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1 Rob Buckman and Chris Beetles carried on the tradition of doctor/comedians (Jonathan Miller, Graham Chapman, Graeme Garden) with The Pink Medicine Show in 1978. Buckman remains a doctor, Beetles runs an art gallery.

2 The successor to Graham Ford as manager of Shepperton.

1 Captain of the England cricket team that won the Ashes in 1981. Now a psychoanalyst.

1 Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader, had just been acquitted on charges of involvement in the attempted murder of his gay lover, Norman Scott. The judge’s summary was seen by many to be blatantly biased in Thorpe’s favour.

1 Charles Alverson, American thriller writer, and friend of TG, Terry J and myself.

1 David Collett was Helen’s uncle. When I first set eyes on her, in Southwold in 1959, she was last in a column of sisters and cousins being led out behind Uncle David for an early-morning dip in the North Sea. Something about her obvious reluctance appealed to me.

1 After regular running at Sag Harbour I decided to make it part of my regime in London.

1 James E Fixx wrote the influential Complete Book of Running (1977), which used to inspire me whenever I felt like giving up. The author, rather unfortunately, died of a heart attack in 1984, whilst out running.

2 One had been an all pair at the Joneses’ in London. They were on a budget trip to the US so Terry had asked Al if he could put them up.

1 Hoagland Carmichael (1899-1981) was a jazz musician and composer who wrote some all-time classics such as ‘Georgia on My Mind’ and ‘Up a Lazy River’.

1 It was a traditional, bland piece about Venice, made special by John’s commentary – ‘gondolas, everywhere fucking gondolas’.

1 Nicky Boult, Helen’s niece and a newly qualified teacher, who was staying with us.

1 And I was. They lived together very happily until Al’s death in 1989, and had a daughter, Gwenola.

2 Friend and fellow thespian at Oxford.

1 A fortnightly children’s show in the 1950s, probably my first favourite programme. Hank the Cowboy was a ventriloquist’s dummy and Steve Race accompanied his adventures on the piano.

1 Its working title was Time Bandits.

1 They had called for the film to be banned.’Though not in itself blasphemous, it will tend to discredit the New Testament story of Jesus in confused semi-Pagan minds.’

1 Blunt, son of a bishop, Professor of Art History at London University, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, had been found to be spying for the Soviets for many years. Though he had been unmasked in 1963, he had been allowed to retain all his posts to avoid scandal tainting the Royal Family.

1 He and fellow-producer Mark Shivas had produced Secrets by Terry and myself in 1973.

1 A radio phone-in, chaired, as I remember, by Simon Bates.

1 This was eventually commissioned by Geoffrey Strachan at Methuen and came out as Monty Python: The Case Against in 1981. It is the first, best and last word on the history of Python’s run-ins with the censor.

Index

A

A1 Dairy, Whetstone High Street, 43

Abbotsley, Cambridgeshire

Palin family stay in, 19 and n, 112, 145, 155, 187–8, 214, 279, 290, 365, 373, 385–6, 591

carthorses, 38

Jubilee Day (1977), 389

high winds at, 413

ABC Bloomsbury, 211, 212

ABC Fulham Road, 211, 212

ABC TV

Pythons co-host A.M. America 229

Monty Python court case against, 267 and n, 269–79, 289, 319, 323, 324–5, 355, 465

Home Box Office show, 451–3

Aberlour House, Gordonstoun, 587

Abraxas Squash Club, 64

Academy Awards (Oscars), 454–5, 456, 460

Academy Cinema, London, 314

Achmed (Tunisian production head), 492

Ackland, Joss, 292

‘Across the Andes by Frog’ see Ripping Yarns

ACTT, 75

Adam, Robert, 154

Adams, Douglas, 188 and n, 201, 212, 213, 214, 248, 257, 267

Adams, John, 535

Adams, Richard, Watership Down, 194, 434

Adelphi Theatre, London, 202

Admiral Hardy, Greenwich, 47

Adnams brewery, 233, 241

The African Queen (film), 338