three days, I worked alongside these people in their office in London.

There was a three tier system. First off, there were the people who answered the phones. These people struggled through the scripts, answering all the tricky questions that irate customers could throw at them. If they couldn't answer a question, they'd call over a supervisor, who would then take the call forward. And when the supervisor couldn't answer a question, then the customer got through to me.

I was the last line of defence, with a small army of people before me. By the time customers spoke to me they were already angry. It was - it must be said - not fun at all. I developed a nubbin of respect for these people that we were paying to take the shit for us. They were young, they were hard working, they worked for peanuts but got lots of motivational effort to partly compensate. They had a career path of sorts, and could aspire to be senior call handlers on complex jobs. Some respect there.

And on the other side of the room, people were calling out, making sales calls on behalf of a bank. Sometimes people from one campaign would move to the other, and vice versa. The same people. One side of the room being helpful, and the other being a complete bunch of arseholes.

All of which is why I never shout at telephone sales people. It's not their fault, really. They wouldn't be doing the job if they didn't need the money - nobody really goes in to telephone sales as a career. And they have so little control over their working practices that it's laughable. Everything is geared around what the client wants. So if I'm woken up at 9 on a Saturday morning by someone calling to follow up on a piece of junk mail, I don't take it out on the caller.

There are all sorts of management self-help books with crazy little titles like 'Who fondled my monkey?', or 'Don't stress, it's only an aubergine', in order to help people to cope with workplace stress. I've got a couple of tactics I use to make the world a more bearable place.

First off, I don't take work home. Which is not to say that I don't physically take a bit of paper from the office to my house. But if I do, I'm very careful. It's on my own terms. I'll set aside some time to work on it, and when the time is over, I'll stop. And I'll be held to that by the wonderful bully I live with.

Secondly, I live with a wonderful bully. Who doesn't work in the same field as me, isn't interested in my work, and insists on me spending time with him, even if it's just lying on the sofa, chilling out, and watching 'You bastard! You overcooked my foie gras and that dress clashes with mine!' or some other Channel 4 lifestyle show.

Thirdly, I let stuff drop. It's an appalling admission, but if certain people ask me to do something, and it's not my job or I don't deem it important, it gets back-burnered. And then oblivioned. If they come back to me and ask for it again, of course, it becomes wildly urgent, but that's not stress, that's panic.

Fourthly, I find little pockets of subversion in my job.

Fifthly, I let my staff leave early if they want to. They've got lives that they need to live, and they don't need a dictator telling them when to work and when not to work. And you know what - they respect me more for it and work harder as a result. That makes me feel good, and also lessens my workload.

Sixthly, if I come home angry, I don't take it out on my wonderful bully. I either let it drop (harder said than done, I know), or take it out on pixels.

Seventhly, I like myself. I don't love myself (except in the sense of the Woody Allen quote), but I'm basically happy with who I am. I don't have unresolved issues, I don't think I need therapy, I'm pretty easy going I think, and stable and level headed. I cope with change reasonably well, and try to share some of that with those around me.

Eighthly, always laugh. Because there's always something funny.

Ninthly, I only worry about the metaphorical tomorrow, and not the metaphorical day after. Who knows what the future will bring? Certainly not me. I've got plans, sure, but I know they'll change. I've got something I'm aiming at, but it depends on a huge range of factors I have no control over. And I'm not going to worry about things I have no control over, because by definition I can do nothing about them. Of course, the trick is to know when you can take control.

Tenthly, if all else fails, vodka.

If you're feeling kind of tedious
If life is seriously mediocre
Here's how to get that adrenaline flowing
Just step aboard a Boeing going high!

We're living the high life
We're living it well!
We're living the high life
Where everything's swell!

We're up in the sky
We're flying so high
Oh my oh my!
We're living the high life...
The High Life!

The High Life is a gem of a series. Perhaps it's because I'm Scottish, perhaps it's because I'm gay, perhaps it's because I've spent a lot of time on short haul flights. But almost everything in the series rings true for me. In a kind of Molly-Weir-as-a-professor-looking-for-a-secret-recipe-for-tablet kind of way. How can you go wrong?

Nul points! Nul Points! Even Lynsey de Paul and Mike Moran did better than that in 1977 with 'Rock Bottom' and they were shite!

It's just like my life was in 1994, in many many ways. I wasn't going through a 'nothing good ever happens to people from Falkirk' kind of phase, but I was working for someone who believed that he was a Vulcan. Or a clown. And I had a colleague who could be described as Hitler in Tights.

I have a hunch the henchman is half-hearted in his horribleness.

Oh, deary me.

Many of us think that we could write a novel, but, as anyone who has tried will attest, writing one that is fit for publication is no easy task.

Interesting article in The Times that basically says 'Don't Write a Novel just for the Money'.

I still have completion anxiety. I've never finished writing anything in my life.

By far my best unfinished novel was 'Different People', which I must have spent about 40 hours actually writing, a lot more time thinking about, and it stood at about six chapters in that time. It's actually some of my best writing, being based on stuff I knew. Best buried, though, it pains me to say.

Partly because I've stolen the unwritten ending to the unstarted sequel, and shoehorned it in to 'Reek'. Reek stands at around 60,000 words, and I swear that I will finish it. But the fact is, I think back to the beginning, and I know that it's going to need a huge rewrite.

Then there's the novella. The one that's on line, that I'm writing actively at the moment. It'll be finished in three weeks, and then I'll write about it more.

Then there's 'Butterfly People'. Whatever happened to that? I think I decided that it was hackneyed. Still, I'm reading M John Harrison to get me in the mood to write it again.

Briefly, there was 'A Clockwork Orange'. More of a trial than pleasure. Still has some of the favourite sections of anything I've ever written, though.

- Back where I come from, we used to live in a society where women were treated as second class citizens. They still are to some extent, but it's changing. Men are starting to realise that there's no real difference between men and women in many ways, certainly nothing that would stop a woman from running a guild, or serving in the armed forces. But it took a lot to make it change. It took some women defying the natural order of things, the way that things had been run for centuries. Sometimes standing up and saying 'this is wrong' can be the hardest thing to do. But if you believe in what you're doing, and you know you're right, you have to do it.
- Even if you're afraid.
- Especially if you're afraid. And the thing is, the scariest thing, is that you will probably fail. You'll probably make no difference at all. But you'll show that you can stand up for what's right. You may not make a difference yourself, but if you show one other person that it's possible to make a difference, then you've won. Maybe not a big victory, but a victory.

It's half past six, and I'm at work. As far as I can tell, I'm the only person in the office. Apart from cleaners, and the woman in the lunch room who has the door open and the television turned up. I can't tell you which episode of Friends she's watching. The one with the obvious twist, possibly.

Anyway.

I've been here for eleven hours now, and it's not been fun. It's been a pig of a day, to be honest. Although I'm on top of everything I've tried to do.

It's beautiful and sunny outside. I need a drink. And a sleep. Long long sleep.

Good News

My 23 month old nephew can recognise pictures of his funny uncle. He can put a name to my face, and he tries to steal pictures of me. Because they're his.

Bad News

He thinks I'm called mr Twinky.

Jacobs Ladder is our new favourite restaurant.

If, like me, you're a sucker for an eight course surprise tasting menu, then you couldn't really fault the dinner that we had on Saturday. From the surprising tomato tart with olive ice cream, through to the perfectly cooked and deliciously gamey rabbit, every course was excellent. And exceptionally good value all round.

Of couse, as the maitre'd informed us as we left it's not always like that. Sometimes the surprise menu is toasties...