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The sun came out as we wandered through the crumbling Oliver set and nosed around on the back lot, where odd pieces of filmic flotsam and jetsam lay about – giant rubber mushrooms and a ten-foot-high birthday cake complete with icing.

Read through the film script this evening in preparation for the Judith auditions. Embarrassed at how slight a part it is.

Thursday, December 22nd

The auditions were pleasant, easy and pre-Christmassy. Maureen Lipman, surprisingly, seemed to find it hard to become a character, but she’s nice and fun and probably would, with work, have been right. Then Diana Quick, exuding confidence, swept the place with a devastatingly assertive, aggressive reading of Judith, which confirmed Terry J’s suspicion that Diana, just being Diana, was the sort of character Judith should be. Judy Loe was not as forceful, and a little pantomimey.

As John C put it afterwards, he rated both Judy and Maureen as lovely, easy, friendly people whom we’d obviously have no trouble in fitting in with, and vice versa, but Diana Quick clearly gave Judith a new dimension of aggression and single-mindedness, which brought the limpid part to life. So Quick will be asked to do Judith. If she does it, she and I will be renewing a working relationship that started at the Oxford Revue of’65.

Thursday, December 29th

Despite the long holiday period, dubbed ‘The Twelve Days Off Christmas’ in the Evening Standard of a couple of days ago, I’m at work today, quite gratefully, going through the text of the Ripping Yarns with Geoffrey down at Methuen.

Home and Helen says to me, rather gravely, ‘Well … Graham Chapman My first instinct is to ask if he’s dead, but he’s not, of course, although he is in hospital, having collapsed at home after four days off the bottle altogether. He rings me later, and sounds small, weak and very old. He confirmed the story that he had been trying to give up – had three days of withdrawal symptoms, seemed to be coping when suddenly today he collapsed. He added that it was remorse for the nasty things he’s been quoted as saying in newspaper reviews recendy about all the rest of us – but particularly about John C in yesterday’s Daily Mirror – that shocked him into giving up.

‘… I tell you one thing, Mikey, I’m never going to drink strong drink again’ (and he sounded as if he meant it).

Saturday, December 31st

Late morning start on a trip with Helen, Rachel and all to the Science Museum, where there is a space exhibition. A chance to see the actual Apollo 10 capsule – its base charred and huge chunks burnt out of it during re-entry.

How long ago all the space missions seem now. The special thermal clothing and the poo-poo disposal bags worn by the astronauts don’t look a lot different from Elizabeth Is underwear in their solemn display cases.

As the days go by I grow more and more proud of myself in actually completing the novel – as well as three TV films and a Python film script this past year. But the pressure has been there. I feel it now in bursts of tension when I find it very, very hard to relax. It’s not so much the work itself, but the fact that, as each year goes by, I find myself becoming a more powerful figure – a lot more people depend on me than just the wife and kids.

1 Terry was duly promoted to Head of Variety at the BBC, and no longer allowed to direct individual shows. Two years later he was seduced away to America by EMI, where, among other things, the golden boy made a name for himself directing The Golden Girls.

2 I’m not sure of the provenance of this scare story, but Terry Jones remembers being alerted by a BBC editor, Howard Dell, that plans were afoot to wipe the series in the early ‘70s. Terry J had them recorded onto Philips VCR tapes and stored them at his house. For a long time, he thought the only copies of Python TV shows were in his cellar!

1 I had met Sheila through mutual friends – Ian and Anthea Davidson. She started the Penhaligon’s perfume business.

1 Nick Gordon, a friend of William’s,