• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The ‘£1 a gallon petrol’ having arrived, I decide to walk Rachel to playgroup for ecological reasons. So she and I, hand in hand, trip lightly through the dirt and dog shit down Grafton Road, dodge the lorries turning fiercely and uncompromisingly out of the Building Depot and into the little oasis of tiny people – the Camden Playgroup.

In the evening Mikoto, Helen’s Japanese badminton friend, comes to cook us a Japanese meal. The preparation is a painstaking and delicate business – as indeed is communication with Mikoto. The food – tempura I think they’re called – vegetables in batter – is quite delicious. We drink sake with it. The kids rave.

I end up eating too much. The food, the sake and the strain of four hours with someone who doesn’t speak your language or you his, is perhaps to blame for a colossal drowsiness which numbs my senses about midnight.

Stay awake long enough to see that I and other rich folk are the chief beneficiaries of the first Thatcher—Howe Tory Budget. The top rate of tax is down from 83 to 60%, dividend restraint is lifted, tax thresholds are all lifted. In short, I’m probably £10,000 a year better off after today. There is some inescapable lack of social justice in all this. But it doesn’t keep me awake.

Thursday, June 14th

Another viewing of Brian. Small audience at the Bijou Theatre – all Pythons there, bar Graham. John Mortimer1 and Oscar Beuselinck represent the law – Mortimer is to give us his opinion afterwards.

He’s a nice, friendly, disarming man, with small, but not at all humourless, eyes, and a ready smile. He’s clearly chuffed to be amongst such humorous company. He loves the film and reckons that we are quite safe. The chances of a jury convicting Python of blasphemy on the basis of this film are very remote, he believes – but not impossible. However, should an action be brought, Mortimer thinks it would take at least a year to come to court, by which time we’ll have hopefully made our money and our point.

Friday, June 13th

Slow journey over to Chelsea, where I arrive 25 minutes late at chic French seafood restaurant Le Souquet, for lunch with Iain Johnstone, producer of The Pythons,2 who has a proposition for me. It turns out to be the offer of host on a new BBC2 chat show which Iain is hoping to produce from October onwards for thirteen to twenty-six weeks.

My first reaction is fear – how could I cope with this world of wit and repartee? Iain tries to assuage my doubts by telling me that Brian Wenham, head of BBC2, and other BBC luminaries were all very pleased that he’d suggested my name. So I feel a bit wanted, I suppose, but still doubtful. Iain talks of it bringing me ‘real fame’. But I think if I have to have ‘real fame’, I would rather it came from acting or writing, rather than hosting a chat show.

Saturday, June 16th

Spend the morning buying bikes – one each for Tom and Willy, who are now thoroughly enjoying cycling round Gospel Oak, and one for Helen and myself to use as a family workhorse. Equipped like a tank, with voluminous wicker basket on the front and a child seat for Rachel on the back.

In the evening to a party at Eric’s – given by Chris Miller1 (Eric having returned to France) for Carrie Fisher (the heroine of Star Wars), who is renting El’s house whilst she works on a Star Wars sequel at Elstree.

Carrie looking very small and delicate, her soft, pale skin a refreshing change from the butch aerosol-spray health look of most Los Angeleans. She doesn’t know anyone, but is straight and funny at the same time, and we have a mutual line of chat – both belonging to the select band of Saturday Night Live hosts. She is currently ‘going with’ Paul Simon, so sees a great deal of Lome. Lome the Great Catalyst – whose name is the criterion for meeting sympathetic people.

The two heroes of Star Wars are also there – Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Harrison Ford.

Hamill is chirpy and is dressed like a delivery boy. Harrison Ford looks young and alienated. He would look over his glasses at us if he had any. As it is he moves broodingly around