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1 Eke Ott was the sister of Max, who designed the German shows. Ian MacNaughton fell in love with her and she became his second wife.

2 Thomas Woitkewitsch, translator of the Python German shows.

1 Python production assistant. A lovely, soft-spoken man with an interest in Norfolk churches. When we filmed a football match between a team of gynaecologists and Long John Silver impersonators, Roger was the one whom Graham persuaded, in the interests of medical authenticity, to go out and buy eleven vaginal speculums.

1 Terry Jones’ elder brother. A journalist.

1 I had got to know Terry’s mum well in the days when I visited the family home in Claygate, Surrey. She was an endearing lady and we were very fond of each other. Some of Terry’s drag roles on Python were uncannily like her, though absolutely not Mandy in The Life of Brian.

2 Our German wardrobe mistress.

1 I was auditioned for this series myself, but John was judged to be funnier and got the job. Quite rightly. He later, of course, became ITN’s political correspondent.

1 Reg Pither was the bobble-hatted cyclist on a tour of the West Country whom I played in the ‘Cycling Tour’ episode of Python.

2 A young Liverpudlian who Graham and David adopted.

1 Called simply ‘Sykes’.

1 Directed by Albert Finney, and starring himself as a hugely successful Mancunian returning to his roots. Co-starred Liza Minnelli. It was written by Shelagh Delaney.

1973

Monday, January 1st

A good start to the New Year – Python has won the Critics’ Circle award as the best comedy show of the year; beat Terry at squash; and at 3.00 we had a meeting with Mark Shivas and Richard Broke to hear their verdict on our ‘Black and Blue’ script, which was favourable. I think they were surprised how over-cautious we were about our ability to write anything longer than sketches. It restores my faith in myself as a writer – not just someone who left university seven years ago, with no real qualifications and a lot of lucky breaks. Terry’s eyes are really on direction – it is this urgent desire for complete technical control that is for him the most important aspect of creation, whereas for me the personal satisfaction of having written or performed something well is usually enough – for then my ambition tends to lead away from the editing room and the dubbing theatre to travel abroad, to reading, to being with my family.

Friday, January 5th

9.30 – arrived at De Lane Lea editing rooms in Dean St to see the 3¼ hour version of Lindsay Anderson’s new film O Lucky Man. It still needed some editing and dubbing to be done, but it was a very impressive film – and tho’ some sequences worked better than others, nearly all of it was of a very high standard – in performance and photography and direction and conception, and there were many moments when I felt a very strong and complete sense of involvement.

At the end, as the lights went up in the little viewing theatre, Lindsay appeared through the door of the theatre with Alan. He laughed and said he’d been spying on us from the projection room. I mumbled my appreciation – but had hardly time to get my thoughts together, and felt rather inhibited about saying anything in the presence of so many people intimately concerned with the film.

Terry and I drove over to the Medical Centre in Pentonville Road, for a complete physical check-up in modern computerised conditions – which normally costs £30, but had been given to us free by Alan Bailey.1 The relevance of the film suddenly seemed uncannily close. Only an hour ago we had been watching a film which took horrific looks at scientific medicine, and in which the charming smile and the ‘Would you come this way please sir?’ were usually a prelude to something most sinister. Now here we were, in the clean, aseptic atmosphere of a rich man’s clinic, being shown into a small cubicle and asked to strip off down to shoes, socks and pants. Alan fortified us beforehand with a large whisky – he really is the most