Back home.

Cleese rings, pretending to be a reporter from Aberdeen; he says the first of nine reels of the ‘Death Fish’ film look strong and he’s very happy. He assures me that my performance is ‘super’.

Out to Wind in the Willows wrap party down by the Thames at Westminster Boat House. I don’t immediately recognise the man with Alison. Only after I’ve greet­ed her effusively do I realise it’s Terry. Eyebrow­less, almost hairless and his face an almost puffy yellow. He finished shooting as Mr Toad on the day we finished in Korea.

On the way out run into Steve Coogan on his way in. Shaggy head of curly dark ringlets confuses me for a moment but I’m glad to be able to rave a little over Alan Partridge. He raves in return. Says he used to record Ripping Yarns dialogue by pointing a mike at the telly. He’d then play it back to people, acting out the visuals as he did so.

To bed at 11.30 when the travel fatigue hits.

Another morning of low­-grade acting. A crowd growing ever smaller behind Kevin who is in his element – playing a big, bold, unequivocally central role – full of physical attack and extemporaneous embellishments.

In marked contrast to the rest of the sunburnt unit K has preserved an almost deathly pallor. He is followed around the location by his stand­-in, Joshua Andrews, son of Anthony, bearing an umbrella like some punkah­ wallah. K drives himself around in one of the buggies.

Jamie regards it all with ill­-concealed impatience.

We talk more today – Jamie and me. I improvise some great ‘Ifs’ of history – If Joan of Arc had been deaf, If Hitler had been nice, If Shakespeare had been dyslexic, that sort of thing. Jamie insists that I call my agent ‘within the hour’ to sell the idea.

Some of the others are trying on their animal costumes for Monday. ‘I’m giving my beaver,’ shouts Robert L.

Wake, just after seven, with a sudden, tightening feeling of comprehensive anxiety. For a while I feel quite immobilised.

This weight does not lift until after I’ve washed, dressed, exercised (without enthusiasm), breakfasted and left for Prominent Studios to meet Bobby Bir­chall, the designer we’ve chosen for the ‘Palin’s Pacific’ book.

I have committed to a nine­-part travel series, and a book to go with it, both of which have already paid me an advance. I have two people, well three, with Kath, waiting to hear what I have to say about book, design, working together. I have two options – one, to run screaming from the room, the other to run the meeting.

I run the meeting.

New regime.

Settle myself in at 54 Delancey, check the marmalade and white cat is in position on the top of Dylan Thomas’s green caravan down in the garden below – it is. Soon after 9.30 set about Hemingway’s Chair.

TG, who has been doing Python 25th anniversary interviews at the Studios, comes by, claiming to be a Dylan Thomas fan. I tell him to fuck off (through the intercom and in Welsh) and we walk down to the Delancey Café for lunch.

He says, gloomily, that he’s the greatest living non­film­making director. Claims to have encouraged Tarantino to make Reservoir Dogs.

Nothing can really ‘rout the drowse’ (V. Woolf) today. Have to go up to Hampstead to buy some lunch. Whilst walking back to my car I’m greeted by the amiable grey­bearded figure who runs the Rainbow Alliance – George Weiss. He complains of how difficult it was to get publicity for his recent can­didacy in the Euro­elections. In the end he got himself arrested. ‘I walked into Hampstead police station with this huge spliff, took a puff and offered it to the sergeant in charge – well, they had to arrest me.’ His party are committed to free public transport.

Mr O’Rourke came round this afternoon to tell me that he’d heard my play wasn’t doing very well and that I should write a musical comedy. He even offered to find me a backer. A man he’d done some marble ­laying for – ‘a brilliant dancer, an excellent businessman, Wayne Streep’.

Pole to Pole is my second No. 1 best-seller, having deposed Madonna and held off the challenge of Mr Bean in 3rd place. Once again I’m among the literary giants! Sweep up leaves in the garden, clear drains and gutters.

I was walking in the school grounds, learning my lines, dressed as old Frank Pillsworth – bald cap, hair grey and stringy, looking down­-at-­heel – when a groundsman/gardener shouts across – ‘Love your Pole to Pole programme.’ Then he takes a closer look at me before saying ‘You look quite different in real life.’

Later I’m playing a biker in his 30s and I have long, greasy blond hair and tattoos and leathers. We do some improvising – a quarrel between the two of us. Tracey is excellent to play against – she listens, times her line, and always with respect for the partnership.

There’s a general feeling that the last two weeks have been happy and productive and that A Class Act will be something more than just a fulfilment of an obligation, a rush job between Tracey’s court case, over royalties from her work on The Simpsons, and her musical with Nick Nolte to which she returns on Monday.

An interview with a very bright, chirpy ex­-air hostess who now edits the BA staff magazine. One thought­-provoking question. If I was able to travel in time would I go for the future or the past? I unhesitatingly plump for the past, which I suppose betrays my literary and artistic preferences over scientific curiosity. Choose Ancient Egypt or Elizabethan England – tempted by the prospect of going to the world premiere of Hamlet.