Tim Samuels's Diary

If you arrive outside a restaurant and can’t find the entrance after 20 minutes, maybe take the harsh lesson that the universe seems to be indicating: don’t worry about über-hip eateries with faux sex-shop entrances. You can do without the cardboard-box interior design. You can certainly live without well-proportioned heart of palm salad with coriander vinaigrette. But to be fair to La Bodega Negra on Old Compton Street, its hearts of palm were well-proportioned and, once you’ve located the neon-lit door, it does feel like you’ve walked into a New York speakeasy.

To be fairer still to the Mexican restaurant, my mind wasn’t really focused on the food: I was there to talk Death Row with Jemima Khan. We’re trying to get a documentary off the ground – in the Bowling For Columbine groove – which tackles the death penalty, and questions why America is the only Western democracy still practising capital punishment. Over my years working on Newsnight, I’ve filmed prisoners who I know are innocent; I’ve seen the mentally ill medicated, so they are technically sane enough to be killed; I’ve been inside those haunting execution chambers. It’s a film we are passionate about making.

Clive Stafford Smith, the crusading lawyer who runs Reprieve, the charity that concerns itself with prisoners’ human rights around the world, called during dinner. He’s close to finding (even) more evidence suggesting that London businessman Krishna Maharaj has been wrongly convicted of murder, as he spends his 26th year in a Florida jail cell. Mercifully he’s been moved from Death Row, due to judicial impropriety at his trial (the judge was arrested and accused of taking bribes in other cases; he was later acquitted), but despite having six witnesses who place him 40 miles from the murders, the 73-year-old just can’t seem to win a new trial to present the mounting evidence that he was framed. I’m heading out there next month to pick up Newsnight’s long-running investigation into his extraordinary case.

Exciting news from out of the blue (rinse). The Zimmers – the OAP rock group I formed a few years ago for a BBC Two documentary – are back together and taking Britain’s Got Talent by storm. I’d wanted to challenge the way the elderly are perceived and brought together 40 lonely old people at Abbey Road to cover The Who’s ‘My Generation’. Led by 90-year-old lead singer Alf, they burst into the pop charts, became a global sensation and ended up upstaging George Clooney on the Jay Leno show. But more gratifying than any OAP rock’n’roll antics were the lasting friendships they made with each

other. When Alf passed away two years ago, aged 93, the crematorium pews were filled with his Zimmers bandmates, dancing in celebratory honour as the coffin disappeared to the sound of Alf belting out ‘I hope I die before I get old’. The mic has now passed to Grace, a mere 88 years old, and they are singing Beastie Boys covers for Cowell and co. I spoke to band member Dolores (a whippersnapper at 70) between rehearsals; she is unfazed by this second bite of stardom. They’re still off to bingo in Camden three times a week.

Having been to bingo with the band and seen the chip-based diet that sustains them during eyes down, I’m less convinced that longevity lies in healthy eating. That said, even seeing ninety-somethings on a chip butty bingo bender didn’t sway my faith in the mythical properties of coconut water. But this certainty was plunged into chaos recently in New York. While my trip there was ostensibly about meeting BBC America and some US networks, the real opportunity was a chance to sniff out the latest superfood. And there it was, nestling in an Amish grocery in Midtown: a quite remarkable jelly-like drink called Mamma Chia. Grains of chia – the fuel of Aztec warriors – suspended in a mango and coconut (phew) water. ‘Sustained energy to power your soul’s purpose,’ declaims this new emperor of superfood beverages. My soul needs a London importer to get on the case.

I’ve had a brainwave – after throwing in the towel on Jewish dating site JDate – about a genius dating app for Facebook. Dating sites are such a waste of time. If a bloke’s got to build his own site to find a lass, so be it – I’ve got a top app developer on the case and am giving it a whirl. Meantime, it’s back to the occasional blind date over a cuppa in Trojka, my local Russian tearoom. Afternoon tea gives you both an escape route after 40 minutes.

One site mine definitely won’t be like is IsAnyoneUp, just closed down by American Hunter Moore. A ‘revenge porn’ site, it allowed spurned lovers to post near-pornographic photos of their exes. He came on to my radio show Men’s Hour to con-fess that a year – and thousands of nude photos – later, he’s had an epiphany, and is now redirecting his traffic to an anti-bullying site. All he needed was some tactically placed Mamma Chia.

Men’s Hour is on BBC Radio 5 live on Sundays at 9pm