A decade of new directions, away from television and into films. The Python collaboration comes to an end with The Meaning Of Life, but I continue to work with Terry Gilliam on Time Bandits and Brazil. I write and star in my own film, The Missionary, with Maggie Smith, and am re-united with Maggie in Alan Bennett’s A Private Function, before taking on Ken in John Cleese’s A Fish Called Wanda.
Pythons in Hollywood. MP,Terry J, Eric I, Graham C, Terry G and John C. Behind us, the Bowl.
John rehearses his Silly Walk.
Dead Parrot sketch always went down well. Never more so than with the performers.
Disrobing after the judge’s summing up.
On the set of Time Bandits. (left to right) Neville C Thompson, Associate Producer, John Cleese (Robin Hood), George Harrison and Denis O’Brien, Executive Producers.
‘I’ve got to have fruit!’ Tied to a tree with Shelley Duvall, as Vincent and Pansy in Time Bandits.
Shooting the Time Bandits’ Giant on the roof of Wembley Studios. Among those looking bored, Maggie Gilliam and Julian Doyle on camera.
Fortescue and his women. Caught between fiancée Deborah Fitzbanks (Phoebe Nicholls, left) and Lady Ames, benefactress, (Maggie Smith, right).
Nepotism at work. Rachel Palin, (centre), on the set at Finsbury Circus.
Charles Fortescue, man with a Mission.
‘As I wait for the clouds to clear the sun, I see our two Executive Producers emerging from the orchard’. Richard Loncraine, director, George H and Denis O’Brien on location.
‘No people, no sun-oil, no deck-chairs, no poolside bars selling over-priced drinks’. Bathing in the waterfall at Shava Lodge after the Kenya shoot.
Missionary publicity. Participating in a custard pie throwing contest at the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.
Missionary publicity. Judging in a custard pie throwing contest at the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.
Playing a TV Presenter for Comic Roots. Behind me, on the left, the house in which I was born and brought up. Sheffield.
John Kelleher of HandMade (centre) and I collect our most cherished, and only, award, from the French town of Chamrousse. ‘I check in the atlas. It does exist’.
Dad in ‘Every Sperm Is Sacred’.
Telling the children the facts of life. ‘I will say “sock” instead of “cock”…and the dastardly substitution will take place in the dubbing theatre’ Elstree Studios.
Christmas in Heaven. (left to right) Idle, Palin, Jones and friends in foreground. Chapman, Simon Jones and Jonathan Benson look on.
Jones, Gilliam, Palin, Cleese, Idle and Chapman emerge from the jungle. ‘Endless takes. Constant calls over the walkie-talkie for the Test Match score’.
The eternal dream. By a pool, with a book, somewhere hot. Kenyan holiday.
Jack Lint. The nastiest character I’ve ever played. Sadly.
Rehearsing with Terry G and Jonathan P in the lobby of Information Retrieval.
Using my heavy duty massager when Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) bursts in unexpectedly. ‘At the end of the day TG says he’s never seen me as nervous before’.
Gilliam the director with Ray Cooper, actor, musical director, gourmet, percussionist extraordinaire and all-round good bloke.
My mother crosses the Atlantic for the first and only time in her life, at the age of 80 years and 2 days. New York City.
With my sister Angela, Nancy Lewis and Mum in Central Park.
Mum, with Angela, at the Saturday Night Live after-show party. ‘There is no question of Granny not wanting to go - in fact she stays there until four a.m.’.
With Laurel and Hardy in the garden. I bought them off a market stall on Canal Street, New York. Hardy’s neck broke in the plane’s luggage locker.
Sheepish of Gospel Oak. Supporting our local City Farm.
‘Take Rachel on a mystery tour. By lucky chance there is a raising of the bridge as we are there. Watch from an abandoned little jetty upstream from the Tower’.
Tom with Denis the cat.
My mother and her neighbour, Lily Pratt, outside Croft Cottage, near Southwold, Suffolk.
Launching a rebuilt steam-engine at the Bluebell Railway.
Mahendra ‘Mash’ Patel, our newsagent. Such reserves of patience and good humour that our family name for him is Mr Nice Man.
‘Sam Jarvis has arrived to start decorating and is extremely worried about the whereabouts of his tea bags’.
Will and Eric in France. I’d had a Geoffrey Boycott T-shirt made for Eric as we were both slightly obsessed with the Greatest Living Yorkshireman.
My friend Al Levinson (left) with Norman Rosten, poet laureate of Brooklyn, and like me, a champion of Al’s work.
With Maggie, enjoying a break from porcicide in the garden at Briargarth.
‘Kill it, Gilbert!’. MP, Betty and Maggie Smith.
Advertising bicycle clips with Alan Bennett, North Yorkshire.
Toilet of the Stars. (left to right) Denholm Elliott, Jim Carter, MP, Pete Postlethwaite, John Normington and Richard Griffiths in the gents at The Great Western Hotel Paddington.
With Alan and Maggie and the foot from my chiropodist’s surgery, on the set of the dance sequence after the Mayor’s dinner.
A Private Function was the last of five films I made with George Harrison and Denis O’Brien as Executive Producers. The HandMade logo was a Gilliam design.
Anne Gibbins, Helen’s mother, with my mother and Helen at the Private Function Royal Premiere.
This photo call at a Python video launch seems to contradict my diary entry, ‘we all come to the conclusion that zaniness after 40 isn’t possible’. The Pythons, sans Eric, and Carol Cleveland, London.
Tristram Powell, director, in cap and Innes Lloyd, producer, worry about the weather, Southwold, Suffolk.
Wearing my Biff T-shirt at the East of Ipswich wrap party at the Crown Hotel, Southwold.
‘Photographed with a bike giving views on cycling in London. Cannot pose with my own bike as the saddle’s missing'.
MP, Gilliam, David Robinson of The Times, John Cartwright of the British Council, and our Russian escort Elena, on Jabberwocky visit to Moscow and Leningrad.
Will, Tom, Rachel and Helen on holiday in Majorca.
Joan Rivers was the only American host who ever wrote me a thank-you letter.
All-American look for the Joan Rivers show.
Tom, Will, Helen, Granny and Rachel brave an east coast gale outside Sunset House, Southwold.
John C (Archie Leach) trying some unsuccessful information retrieval.
Ken Pile. Fan Photo.
‘Start the day being kissed repeatedly by Jamie on the bathroom floor. Very pleasant form of acting’.
Comrades in arms. With Charles Crichton, director.
Comrades in arms. With Gerry Paris (the best stand-in in the world).
Comrades in arms. Kevin Kline, chip abuser and friend.
With 90 year-old Joyce Carey, friend and muse of Nöel Coward, on the set of Number 27 ‘Apparently her skirt fell down as she stood in the rose garden. “Normally I would have laughed, but this time I was a little cross,” she commented’.
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