If you're a regular reader of my column, you'll know that after a gruelling round of interviews, I did find a lovely PA/carer.

I'm loath to use the word "carer" as I think it's insulting to suggest that just because you are working with someone disabled, you have to be of a sweet and "caring" disposition. A "personal assistant" is a much more accurate and empowering description for this sometimes very intimate job.

My new PA was a very bright South African girl. She was also a devout Christian so no dragging herself into work on Monday mornings with a bad come-down and an attitude after a drink-drug fuelled weekend of casual sex. It all seemed so perfect.

Anyway, as bad luck would have it, after three weeks of entrusting my new PA with the minutiae of my life, she became worried that an old back injury was flaring up from helping me stand when moving me to the loo and getting me into the car, and she left.

I briefly flirted with the idea of converting to Satanism before starting advertising and interviewing again.

Amazingly, I soon found a fabulous Kiwi girl and gave her the job, but just before she was about to start, she called to say she had some personal problems and was moving back to New Zealand.

I'm still interviewing now but am feeling a little on the fed-up side at the moment, to put it euphemistically.

I'm looking hard for the silver-lining here but it seems to be eluding me. Perhaps it's being overshadowed by the fact that I'm stuck inside, unable to go out, even to fulfil work commitments. The added pressure on my partner makes home-life a little less than rosy.

On a happier note, I have made a small in-road into my acting career. The ground floor of the Actors' Centre in London's Covent Garden has just become wheelchair accessible, oh joy of joys, so I am now a member and I recently attended my first acting class.

It was quite terrifying as I hadn't been to one for thirteen years and didn't know whether I could cut it or if people would just point and laugh. I was also completely over-excited as I felt I was responding to a "calling" on some level and had decided that even if I was rubbish, I was going to work at it and get good.

The class involved sight-reading. We were each given a play monologue to read briefly and then perform. I was given a piece from "Gift of the Gorgon", (which I had never heard of) and the part I read was once played by Dame Judi Dench so quite a lot of pressure but luckily, I was actually alright. In fact, the word the tutor used was "impressive". Hoorah!

Unfortunately, absence of PA has rather put spanner in the works as far as continuing my acting lessons just now, but still, it's a start.

On the acting theme, it was with great anticipation that I tuned in to the BBC's new sitcom All About Me (Monday nights, BBC1).

I didn't know what to expect but having a disabled character is a good enough reason for me to watch any programme, eager to witness the infiltration of disability onto our screens and into our social consciousness.

It's not the greatest comedy ever written; actually I found it quite flat, but it's a commendable concept to reflect the life of a really diverse family who live in the North of England, have an inter-racial marriage, a plethora of step-kids, one of whom is severely disabled. It scores very highly on the "inclusivity" scale. All they need now is for one of the kids to "come out" and the introduction of an elderly relative and this sitcom will have single-handedly filled the Beeb's annual diversity quota.

In fact, I get the impression that so much emphasis has been put on the idea that they're doing something "progressive" that quality control has got lost amidst all the back-patting. But it's early days, perhaps it will improve, and I'll definitely keep watching. It's good to see disability in the mix without making too much of a point or giving a medical explanation, so big respect for that.