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By Root 1025 0

group up in a box. The week’s audiences have been capacity, apart from Monday and Tuesday, and, rather than become jaded, the show has brightened up a bit, and we’re enjoying it more than ever. John has added little embellishments to ‘Silly Walks’ in order to corpse me. Terry and Graham, as the two Pepperpots, have a continuing battle with each other centring around lipstick and names. Graham’s lipstick tonight stretched round his mouth, up and over the top of his nose; Terry had a phone number written in lipstick across his chest. They also have fun with names – starting by calling each other comparatively simple medical names (Mrs Scrotum, Mrs Orgasm), they have now become wonderfully obscure – Mrs Vas Deferens – and tonight’s masterpiece from Graham was Madame Émission Nocturnelle.

In the ‘Custard Pie’, when I have to shout ‘Hey Fred!’ at Terry G, I have varied the names a lot – but none with greater success than ‘Hey Onan!’. That was a week ago, and I haven’t had so many people laughing on stage since. Tonight, however, I could tell that John C was reacting to the noisy crowd as he usually does, by tensing up, and ‘Pet Shop’, normally a corpser’s delight, was rushed through at quite a lick.

Saturday, March 23rd

Last night tonight.

This was the show that Tony Stratton-Smith was recording, and yet responses to such great favourites as ‘Silly Walks’ were the worst ever. Graham was very fuddled through ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ and in the ‘Election’ sketch, John forgot a fairly important line and ‘Parrot’ ended prematurely after I replied ‘Yes’ instead of’No’ to John’s query about the slug, ‘Does it talk?’ He chased me off the stage claiming afterwards he was too tired for ad-libs.

Champagne and scotch on stage for the company and friends. The stage hands were in sentimental mood and genuinely seemed to have enjoyed the four weeks. By an extraordinary coincidence there is a man who works front of house in the Theatre Royal called Mr Gumby. He was small and middle-aged and looked a bit like what I imagine Richard Goolden looks like as Mole in Toad of Toad Hall. He kept insisting that I call him Leslie, and I realised I was repeatedly calling him Mr Gumby, just to relish the name. Anyway, I got the cast to sign my Gumby handkerchief for him, which will surely confuse him even more.

Tuesday, March 26th, Southwold

Up to Southwold on the train. Met at 11.30 at Darsham by Mother. From Darsham we drove into Wickham Market and had lunch at the White Hart, then drove on to St Audry’s Hospital near Bury St Edmunds.

Up anonymous institutional corridors smelling of disinfectant, until we reached the Kenton Ward on the second floor. It was a long room, bigger than I had expected, with high walls. About twenty beds neatly set out. In the first part of the ward the TV was on and about fifteen or sixteen men were slumped in chairs around it. I didn’t notice them at first because they didn’t react at all as we entered the ward, whilst the three or four nurses and two male attendants sitting at a table beyond a glass partition turned immediately. There was little sign of life from the inmates.

Then I saw my father sitting on the side of his bed. Here was the man who played football with me, who ran along the towpath at Shrewsbury when I rowed in Bumpers, who used to try and teach me to overcome my fear of the sea at Sheringham. He was now sitting on his bed with his head bent, muttering to himself, and picking with helpless hands at the cord of his pyjamas, which were open, exposing his white stomach. He didn’t look up as I approached him – he didn’t hear as I talked to him. When eventually one of the male nurses came across and, like dealing with a child, firmly but pleasantly did up his pyjamas and put on his dressing gown, he at last looked up. His eyes were heavy and dull, with a film of moisture across them and a rim of white along the lower lids.

George helped him round to a chair and we sat down to talk. ‘George,’ Daddy explained, was a man ‘whose instructions it was best to ignore.’We later found out that ‘George’ was