Python’s Life of Brian has made No. 1 on the latest Variety chart. One year to the day since we were packed in a tiny upper room of the Ribat in Monastir, ours is the film most people in America want to see.

Maybe subconsciously this reassuring state of affairs propels me to the end of the second act of my play.

Start of week four. The nineteenth day of filming. We’d have shot almost two Ripping Yarns by now. At the make-up house by 7.30. Tunisians, eager for work, cluster round the wrought iron gates of the two-storey villa lent to us as a wardrobe and make-up base. I have to shoulder my way through. They stare at me, unblinking stares.

Emerge three-quarters of an hour later as Pontius Pilate, in short grey wig and long white under-toga and, thus attired, pile into my Renault, under the half-smiling gaze of a beautiful dark-haired, dark- eyed little boy working with his father, who is building a wall from a dusty pile of rubble.

A delay for lighting, then a very gruelling day shooting the first Pilate scene. The need to keep the vital giggling ingredient fresh and spontaneous made it a little bit harder to play than an ordinary scene with set words and reactions. The success of this scene will depend on the genuineness of the guard’s reaction to Pilate. It can’t all be acted, it must be felt.

So I have to do a great deal of ad-libbing at the end of the scene – and by the end of the day I must have thought up over twenty new names for Biggus Dickus’ wife – ranging from the appallingly facetious Incontinentia Buttox to the occasional piece of inspiration which resulted in breakdown from the guards. Bernard McKenna in particular did the nose trick spectacularly – once right down my toga.

Shave, select clothes that will be seen across the nation tonight – and I think that’s probably the last time today that I consciously stop and think about the awesome accessibility of TV. The number of homes all over America who will be looking at me, tonight, in these jeans I’m just hauling myself into. The number of friends whom I may never see again, who will see me, after their dinner party, or as they row, or because they can’t sleep. The number of film stars I idolise, sports heroes, ex-Presidents of the World Bank, Watergate conspirators (Dean), authors I’m reading at the moment (Bellow), boxers, test pilots, Mick Jaggers, Senators, Congressmen, criminals, who may be looking at this shirt, or these white sneakers, before this day is out, is a thought too colossal to comprehend.
So I don’t. I get going. My philosophy of the day is that this is a cabaret. And the words are all on cards.

To the studio around lunchtime. Almost the first person I see is John Belushi – he is a regular member of the team and probably the best- known now Chevy Chase has left. He has flown in overnight from LA, where he has been working on a movie, and he returns tomorrow.

The Chilites dance routine does not please Lorne and is cut just before the dress rehearsal. ‘You’ll thank me in years to come,’ says Lorne. I’m thanking him now.

My main worry centres around a Sherlock Holmes sketch which is not just a rather long one joke item, but which requires a certain amount of playing and elaborate use of cue-cards. I find it hard and unrewarding work. Lorne said yesterday that it’s a sketch which will not work until the show. Brave words.

We still have sketches unblocked when the audience come in for a full-house dress rehearsal at 7.30. For the first time today I feel nervous.

At eight we roll – the cold opening – an encouragingly funny retrospective look at the Academy Awards with Vanessa Redgrave (Jane Curtin) introducing a splendid Yasser Arafat from Belushi. Then titles – my name in lights on an electric billboard in Times Square (oh, Lorne the showman), the cast and then the rich, trusty tones of announcer Don Pardo – ‘Your host for tonight … Michael Palin.’

This is the moment of truth. For the next five or six minutes it’s just me. The monologue goes averagely. The show speeds on – no major boobs, but a poor audience. However, I appreciated the psychological boost of a full-audience dress rehearsal. Most of the terrors are gone now. From now on there’s no time to think.

First there is a meeting of technical staff in Lorne’s office. Briskly, but unhastily, Lorne runs through the show. Two sketches disappear altogether. ‘Holmes’ is still there and didn’t go too well at dress. Lorne remains confident. Writers are sent scurrying off to rewrite material. By 10.15 a smart, new, typed running order is issued. Decisions on material that have taken three days of the week are reversed or replaced by other decisions in the space of 30 minutes.

Then to the dressing room – and Nancy and Al Lev and telegrams from Terry and Eric – ‘Please Stay In America’ – and into the wonderful, baggy, shiny grey suit with the specially protective cat lining in front. It could be a Python recording. I feel strangely and completely at home as 11.30 nears. I’m moved into position by Joe Dicso, the dependable, refreshingly un-camp floor manager, and at 11.30 we’re off. The cold opening, the big build-up – ‘And now your host …’ – and out I go – into America.

A warm reception, the monologue intrigues them, but I can’t wait to get to the dance with the cats and sea-food salad. All is going well, but the cats have stage fright and, as I gyrate and at the same time try and coax these pussies into my trousers, I become aware of a frightful smell, and a warm, brown mess all down my arm. Even as I am grinning manically and pushing it down, the cat is shitting more violently. I can’t hear the audience reaction above the band, but I know that the worst is happening. This is going to be tele-embarrassment on a monumental scale.

The offending cat leapt away, and I was left stroking the other one’s little marmalade head as it peeked out of my trousers. I caught sight of myself on the monitor and it looked nightmarishly obscene. But the red light of the camera shone unblinkingly at me – revealing to the entire US a man who looked as if he was masturbating with an arm covered in shit. Awful. An awful, monumentally awful, moment.

No time after it to stop, think, question – I had to run into a one- minute costume change (the show could never work without commercial breaks) to become an RC priest in a confessional. I reached the confessional with five seconds to spare, slid back the partition and suddenly realised my arm was still stained with cat nerves. In a split second I changed arms – which must have greatly thrown the director – and the stink in the cramped little confessional grew by the minute.

Even after the confessional there was no time for the scrub I needed, for I had to be raced the length of the studio, tearing off my soutane as I rocketed through the audience, in order to make a change into a Very Famous Actor. This time I was locked in a trunk with my smell.

Half an hour of high-pressure insanity had gone by before I was able to stop and think and gauge reactions to the hideous occurrences during the opening monologue. Lorne, who was on the floor throughout the taping, was the first to try and convince me that the opening had been hilarious – and I realised that nobody knew the hell of embarrassment I’d been through. After all, you can’t smell on TV and the camera was never close on my arm – and anyway, it all looked like sea-food salad. No … it was great, they all said.

The ‘Holmes’ sketch came to life – or as much life as it’ll ever come to – which was especially rewarding as we approached one o’clock. Lorne was cutting and changing and reshaping even as we were on the air, and we lost a sketch before one, and the farewells and thank yous and it was all over.

Nancy had a huge magnum of champagne ready, but I hardly had time to drink any. Many congratulations, but I think mainly just the joy of relief – of having done it. Completed this ‘dangerous’ show, as Lorne called it. ‘Come and meet a fan’, I was asked, and rushed from my champagne, which everyone else was drinking anyway, to meet a scrawny, freckled youth in loose clothes, who was introduced as Jeff Carter, the President’s son.

Up to Lorne’s office to see the tape. It did look monstrously funny. Bill Murray thought it was the best show this year. Everyone very happy.

This morning back at familiar Shepperton. A short scene with Harry H (full of doubts again, but I’ve grown very fond of this strange, self- critical, introspective extrovert). Then a strange and uncomfortable series of shots of me being flung around on the end of Bernard Bresslaw’s legs and picked up and hurled out of the Queen’s Haemorrhoids – a harness of quite unbelievable awkwardness for this shot – and finally into the rain-soaked woods in the back lot for a scene of wood-gathering, when I’m surprised by Terry Gilliam (playing Patsy from the Holy Grail again). Much crouching and being savagely attacked.

Terry is very sick today and keeps having to retreat to the bushes to throw up. But he battles bravely on. How he will shape up to the week, I don’t know. It’s going to be hard and they’re already behind. I must finish Sunday – I start Ripping Yarns on Monday – but it’ll be a hell of a push.

A moment of quite stimulating liberation when I am required to drop my trousers in a shot and reveal my un-knickered bum to all and sundry. As we’re outside the main gates to the castle, quite a little crowd has gathered to watch the filming – about fifty or sixty in addition to the fifty extras in the scene.

Realise I feel less embarrassed than they do, and really quite enjoy the experience of flashing a naughty part of the body in a public place – and getting paid, rather than arrested for it. Can see the exhilaration of ‘streaking’ – a sort of heady feeling of freedom comes over me as I point my bum for the third time at a twin-set and pearl-bedecked lady standing not ten yards away!

The Amnesty bandwagon gathers momentum today – a second and final rehearsal on stage at Her Majesty’s, with Roger Graef and team poking about. I notice them filming, at great length, a conversation between Cleese and Peter Cook on the stage, and it occurs to me that, as the cameraman himself is small (or average) compared to them, he’s probably much happier filming tall people. I asked Graef whether I would be a better bet for tele-verité if I were six inches taller … ‘Oh, yes, undoubtedly,’ he assured me. ‘They can get lovely angles if you’re tall – shots against the sky, or, in this case, against the spotlights.’ Yesterday they’d been filming the Goodies at rehearsal and the cameraman had found Bill Oddie quite a problem.

Peter Cook – who apologised for his slightly glazed state, saying he was recovering from a long night spent with John Fortune discussing Lenny Bruce’s drug problem – steadfastly refuses to learn the words of the Condemned Man in our ‘Court Sketch’. He does ad-lib very well, but it gives Terry J a few hairy moments.

At about 12:30, more press photos outside. For some reason a Daily Mirror photographer issues us all with pickaxes – no one knows why until we see the photo in the Mirror on April 1st with the caption ‘Pick of the Jokers’. No wonder the Mirror are losing their circulation battle.

Another Python meeting. This time to discuss affairs of Python generally and to plan our future in general.

When I arrived, Eric was the only one there, stretched comfortably in a corner of the sofa, wearing what looked very much like a bovver boys outfit, with TUF boots and jeans with rolled-up bottoms.

Good news at the beginning of the meeting – Nancy rang through to say that a US record deal was signed today with Arista Records – we would get an immediate $10,000 advance on Matching Tie and Live at Drury Lane. So good work there from Nancy, who has also secured her pet consideration on a record contract – $50,000 set aside just for publicity.

It was on the subject of paying off Gledhill* that the meeting suddenly and abruptly took off. As I remember it, Graham was on the phone to Jimmy Gilbert to check the autumn TV recording dates, John Cleese was being unusually co-operative and had even indicated that he might consider coming on this publicity tour to the US in March, when Eric suddenly became quite animated, attacking the Terrys and anyone around for being mean with Gledhill. From here Eric went on bitterly to criticise Python for becoming nothing more than a series of meetings, calling us ‘capitalists’ and ending up by saying ‘Why can’t we get back to what we enjoyed doing? Why do we have to go through all this?’ It was rich dramatic stuff.

Terry J was on his feet – ‘Well, if that’s how Eric feels, we might as well give up,’ and he nearly left there and then. GC and JC looked at each other in amazement. Only the entirely admirable Anne H managed to cool everything down by giving out cheques for £800 each from Charisma – an advance for the LP made last May!

A selection of letters are read out to the assembled gathering. From CBC Canada – ‘We would like the Python group to contribute up to ten minutes of material for a special programme on European Unity. The group can decide –’ the reading was interrupted here by farting noises and thumbs-down signs. On to the next.

‘Dear Sirs, I am writing on behalf of the Television Department of Aberdeen University … ’ An even louder barrage of farting.

‘Dear Monty Python, we are a production company interested in making TV films with Python, George Harrison and Elton John …’ Despite the fact that £36,000 is mentioned in the letter as a possible fee for this never-to-be-repeated offer, it is jeered raucously and I tear the letter up and scatter it over the Henshaws’ sitting room. In this symbolic gesture, entirely characteristic of the general irresponsibility of the assembled Pythons, the meeting staggers to an end and we all make our several ways.

*John Gledhill had ceased to be our manager as from November 1974.

A rather grey day, with intermittent rain. At the gates of Doune Castle Philip Jenkinson is standing with the Film Night crew.

I haven’t been chatting with him for long before we have been imper- ceptibly shuffled into an interviewing position beside a car, and I find myself being filmed at about 11.00 in the morning, the dullness of my replies matching the dullness of the day! After that they move over to a well in the courtyard and interview Graham, who at least managed to get some silly lines in – he deliberately mishears Phil Jenkinson’s rather facetious remark about an ‘insanity’ clause being built into the contract – ‘There is an insanitary clause, yes.’ Funnily enough, Phil Jenkinson is besotted by Eric Idle’s take-offs of him and constantly refers to them.

John is doing the Taunter on some artificial battlements at the back of the castle. He’s getting very irritated by TG’s direction of his acting. TG tends to communicate by instinct, gesture and feeling, whereas John prefers precise verbal instructions. So TJ has to take over and soothe John down.

Then the shot where live ducks and chickens, as well as dead rabbits, badgers, etc, are flying over the battlements. Small boys are recruited to help catch the chickens as they’re flung over. ‘Those spotted roosters are fast,’ warns Tommy.

A rather jolly day, with much corpsing from John, Eric and myself when Brian McNulty, third assistant director, in rich Glaswegian, reads in John’s Taunter’s lines for us to react to. How can you react without laughing to a broad Glaswegian saying ‘Of course I’m French, why do you think I’m using this outrageous accent?’