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Fortunately Jill has seen a script and is equally unimpressed, so the problem of hurting her doesn’t arise. She phones the agency. An hour later the director calls back and asks if I would still be interested if the script were entirely rewritten.

Friday, April 21st

In the afternoon drive down to Anne’s for a meeting with John Goldstone and the Pythons to discuss the new Brian deal.

This has been put together by Denis O’Brien and his company, Euro Atlantic. He will collect £400,000 from four rich folk and then borrow the rest, on their behalf, from the bank. The £2 million borrowed can then be written off against taxes.

Nearly everything we asked for is granted – and they seem less worried about controls than EMI. They do want to work closely with John on all distribution deals and we are being asked to put up £200,000 of our (and John Goldstone’s) fees to cover the completion guarantee and £177,856 of our fees for the contingency money.

If we are all good boys and the weather’s nice and there are no revolutions, we will make more money upfront than the EMI deal. But if we overrun or overspend then, by the terms of this deal, Python stands to be hit harder.

We talk on for two hours. Eric is aggressive – sometimes quite outrageously awkward over small points – but it’s very good to have someone in the group stirring it up, when the rest of us are really happy to accept this stroke of good fortune.

Wednesday, May 3rd

The BBC ring to say that they cannot get the ‘resources’ for two Ripping Yarns this summer, and can record only one in July and the other two will have to wait until March/April 1979. Once more I feel the dead weight of BBC bureaucracy and mentally resolve to do without them for a while. Maybe I will use July/August to prepare a special for NBC. That is, if Lome’s still keen.

Friday, May 5th

Half-way to seventy today.

We signed the contract with Euro Atlantic, which gives us £2 million to make the next Python movie.

When Anne asked if there were any points in the contract we wished to discuss, there were unanimous shouts of’Get on with it!’ and ‘Give us the money’, so the signing went ahead with due irreverence for this vast sum we are acquiring. A magnum of champagne was opened and Anne produced a birthday cake for me, so everyone had to sing ‘Happy Birthday’.

At this point Oscar Beuselinck,1 the lawyer we have approached to help us on the Bernie [Delfont] front, arrives in the champagne and chocolate cake-stained salon. He sits himself down comfortably and confidently – a marked contrast to most people’s behaviour when first confronted by the massed Pythons – as if preparing for a performance.

Oscar, who is only slightly less obsessed with being Jewish than Edwin Goodgold, clearly relishes the case. In his opinion, Bernie can’t take the Otto bit about Jews putting people into ‘little camps’ – too near the truth about the West Bank, etc.

The upshot of Oscar’s jolly visit is that we are, on his advice, going ahead with plans to sue Delfont for the money we had to pay out, and for loss of earnings due to rearrangement of our activities – on the basis that there was an oral contract, and with the moral point that we should do everything legally possible to react against this blatant act of personal censorship as being detrimental to us, good business and the British film industry … Amen.

Python has always enjoyed a fight – and with the heads of ABC and Time-Life on a charger already, we’re now spoiling for action nearer home.

Saturday, May 6th

Pull myself from slumber by nine and wake myself up by driving down to Old Compton Street for croissants and newspapers.

Time to clear up and clean up before Danny Aykroyd, Rosie Shuster and friend Margot Kidder drop in … ‘What a well-vacuumed house,’ Danny comments. Danny and Rosie have come over on Laker’s Skytrain, and say it’s grim but cheap.

Margot Kidder is playing Lois Lane in the Superman movie (which is still shooting, over a year after they pulled