Monday

There are many days I question my own sanity. This weekend being the most recent example. Driving home late on Saturday night from watching Spurs play in Leicester, my car got a puncture on the M1 and the run-flat tyre predictably failed to run flat. Leaving me stuck on the hard shoulder with no spare as the manufacturer no longer bothers to supply one.

I rang the AA and eventually got through to the emergency call-out department shortly after 1am after being kept on hold for more than half an hour. I was then told a van would be sent out to recover my car within 45 minutes to an hour. After I’d been standing around, trying not to catch hypothermia behind the metal safety barrier, for two and a half hours, a van eventually turned up at around 3.40am. Only to tell me he was going to take me just 10 miles down the road to a motorway services, and I’d have to get the AA to sort someone else to take me back to Streatham.

Five hours waiting at the services for a second truck to turn up, with countless, pointless calls to the AA – in which I was repeatedly given inaccurate information, not to mention reassurances they weren’t short-staffed and that this standard of service was entirely normal – to relieve the boredom almost broke my spirit entirely. I eventually got home at about 10am on Sunday. Still, it was good news for Chris Grayling. When he’s finally sacked as the transport secretary, he can become AA’s chief executive. It’s one service he couldn’t make much worse.

Tuesday

Yet more proof that Brexit is ruining my life. I’d waited my entire life to have the chance to see Spurs play Barcelona at Camp Nou in the European Cup or the Champions League. So when the dream draw came out of the hat back in August, almost the first thing I did was block out 11 December in my diary.

Then Theresa May finally managed to negotiate a deal with the EU and scheduled a five-day debate with the final vote scheduled for about 8pm on 11 December. The exact same time as the match kicked off in Barcelona. So, reluctantly realising that the Guardian would take a dim view of me bunking off to Spain at such a crucial moment, I sold my tickets to two very grateful fans. I had just about come to terms with this personal tragedy when, the day before the game, the prime minister announced she was going to pull the vote. Instead of reaching a decision on the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, parliament would be debating the Lords’ amendments to the ivory bill.

In that moment, I knew it was written in the stars that it would be a glory night, with Spurs getting a result and qualifying for the knockout stages. While I was watching the game on TV at home, my main thoughts were on the fact that I should have been there. The Christmas card from Theresa May, unexpected if welcome, above the fireplace was no consolation.

Wednesday

After several weeks of failing to be able to count to 48, the European Research Group finally reached the threshold of letters required to trigger a no-confidence vote in the prime minister. Westminster instantly went into even greater chaos than usual, with cabinet ministers who had been openly briefing against Theresa May and were known to be sounding out colleagues to support their own leadership bids suddenly taking to the airwaves and social media to proclaim their undying love for Theresa.

The meeting of the 1922 Committee took place in committee room 14, and the corridor outside was a total scrum when the Tory MPs began to emerge. Some, such as Boris Johnson, tried to sneak off unseen, while others were desperate to give their insider accounts. Victoria Atkins, a junior minister hellbent on joining the cabinet, tried to wipe away a tear as she relived the emotion of her devotion. What did immediately become clear was that, not for the first time, May had been totally unclear. Some thought she had agreed not to lead the party into the next election, whenever it took place; others that she had only promised not to lead the party in 2022.

A few hours later, at 9pm, we lobby hacks were back in the same committee room to hear Graham Brady announce that the prime minister had won by 200 to 117. Hardly a ringing endorsement, and confirmation that the government still had no chance of getting its Brexit deal through parliament. Not least because some of those who had voted for May would not vote for her deal. For once, May was on the money. Nothing had changed.

The Queen in the lecture theatre: ‘It’s the room for Theresa May’s press conference’. Photograph: Toby Melville/AFP/Getty Images

Thursday

Harry Redknapp has bushtucker trialled and charmed his way to being crowned “king of the jungle” in the latest series of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here. Those of us who sat through almost every day of his two-week trial at Southwark crown court on charges of tax evasion trial in 2012 were unsurprised by his success.

Even though he must have been under enormous stress, he was unfailingly polite and had a gag for every occasion. The jury loved his stories about the Monaco bank account named after his dog, Rosie, and how he “wrote like a two-year-old” . He was acquitted on all charges.

I was there because I was writing a biography of Redknapp, ambitiously entitled Harry’s Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp. The book wasn’t a great success. Partly because everyone I spoke to didn’t seem to think there was any more to Harry than you learned from first appearances, but mainly because it had been commissioned on the premise that Harry would either be England manager or in prison by the time it was published. In the event he was merely out of work, having even been sacked by Spurs, and no one was much interested in him. Still, Spurs fans gave him a good send-off. At every game after his trial, they used to sing: “He pays what he wants, he pays what he wants. He’s Harry Redknapp, he pays what he wants.” Happy days.

Friday

A big shout to the New York Times for doing something no politician has managed in years. The paper has united the whole of the UK by asking its readers to send in incidents of petty crime they have experienced in London.

The replies from Brits have been comedy gold. My two favourites so far are the person who tweeted to say their neighbours had left their bins out for two whole days after collection, and the person who complained that someone had held a door open for him, thereby obliging him to run to get through it in order to return an unwanted politeness.

My own contribution to the NYT’s growing database is that I was once mugged by the world’s worst muggers. It was back in the 1980s and I was walking along an underground connecting passage at Kennington tube when about five teenagers approached from the opposite direction. As we converged, they surrounded me and started jostling me and rifling through my pockets. They came away with a fiver and my house keys, somehow having managed to miss the wallet and the drugs that had been in an inside pocket. As they ran off, I shouted at them, “Could you at least give me my keys back?” and one of them sheepishly walked back to return them. The shame of being mugged by amateurs has haunted me ever since. At least if I had been in New York I would have had the satisfaction of knowing the job would have been done professionally.

Digested week digested: “I fight on, I fight to win …”