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It transpires that Concorde is too high for the ramp, and the only way to lower it is to fill the nose – the famous Concorde droop-snout – with as many British Airways employees as possible. This wonderfully manic piece of improvisation still doesn’t quite work, for I’m half-way up the ramp, about to make my inelegant way into this beautiful, pencil-slim plane through the catering door, we are all shooed back – as the plane (by now filled up with many passengers) had sunk below the top of the steps. It was nearly midday when the last of us completed this ignominious boarding. Before take-off the captain, clearly very grumpy, urged us to write to British Airports Authority and complain!

Due to a combination of the free champagne and mean toilet space, several passengers, myself included, are queuing for a pee when the sound barrier is finally breached. Fifty-eight thousand feet and the digital counter hovering at 1.99 – with free Dom Perignon and a five-course meal to look forward to – is as heady and exhilarating a feeling as I’ve experienced.

The American coastline arrives with the last sips of Napoleon brandy, and we are down at Kennedy by 9.50 US time, having left Heathrow just after midday.

I ring Al and Eve and am soon in a cab round to their small, welcoming little flat in Gramercy Park. I think I’m still suffering a post-Concorde high and gabble on unrestrainedly.

Sunday, April 2nd, New York

Nancy and I go over to an ABC TV studio at the Elysée Theater, off Seventh Avenue – within spitting distance of City Center – where I am to make a brief appearance in a show being recorded for one of the several new cable TV outfits springing up. It’s called Home Box Office, and the show is a special featuring comedy teams, or partnerships. They’re showing a Python clip and want me to introduce it.

I suddenly find myself on the bill alongside hosts Rowan and Martin and such great and famous names as Sid Caesar – whose Show of Shows was one of the most influential American comedy programmes of all time. Meeting this rather shy, thin, drawn man who appears not to have aged, I think I probably poleaxed him with my effusiveness.

Rowan and Martin and everyone there seem very honoured to have me around. Dan Rowan – very smooth, on and off the camera – remembered his favourite Python line – the line in the ‘Proust Competition’ about giving the prize to the girl with the biggest tits.

Throughout the evening, the staff are overbearingly and unreasonably bossy. I am required to be at the ready, dressed and in the wings half an hour before the recording starts and once the recording does start I am to wait in the wings – not in my dressing room – despite the fact that I am not on for two hours.

The audience assembles, the live band starts to play and suddenly I’m part of an evening of American music hall, exchanging nervous back-stage pleasantries with the likes of The Flying Volantes.

In a makeshift dressing room, Senor Wences, a small, lined, balding little man, who was busy making up his left hand in preparation for his celebrated – and brilliant – ventriloquist act.

I was, apart from The Flying Volantes, easily the youngest person in the show – and I was, after much draughty waiting, finally announced by Dan Rowan, and ran out to spontaneous applause – cued up on the ‘applause’ signs which flashed above the audience.

My little piece went well, but not as surely and confidently as at the run-through. They didn’t have the Python film clip (‘Soft Fruit’) to show, so I was left with some egg on my face after the announcement. All I could think of to do was eat the postcard which I was using as a prop. This at least had the effect of corpsing Rowan and Martin as they walked on later.

As it transpired, the evening belonged to the Ritz Brothers, two sharp old men who I’m afraid I had to admit I’d never heard of, but who evidently were legends in American showbiz for 50 years. Films, theatre … etc … they danced nostalgically and everyone loved them.

So, in the final line-up, as the audience