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By Root 839 0

independent state of Bangla-Desh. Amin was bitter about the Pakistani surrender, and his primary reaction seemed to be emotional – hurt national pride, and a desire for revenge – but as he talked it was clear that he also had a secondary, more realistic reaction, which was relief that the war had ended, and the hope that India and Pakistan would now live together. It was a strange sensation, sitting in a comfortable south London sitting room, hearing from someone who only a month before had been living through air-raids, in a country where the old and infirm had come down from the mountains to the ioo° desert to fight – clad in furs and skins.

Friday, January 7th

Back into our routine again – a week of dubbing, writing, rehearsing, and recording.

Today there are two major sketches – one with Graham C as Biggies, using generally abusive language, dictating a letter to King Haakon thanking him for the eels, and finding out Algy was a homosexual – the other was a parrot shop type of sketch with John as a customer in a cheese shop, and myself as an obliging assistant, who has none of the cheeses the customer asks for – and John goes through about fifty, before shooting me. Typical of the difference in writing since the first series, is that, no longer content to just write in a cheese shop as the setting, there are throughout the sketch two city gents dancing to balalaika music in a corner of the shop. Our style of humour is becoming more Goon Show than revue – we have finally thrown off the formal shackles of the Frost Report (where we all cut our teeth), and we now miss very few chances to be illogical and confusing.

Tuesday, January 11th

This evening, in order to cheer ourselves up after a day in which it rained solidly, Helen and I went to see Woody Allen’s film Bananas, and another comedy Where’s Poppa1 at the Essoldo, Maida Vale. Both the films made us hoot and roar with laughter – though neither added up to much – there were just delicious moments of comedy. Bananas was rather like a Python show, with the same kind of feverish pace and welter of jokes and joke situations. Where’s Poppa was another very funny Brooklyn Jewish comedy.

Came back feeling very much better. Read more of Charlie Mingus’ autobiography ‘Beneath the Underdog’ – amazed at the speed of the book and the great turns of phrase and styles of speech which Mingus and his Watts friends speak. Conditions may have been bad and Whitey may have been a continuous oppressive force, but they knew how to have a good time – and there’s much more spontaneity and honesty and good, plain communication in Mingus’ world than there is in our own.

Saturday, January 15th

At home doing odd-jobs for most of the day. In the afternoon a giggly phone-call, and a girl from Roedean, one Lulu Ogley, rang from a phone box with some of her friends. They wanted to know what I was really like!

Lulu spoke rather like Princess Anne, but asked fairly sensible questions, whereas her friend was unable to bring herself to ask whether or not I was married. Last night John Gledhill gave me a phone number from an anonymous girl who wanted to contact me, and a few days back I received a rather sultry photo from a girl of seventeen. Altogether most disturbing.

Monday, January 31st

At lunchtime I went for a run across the Heath, and had that rare and pleasurable sensation of running in a snowstorm – the snow silencing everything, emphasising isolation, but cooling and soothing at the same time.

The papers and news today are full of Bernadette Devlin’s physical attack on Mr Maudling in the Commons.2 The shooting of thirteen Irish Catholics in Londonderry yesterday has made England the most reviled country in the world. For almost the first time in the whole of their impossible task in Ireland, the troops seem to have been guilty of a serious misjudgement. Now Bernadette shouts loudly and viciously for revenge. It all seems a most unpleasant and violent spiral, but surely now the British government must start to take the Catholics seriously.

Tuesday, February 1st