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We had an Indian meal at the Karachi restaurant across the road and Tom bought us champagne. I don’t think he really expected us to accept it, but it set us up well for a final three hours of some very difficult dubbing, where often there was no guide track at all – and we had to work out from our rapid lip movements what on earth we were saying. But at last, just after 12.00, we finished the last of Tim’s many voice-overs. It was about Harris being a Pole and Tim had got the giggles over it earlier on and been unable to do it.

Home and a bath about 1.30.

Tuesday, September 30th

To the TV Centre at 10.30 for a day of production meetings on Tomkinson’s Schooldays.

After Judy Parfitt turned down the part, I asked Tom, Tim and Stephen at the weekend for ‘Gwen Watford’-type ladies, and Stephen Moore said, ‘Why don’t you ask Gwen Watford …?’ So today this is just what we did. I spoke to her agent, who was very approachable, and then to the great lady herself, and she was interested enough to ask for a script – so we’ve sent one off this evening and are just keeping fingers well crossed.

Ian Ogilvy is also on, as far as I know, so it’s becoming an all-star cast – apart from myself.

Finished at the Beeb about 7.00. Had a drink at the Sun in Splendour, Notting Hill on the way back with Terry J. He is a little vague and not entirely happy about what to do next. I said I was also vague – and intentionally so, enjoying, as I am at the moment, a sort of directional limbo, trying to absorb influences from all sides, without having to commit to any long-term projects. For the first time we actually talked about whether he should go and do something on his own. I said I didn’t want to drag his heels as well as my own.

Friday, October 3rd

At 5.15 arrived in taxi at the BBC’s Paris studio – which is not in Paris, of course, but in Lower Regent Street – for recording of Just a Minute. A few people from the queue came up and asked me for an autograph – and there was my face on a display board outside. Inside, the peculiarly non-festive air which the BBC (radio especially) has made its own – everything from the colour of the walls and the design of the furniture to the doorman’s uniform and the coffee-serving hatch seems designed to quell any lightness of spirit you may have.

Then I met Clement Freud. He stared at me with those saucer-shaped, heavy-lidded eyes with an expression of such straightforward distaste that for a moment I thought he had just taken cyanide. The producer, John Lloyd1 – a ray of light in the darkness that was rapidly closing in on me – hurriedly took my arm and led me aside as if to explain something about Clement F. It was just that he had a ‘thing’ about smoking – and for some inexplicable reason I had just taken one of John L’s cigarettes. Still, this blew over.

A depressingly half-full house filed quietly in and at 5.45 the contestants -three regulars, Freud, K Williams, the rather forbiddingly authoritative Peter Jones2, myself, not exactly in my element any more – and quiz master Nicholas Parsons were introduced to friendly applause and took our places at our desks. The three regulars have been playing the game together for five years – Williams and Freud for eight – and it shows. They are smooth and polished, they know when to ad-lib, when to bend the rules a little, and when to be cross with each other. I buzzed Clement Freud when he was at full tilt and, when asked why, I apologised and said I was testing my buzzer. That’s the only time I saw him smile in my direction.

The game became easier, but I never mastered the technique of microphone-hogging which they all have perfected.

Before I knew it, two shows and about an hour and a half had passed and it was all over. I signed autographs. Peter Jones was very kind to me and complimentary, Freud I never saw again and Nicholas Parsons was the only one to come round to the pub and drink with us. Us being myself, Douglas Adams (who had recommended me to his friend, the producer) and John Lloyd. They seemed to be quite pleased