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Whether Terry will snuff it before the night’s out, we’re not sure, but arrangements have been made for the redistribution of his fees for the film, and anyway it’s probably God’s way of punishing him for having forgotten to bring his script.

Terry J and I bathe. It’s very dark and there are warnings of sea urchins. Terry is very worried about the sea and thinks big fish will eat him or perhaps even a lot of little ones will gang up.

He’s brought Wild Wales with him to read. It’s difficult to believe in Llangollen and Aberdovey when you’re in a place like this.

Dinner is held up for a few minutes as we await the arrival of the guests for the evening, Mr Jagger and friend and his friend Mr Rudge and his wife. When they arrive we descend elegantly to the table – also designed to match the local limestone material from which the house is built. I don’t think I’ve ever had my dinner off a table made entirely of limestone.

A jolly evening developed – the epically proportioned piano nobile (you couldn’t really call it a sitting room) was soon filled with a rather rude game of charades. Mick’s graphic mime of the Sex Pistols will stay in the memory particularly.

I think dawn would have been breaking in England when we finally separated to our various tasteful bedrooms.

And Gilliam was still not dead.

Sunday, January 8th, Barbados

The sea and the beach are so clean here – and at half past seven everything shines with a sparkling brightness as if it was the first day after the Creation. I walk up the beach. Meet a man who has a four-month-old pet sea turtle which he keeps in a basin and feeds on pilchards. I think he said pilchards, but I may be doing a Graham on this one. (I told Graham that we had ended up the evening at the Pink Cottage. ‘Pig Cottage?’ he asked incredulously.)

I swam – the water was clear and clean. Cleese was the only other one who was up. He’d swum at 9.15, and was now sitting at the massive stone table, looking like Christ at the Last Supper before the rest of the guests arrived.

I tried water-skiing for the first time. No-one was watching here so I decided to try it. It was third time lucky – on the third start I pulled up cleanly and stayed up and was very pleased with myself.

Graham is stoutly and very worthily maintaining his non-drinking, helped by a pill called Heminevrin. Talking with Eric and Graham in the front row of the stalls at sunset – when the sky and the bay go through so many rich colour changes in half an hour – Graham suddenly asks me the date. When I tell him it’s the 8th he murmurs with ruminative interest … ‘Mm … It’s my birthday.’ So we toast GC’s 37 years in fruit juice.

Monday, January 9th, Barbados

‘Had egg for breakfast’ takes on a new significance here. I’ve rarely had an egg for breakfast beneath soaring columns and beside balustraded stone staircases, and the fact that this is a fifty-yard sprint from the clear blue waters of the Caribbean only adds to the unbelievability. Mind you, the Squirrel marmalade tastes as alarming as it sounds.

We fairly roar through the script and there’s a very productive feeling that at this stage anything is worthy of discussion. We are not under pressure, everyone is warm, comfortable, happy, looking forward to a swim and sunbathe, and therefore amazingly tolerant of any ideas, however devious, deadly or heretical. The script is being turned upside down and inside out.

More work in the afternoon, but we break after one and a half hours to take in the sunset. I go for another water-ski – this time with TG, who is quite impressive, considering he hasn’t done it for ten years (water-skiing, I mean).

I think I could cross my heart and say that we did work hard today, with Anthony Eden surveying us urbanely from his signed photograph.

Tuesday, January 17th, Barbados

Tonight the first clouds of discontent appeared on the otherwise clear horizons of a perfect ten days.

Towards the end of last week we began to summarise what we had achieved and this meant going back over