LA in October is, well, like UK in high summer and how the Antarctic will be in 50 years (but without the botox). Perfect bleached sidewalks, blue skies and damn hot, in the 80s or so.! I recall how last year, when we were over to record the real Homer Simpson at Fox sound studios it rained and temperatures hit the low 60s. To LA people, that is cold, whilst we were almost at the point of taking off our t-shirts (isn’t this what all Brits want to do when they go abroad?). We’d just got over the jet lag when Nick, our contact at Stampede, took us out for a power lunch at Café Primo on Sunset Boulevard. Sweaty, semi-beautiful people striding in from the ultra gym next door vying with surly waiting staff; you can’t get more LA than this (unless you consider the bluey white dentures I bought from a man in North Hollywood; only kidding, I’m staying with my true Brit tombstones).

Snoop wrote the additional stuff for the TomTom celebrity voices GPS script himself. He pulled together his Snoopisms and overlaid them perfectly onto our script. Reading it, we knew we had a hit! But we also expected him to improvise a little – after all he’s well known for this.

Grant and I recorded Snoop at Conway, where Guns n Roses made ‘Use Your Illusion I & II’, and U2 recorded ‘Rattle and Hum’ (gold discs up on the wall always impress an ex-muso like me). A really lovely place set back in quiet residential street; inside there is a walled garden with loads of trees nestled between the 3 studio complexes. I can see why you’d want to record your difficult second album(s) here. Our ops director, Colin, didn’t make it to the session, sadly. Food poisoning. Raw fish never gives me any problems. Still, there has to be some payback for having lunch earlier in the day in a Malibu café overlooking glorious pacific waves.