Which I only took for the crossword (see note on page 55).

'D'you mean this?' said John, pulling his bicycle out of a bush.

'No.'

'The donkey?' I opined,¹ thinking that it must be at least 25,062 words since anyone had done so.

'No - that geezer being pulled out of the well. Tell you at the beach bar.'

'Vroom,' went his SEAT 600.

For the next week we all had Fun going to the beach during the day, trying to find more expensive restaurants in the evening, and having witty and zany conversations. A typical beach scene would be John's Doctor Scholl sunglasses with nose-shield reading The Daily Telegraph from cover to cover - they were apparently desperate to learn about politics, football and cricket; Tim Brooke-Taylor running around a lot in the sand; Loretta covered in Sellotape in a desperate attempt to get the gullies in her crow's-feet as brown as the rest of her face, drinking gallons of Buck's Fizz; and Marty amusing the others and himself by annoying John. He spent some time searching out what he thought was the most boring person on the beach and found him. A greengrocer from Nottingham. He was a man of about five foot nine inches, wearing a beach shirt and matching shorts covered with the words SKOL, CHEERS, SALUD, UP YOURS MATE!, SANTE, PROUST, EIS HrEIA and a rather inexplicable DAMON RUN YON just under his left tit. Presumably even the shirt printer had found him boring.

Marty told him that he had a friend on the beach who had a copy of yesterday's Daily Telegraph (therefore the latest cricket-scores and information about the World Cup) and was also passionately interested in bullfighting, although he'd never seen one. He homed in on John like a missile programmed to injure Frank Sinatra. He warmed up with detailed enquiries about the Third Test, followed by a crip-plingly fine-toothed analysis of the England line-up for the World Cup. John very politely answered all his questions, but it was obvious from the pucening of the bald patch at the back of his head that he was growing irritated with the wholesale fruiterer and his greengro^ulent attentions.

1. See Chapter 2, page 46.

SKOV «

Yesterday'5 Daily Telegraph

'Have you ever been to a bullfight?' asked the man.

'No,' John screamed, and ran off towards the sea explaining that he'd promised his auntie that he would bathe regularly, and please, please, keep the Daily Telegraph, and that he probably wouldn't be back tomorrow.

'Good idea! Feel like a dip,' said the man and dashed off after him.

John swam what must have been a quarter of a mile underwater without coming up for breath, only to surface next to the Nottinghamshire fruiterer. None of us could hear what was said but the stout Midlander appeared to be demonstrating bullfighting techniques from his lilo. John swam out to sea and was never seen again. (Except a bit.)

I spent the next two weeks on a Cleeseless Ibiza, searching for something that I knew was probably very sexy. I had telephoned my girl friend and she 'Very likely wasn't going to come out', which was a bit of a relief in that I'd rather half-heartedly decided to marry her. A telegram arrived at the villa for 'Dr G. Chapman' and I realized that I'd passed the exams.

Unfortunately so did everyone else on Ibiza. Even the locals didn't trust the two doctors on the island: the 'physician' in S. Antonio, who would dress minor wounds while smoking and patting a scrofulous black labrador; and a surgeon in Ibiza town who refused to attend any emergencies while he was eating breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner or supper. But the human body has remarkable recuperative powers, and, as far as I know only four people died through lack of Aesculapian attention, while in the same period at least eight were killed by nuns posing as medical auxiliaries. The chemists did the rest of the work. The peasants could buy toothpaste with penicillin in it - guaranteed to give them a raging fungal gingivitis - they were given barbiturates for headaches, and quail-flavoured suppositories for everything else. Contraceptives were readily available to kings and popes who rolled their own at 350 Newfoundland kopecks per pair.

Because o( this I got several patients (silly complaints) and while dressing the kneecap of Pippa Sherman I realized that I was a doctor and should perhaps consult myself about a

psychological complaint. Why was I looking wistfully at the stars every night? Why did I go to so many bars? Why did I avoid the company of the others and yet go out looking for company? Why was I coveting my neighbour's ox?

It was the Quatorze juillet, and having had at least catorce Cuba Libras, I sat smoking my pipe at an outside bar, wondering if I'd see the ox. The coveted animal passed, a nineteen-year-old beauty, small and slim but strongly built, with legs like a Russian ballet-dancer, smooth brown skin, huge dark brown eyes, provocative lips, a retrousse nose, and ear-lobes that defy description.

He glanced in my direction. He glanced in everyone's direction. I thought, Tucking hell, he's a goer if ever I saw one,' which I hadn't (male that is). I nonchalantly threw my Daily Telegraph to the floor and with a pounding heart followed at a discreet distance. He was walking towards the campsite in S. Antonio and, leaving all thoughts of the Daily Telegraph and my bicycle behind, I tried to look as though I wasn't actually catching up on him. The knowing little flirt stopped on a bridge over a tiny stream. This was it, my catechol amines had reached their lifetime zenith....

Click. Went a tape recorder playback button and David said:

'It was the 14th July, and the campsite was full of French drunks going out as I returned. I liked rising and sleeping early for the sun rather than discos full of Birmingham typists. I was walking on the long road back to the campsite lined with poplars and festive lamps dotted with geckos keeping warm.¹ I was saying 'Goodnight' to everyone in any language that seemed to suit their appearance and when I came to saying it in English I think I was answered with 'Good evening' in English from Graham. I thought at first he was coming towards me from the campsite, but it turned out he'd been following me for quite a distance. He asked me what I was doing, and would I like to have a drink at the bar. He told me a strange concocted story about staying one night in the campsite before his room in a villa was ready. He said he'd seen me in town and trailed me a bit.

I. I'm a much more mature writer now (L. Durrell).

'We went to the bar by the swimming-pool. He introduced himself, his work, and ordered two enormous double Bacardi and cokes. We were very amused - making for instant rapport, by the antics of French people dressed in banana-leaves pushing each other into the pool, pouring wine over each other's heads and bellowing every national anthem they knew.

'After quite a few drinks....'

Click. 'Well. We had a polite conversation about the other occupants of the villa who included, intriguingly, Marty Feldman of Round the Home, and his wife - more interesting to me than Cleese or Chapman.... Then suddenly Graham asked if he could come and see my tent, which seemed eccentric from such a straight and ordinary-looking man. I genuinely had no inkling until we got there and he was supposedly surveying it that he was actually going to grab me and give me a passionate kiss. That led to seeing the inside of the tent. I was totally amazed at the novelty of it to him. We didn't do anything devastating but spent the time exploring each other - great fun - not heavy and have your rocks off immediately. It was romantic. Still, it was a year before I could believe I wasn't being taken for a ride.

'The night was also punctuated by drunk Frenchmen tripping over guy-ropes regularly till the early hours. Both of us shared a dislike for French people en masse, who are almost worse than Germans, although the English are probably worst of all. Still, French women with pinnies, curlers, budgies, tortoises, etc. are as bad as the Americans.

'Graham left the tent at about six in the morning to be chased by the camp alsatian, and was questioned at tooth-point by the commandant. But somehow - by being a bewildered Englishman - he talked his way out.

'He was Adonis-like, with a very short Roman hairstyle bleached almost ash-blond, very fit and in fine condition from rugby and rock-climbing, with a week or two's tan, eyes very blue, and smoking a pipe which I thought was impossible for a gay.

'After that we made tentative arrangements to meet again which I didn't believe. The arrangement was he would leave his bike outside the Rosa Negra boutique and it would have

a copy of the Daily Telegraph stuffed in the back under the saddle. He used to cycle eleven miles into the town to meet me and I think the villa people were intrigued to know what he was doing....'

Click click rattle rattle slam.

'Hello Towser. Towser wowser who's a good boy tickle tickle under the rear armpits. Urrummmmm. Hellooo! David! Hellooo, David! Are you upstairs?'

(Silence.)

'DAVID! Where are you?'

'Don't make so much fucking noise, we're in here.' f.x.: Door opening. graham: Oh sorry, I didn't know you were recording.

'Yes we are, about you, so get out.'

'Well actually, David, I think we've probably done enough for the moment.'

'Oh great. Fine. I hope it's all right.'

'It sounded very good.'

'Thanks, Dave. God I'm dying for a gin and tonic. That voice-over went on for hours and hours. The same old thing. They were expecting me to make something funny which wasn't. Still, it's a hundred and fifty quid for half a day's work and it'll never be heard anyway.'

(graham sits. Slurp, slurp, slurp and slurp.)

'Did he talk about Ibiza?'

'Yes, I've got quite a bit of that.'

(Slurp slurp guzzle guzzle.)

'Did he tell you about the red snapper in the swimming-trunks?'

'Yes.'

'Me hiring the band to embarrass a table full of French tits in a restaurant?'

'Yes.'

'The mad cowboy who used to shoot up the town with his toy pistols?'

'Yes, that was really funny - what a character.'

'I think I need another of these. Fancy one?'

(alex shakes his head.)

(Glugglug. Schweppesss! Glugglugglug. Slurp.)

Ah that's better... I remember J. B. Priestley once gave me his description of the English character. It was at his house near Stratford-on-Avon. Barry Cryer and I, one Friday morning, were hurriedly trying to finish a script for Ronnie Corbett's situation comedy series No That's Me Over Here, and the bar was about to open. We wrote 'End of Part One' which completed the first half, and we thought, 'We'll easily finish the rest this afternoon.' We rushed off to the bar dutifully — we took it as a slight if we weren't the first scriptwriters in. We only just managed to beat Bernard McKenna who at that time was writing some blurb for the TV Times.

We all downed a few pints of lager before even the Sports Department had entered — a very cheery lot of non-professional drinkers, who pretend to be butch by punching each other in the balls and telling filthy jokes that everyone's heard before. If there's one thing I can't stand, it is being told jokes. Bernard and I had an intra-company feud with the Sports Department. We would send them messages through the internal mail containing banana peel, bits of dried apricot, cigarette ash, etc., and rearrange their offices for them in the hope that we would hear a wrestling commentary over a horse-race. I'd decided this was High Noon. The showdown of Comedy us Sports was on.

Being wheeled around by Barry on a beer-barrel trolley after having announced that all the Sports Department were pansies, wearing a Gay Lib badge, I attempted to kiss each of them. They resisted fiercely (except for Jimmy Hill, who really is a 'good chap') and stopped punching each other in the balls. I then asked to be wheeled over to a table where I thought I detected two extremely uptight gentlemen who were wearing uptight clothes and talking very earnestly about uptight business. By now I was sitting on the trolley, glid beside them, and said, 'Hello, I'm homosexual.' They looked uneasy until I explained to them I wasn't going to rape them on the spot, and that I'd been living with a steady boyfriend for some years, and could be a useful member of society. They seemed to understand, even bought me a drink, and we finished up talking about sex as though it were something natural. I waved goodbye to the Head of Religious

Broadcasting and his friend and joined a very cheerful Barry in another corner of the bar.

Barry, Bernard, and Richard O'Sullivan (who was doing amazing tricks with cigarettes), sat there for a while, realizing that we'd trounced the Sports Department and thinking about who should be the next victim. After a few lagers we all decided childishly to pick on an innocent but effete (which is also nearly effeminate) director of Light Entertainment who had just appeared in the bar. He stood, trying not to look effete or effeminate, talking to a group of important-looking people who were obviously to do with the production of some terrible trashy programme he was trying to get off the ground. He was some distance from us, but we decided that we would laugh every time he opened his mouth. The rest of the bar couldn't understand our laughter and thought we were just pissing around as usual. But as the director carried on opening his mouth, we began to laugh in earnest to the extent that Bernard McKenna, after twenty minutes of it, was actually able to wring out his handkerchief.

After a tough lunchtime like this, Barry and I trudged back to our office to complete the script. Now for years Barry Cryer had been eulogizing J. B. Priestley - a very good man I thought, but no need to go on about him to the point of nausea. I said, 'Let's go and see him.' Barry said, 'What?' and cavalagerially I said, 'Why not? Let's give him a ring. I'm doing a show in Coventry next week, which is quite close to his house, you're coming to the show, ring him up and we'll pop round to see him for tea.'

Barry almost as cavalagerially, rang up to find the great J.B.'s number from his agent's office, and then dialled the Priestley household.

'Hullow,' saidJ.B.

'Hullow,' said Barry, after climbing back onto his chair.

Barry explained that there were three TV scriptwriters who'd like to come and have a chat with him, that they would be in his area, and loved his work so much. He said, 'It's not an interview is it?' Barry said, 'No,' and he said, 'See you on Monday afternoon at four.'

Barry was so overwhelmed he stapled his nostrils together. Next Monday we arrived at the house at the appropriate time

- a very pauntly house I may add - and pulled the bell chain. As no-one arrived for some time, John Cleese, G. Chapman and David Sherlock, who were by now accompanying Barry Cryer on his pilgrimage, stood waiting. Barry jokingly did obeisance on his knees to the very front door of his hero, which was unfortunately observed by the maid as she opened the door. We were shown through the marbled corridor to His study, admired the flamingoes in the pond, stared at ninety-five million books written by J. B. Priestley, sat down, and were all suitably ill at ease, with the exception of the lager-and-by-now-gin-and-slimline-tonic-with-ice-but-no-lemon-in-it-sodden me. A thing called polite conversation was made, which bored me rigid. Why should anyone be so much in awe? J.B., being the extremely intelligent man that he is, sensed this, and started to talk about the only subject that he had in common with any of us, which turned out to be my pipe, a quite respectable Dunhill. We chatted about the different sizes and shapes, and the fact that Ralph Richardson sends him a Dunhill every year because of a successful run he'd done in a Priestley play, An Inspector Calls, I think it's called, although I'm not very attentive.

After a few garbled and inept nothings from us (with the exception of pipes) we went through to the lounge to have tea and cucumber sandwiches with his wife, Jacquetta Hawkes. I think all of us felt that we could ask the question, 'Now please tell me everything about the world,' and that he and she could have given a reasonable answer. While talking about some work that had been done, but done incorrectly, in the garden, he made a remark I liked about English people. He explained that the biggest fault of the English, but perhaps their most charming attribute, was that they had one foot in America, and the other in Mexico.

We tittered grovellingly. I had another cucumber sandwich and said to Jacquetta, 'These are delicious, but are you any good at doing links?'

'Of course I am,' she said. 'I'm doing one now.' And so, from cucumber sandwiches we turn to Essene manuscripts. And from that immediately to Ibiza, on July 20th 1966.

Thanks, Big J., that was really super.

The weather had been ideal for six weeks and encouraging naughty behaviour in twenty-five-year-old adolescents.

I'd been meeting David furtively on lonely beaches, with the inhabitants of the villa, particularly Loretta Feldman, wondering where I was spending my time. I didn't want anyone to know of my shameful behaviour, but the idea of a portion of naughtiness in a real bed overwhelmed me. Which is why, very grown-up and hairy though I was, I woke up one morning to find myself in bed with a young gentleman.

Someone was trying to get into my room which, with the precaution of a drunk, I had locked the night before. Knock! knock! knock! went the door. I froze as though it was Armageddon. Knock! knock! knock! went the bloody door again.

'Hello Graham,' said Humphrey Barclay from outside. He had never offered me coffee before and I think had sussed out that something naughty had been going on in my room. I shouted, 'NO, THANK YOU!' in capitals and added, Til see you soon,' while turning vermilion.

I signalled David into silence, unlocked the door and walked out with all the nonchalance of a guilty child-mol-ester. I went into the kitchen and saw H.B. Why was he still there? He should have been on the beach. I looked out of the window and saw the clouds. It was the one dull day. Julian Slade had decided to stay at home and paint on the verandah. Alan Hutchieson was doing sketches in the main bedroom. Marty and Loretta Feldman were not quite having it off but with the door open. And so I stood in the kitchen making small talk with H. such as, 'Oh dear, it's a dull day, perhaps it will rain.'

'Yes it does look dull,' said Humphrey. 'It might even rain. Why was your door locked?... You've got a scratch on your back.'

'Oh it's nothing, must have hit a wall or something.'

'Whose are those pears?'

'Tim's I think.'

While he was sorting out the salt for his egg, I surreptitiously stuffed a pear down the front of my trunks and while saying, 'Ugh! it was a late night. See you later,' I went into the corridor outside my bedroom and threw the pear onto the bed containing David, in a kind of pathetic breakfastorial

gesture. I quickly whispered an arrangement to meet him that evening in the bar near the Rosa Negra. At the same time I explained to him the need to be v.v. silent and that I would move down the corridor, wait until H. Barclay was engaged in the kitchen and Alan Hutchieson wrapped up in roughing the outline of a tree and Julian Slade was more fully engrossed in the tinting of his fucking bougainvillea.

It was arranged that I should sit on the sofa in the main room until such time as the desired situation had been met. From the sofa I could see all three people doing their things. I coughed once while they were all looking at their own activities, which gave David time to dash out of my bedroom into the corridor. Looking around with affected ease I waited for another convenient moment and coughed again, this time incredibly loud, so that everyone would look at me rather than David who was rushing down the stairs and out.

'He looks nice,' said Julian as he looked down from his painting, not realizing who'd just walked past. 'Who's that Jules?' said Humphrey, rushing onto the balcony.

'I don't know, never seen him before. Very brown isn't he? What a tan! And I bet that's all over....'

'Have you seen him before Graham?' asked Humphrey.

'Good grief, no... probably just walking past.'

'You mean the one eating the pear?' asked Julian.

'No that huge bloke,' said Humphrey, 'the one all covered in grease, sand, and donkey fluff.' 'Where, where?' asked Julian.

'The one wearing the athletic support and the Manchester United bathing cap.... It's... it's... it's John! He's back!'

John Cleese (for it was he) took a bionic leap and arrived on the roof of the house next door, unconscious. We dragged him down and revived him with caffeine enemas, but he was soon in good shape, and, wrapped in a blanket, he sat on the sofa and told us, as we all listened with characteristically bated breath, his ridiculous yarn about how he'd just swum from Wembley, having seen England beat West Germany in the final of the World Cup.

Marty Feldman and Loretta arrived, dressed with their usual modesty as D'Artagnan and Kemal Ataturk. They wondered where John had been, where I had been, and what

the score had been. '4-2,' said John. 'That greengrocer isn't around still is he?'

'No,' said Marty.

'Who was that throwing pears away?' asked Loretta.

'No idea,' I said.

'He had gorgeous eyes.'

'We've just got some tickets for a bullfight tonight. We can all go,' said Marty. All except me cried, 'Great, great.'

'Oh damn! We only got seven.'

'Don't worry, John can have mine,' I said. 'I thought I'd just wander around town a little, I want an early night anyway and the throat's still playing up.'

They seemed not to notice anything wrong with my excuse, and I left soon after for town with a song in my thighs.

I threw my bicycle and Daily Telegraph down in the dust under a tree near the Rosa Negra, and ran upstairs to the balcony bar. I was nervous, and swallowed two swift Cuba Libras, and went to look for David. He was there, sitting at a table on the edge of the balcony. We spent half an hour exchanging rather wet conversation, with me pretending to be interested in theatre and him pretending to be interested in television. Then

I heard John talking to Connie outside the boutique below us. The whole party had returned early from the bullfight, having found the sight of an inept killer of bulls repellent. John didn't feel like a drink, neither did Connie, so they both went off. Marty, Loretta and the rest were off not being noticed somewhere, but Alan Hutchieson said, 'See you later, I think I'll just have a quick one and a look at the crossword.' I heard him climbing the stairs and, with fear threatening the hygiene of my underpants, I told David I'd see him later

at the floating bar in the harbour, and fled to the bog. I was in a hell of a state. David was deliberately wearing tightly suggestive clothes and I couldn't be seen with him - certainly not by a reporter from The Times. Through the keyhole I could see Alan, who sat down opposite David and read almost every word in The Times before starting on the crossword.

After about an hour the waiters were beginning to make even louder knocking noises on the door - there was only one bog.

Half an hour later the constant pounding reminded me of sitting in a public convenience in Dresden on St. Valentine's Day 1945. I made being ill noises, simulating vomiting and worse, and even considered jumping out of the window into the street below, but then Alan was facing in that direction and would have seen me anyway. He wouldn't move. Why not? He ordered another drink and went back to the crossword - I nearly went mad. Another bang on the door. I made more vomiting noises in Spanish.

Finally he asked for the bill, and haggled agonizingly over the tip. I was hoping David hadn't left our rendezvous, as I was still uncertain of his affection for me, and I knew he had some French git as a 'friend' on the island. As soon as I saw Alan leave and get on his bike, I unlocked the door and came out rubbing my stomach and going 'Eurrgh!' in front of irate dago waiters.

I ran down the streets to the harbour and into the bar. David was there. Because I imagined my 'offence' to be punishable by shame and social rejection in perpetuity (and being kneed in the groin by the police whenever they had a moment to spare), there was nowhere for us to go except beside some uncomfortable rocks just beyond the harbour. But lying down under the stars with the person I loved, I couldn't think that any bug-eyed monster from another world would have objected. And even God has his compassionate moments, presumably.

The next morning we were all having coffee (a euphemism for gin and slimline tonic with ice but no lemon in it, in my case) and just as I was making excuses for not going to the same beach as the others, we saw what appeared to be, and

was, David Paradine Frost walking up the street. He had just arrived, having popped over from London for lunch to see how John and I were getting on with the script. He'd no idea where we were staying but then Ibiza is a small island for a man who thinks he's that big. We called out to him. He joined us and chatted intermittently about the film and how super everything was, while signing autographs for English tourists.

He ended up staying one-and-a-half-days - a record holiday. Tim and I took him out to eat and using one of the least sophisticated drugs in the world — alcohol — saw through the outer shell of his psyche to find surprisingly pleasant contents. The sort of man, rather like John Cleese, with whom you would feel you had more in common, if only they drank as much as you did.

Several years later I went to see David at his home in London on a purely friendly visit. He couldn't understand this and was certain that I was trying to sell him something, like a television or film script. I wasn't, but even after reading this I'm sure he'll suspect that I still am.

On his last morning in Ibiza David (F) wanted to go to the beach. The others had all left by then - or hadn't come back - how the hell am I supposed to remember everything - I mean it's difficult writing autobiographies you know -specially when you're doing it with someone else. I'd arranged to meet David (S) at Calla Bassa, but since there was no-one else in the house to look after David (F) I couldn't leave him alone. I said, 'Let's go to Calla Bassa, it's a nice beach,' half hoping that David (S) wouldn't show up, since I'd got my boss with me. The two of us rode down to S. Antonio, but unfortunately the last boat had left for Calla Bassa.

David (F) has never even had a daunt: and wasn't about to then. Without speaking a word of Spanish, he shoved 59,000 pesetas into the hands of a previously lazing dago, and off we went, just the two of us on a caique that would normally carry seventy people.

At Calla Bassa David romped around the beach attempting to play football — I didn't want to join in — and amused himself paddling in three feet of water. He can't swim. He

was wearing my snorkel and goggles and became more and more amused and high-pitched in his description of the tiny animals called fish that he'd previously only ever seen in restaurants. In the water, without his girdle, in profile he resembled Alfred Hitchcock. But it was good to see him enjoying himself outside a board meeting. He joined me at the beach-bar and so did David (S). And like St Peter I pretended he was only a casual acquaintance.

And on the way back to the airport David (F) said, That boy on the beach?'

'Oh yes,' I said, still hoping to avoid the issue.

'You know, the one with the big eyes that came up and spoke to us. He's a nice young man. He's a homosexual isn't he?'

I said, 'Probably,' and he said, 'It's a pity isn't it?'

I didn't say it but inside I thought, 'Damn you - no it fucking isn't.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Reincarnation

The Coming-Out Party. A Platinum Hydrangea OfMontreaux. The Lost Epistle Of St Paul To The New Zealanders.

In the course of David Frost's 'One-day Holiday' in Ibiza he checked up that John and I had actually been ^ doing some writing and even 'squawked' at it, which we took for ^laughter (but he pointedly looked forward to reading more than ten pages); said that he thought that it'd be a good idea if John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Marty Feldman and myself did a TV comedy show together; and added that he was looking for something for Ronnie Corbett to do, remarking 'Perhaps you, Graham and Barry Cryer would like to have a go at writing it - a kind of middle-class situation comedy - there hasn't really been one.'

That all sounded very good to me. Although I knew him, I'd never written with Barry¹ before. 'How would it be if Eric Idle, Barry and myself were to write a pilot programme for the series?'