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This evening Helen went out to her pottery classes, and Terry J, Terry G and Viv Stanshall came round for a meeting. The reason for this particular combination was that Viv Stanshall (whom we last worked with on Do Not Adjust Your Set – and who has since been doing some very weird and imaginative and original pieces for radio, as well as occasional gigs) had been in touch with Terry G to enlist his co-operation in a musical cartoon – ideas by Viv Stanshall, pictures by Terry G.

However, at the moment Gilliam is going through a spell of disillusionment with animations. He no longer enjoys doing them, and claims his ideas have dried up as well. He is much more keen on directing or writing live action, and this he wants to do in collaboration with Terry J and myself. Gilliam felt that the injection of non-Python ideas from Viv might actually get us going on something, instead of just talking. We all got on well, we ate Helen’s fantastic pâté, frankfurters and sauerkraut, and drank several bottles of Sancerre.

In the general mood of confidence and optimism which the Loire had generated, we decided to try and find backing for a 90-minute, feature-length film involving the four of us. Watch this column for further exciting developments.

Thursday, March 16th

Another good day’s filming, ending with a marvellously chaotic situation at a flyover building site at Denham on the A40.1 was narrator in front of the camera, describing how work was going on a new eighteen-level motorway being built by characters from ‘Paradise Lost’. So behind me were angels, devils, Adam and Eve, etc, etc. All around us was the deafening noise of huge bull-dozers. We were trying to time the take to the moment when the largest of these mighty earth-movers came into shot. So amidst all the dirt and mud and noise you would hear Ian shouting ‘Here he comes!’ Rick the camera operator shouting ‘Move your harp to the left, Graham!’ George dashing to take Adam and Eve’s dressing gowns off, then the earth-mover would stop and plunge off in another direction, and all the efforts were reversed.

Thursday, April 6th

Almost two years and nine months to the day since we shot our first feet of Python TV film at Ham, we were at Windsor to shoot what is probably our last. On July 8th 1969 we started with Terry dressed as Queen Victoria, and today we finished with myself dressed as an Elizabethan.

Tuesday, April 11th

Terry and I meet Bill Borrows of the ACTT – the film technicians’ union – to ask about joining as directors (for our summer film). The union, which five years ago was all powerful, and held the crippling ITV strike in 1968, which got London Weekend off to such a disastrous start, is now on its uppers. There are few films being made in England (only eleven this year) and the union has 70% of its members unemployed. Along with many other unions it has refused to register under the government’s Industrial Relations Bill, and it may go under.

So Bill Borrows was indeed pleased to see Python people. And Now For Something Completely Different was, after all, a very successful British film – it’s breaking box-office records at a cinema in Canada even now. We were given forms to fill in, and it looks as though there will be no trouble.

Saturday, April 13th

Cool, but often sunny – this was the nearest to a spring day we have had since the middle of March. In celebration of it, we went ‘en famille’ on the train to Kew Gardens.

At the station we have to wait for an hour, as a woman has trapped herself underneath a train. I presume it was a suicide attempt. People go and stare at her, but the ambulance is a long time coming, and the railway officials are in a complete panic. No-one knows where the key to the first-aid cupboard is, for instance. Classic English characters emerge in such a situation – a lady, laden with parcels, tells Helen almost regretfully ‘I didn’t see any blood across the line or anything – I don’t think she’d cut her wrists or anything. Why do people do it, that’s what I wonder.’

We were