The Diary: Andrew Lloyd Webber; Bollywood films; Sebastian Barry; Atheist Bus Campaign; India Grey

Lordly but low

Andrew Lloyd Webber has apparently had a queasy moment in his quest to unearth the country's finest Eurovision representative, for whom he will compose the tune for the song contest. It happened when he and his crew of 'Your Country Needs You' recruits (the candidates for mission Eurovision on his latest TV reality show) were at the O2 Arena in London, filming for tomorrow night's episode. Fortunately, it was not the competitors' singing that left Lord Lloyd-Webber's head spinning but the vertiginous heights of the 20,000-capacity arena itself. Lord LLoyd-Webber was reluctant to climb to the arena's higher reaches – as are many of the venue's customers – and settled for watching the performances from the far lower "suite level".

Accident tourists

They are the disenchanted British Asian youths who are leaving for India, not to be "radicalised" but to be "Bollywoodised", apparently. A growing trend of British Asian men aged between 19 and 25 enlisting for training to become stuntmen in Bollywood films has emerged, according to 'Eastern Eye' newspaper. The mission to make it to Mumbai includes learning how to fall down stairs, be set on fire and have on-screen fights. Let's hope they break a leg.

Speak softly...

Irish novelist Sebastian Barry is set to travel to London after his 'The Secret Scripture' won the Costa novel prize. The overall Costa winner is chosen on 27 January. A trip to London isn't as harrowing as it was during the Troubles, Barry tells me. "After certain bombings, you would be on the Tube and not speak so as not to make your Irish accent known, in case there was hatred directed towards me. You would have Special Branch looking at you the minute you got off the boat."

God forbid

Atheism appears to be having an image revamp with a shiny new campaign to rebrand the death of God. The journalist Ariane Sherine and Professor Richard Dawkins, plus other supporters, this week boarded the Atheist Bus Campaign, featuring the slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." A series of ads will go out, starting next week, featuring quotations from famous atheists including Katharine Hepburn ("I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe that there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people"); Douglas Adams ("Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"); and Emily Dickinson ("That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet"). God, of course, has the right of reply. Beware the backlash.

He kicks, he doesn't score

The Mills & Boon writer India Grey is among eight novelists penning steamy fiction based on rugby. She says she read Jonny Wilkinson's autobiography for inspiration, but decided not to base her hero on the England star (right). "I read it to get that mindset of the sportsman, to get the intensity and the focus, which are qualities the Mills & Boon series often have in a hero. But my character is dark, Spanish-looking, and the antithesis of Wilkinson in looks." In her novel, out in March, an Argentinian polo player and former rugby pro returns to play in a Barbarians match and scores with the coach's daughter.