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By Root 991 0

appeared at my side, in a state of high excitement, to announce that Christine Kaufmann, Germany’s leading actress, and ex-wife of Tony Curtis, was not only here tonight, but, and here Alfred became almost uncontrollable, she loved Monty Python!! Soon she was brought to our table, and the meeting of the greats took place. She wore her black hair long and unstyled, wore a simple dress, and her face was thin, fine-boned and un-made-up. I liked her at once, but conversation was made doubly difficult by the music, and by her boyfriend, a German disc-jockey, who chattered about the wonders of Python without even a break for commercials. He was clearly the kind of person who was used to being listened to, rather than listening, had an annoying habit of referring to Python as being very popular with ‘all the intellectuals’.

After their whirlwind visit, their places were taken by yet another model – this time a real head-turner, with carefully arranged red hair, a rich suntan, and a thin cotton shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Apparently, Thomas2 assured me, she had been in Playboy magazine. I drank the last remains of my white wine. Miss Playboy’s photographer escort, meanwhile, had ordered a magnum of Calvados.

Outside it was 1.30 and raining. I walked home with John – wet, shabby, tired, but still just celebrities.

Wednesday, September 20th, Hohenschwangau

Filming in Neuschwanstein Castle. A clear and sunny day. In the distance the sun picks out the snow on the mountains of the Austrian Alps. It’s a perfect day for throwing a dummy of John Cleese from the iooft tower of the castle to the courtyard below. The tourists watch with great interest – an English couple and their young brother-in-law can’t believe their luck that they’ve found Python in Germany. We finish filming by 11.00 and now have a break until 6.00 for we are night-shooting inside the castle. (Apparently we are lucky to have received permission – for the last crew to film here was Visconti’s film of King Ludwig, and apparently they had messed the place up a bit, and urinated in the fine Wagnerian interiors, and were generally unlikely to be asked back.)

I was playing Prince Walter, described in the script as ‘rather thin and weedy with a long pointed nose, spots, and nasty unpolished plywood teeth’. The make-up man, George, made a superb job of personifying this creature. My own hair was laboriously curled with hot tongs into a silly little fringe, which made me look like an underfed Henry V, and it took almost two hours before I was ready with my long turned-up nose and spots, to leave the Hotel Müller and be driven up to the castle.

A perfect Gothic horror evening – a cool breeze, and a full moon, glimpsed through the trees and occasionally blotted out by scudding clouds. As we drove through the silent and deserted stone archways of the castle, there was but a single light shining high in the dark walls. Ludicrously clad, wearing a silly false nose and carrying a crate of beer for the unit’s supper, I was led through echoing passages and through stone-vaulted halls towards the filming.

Thursday, September 21st, Hohenschwangau

Another fine, sunny day. Into Prince Walter outfit. Sat around outside the hotel thus attired, read Raymond Chandler, wrote postcards and confused the tourists – who start to appear in droves at about 11.30, are everywhere like insects, and like them, disappear in the cool of the evening. Filmed beside a lake. Eric played his guitar, the crate of beer was kept warm in the water of the lake, and Connie Cleese raped me (on film). What more could a man want of the day?

Friday, September 29th, Munich

Only last night did I learn for certain that today we were to do the most complicated sketch of all – the Hearing-Aid’ sketch – an old 1948 Show sketch in which I was given joint billing with John. We could only use the shop to do it in after 8.00, so it was a most uneven and awkward day. As we rehearsed Ian took a phone call from his P.A. in England. She had received a note from Duncan Wood in which he ordered another round