After breakfast Terry went off to film at a rubbish dump a piece of Jean-Luc Godard ciné verité involving an exploding lettuce.

It was another hot day and Graham and I, in leisurely fashion, paid our bill and drove round to the Imperial. Here we spent what must rate as one of the most luxurious and effortlessly pleasant mornings of my life. We lay in the sun beside a beautiful heated sea-water pool, and had gin and tonics brought to us.

After a swim and drinks and sunshine, we went into the restaurant, where we ate a most excellent meal, accompanied by a half-bottle of Meursault. After that, we drank Grand Marnier and I smoked a cigar in the lounge.

I hope I never get used to that way of life, I hope I can always enjoy self-indulgence as much as I enjoyed it, that first, sunny perfect morning, at the Imperial.

We drove out to the location and spent the rest of the afternoon playing football dressed as gynaecologists.

It has been a glorious week of sunny weather. We have been working for three days on the Python film script with maximum productivity. Ideas have been pouring out, and we have had very concentrated, but quite tiring writing sessions.

Today at Terry’s we sat outside in the sunshine to write, and for the first day this year I caught the sun. Al fresco lunch with wine and a Chapman salad. John busy writing biographies for the press – ‘Despite what Michael thinks, he is not good company.’

After lunch, built a new piece of fence for Granny, whilst she and Helen sorted through an old chestful of Grandfather’s papers. Letters from Shrewsbury home to his parents, old school reports, Indian Railway timetables, dance cards from Poona, with the names of his partners for the evening marked.

A fascinating collection – in the Shrewsbury and India days much evidence that he was quite a character, enjoyed life and was sociable: ‘always looks as though he has done something wicked, but never has’ – school report from Shrewsbury.

His later letters to the head of Edgar Allen’s, for instance, complaining that the £1,600 salary he was receiving in 1960 was hardly sufficient for a ‘public school-educated, university graduate’, have a much more hopeless air about them. But Thomas and Willy love his old bundles of cheques and Thomas has taken to playing ‘bank managers’.

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?’

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.

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.

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!

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.