Captain 'Clint' Morpeth. Petty Bourgeois Bum-Biters. 'Nasolube'. A Gay Liberation.

After my final examinations the prospect of three months writing a film on a Mediterranean island appealed to me more than six months of looking into ears, noses and throats. The new long-fuselage Boeing Ford Anglia log. 7^987 GTQ stopped. Its engines didn't choke, splutter or cough, the wheels did not screech on the tarmac, and the nearest aeroplane that actually shuddered to a halt was a Douglas Dakota (Prototype) at Reykjavik on January 8th 1937. Neither did the grim-faced pilot throw off his goggles, sigh with relief, turn to his co-pilot and say, 'We made it Ginger.'

But none of this stopped the air-hostess doing her bit over the tannoy: 'On behalf of Captain Morpeth and the Muir of Ord we hope you have had a pleasant flight. Would you please remain seated until the irrational and claustrophobic grappling around the two exits has come to a complete halt. I don't know about you, but this is definitely my last flight with Air Faecal Pellets, and the reason is that I have now

spent three years staggering up and down between rows of cramped seats filled with conceited American businessmen grabbing my arse - though God knows why, because they couldn't even fuck their own fists on alternate Fridays - wearing this humiliating priapic costume - where's the so-called ''glamour" in that? Even the pilot - who I happen to know is being fucked by a policeman in Benidorm - is hardly likely to come and give me a twatful of God's own juice, which I gather is so good for the teeth. And there's no point in any of you tittering like that - it goes without saying that all of you will have to wait three quarters of an hour in the plane at no°F, then pour out into an airport bus which will drive you three times round the plane and then zig-zag the twenty yards to the corrugated iron Arrivals Hutch, where you will have to wait another three quarters of an hour at 120⁰ for the privilege of having your passport messily stamped by a myopic, unshaven bureaucrat in Woolworth's "Dago" reflecting sunglasses. While you are standing there you will see Captain "Clint" Morpeth and his co-pilot who thinks he's James Bond (you can tell him by his red face, a stench of Japanese body-rub, and the time-expired packet of Durex in his top pocket) streak through hours ahead of anyone else clutching their contraband, which will be very annoying for you, 'cause by then you'll be dying for a piss and there's absolutely nowhere for you to go. Even then you'll have to face the baggage claim with the suitcase that goes round and round for forty minutes looking like yours, and if you get your luggage, it'll be grabbed by some petty-bourgeois bum-biter of a customs officer who thinks he's General Franco 'cause he's got two stripes round his sleeve, who will force it open at the hinges and sweat torrentially all over your fresh white cotton shirts in search of smuggled dried lizards and illicit pinball machines. Finally you'll get out and there'll be no buses to the town so you'll have to take a taxi and be charged £35 for a two-mile ride on burning plastic seats that scald your... Oh you'll never learn, will you? Just get off.' Click.

After I had checked out of the airport I was met by Loretta Feldman, who called herself 'Mary O'Sullivan' on a forged passport. She took me to a car driven by her husband, called

Marty. On the way back from the airport we chatted happily about how appalling D. Frost was, and arrived at a restaurant called the Green Dolphin. Inside the Green Dolphin were John Cleese with some tart,¹ Marty, his wife, Tim Brooke-Taylor, and several pictures of Nazi war criminals. Because we were supposed to be taking the ladies out I was paying double for something I didn't get. I didn't mind too much -I was drunk, and, needing a piss, I went into the Gents. I noticed that the soap above the sink was stuck on a prong and looked curiously like a half-erect penis, even though most of it was green. I rejoined the table and Tim Brooke-Taylor was ready to micturate. I explained to him that there was something in the bog that he would find extremely amusing.

A minute later he came out with a white face, sat down, shivered a little, and said, 'I think that was in extremely bad taste.'

I said, 'What do you mean, didn't you see it?'

Through gritted teeth he hissed, 'You know what I mean.'

I said, 'What do you mean - the soapV

He said, 'You know,' as he pushed his tuna fish salad out of nostril range. I didn't know why my description of the soap should have distressed him so much and went back into the lavatory and saw a pair of legs sticking out under one of the doors. Knowing that no-one could be that tall, I opened the door of the cubicle to find a man about twenty-eight years old with his trousers round his knees, shirt up to his armpits, lying flat on the floor with a small pool of blood under his head. I realized what Tim meant by bad taste and went to find the Bormann-like manageress. We carried the unfortunate toiletee outside and laid him on the pavement. I made sure that his heart was still beating and that his airway was clear, and examined him for signs of drug overdosage. We found out later that he'd taken LSD and run over and killed an old man with his truck and that his behaviour that evening was his equivalent of joining the Foreign Legion.

i. Quite a nice girl really. I only wrote 'tart' because the back of my neck is aching and I keep being interrupted by telephone calls from Eire about whether The Life of Brian is blasphemous, while being interviewed by the Belgians on the same subject.

I had never been to Spain before and was about to start now. Even the foreignness of the place seemed alien, except for my pipe, several packets of Three Nuns' and 'St. Bruno' mixed and the odd gin and slimline tonic with ice but no lemon in it. We arrived at the villa which was the upper apartment of a two-floor building, very spacious with two balconies and absolutely covered in fucking bougainvillea, so picturesque it made you want to excrete.

The next day I hired a bicycle and so did John Cleese. He couldn't ride his, but then he was only twenty-five years old. I was worried about the aesthetics of people of that age who are quite capable of basking in the sun wearing only a jockstrap, and of leaving the door open when they go poohs. I realized later that he had gone to a public school, where it's obligatory to be peered at in your most intimate moments (unless you're bullying someone).

John and I had written a lot of sketches for David Frost, as you should know by now if you've been paying attention. In consideration for our services Mr Frost wisely chose to pay us the kind of pittance that we would think a fortune to write a film. David P. Frost had had a very good idea for a motion picture, probably bought from some impecunious city stockbroker. It was a good idea about someone who used psephol-ogy to become first of all Prime Minister and then President of Great Britain. People read in the newspapers about the way they thought and which way they would vote and this influenced them into voting the way the psephologist wanted. The film predicted the advent of the Heath government, North Sea Gold, twenty-three assassinations, the entire demise of the Anglican Church, and the use of referenda by weak governments as a devious means of strengthening their arm - the public were at first impressed at their new-found power (being asked about such important issues as the Common Market, Trade Unions and Devolution), later becoming pissed off with letter-boxes full of forms asking them about road-widening in the Scilly Isles, the colour of pillar-boxes, and the repeal of the Dog Licensing Act (1878), pissed off to such an extent that after a month they were begging for a dictatorship. In this way a little-known psephologist became the first President of Great Britain.

But Columbia-Warner-Seven Arts decided not to put the film on general release until all the predictions had come true, losing a lot of money for themselves and giving John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Peter Cook nothing for two years' work. If the head of Columbia-Warner-Seven Arts is reading this book he had better be warned that I might at this very moment be outside his door with an ice-axe. I think I can say with sincerity that I'm against any large organization, communist, capitalist or religious, that pretends to know best. I would rather have a perverted Roman Emperor or a pederast king than the blinkered and bureaucratic pismires who trammel humanity with their legal systems, medicine, trade unions, armies, the archaic tribal mutilation of circumcision, baton charges against students, students charging police, fish fingers, lard, turgid or tit-and-bum journalism, television programmes that wouldn't appeal to a stuffed walnut, and National Parades.

Personal masturbation is a noble pastime - enhancing as it does the faculty of imagination - but, as acted out on a national scale becomes true to its Victorian name of self-abuse. Viz. the Trooping of the Colour, Bastille Day, Mayday in Moscow, July 4th in America, Timepiece Afternoon in Switzerland, Football matches in Brazil, and anything at all that happens in Germany or Japan. I mean, let's all of us come off it. What are we? We are tubes - hollow cylinders of flesh. What is our expectation from life? Regular fulfilment of primitive functions at both ends, coupled with the thought that we must progress, leaving at least something behind us, very much in the same way that a dog pisses on a tree.

By now all of you must be wondering why we needed to hire bicycles in order to write. I'll explain. As John pointed out, transport on Ibiza at that time was rather primitive and we needed individual conveyances so that we could examine beaches¹ in the shortest time - say about two weeks of the working period which was three months anyway, and 'there's plenty of time yet'. 'I think we should have bikes, because we're bound to want to go off and buy pens and pieces of paper, and pens and things, and Scotch tape, and a pair of

I. To find out which would be the best one for writing a film set in London.

scissors.., typewriter ribbons... well, it took me two weeks to get acclimatized... and I still haven't thrown off this throat....'

John Cleese, whom I'd always known as an over-industrious, painstakingly meticulous worker, appeared to be hinting at something.

'It is rather hot isn't it? I'm feeling a bit groggy myself. Perhaps a couple of weeks' rest might be a good idea.'

'D'you think we should? I mean David and all that... He has paid us, Graham.'

'Yes, I suppose you're right.'

'Yeah... I'll probably be all right tomorrow morning... Right... yes... that's fine then....'

'Fine.'

'Great.... Oh shit, d'you mind if we make it evening? Only I promised I'd take Connie to Calla Bassa tomorrow -she's only got a few more days here and it'd be a bit awkward to get out of now.... Damn.'

'Oh that's fine by me. I've only just finished taking those bloody exams. We have done the synopsis and I wouldn't mind taking a bit of time off

'So we'll start on Friday.'

'Yup.... It'll be a bit noisy, but we can shut ourselves away.'

'Noisy?'

'Yes - there's a fiesta, lots of dancing and fireworks, and wine.'

'Oh. I've never been to Spain before.'

'Haven't you? Well you must then.... So let's have a look at the diary. That brings us to Monday. We'll start on Monday. Oh, but Monday and Tuesday are Connie's last two days, I'd like to see her off at the airport on Wednesday. That would give us two days...'

'Look, why don't we make it two weeks?'

'Done.'

So we closed up our notebook marked 'Film' and went to the beach.

Something had changed in John. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the island - the singing heat, the occasional fennel-scented breeze castrating the almost ever-present frenzy of

the shrill cicadas as we passed through groves of olive and sweet-scented asphodel, looked down into coves of limpid deepest blue that seemed perilously inviting from our vantage point, while in the air was the pitiful bray of a distant donkey being done in by dagos, and the even more distant hum of telephone wires as travel agents desperately tried to contact Lawrence or Gerald Durrell for their latest offer of twenty-five redolent adjectives for isp in a plain wrapper.

As we cycled adverbially through the adjectival groves of whatever they were - kind of tree-things - in a detached way I looked at the three of us. There was Connie - Constance Booth, later to become John's wife (and ex-wife), who wasn't there that day anyway because she'd gone by boat. There was John, the pedestrian parentally predestined solicitor, changed to a cycle-riding, lobster-red, writer-performer, wearing baggy shorts, plimmies, no shirt, sunglasses with white plastic nose-shield, and a floppy khaki hat. ('Crumbs! What a change,' I thought, as we swerved to avoid a dying donkey.) But then this island was already beginning to have its influence on me as well. My first day I had gone down to the beach wearing brogue sandals, tweed swimming shorts, a pair of bakelite Dr Scholl sunglasses, and a straw deerstalker, and now here I was wearing just a pair of denim shorts. What was happening to me? The thought of this blattering transformation made my left hand sweat as it gripped a copy of The Daily Telegraph¹ to the handlebars.

There was a loud roar from behind us padded out with ear-shattering horn-blasts. We skidded to a halt at the side of the road to avoid the monstrous vehicle. A SEAT 600 glid past and screeched to a halt in a flurry of sand and donkey-clippings. Marty Feldman's head popped up through the sunroof like Marty Feldman's head through a sun-roof. As the famous scriptwriter of the radio comedy Round the Home, he was so anxious not to be recognized that he'd been forced to wear no shoes, purple bikini briefs, a half-length orange caftan with purple embroidery, a necklace of golden prayer-bells, and a yellow skullcap with a subtle application of Helena Rubenstein 'Nasolube' nose highlighter. He shouted, 'Did you see the accident?'