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Monday, June 18th

Collect Rachel from school on the new bike. She laughs and giggles all the way home as we cycle over the bumpy, pitted roads beside the garment factories and under the railway. Definitely a successful purchase.

In the mid-afternoon, Cleese comes round with a small, slim, handsome, trim-faced girlfriend called Suzanne.

We sit in the garden and John eats fruit and talks me into doing a few sketches for the Amnesty shows next week. Nothing terribly exciting.’Custard Pie Lecture’ again. ‘Cheese Shop’ to look forward to.2

Sunday, June 24th

Midsummer’s Day. To Her Majesty’s Theatre for rehearsal of the second Amnesty Show [The Secret Policeman’s Ball]. John being very serious and efficient as director. Like a character in a sketch who one expects to suddenly crack into uncontrollable comic spasms – but it never happens.

Meet Rowan Atkinson and Buckman and Beetles1 for the first time. I suppose we (i.e. the Pythons) are the senior team now – the ‘famous ones’. But Eleanor and Pete Cook are there – comforting figures from our past.

Helen applies coat after coat of bronzing cream to recreate Tunisian tan on my white body ahead of a Brian re-shoot tomorrow.

Monday, June 23th

Drive out to Shepperton soon after eight to shoot a new opening to the much-filmed ‘Ex-Leper’ sequence – a last ditch attempt to try and salvage a piece which everyone (with the possible exception of Eric) thinks ought to be in, but are not quite happy with.

It’s over seven months since we last shot ‘Ex-Leper’ – I’ve put on a few pounds, but make-up does a pretty good job (Elaine and Maggie).

Shepperton depresses and embarrasses me – the dressing rooms are uncleaned, the place looks shabbier and more down-trodden than ever. The canteen, now partitioned off with hideous paint and a huge, unsightly, unfriendly expanse of plastic sheeting, is unspeakably grim.

We shoot at the main gate of the old Oliver set – in itself a sad and crumbling place, with memories, for me, of Jabberwocky. The shooting, between showers and aeroplanes, goes along well and we even do some hand-held dialogue shots.

At one point, a strange occurrence. The catering manager shuffles up to me and asks if he might have a word. Is this the moment of truth, when he will at last confess to the appalling service he has inflicted on Shepperton these last few years? Not a bit of it. He tells me he is going to Los Angeles with a film script he has written and slips an envelope containing said script into my Ex-Leper’s palm, for my perusal – and could I give a copy to Mr Galsworthy (John Goldstone). Game, set and match to him.

Afterwards, over a drink and a very acceptable sandwich in the ‘executive’ canteen, I talked to David Munro2 and was astounded to be told by him that he resigned five weeks before, and is only staying on for another month.

On the way home I drop in at Cleese’s mighty ex-Bryan Ferryish pile in Ladbroke Road and we rehearse ‘Cheese Shop’ together. I notice John has all the books I see reviewed, covet and never buy, in his shelves, in pristine condition. ‘For my retirement,’ John tells me.

Wednesday, June 27th

First night of The Secret Policeman’s Ball. The shows have all been sold out since Monday and they’ve been selling standing tickets.

A motley crowd assembles at Her Majesty’s about 10.30. The pattern of the evening is set by the first sketch, an E L Wisty piece involving Cook and Cleese and a park bench, which is down on the running order as three minutes, but by the time John C has finished corpsing and Peter ad-libbing, is well past nine.

We take a book on the time of final curtain (curtain up being 11.15). I plump for 1.53 and am nearly an hour out. By the time we pull sweaters up over our heads for Peter Cook’s Beyond the Fringe ‘End of the World Sketch’, it’s just passing 2.30 – we finally take our bows at 2.35.

Saturday, June 30th

Drive over to Anne Henshaw’s for a meeting with Denis O’Brien, only to find that the meeting is at Denis’ place in Cadogan