• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Downstairs I go. No evidence of Jane Sconce or anybody. Through a door I hear the sound of recorded playbacks of voices saying ‘Maxwell House – the most exciting sound in coffee today.’ I hear another voice from another room: ‘All we need is just any out of work actor. The awfulness of the place and the awfulness of the people make me decide to leave, forget it all, forget this ghastly basement with closed doors. But for some reason I stayed and I found Jane Sconce’s office, and she was ever so nice, but really so busy, and she took me into this room, and there was a trestle table, two jars of Maxwell House on it, and at one end of the room were four men and a girl, and a camera and a monitor. It was an audition. I tried not to listen as the patronising ‘director’, or whatever, bombarded me with instructions as to how to deliver my lines, my head swam with that awful feeling of being on the panto stage at the age of seven and how I hoped I wouldn’t wet myself. But try as I could, I was unable to avoid reading the script. That was the nadir of this whole sorry enterprise. ‘Shake a bottle of powdery coffee and what do you hear? Nothing. But shake a bottle of new Maxwell House and you have the most exciting sound in coffee today.’

I did it quickly and sent it up at the end. The ‘director’ sharply reproved me for sending it up. At this I attacked for the only time in the afternoon. ‘I can’t really take it seriously – this is the kind of stuff I spend days writing sketches about.’

But I did do it seriously, and I did hurry out without offending any of them, without telling any of them how incredibly cheap and nasty I found the whole set-up.

Sunday, March 8th

I walked over the Heath, which was still snow-covered. The sky was a light grey, but the sun filtered softly through and on the north side of Parliament Hill there were two or three hundred tobogganists and spectators. The spectators ranged across the skyline – like the start of an Indian charge. Sledges were everywhere and half-way up the hill was an ambulance. I walked on to Kenwood House. It never ceases to fill me with some gratitude that at the halfway point of a walk across open grassland and woodland not 20 minutes from the centre of London, one can walk amongst Joshua Reynolds, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, a Turner and a Rembrandt self-portrait.

We watched David Frost ‘hosting’ the Institute of Television and Film Arts awards at the London Palladium. Monty Python was nominated for four awards and won two. A special award for the writing, production and performance of the show, and a Craft Guild award to Terry Gilliam for graphics. But somehow the brusqueness of the programme, and its complete shifting of emphasis away from television and towards Frost and film stars, made the winning of the award quite unexciting.

None of us was invited to the awards ceremony, as the girl who was organising it ‘didn’t know the names of the writers’ of Monty Python.

Tuesday, March 10th

At 9.45 I found myself in Mount Place, Mayfair, ringing the bell of Joseph Shaftel, a film producer. The reason for this heavy start to the day was a phone-call from Fraser and Dunlop the night before, asking me to go and meet a casting director for a new Denis Norden-scripted comedy film to be shot in Rome. Apparently my name had been put forward together with those of Graham Chapman and John Cleese; however, still smarting from my experiences at Benton & Bowles, I arrived prepared to be humiliated a little.

But no, all was sweetness and light. I was ushered into a small ‘conference’ room where sits Denis Norden,1 who shook my hand and fixed me with his extraordinarily kindly eyes, which made me feel considerably happier about the meeting. He introduced me to a small, shaven-headed American director, who proceeded to send himself up in a most frightening way, and a sleek, immaculate Italian, who I presumed was a co-director.

The conversation turned on a Sheffield Wednesday’ badge I happened to be wearing, and it suddenly felt as though no-one