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I like the theatre, I like the dates, I like the fact that the seat prices would not be as high as they would be on Broadway and I like Arthur Cantor. So I’m converted to a three-week stage show – if Python still exists!

From seeing Cantor and the theatre we go to a final meeting with Gross and Kaestle to look at the page layout. Everyone chips in with ideas and Ned and Steve discuss business, copy runs, initial prints, costings, etc, quite openly. There is no hierarchical aspect to the discussion.

Then we take Steve back to the hotel. Before we leave for the airport, we finish off our wine and beer with Ed Goodgold, Nancy Lewis and Ina Lee M and Steve, her partner.

Ed brought me a couple of cigars for the trip, which I appreciated, but eventually left in the bottom of a chest of drawers, beside a half-used box of sanitary towels left by some previous resident.

Left NY on the 10.00 BA flight.

Friday, September 12th

In the afternoon TJ and I go to the BBC for a meeting with Terry Hughes.

The Tomkinson’s Schooldays scripts arrive with the title ‘Michael Palin Special’ writ large across them. But the meeting with Terry H goes well. Milton Abbas School in Dorset have given us permission to film there, and even to use the boys, provided their faces are not featured. We look through Spotlight. Judy Parfitt looks right to both TJ and myself as the mother, and TH says she’s fun to work with, so she gets a call for the mother’s part. TJ is still to play the School Bully, though TH suggests Ian Ogilvy, who strikes both of us as ideally physically right.

Tuesday, September 16th

Gilliam and Maggie round for a meal this evening – TG to tell me about his Jabberwocky film, which he wants me to write with him. He has an overall plan for the film now, which I like the sound of very much. In addition he has the backing of Sandy Lieberson, an American, who, with the Englishman, David Puttnam, runs Good Times Enterprises, who have a record of backing and setting up better-than-average movies.

I’m undecided about whether to work on Jabberwocky. I like it because it sounds like a starter and I like TG’s sense of excitement about it, and I am quickly infected by his enthusiasm. I’m also very confident that anything he puts his mind to will at least not be dull – but I want to see how successful Tomkinson’s Schooldays will be and how successful Three Men in a Boat will be and I want to find some project of my own.

For all these reasons I hang back.

Friday, September 19th

This evening is the first of John Cleese’s solo efforts – Fawlty Towers – which he’s been working on with Connie for over a year. Angela and Veryan and Michael and Anne Henshaw came round to have dinner and watch it with us. Helen and I were reduced to tear-streaming laughter on one or two occasions, the Henshaws less so and Angela and Veryan (probably put off by the intensity of my reaction) were quite quiet throughout. John has used a very straight and conventional Light Entertainment format in design, casting, film and general subject, but his own creation, Basil Fawlty, rises above all this to heights of manic extraordinariness. It all has the Cleese hallmark of careful, thoughtful, well-planned technical excellence and there was hardly a spare line in the piece or a moment when John wasn’t going utterly spare. Anne said I was clearly enjoying it more because I knew John, but it was by any standards a really hard-working, well-realised performance. Whether he can keep it up, I don’t know. It could become a bore and certainly there are as yet no reserves of warmth or sympathy in the character of Fawlty to help it along.

Thursday, September 25th

I spent the lunch hour in a recording studio doing three voice-overs for Sanderson Wallpaper. I really did it because I wanted to keep my hand in and a voice-over, however dull or badly written it may be, at least requires a bit of application and a little bit of performing. It’s good practice. By the