• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

2 Helen’s niece.

1 Peter was behind the Amnesty charity show in 1976.

1 Ina and Robert were the driving forces behind Python’s action against ABC.

1 It never did get into the film, but is reproduced in the Life of Brian book, along with the ‘Headmaster’ and other plucky failures.

1 Eddie Stuart and Liz Cranston – members of the production team.

2 On ‘The Testing of Eric Olthwaite’

1 Lily Pratt, my mother’s neighbour.

1 Kinnear made his name on the satire show That Was The Week Tliat Was (1962). Constantly in demand as a character actor, he died from a fall from his horse whilst filming The Return of the Musketeers in 1988.

1 Edward Burd, my brother-in-law, was an architect.

1 Married to Richard Beckinsale. Mother of Kate.

1 For ‘Curse of the Claw’ filming.

2 Uncle Jack was a character who had all the world’s diseases, at the same time.

1 An experienced climber who lived in Glencoe and who had helped us on Monty Python and the Holy Grail by throwing dummy bodies into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. Unfortunately he was head of Mountain Rescue at the time.

2 Enormously experienced and much-liked Radio i producer. In 1965 he got me some work as a DJ on a programme called Playtime.

1 National Film Finance Corporation.

1 My only previous visit to Berlin, with Robert Hewison.

2 Author, journalist, and, at the time, film critic of the Sunday Times.

1 The Vole was an environmental magazine edited by Richard Boston. The Penrhos Brewery, near Kington, Herefordshire, was a real ale venture run by Martin Griffiths. Terry was fairy godfather to both.

2 Derek Taylor, a journalist from Hoylake in the Wirral who became the Beatles’ press officer. He had a terrific, very English sense of humour and wrote memoirs such as As Time Goes By and Fifty Years Adrift.

1 Playwright, best known for Chicken Soup with Barley, The Kitchen and Chips with Everything.

1 She was right.

1 Wife of Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada 1968-79. She memorably said ‘I want to be more than a rose in my husband’s lapel.’

1 Hilary Sandison, responsible for overseas sales of Jabberwocky.

1 Thriller, directed by Michael Anderson, starring Cliff Robertson and Jean Simmons.

2 André’s accountant, with a share, like me, in Redwood Studios, Andre’s company.

1 Not far from home. Foot lived only half a mile away up in Hampstead.

2 Robin Scott, then Controller, BBC2.

1 A Sheffield firm which made, among other things, shovels. My reference to Eric Olthwaite’s ‘Spear and Jackson No. 3 with a reinforced brass handle’ was meant fondly, but clearly not taken that way by the manufacturer.

1 Brasenose College, my alma mater 1962—5.

1 With everything else to do, I’d fallen so far behind with the novel, that escaping London seemed the only way to finish it.

1 Recently-founded Trotskyite group led by Gerry Healey. Corin and Vanessa Redgrave were loyal supporters and attracted other actors to the cause. Kika later married Corin Redgrave.

1 Robert’s book Under Siege, Literary Life in London 1939–1945 had been published earlier in the year. Harold Pinter called it ‘a vivid, highly readable, important book’.

1978

Sunday, January 1st

John rings. He’s been away in the country for the weekend. Has just returned to find a message that Graham has had a nervous breakdown. John admits that at first he saw it as just another Chapman wheeze to avoid the stick which would inevitably fly in Barbados over his newspaper interviews. Not far off the truth, John.

Tuesday, January 3rd

In the afternoon I took Willy to see the latest James Bond movie – The Spy Who Loved Me. I thought it most unpleasant. No attempt was made in the imbecile script to create any characters, it was wooden puppets saying wooden lines. The action sequences, of course, were brilliant, but then we all know Britain leads the world in aimless explosions. Otherwise I think it’s the sort of mindless garbage Britain has no reason to be proud of. The American-inspired and scripted Star Wars