When a blockbuster film is finally made about my life (and frankly, I'm amazed that studio bosses didn't leap at the opportunity back when I rescued that hedgehog) I'm going to insist that I am played by Mr George Clooney. Yes, I know what you're thinking: "Don't be daft, Jon, audiences will never buy it. He's all grey and wrinkly while you're fresh-faced and youthful. You want someone much better looking than him." And to that I say: apparently you can do wonderful things with CGI and makeup these days.

Mr Clooney gets the thumbs-up from me for three reasons: 1) he's not fallen back on the the easy superstar choices, appearing in some great films like Oh Brother Where Art Thou and Syriana, 2) his politics are sound, as evidenced by the fact he spoke out against Bush's imperial adventures when the rest of "liberal" Hollywood were all afraid of being labeled traitors and 3) he won't need to bother method-acting too much when it comes to understanding my facial palsy, because he's overcome one himself.

Yes, that's right: Dr. Ross once looked as weird as I do. Back when he was in his early teens, the young Clooney was sitting in church with his parents when he felt his tongue go numb. He was taken to lunch after the service was finished, but when he went to take a drink of milk it dribbled down his chin. As the actor himself recalled dryly, "It was the first year of high school, which was a bad time for having half your face paralyzed." He was stuck like that for nine months, during which time he had to endure no small amount of playground taunting due to his odd appearance. I'm guessing that whenever he is photographed stepping out with one of the world's most beautiful women, he thinks back to those days, and the words "How do you like them apples?" cross his mind.

Unlike my own, Clooney's droop had nothing to do with a tumour. He had been struck by Bell's Palsy, a rare condition which causes the facial nerve to stop working. Its cause is unknown, but it seems palsies disproportionately affect people from the left of the political spectrum. As well as George and I (regular readers of this blog will have worked out I'm no disciple of F.A. Hayek), other victims have included US consumer champion and former Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader, as well as Canada's 20th prime minister Jean Chretien. Indeed, the latter, a Liberal, saw his facial palsy turn into a campaign issue back in the country's 1993 election. The Canadian Conservatives ran an attack ad featuring a montage of unflattering depictions of his face, while a voiceover (a mocked-up vox pop provided by an actor) groaned, "I would be very embarrassed if he became Prime Minister of Canada." In response, Chretien made a very dignified speech comparing the ad to the teasing he suffered as a child. His approval rating shot up, he won the election by a landslide, and the Conservatives went from being the governing party to a rump of just two seats in parliament. Ha!

I don't know the political views of Pierce Brosnan, the late Ayrton Senna or Def Leppard bassist Rick Savage (all former Bell's sufferers). But I do see a pattern emerging. I must remember to raise this with George when we are on set discussing my motivation.

A year ago today, not long after 9am, I boarded a tube train at Willesden Green, and it didn't move. There's been a power surge, came the voice over the tannoy. Everyone off. Then it told us to evacuate the station. That's annoying, I thought, as I went to ring the office and let them know I'd be late. But for some reason the network was jammed.

I only realised something was up when I managed to get an overland service from Willesden Junction. As we went through Camden, Hackney and Docklands the air outside was filled with sirens. A woman sitting near me said she'd heard there had been bombs. And then my mobile sprang into life, with friends and family wanting to know I'd been one of the lucky ones. When I eventually got to my office, two and a half hours late, it was surrounded by armed police.

As a reporter I was on the ground during the days and weeks that followed, talking to survivors, trying to make sense of the attacks. I was impressed by London. With half of my family being Irish, I feared muslims would suffer the same opprobrium as did people with surnames like mine in the 1970s. But the rabble-rousing of those like Melanie Phillips who tried to turn the community on itself fell largely on deaf ears, even though the city had just been literally shaken to its foundations.

Ironically, as I snorted at this rhetoric of fifth columns, I was harbouring my very own Enemy Within. Unknown to me, an MRI scan on my brain a week before July 7 had picked up my tumour. It would be another fortnight before a specialist would break the news to me that my brain contained its own cluster of terror cells.

Stretching this analogy too far would be crass. But, likewise, ignoring the context of this collective trauma on which I was reporting in relation to the personal bombshell that was about to hit me would be equally perverse. I don't believe it's possible to make sense of my own response to what came next without bearing in mind that I was in the middle of a city, sweltering in the summer heat, that found itself under attack.

The capital's reaction to what became known as 7/7 was bound up in the myths and rhetoric of a British, or an English, or more accurately a London character forged around stoicism and endurance. "London can take it," Tony Parsons wrote bluntly the next day. "London will weep and London will bury its dead and London will put up extra security and London will steel itself for the next attack." Ken Livingstone echoed this almost masochistic invocation of Blitz fortitude: "Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail." A website sprang up called We'reNotAfraid.com. Taking the tube to work became an act of defiance. You showed your resistance to global terrorism and theocratic fascism by carrying on as normal.

Not long after all this, I arrived at work one morning and told my boss I had a brain tumour. He asked me if I wanted any time off. No, I said, I'd rather stay busy. I suspect this would have been my reaction anyway, whether or not bombs had exploded around the city. But fresh in my memory were survivors of the attacks I'd interviewed, men and women with bandages wrapped around their heads insisting they wanted to get back to normal. I remembered families of the missing, keeping their dignity and composure as they handed photographs of their loved ones around the media scrum. They could take it, and they were going through much worse than me. I could take it, surely.

When I look back through this diary I realise I marked my own milestones in terms of the routine: going for a pint, taking the train, driving the car. That'll show 'em. I'm evidently not a proper Londoner; I only lived there on and off for about four years. But some elements of the city's self-image seemed to have rubbed off on me.

Like everyone else I'll remember the 52 dead and their families today. I'll also think of the survivors, the wounded, the rescuers who risked their lives. This morning Sir Ian Blair warned the capital that further attacks were inevitable. It's not for me, from this distance, to declare Do your worst. There are seven million people in the city who can say it for themselves.

He isn't most mothers' idea of a role model, but I continue to take genuine inspiration from Keith Richards. Regular readers will recall my admiration for the walking branch of Superdrug's fortitude after he split his head open falling from the top of a tree in which he had been foraging for coconuts. With Ronnie Wood. Aged 62. As a result, the erstwhile Glimmer Twin needed emergency brain surgery to remove a blood clot and various fluids from inside his skull (I shudder to think what else the medics found in there). Six weeks later, he is back on stage battering out Gimme Shelter again. I'm starting to believe he's going to out-live me.

Anyway, Keef has spoken for the first time about going under anaesthetic; and, guess what, it was a really far-out trip, man. "I was pissed off when they woke me up," he told a 3am Girl. "I was enjoying myself." Someone should read this to Coldplay and Keane, then shout repeatedly in their complacent, cosseted faces: "That is what you call rock 'n' roll."

My thanks to Sharp from Stonehaven for alerting me to this, as well as a story about a man whose brain tumour turned him into a paedophile; I'd like to take this opportunity to reassure everyone that mine had no such effect, before I'm burned out of my home by a vigilante mob.

I know 20six have taken away the "currently listening to..." thing, but this is what's on my CD player:

Sometimes I feel like Fletcher Christian
Staring out across the sea
Torn apart by duty's shackles
The twisted tongues of loyalty

Well I sucked hard on every pleasure
Till my head began to spin
He'll choose between the whip and feather
And that is where his crimes begin

Sometimes I feel like Fletcher Christian
In paradise with the tables turned
Yes and I can fell the tatooists needle
I can feel my neck and ankles burn

These south sea isles are cold and barren
But this civil war's been good for me
We took drugs and tore our uniforms
Gave up our captain to the sea

Sometimes I feel like Fletcher Christian
Twisting off the serpents head
For the mutiny I'll shoot the big one
Hot and hungry, far from home

Through the sun and sea my skin is peeling
But it don't make these picutres fade
Those shapes and symbols, I know their meaning
The shameless riches of another world

If I return they're sure to hang me
So I guess I'll have to stay
And if I should croak out in the darkness
No-one will know I got away

As I type, Old Sparky is gently tickling my face. Our relationship has grown much more intimate over the last couple of months. At first we only spent 10 minutes together at a time. Now it's three hours each day. It's a bit like a marriage really. An arranged marriage, of course, and one that casts me in an unsympathetic light: once my spouse's usefullness has been outlived, I'll be straight down the divorce courts.

I can't say I've noticed a great deal of change in my cheek muscles since I first strapped using my trophic stimulator: it's still very early days as yet. I'm quite enjoying being electrocuted, however. It feels like being gently stung by dozens of tiny wasps. It's a strange sort of prickly sensation that I'm sure is fetishised in certain niche subcultures. But then, thanks to the internet, what isn't these days?

I have encountered one side effect, however. To help conduct the passage of electricity, I have to smear lubricating gel over the electrodes before applying them (yeah yeah, go on and snigger, I've heard it before). The greasiness of this KY Jelly-like substance is wreaking havok with my skin. Over the last month or so my visage has erupted in spots. I tell you, they're sprouting like mushrooms. No sooner do I squeeze one than another pops up to replace it, like the skeletons from Jason and the Argonaughts.

I'm drinking Dumfries out of fresh orange juice to no avail. Even when I was a teenager I was never this pimply. In fact, back in the days when I would vainly run a disposable razor over softy downy moustache hair and listen to The Queen Is Dead in its entirety every morning before school, my complexion was fairly smooth. I'm not prepared for this. Mind you, acne seems to be cool these days. Have you seen a close-up of the Arctic Monkeys? They all look like they've been sprayed with shrapnel from an exploding baked bean factory.

Some people might take the onset of whiteheads as a blow to the ego. But they would be without the support and reassurance of a stable marriage. What's that, Sparky? You think I look better than ever? Of course you do.