I. Whom you, dear reader, should know slightly better now than I did then.

'Super/ said David. 'Super,' and went off to frolic in the shallow waters.

And so what was to become The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimtner, later re-written with Peter Cook; At Last the 1948 Show (very much a progenitor of Python); and several series of Ronnie Corbett's No That's Me Over There would never have happened if it hadn't been for forty-five minutes of David Frost's enthusiasm and confidence prior to paddling.

When I returned from Ibiza I had three months to fill in before taking up an Ear, Nose and Throat 'House-job', and a secure future in medicine seemed to be mapped out for me. Too secure, too mapped out. If I carried on in medicine, I realized I'd have a pretty good idea exactly what I'd be doing ten, twenty and even thirty years from that moment. It struck me like a halibut from the North Sea that that was not the way my life should go at all. What was the point of working on through up to the age of sixty-five and then taking a chance on a better reincarnation next time?

Instead of filling in with an E.N.T. locum I decided to see if I could 'earn' money by writing 'professionally' and so I wrote sketches for Roy Hudd - a programme called the Illustrated Weekly Hudd, and, for a little extra money at Christmas, wrote the linking material for a Petula Clark show. The sketches for Roy came easily enough; it was like writing for The Frost Report. But trying to think up seven different introductions for 'The Other Man's Grass is Always Greener' and ten for 'Downtown' and the odd humorous remark for such people as Sacha Distel, Anthony Newley and Johnny Mathis was really quite a feat. Despite this, I was hooked by it all. It was Showbiz for Dr G....

The pilot script for Ronnie Corbett was approved and the three of us wrote the scripts for seven programmes. Eric, not finding sit-com was his trunk of marbles, opted out leaving Barry and me to go on and write a further forty-seven half-hour programmes. The first of these got very little critical attention. I think the Sun newspaper quite liked it. George Melly in the Observer hated it. But then, most unusually for a critic, George Melly, after having seen the second programme, recanted completely with an enthusiastic review ending 'Mea culpaV 'A friend for life,' I thought. Ronnie

Corbett got pretty good viewing figures too, which rather annoyed John Cleese, as our very own At Last the 1948 Show was less widely seen.

But 1948 did get a lot of favourable attention from the Press and quite a cult following and Marty Feldman rocketed overnight to Intergalacticsuperstardom. After his own BBC show won the 'Platinum Hydrangea of Montreux' award he 'zapped-off Stateside-wards-ville' for a wallooming career in the Movies.

Between the first run of seven and the second of six 1948 shows I was living with David in a flat in Hampstead.

The Coming Out Party

22 Gayton Crescent, nineteen sixty-thing.

'Bring-bring', said the telephone.¹

'It's all right, Dave, I'll get it.'

'Bring-bring' it opined again,² and before I could stop him»Dave had picked up the handset and was answering. I rushed up and thumped him across the gob to stop him saying any more.

'Who was that?' said my mother.

'Oh it was one of the painters,' I said, knowing that she knew I was decorating my flat.

'It sounded like one of the painters I've spoken to before.'

'Well, yes, it probably did a bit.'

'It's a bit late for a painter isn't it?'

'No. No, you just don't understand London, mother. This is not like Leicester.' For a whole year I had lived in terror, an almost thorpeian terror, of being found out for what I was - a

1. A slight inaccuracy (see page 109). It was more like 'Bleunngg-bleunngg'.

2. See 1.

Fuck it, I thought. Why go through this agony? I decided that I would invite all my closest friends to a party to meet David and explain to them all that I was a bit 'bent'. The agony of keeping silent had become too great. Having to explain to Marty, John and Tim that I had to 'rush off to St Swithin's to cash a cheque', when I should have been writing with them at 10 o'clock in the evening, became boring, worrying and unnecessary. I thought, why hide something from intelligent people like that. I was ashamed that I wasn't admitting that Dave was my closest friend. He came to most of the recordings of The 1948 Show and sat at the back anonymously in the audience and couldn't come with all the other people's wives and girlfriends to the bar after the recordings. I felt unable, stupidly, to take David there. I always noticed him in the audience and we exchanged a glance or two but I even felt ashamed of doing that.

So, after a year, I decided that this party would be a good idea to get it all out into the open once and for all. I invited Marty, John, Tim, Eric Idle, Barry Cryer, Dick Vosburgh and Beryl - almost everyone that I knew - I don't think David Frost could make it, he was in a meeting at the time -and even my ex-girlfriend, and one or two other people from St Swithin's. This was a 'Coming-out Party'.

We laid on a very good meal in our little basement flat, a buffet. We had splendid food and lots to drink, because I still felt a bit nervous about the occasion, and I thought I'd better get everyone pretty pissed before making - well, not an announcement - just wandering from group to group explaining that this was David and introducing him. And that's what I did. It was interesting seeing various people's reactions to this. From Marty, it wasn't so much surprise, as disbelief, but then laughter - being an East-End lad brought up in a theatrical family with a telluric wife he wasn't worried about it at all. And obviously he had met similar people before - he was a B.A. (first class honours with distinction) from the University of Life (Commercial Road College). He was telluric too, it was fine, and I felt a little bit relieved about that. I then went on to chat to the others.

John Cleese already knew about it because I thought that just to announce it to him, since he was one of my closest

friends and we wrote together, would be tactless or even a form of betrayal. I'd actually told him about two nights before this party, so he wasn't surprised, but was still in a state of shock about it all, because it was totally, totally alien to him - such a thing was unthinkable and this was going to be the ruin of my life. Although he was still friendly he was completely at a loss to give his feelings. But his girl friend at the time, Pippa, was a lot more understanding. I've often found that women are a lot more understanding about male homosexuality than men; because I suppose men feel threatened in some way. I don't know what it is, but your average butch male is probably worried about certain tendencies and things that went on at school, and now is so blee-din' butch and grimly heterosexual that he wouldn't admit to such a thing even existing, except with scorn or in various puny jokes about people wearing pink and mincing around.

The other reactions: Barry Cryer was fine, he took it all in his stride because of his previous showbiz background - he did write for Danny La Rue, after all. My ex-girlfriend, unfortunately, ran off in tears, accompanied by a couple of people from St Swithin's, so that was a bit of an unhappy moment, but she came to terms with it eventually. The other extraordinary reaction was from Eric Idle, who was quite stunned - obviously he was quite young then, but I had to explain to him what it all meant - that I did actually go to bed with people of the same sex and that it was quite fun and we actually loved each other - it wasn't at all naughty. Now, of course, he's probably even more liberated than I am - not in the same way, but in 750 other ways. Being the only child of a mother who looks exactly like Mary Whitehouse can't have helped to give him an open outlook towards other human beings, or could it?

I felt a lot better after the party.

But it was about two years later than that before I could tell my parents, which was a very difficult moment. By then I had a flat in Belsize Park. They'd visited that flat, and by now they'd spoken to David on the phone and they knew that he was living there. I made elaborate attempts to make it look as though there was a separate bedroom for him and had to rush around the house, hiding things the whole time, to

make it look as though I was in the master bedroom sleeping in a large size double bed with no-one else and making sure there were no head marks on the pillow next to mine - literally that sort of detail because my mother would have noticed - as they do. Of course the first thing my mother ever did when she came to the house was want to put her coat in my bedroom, and I knew damn well she'd have a quick pry -look through all the cupboards, under the floor boards etc. I usually tried to insist that I put her coat in my bedroom for her, but she'd always try the door, nevertheless, and go in.

Eventually she got so inquisitive that I had to lock the door. She had always been a bit of a Hercule Poirot. I remember her finding a contraceptive in my pocket when I was about fourteen. I only bought the thing to see what it looked like. It was a question of going into a barber's shop in those days and trying to raise enough courage to ask for one - I think they cost two and nine at the time - for three. I was a tall child for fourteen so it didn't look too unnatural to the barber and I did get the 'Was there anything else?' treatment and said ⁴Yes, there is,' and promptly gave him 3/9 and got the packet. Partly, I suppose, I wanted to find out what they felt like. And then you never know your luck.

Unfortunately Hercule Poirot found one in my pocket and it was the usual, 'What's this?'

'I think maybe a friend must have put it in my pocket for a joke. I've never seen it before.'

The great detective was rather angry and explained that Mrs Wood's husband, over the road, uses those and they've got five children - it hasn't done them any good has it? My reply to that was, 'What if he'd never used any? How many would she have then?'

About a year later than the time when I was hiding things, I decided I'd just have to tell them. It was a waste of my time pretending and a waste of their time worrying. So I told my mother that David was my boy friend. I've never seen such rage, tears, stamping of little feet. It took me quite a long time to calm her down - luckily I was fortified on quite a lot of gin and tonic and was determined in my mind that everything was all right. I'd been in at the inception of the Gay Liberation movement in this country and so had a pretty solid

idea that what I was doing was not wrong and that to love another human being, of whatever sex, is surely an admirable thing. I wasn't taking any more, and while she was having her little fit, I stood firm and told her to shut up, that it was all pointless, she'd known David for a couple of years and neither of us had done any harm to the other. Still she screamed. Eventually she calmed down and then I said, 'Right, I'm just going to tell Dad.'

That started her up again: 'Oh no, no don't. It'll kill him.'

'No it won't, it won't.'

'Yes it will, it'll kill him, it'll kill him.'

'It won't, of course it won't. Shut up, I'm going to tell him.'

But eventually she persuaded me that it might have some adverse effect on him and she made me promise not to tell him. So they went home, my mother pretending that nothing had happened at all. She spent the next seven nights completely sleepless, until he eventually forced it out of her and said, 'Look, what the hell's the matter with you?' She explained to my father, who took it all in his stride.

I was on the way back from some show I was doing up north and was going to call in and see them at Leicester. I was too late really to call in and get back to London on time so I rang them up from a motorway service station and explained that I couldn't call. At the end of the conversation my father said, 'Oh Graham, your mother's been a bit upset the last week and I know what it's about. Look, don't worry about it, she doesn't understand these things.' I felt fine, that was good. Thereafter David has been like another son to them and they've been absolutely splendid ever since. But it is very difficult for people to break that kind of news to their parents. They should. What's the point in hiding things and telling lies? That's what I hated, and having to cover up something. I had always had to watch myself on the phone and in conversation:

'What are you doing tomorrow?'

'Oh we're going to...'

'What do you mean weV

'Well, ha, ha, no, sorry, I meant I.'

I wouldn't encourage anyone to lie¹ but that's one to watch out for - the 'WE': 'Oh we're just sitting at home watching television - er, I'm just sitting at home watching television.'

I had learnt about the Gay Liberation movement through a German friend of mine called Jurgen, who was the son of a German steel manufacturer that provided a lot of arms for the last war - they were second only to the Krupps. I'm digressing for a moment, but he told me that after the war the school children in Germany were regularly shown films by the Americans of the Nazi atrocities: Jurgen at nine years old saw emaciated corpses dumped into communal graves, people strung up by piano wire and other nauseating antics from Auschwitz, Dachau etc. To show such films to German adults was a bit like rubbing a dog's nose in its own dirt: a bad policy. It's better to be kind to the dog - show him how to behave properly and then reward him. But to do such a thing to children was Freud-blenching.

Anyway Jurgen was the first male person I went with, with any kind of love in my heart, since meeting David. We were both twenty-eight or twenty-nine at the time. He was running a restaurant in Ebury Street which David and I went to virtually every other night - and it was Jurgen who first introduced me to the fact that there were Gay Lib meetings going on.

One night in Jurgen's restaurant there was an American lady who was out with a paid escort. She was on her own in London, a rich, middle-aged, blue-rinsed-hair, Daughter of the Revolution type. She was having a great time, it was her last night in town. She obviously wasn't going to get anywhere with her rather young escort but she was enjoying herself. She'd been to the theatre, was enjoying London -because London was a fairly swinging place with the Fab Four, Sergeant Pepper, A Whiter Shade of Pale - to name but two - everyone feeling relaxed and everyone richer too. I was just beginning to earn a little bit of money myself and so felt braver than ever. Anyway to go back to the blue-rinsed lady and the escort... at the table opposite them was a group of what you could very well call 'queens', who were being rather precious and superior. They were far more sophisti-

I. That's my prerogative: you write your own autobiography.

cated than this rather crude lady on the table opposite them. The kind of comments they made were really rather annoying. I can't recall them exactly, but you could tell from the atmosphere at the table they were doing a lot of sneering and it angered me. So I took a rose from my table and went and gave it to the lady. She was thrilled by this: that someone at another table should come up and give her a rose, simply because she was a nice person; she was absolutely thrilled by it.

The table full of queens laughed, thinking I was sending her up, so I went over to their table and said, icily, 'That is my mother.' They sank into silence. 'Anyone got anything to say about my mother?' They looked rather embarrassed and ate their meal in silence after that. I just went back to my table and glared frequently at them for the rest of my meal.

I had put some money into Gay News, a fortnightly newspaper, to help get it started and my point in doing so was that I thought that it would be valuable if someone, say, in Huddersfield, could buy a paper like that and realize that he wasn't the only homosexual in the world, because in Huddersfield at that time there wouldn't really have been many people that he could have talked to about such things. It would have been difficult for him to talk to a doctor, a priest or a schoolteacher and so he would have had to resort to any outlet he could find, either to pornographic literature, public lavatories, or sitting next to people in cinemas and doing the kneesy-kneesy bit, all of which would have been likely to land him in a great deal of trouble. If someone like him, or indeed her, could find out where to go, like advice centres, clubs or discos - places where there were a lot of people who felt the same way - he or she wouldn't be quite so lonely and there would be fewer suicides. Suicide was quite common amongst lonely gay people in Britain at that time and there was also a thing called police entrapment.¹ There was one incident where a youth (by youth I mean a person under twenty-one years of age), had been with several gentlemen in the district. With promises of leniency the police persuaded him to reveal the names of his lovers. Filled with remorse at what he'd done, he committed suicide: two of the other five

I. Policemen posing as pouffs for proof

H3

'Suuddus fo }o\ v Sutop dxdm /fot/j,

men involved ended their own lives because of the shame of it all. This could not happen today.

Suddenly I feel like digressing for another moment about morality. I intend to publish here for the first time what I believe to be a missing portion of the New Testament. The papyrus manuscript, translated here from the original Greek, was discovered in 1979 by the author at Auckland airport. He was there in transit to Sydney, Australia on the 5th November whiling away a few moments, idly looking under rocks when the manuscript¹ was given to him by a Maori chieftain and toilet attendant.

The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the New Zealanders

A.D.59 CHAPTER ONE

i In which Paul castigateth the Antipodean*; 2, 3, empty showing of holiness; 4 of fornicators and abusers of mankind; 3 of poverty and tolerance; 8 exhorteth them to beware of false prophets.

1. Dear New Zealanders,

It has come to my attention from our brother Hillary, the Beekeeper of Auckland, that all is not well in your community.

2. What is all this nonsense about certain of your number kneeling down in front of crosses? That is naughty in the extreme; you've changed the glory of an incorruptible God into an image.

3. I understand that the very same people collect together in churches for the purpose of worship. Who needs it? God

doesn't. I've asked Him; He's fed up with it, especially psalms, they give Him a headache and cause his teeth to strike together. Don't they realize their praise is meaningless? Why can't they concentrate on being better behaved towards one another and forget about this empty show of holiness? He also says, though don't quote me on this, 'They can stuff it up their arses.' He said that, not I. I, a mere mortal, would not have put it quite like that. I'm afraid I think too much about my earthly reputation; but I cannot help agreeing with Him. About fornicators, adulterers, effeminates and abusers of mankind: I am constantly being misquoted on this point. I would like to state quite clearly that sex is nothing more than a way in

1. The manuscript contained two leaves of an Alexandrian text type, similar to the Beatty Biblical Papyrus II P⁴⁶. But this was probably written by a scribe whose native tongue was Coptic. Once the mis-spellings and itacisms are corrected, it closely resembles the Greek of the earlier Alexandrian witnesses.

us

which two or more people can have lots of harmless cheap fun, provided that they are clean and that the aim is not reproduction. The betterment of the lot of mankind is impossible without strict limits on reproduction, so don't make the mistake the rest of the world has made and over-populate yourselves. Not everyone has to have children, for Christ's sake. He didn't have any, and I should know. If you really feel you have to have children, then make sure that, as parents, you have no more than you can properly look after. 1 don't know how all this nonsense about counting souls got started, it just leads to overcrowding and poverty. Look, poverty isn't all it's cracked up to be; I think the old needle /rich man /camel story is being misunderstood out of context. Of course worrying about earthly possessions makes it difficult to concentrate on spiritual things but, dear friends, isn't it also difficult to concentrate on spiritual things if you are an ill-nourished, diseased down-and-out. The deprived may also become the depraved.¹ 5. I've had a lot of trouble with this poverty idea in Rome where the notion unfortunately seems to be catching on that the Church

1. See West Side Story. You should time. (G.)

should be richer than anyone else on the grounds that only they can handle it. Peter, for instance, scared Ananias and Saphirra to death for hard cash in the name of the Church. I said to him, 'Now, that wasn't very Christ-like, was it?' And he told me to get stuffed as he was a Super-Apostle.

6. You seem to have made more progress in stamping out the primitive tribal mutilation of circumcision than they have in more venal communities, yet it is still recommended, so the Beekeeper tells me, by some wretched 'physicians' who seek to line their pockets or cling to their Judaic ancestry....

7. Talking of tribes, from what I've heard, there could still be more understanding and tolerance between the two main tribes in your islands. I hope this is heeded more than my letter to the Tasmanians....

8. I exhort you to:

be em pat he tic; be splendid;

be aware of your own ignorance, and, as always, beware of those who claim to lead you to better self-knowledge by taking your money. Must finish now as I have to catch the post. Lots of love, P. Kiss, kiss, kiss.

n't sit at home reading books all the

I46

There has been much discussion about the authenticity of this Pauline Epistle. The fact that it predates Captain Cook's voyages is countered by other instances of long distance travel predating Western historical records and carbon 14 and thermoluminescent age verification. Most theologians, however, give little credence to so-called scientific proofs and consider that it could not have been written by Paul in that the writer of this letter finishes his sentences properly, doesn't become over-enthusiastic and get lost when making a point, and also is not rabidly anti-women. However, other biblical scholars point out that the writer's fixation about circumcision and his paranoia about his position as an apostle are typical of St Paul. They believe that this may be one of the few Pauline letters not to have suffered editorially or to have been largely rewritten by second century politico-biblical hacks, since it had been carried swiftly, thousands of miles from the great Bowdlerization-centre in Rome.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Two Films and Six Snakes

'Additional Material By Jim Viles And Kurt Loggerhead'. P. Sellars.

Y. Brynner. U. Andress. Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus. The Air Oscillates

With Boggling Minds.

After two series of At Last the 1948 Show, John Cleese and I decided to spend our time trying to write films 'and we began work on a film which would have starred Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman (in the role of 'Owltruss'). It was only ever provisionally entitled Renta-sleuth and was about the misadventures at a security firm who, unknown to themselves, were hired both to protect the secrets of the manufacture of a new nerve gas and at the same time to commit industrial espionage by stealing the plans for its manufacture. We wrote what we considered to be a very funny script and worked on it with the splendid director Charles Crichton, who directed several Ealing Comedies, including The Lavender Hill Mob. Unfortunately, we were contractually committed to the Frost Organisation, which meant that the film did eventually get made but was produced by Ned Sherrin under the witty title Rentadick. Seeing

the way things were going for this venture, John and I refused to take any further part in it.

We did see a screening of the film after which we decided that even our names should be removed from the credits. Otherwise we would have felt like accessories to the theft of our own valuables. I am convinced that the original script could still be filmed: the connection between it and the one Mr Sherrin had produced would be unnoticeable. We fought to have our credits removed. His film does, therefore, have the unique distinction of having the following writers' credits:

[a blank space] additional material by Jim Viles and Kurt Loggerhead

It was during this period that we were visited by a strange, portly¹ American producer who had heard of 'two new young brilliant English screen-writers'. Having looked him up in the film and TV year-book, we'd come to the decision that his credits amounted to cinematic ordure. John had always had an explicable fondness for soft cuddly toys and stuffed animals, particularly at that stage ferrets and mice. He must have had fourteen or fifteen of them and so before the unpauntly producer arrived in our office we'd arranged for a furry creature to be peering out from behind every picture, out of every cupboard - behind the clock; tails could be seen disappearing under doors and chairs and little pink eyes peered in through the windows. We were anxious to see how he would react. The poor man came in and sat down and began to tell us something of the plot of this marvellous movie. I remember at one point he was saying how we could go anywhere with this picture. He was saying that in one scene we could have the heroes making their exit from a medieval town. We could have 'Ernest Borgnine on a hog and Kirk Douglas on a hog and Jack Palance on a hog, all of them on hogs leaving this town' - couldn't we picture it? We stared at him with growing doubt.

As he tried to continue his story he must have noticed a large number of stuffed animals peering directly at him from various parts of the room. He coughed a couple of times,

i. In no way pauntly.

brought out a handkerchief and thirty or forty brightly coloured tranquillizer pills fell to the carpet. John, the ferrets and I tried not to notice as he picked them up and hurriedly popped a few of them into his mouth and we found ourselves saying that we would let him know....

Imagine our surprise.... No, don't, why should you when it's perfectly possible for me to explain it...? A week later John and I were more pleased than we'd ever been to receive a call from Peter Sellers who wondered if we could spare some time - a week, maybe two, to do some re-writing on a film he was about to make called The Magic Christian. We said we were interested - we liked the sound of the money particularly and he sent round copies of the original Terry Southern book and screenplay. We found the book rather 'episodic' and too much of its humour relied on the fact that given sufficient money, you can make people do anything, a rather too obvious point. But several of the episodes were extremely funny and we felt we could add to it. One of our main tasks also was to write in a new character to be played by Ringo Starr. Well, we wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and we wrote quite well, so much so that on the basis of the re-written script the producers were able to raise the money for the project.

Peter Sellers I liked a great deal but he was somewhat insecure in his judgement in that he would fall about having read a scene one evening and we would arrive the next morning to find that this scene 'no longer worked' - Peter's milkman apparently had not laughed at it. While I had a great deal of sympathy for Peter and could understand how difficult it must be for someone in his position really to trust anyone else's judgement, I was angered by the fact that as soon as 'shooting' began, Terry Southern was sent for and the 'original' script reinstated.

I watched the first day's rushes, a scene in which Peter, as Guy Grand, with his purchased son, Youngman Grand (Ringo Starr), was wandering through Sothebys. Peter was handing over enormous quantities of cash for works of art while Ringo followed with a shopping trolley ticking off the list of Rembrandts, Picassos, Modiglianis etc., which, once bought, were thrown carelessly into the trolley, to the dis-

tress of the 'Curator' (played by John Cleese) whom they aimed to drive mad. He was torn, as they knew he would be, between his love of fine art and fine money. Finally he had to submit to the indignity of allowing Sir Guy to buy a Rembrandt portrait, the only portion of which Youngman wanted for his collection was the nose (Ringo: 'I only like noses') which his father then promptly cut out, discarding the rest of the painting as so much rubbish.

Ringo got a lot of laughs in the rushes but Peter felt he hadn't really caught his own character quite correctly yet... and so the scene was re-shot, but only the end of the scene, cutting out most of Ringo's lines. In his insecurity Peter surrounded himself with more and more friends who would love to take a part, so the final cast was quite phenomenal; such people as Yul Brynner, Wilfred Hyde-White, Lawrence Harvey, Ursula Andress, Spike Milligan, even Roman Polan-ski. I certainly met a few people from the world of films during the shooting of this picture, but couldn't help feeling that somehow or other everything would have been better if more attention had been paid to the script than to everything being 'Wonderful'.... The final result, I suppose, was patch-ily funny and everyone was extremely good in it, but it was a missed opportunity....

In the spring of nineteen sixty-splunge John Cleese and Graham Chapman thought they might like to do another television programme. In another part of London, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle and an American draft-dodger (and who can blame him?) called Terry (Vance) Gilliam thought they would too. Their last show had been a zany, whacky, dappy, dippy, off-the-wall, over-the-carpet-through-the-french-windows-and-into-the-garden show

which included the splendid Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band with His Pauntliness, Neil Innes.... This 'effort' was a children's programme called Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Barry Took, ex-writing partner of Marty Feldman, conceived the notion that perhaps six of us could produce an intercoursingly-good-show. I was unaware of this at the time, but I have been told that one of the strong reasons for the amalgamation of the two groups was John Cleese's shall

we say 'affection'? for 'Mikey' (as he calls him) Palin, but I

know nothing of these things... and he certainly doesn't. This then was the beginning of Owl-Stretching-Time, The

Toad-Elevating-Moment, A-Horse-A-Bucket-A-Spoon, Sex-And-

Violence, Circus, Flying Circus, Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus,

and eventually Monty Python's Flying Circus, and now Python. I remember not being particularly interested in the debate

about titles and wouldn't have minded if the programme had

been called Lizard in that the contents of the programme

were more important than the title. Had I given up medicine

for such trivia?

me: I still like 'Owl-stretching Time'. (Of course, it was my idea.)

t. jones: Wheenh eheenh enehweech (and lots of noises only the Welsh can make.) I still like 'A Horse, A Bucket and A Spoon'. (His suggestion.)

j. cleese: Look, you Welsh git, we discarded that about two hours ago.

T. jones: Fucking hell. (Throwing papers to the floor.) Aren't we able to talk about things?

j. cleese: Yes, but do we have to go on and on and on about it in such a high pitched voice?

t.jones: Wheennh, wheenh... (j. cleese guffaws like a barrister having made his point. This winds t. jones up to near violence.) Of course I go on and on about it. It's fucking important.

j. cleese (patronizingly): Terry, would you or would you not say that the rest of us have already agreed that we don't like it?

A heavy glass ashtray is flung across the room, narrowly missing j. cleese. Characteristic of his temperament, t. jones calms down instantly, having vented his spleen on inanimate objects.

G. chapman: I still like 'Owl-Stretching Time'.

M. palin: No, I've gone off that a bit. I prefer 'Sex and Violence'. But I do think Terry's got a point about 'A Horse, A Bucket and A Spoon.'

j. cleese: Oh come off it....

And so, it was decided to call it Monty Python's Flying

Circus.

The BBC thought it was getting another in a long line

'Owl-stretching Time'

of unsuccessful, late-night, ex-undergraduate 'satire' shows. They were trying to find a successor to That Was The Week That Was then, and they still are. We didn't know what we expected to give them until we'd written it, but we knew that we weren't giving them 'topical' jokes, spoofs on political leaders or trenchant vignettes about life in North West One (London N.W.i). We were fed up with the traditional, well shaped 'sketch', the beginning, middle and the inevitable punch line. We wanted to be free to hang on to an idea for just three seconds or a whole half-hour if we felt like it. Despite its faults, the BBC hadn't succumbed to timid vapidity in those days and gave us a series of thirteen programmes to do, without demanding to see a script or a pilot programme and very gradually they even allowed us to do more and more outdoor filming. The style, if there is one, developed because we were the people we are.

Ian McNaughton, a tousle-haired loopy Scottish person was to be our director. Ethanol was a common bond between Ian and myself and I also liked his knack of getting things done while surrounded by apparent total chaos.

'Let's have a drink, hen, y'know what "a" mean? -Jesus Christ, they might grumble but we get twice as much fuckin' usable film in the can in a day as moast o'these other BBC pawnaggers... doan't ye think so Graham?....' "A" do. Let's have another.'

'Aye.'

The meticulous, orderly side of John Cleese's nature - the side that counts how many 'O', 'A' and 'S' levels and what sort of a degree a person has got, as in some way definitive of that person's all-round ability, was uncomfortable with some of Ian's character traits, particularly Ian's friendliness which made John freeze and resort to schoolmasterly sarcasm. Terry Jones wanted to direct everything that Ian was directing, but Ian was very tolerant and I really feel that Ian never got enough credit for his part in the creation of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

For the first filming session that we ever did for Python we went up to Bradford in Yorkshire. Why? We didn't know then but we now know that Ian had a sure-lay scrubber of a girl-friend tucked away up there for his delights. As if that

weren't enough, he booked a Soho stripper called Cecile Mould, whose naked top-half we needed in a newsagent's shop scene due to be shot some time later in London. However, Cecil Mould accompanied us to Bradford. We searched the script for the part Ian could have had in mind for her. This was not to be found and he was heard continually reassuring her that she would be used the next day.

A most peculiar lady, with excessively large breasts, which on close inspection to my trained eye, had a series of half inch barely visible scars around the periphery of each paraboloid protuberance. This to me was evidence of some early form of surgical cosmetic 'enhancement', the injection of silicone quite possibly, most of which, on palpation, would have appeared to have hardened somewhat over the years, giving one the sensation of cushions firmly filled with gravel, making her surname curiously apt. These scars, she claimed, were the result of an occurrence in a night club when she had had the misfortune to trip up and fall bosom-down into a tray full of empty glasses - the glasses presumably being arranged with surgical precision.

Unfortunately for Ian, Miss Mould was not a man's woman. I first noticed this while travelling back from some filming in the minibus with her. While I was delighted that she had placed her hand down the front of my trousers and I, settling back and anticipating an enjoyable fondle, screamed out at the sudden pain occasioned by the nipping together and tearing of my prepuce by the said bitch, Ms Mould, who subsequently, while we were changing back at the hotel, caught Terry Jones with a similar playful blood-letting 'tweak' on the left nipple. Suddenly the reason for Ian's scars became more apparent and he, too, was anxious to send the lady back to her natural habitat.

The next day the camera was set-up in what passed for one of Bradford's night spots, complete with vomit in all the basins in the gents' loo. This was not a pleasant place to be at nine o'clock in the morning. The cast of Monty Python's Flying Circus sat around in assorted costumes while Ms Mould's strip act was performed with the highly improbable excuse of 'Well, hens, eh, we can use it as a link p'raps -know what "a" mean?'

Fortunately it was all over in time for her to catch the 10.30 train back to London.

Filming was always short sprigs of activity and large vacuoles of waiting around. Thoughts of sub-atomic particles occupied many tedious long waiting around bits. I wondered how many million neutrinos were zapping straight through my head at light-type speed every micro-micro-second.

I considered the neutrino. A particle having no mass: neither a positive or negative charge, just a characteristic spin, consisting of nothing else whatsoever.

Thinking of muons and quarks I invented the 'gluon' or at least sub-atomic particles of adhesiveness I termed 'fettons'.¹ I thought of the 'quarm', a particle consisting only of reticence and the 'giglon', whose elusiveness to sub-atomic physicists gave birth to the Big Laugh Theory of the creation of the universe.

A Quite Embarrassing Moment

We went away for a couple of weeks to do some filming for M.P.F.C. in Torquay. I stayed in the Imperial Hotel. The hotel that we'd actually been booked into by the BBC was the one that John Cleese was later to turn into Fawlty Towers. The owner of this particular hotel did not like guests and even thought that Eric's football gear, which was in a bag, and which Eric had just left outside the hotel, was in fact a bomb. He was completely round the twist, off his chump, out of his tree. I found the hotel intensely disagreeable in that it was absolutely impossible to get a drink. To make matters worse, they had a bar which could only be open while the owner was around, since he did not trust any of his other two staff. The bar was only open during the serving of the evening meal; the only person allowed behind the bar was himself and, as he was totally occupied supervising the serving of the food, getting a drink was out of the question. It was impossible as a place for me to stay. Cleesie also moved fairly quickly to the grandeur of the Imperial Hotel.

This was at a time in my life when I didn't think I'd been

I. Submitted in an essay to the Royal Society, February 1971 and rejected. (See page 69, Footnote 1.)

to a town until I'd actually managed to score with one of the local inhabitants. It was fairly easy in Torquay (in fact it's remarkably easy anywhere - praise be). I just went along to the Rockingham Club where there seemed to be several possibilities. I was soon chatting to a very pleasant group of people which included one very particular young man, an attractive black guy in a wheelchair. Carlisle was about twenty-five years old and had become a total paraplegic after breaking his back in a riding accident. He'd been quite an athlete prior to this, getting a great deal of attention from the ladies. He was also a very intelligent and sensitive person. He said that his relationships with women had curiously always seemed less than satisfactory and he couldn't quite understand this until after his accident while in hospital, where he found the attentions of the male nursing staff more pleasing to him and in fact had taken quite a fancy to one of them. He was now living with a good-looking young antique-dealer, Roger, who cared for Carlisle with genuine love and affection.

Carlisle was studying psychology and I suppose, having had to face such a huge personal calamity, then to be rewarded with a truly magnificent friendship certainly gave him great personal insight and a feeling for others and what motivates them. I chatted to him about his medical condition a little but mostly we had a good laugh, trying to imagine what was going on in the heads of the other people in that club. Why all that provincial reticence? They were all thinking the same thing - what a pity they couldn't get things together. The two of us being in a good mood tried, by making ourselves look idiots, at least to bring one or two of the peering, timid wallflowers to speak to each other. During this I found one wallflower - reasonable enough to look at but a bit plump in the face, who would do for a first night in Torquay. I've forgotten what his name was, but I'd never forget Carlisle....

The second night at the Rockingham I really did find someone that I thought was fantastic, a real peach, and had a wonderful time. We exchanged telephone numbers but I wouldn't be able to see him again until the end of the week because he lived in Paignton with suspicious parents and had

an unsuspicious girlfriend who had to be taken out.... At the end of that week the Python group decided it would be a good idea to buy an excellent dinner for as many of the film crew as we could muster at the Imperial Hotel, as a gesture of thanks for all they had done. There was, I must admit, a small feeling of guilt on my part, having lived in such comparative luxury. So it was arranged that a table for twenty-four people was to be set for us in the middle of the huge Grand Dining Room, a Very Imposing Room with its Magnificent Chandelier and other brochuric artefacts.

Now I wanted to show off. I'd been bragging a little to the others of my conquest earlier in the week, how fabulous this young man was - 'Cor what a little raver, a peach,' I'd say to M. Palin, T. Jones, E. Idle and J. Cleese, only to boost my own ego and make them, and particularly T. Gilliam, envious (See ⁴T. Gilliam and the Why Not Club, Munich', in A Liar's Autobiography, Vol. VIII). So I rang the peach up and invited him to dinner that evening at the Python table. He agreed and I was delighted, thinking of the night ahead.

The other Python people arrived and the rest of the crew all gathered and I was waiting in the foyer not far from the dining-room, hoping he would remember what I looked like and still like it and desperately trying to make myself look as obviously Graham as possible, though slightly more attractive. About twelve minutes later I was beginning to get a bit worried that he would not show. By now all the rest of the group were gathered round the table and were beginning to think about ordering.

Into the foyer came a black man in a wheelchair. It was Carlisle and I was pleased but surprised to see him. We chatted about this and that until he said how kind it was of me to invite him to dinner: it was obvious to me only now that I had, in fact, rung the wrong number. I was then left with no choice but to take my guest into dinner and so, taking over from the porter, I pushed Carlisle into the Grand Dining-Room, across the Grand Dining-Room floor with its Magnificent Carpet to the Entire, Magnificent and Grand Centre Table. The whole group at the table, noticing my 'peach', thought something. The air oscillated with boggling minds. Some didn't know where to look; some did. Whatever it was,

i₅8

they certainly thought that I had surpassed myself this time. I have never seen quite such a look, even on John Geese's face, as was there at the moment we arrived at table. This, my close confidants must have thought, was the peach I was raving about the night before. There was nothing I could say to disabuse them of that. There was nothing I could do at all, in fact, there was nothing I wanted to do. I began to enjoy the situation immensely.

Carlisle was in splendid form. From the looks on several faces he knew he was the object of intense curiosity. He sensed mental turmoil. A wink and broad grin from me told him everything. Quickly realizing he had the entire table at his advantage he said to them, 'I don't know any of you apart from Graham of course (a wink); I haven't met any of you before (a grin), but, just as a game, let me try to guess some of your personality traits — let's see how many I get right!' He then proceeded to do just that with remarkable accuracy around the table. Carlisle was quite a hit that evening. I thought with tremendous internal glee of the tumult going on inside the heads of some of the more bigoted crew members. Whatever they thought at first, they were all thoroughly entertained and impressed by Carlisle.

I saw Carlisle again a few times after that, rare occasions when he and Roger came up to London. He was always an extremely happy person to be with but he knew his condition severely limited his life span. He was constantly getting a recurrence of urinary infections; nevertheless he took a leading part in organizing and competing in the Wheelchair Olympics. He died; but, just as people of his stature can, he left a lot of his mind around. What he was certainly affected my attitude towards people and to life. I'm sure he must have changed many other people too.

I had a mad year which I shall never forget, in which I wrote, or co-wrote thirty-seven half-hour T.V. comedy scripts. That may seem a lot and in fact it is, so you'll have to forgive me. There were thirteen Python programmes, for which I was writing with John Cleese; a series of thirteen for Ronnie Corbett, for which I wrote with Barry Cryer; and eleven episodes of Doctor At Large, which I wrote with

Bernard McKenna. But of course the really heroic part is not the sheer number of scripts but what Bengalis call Kwalitee\^l and I will have to leave it to more modest people than myself to deny that all thirty-seven were reasonably good.

I went to one office for Barry Cryer in the morning, to another in the afternoon for Bernard McKenna and then spent the evening writing with John Cleese. Everyone, apart from Barry, thought I was being lazy. It was fun and I was pissed most of the time. I had to be because of the sheer strain of it. Much of that tightly-pissed period is still a binful of blurred memories.

The years that followed remain so similarly - which is an excellent excuse for a few disordered snatches. Extremely heavy petting in the back of a taxi-cab with four Chinese 'friends' reached a climax as we drove through Swiss Cottage towards Belsize Park, a mere prelude to a night of Neronic concupiscence.

Keith Moon and I went to meet Harry Nilsson at the Mermaid Theatre where Harry's The Point was playing. In the crowded bar, at Harry's request, Keith's 'minder', Richard, demonstrated his 'art' by kicking a cigarette out of Harry's mouth. You would have missed the action in half an eye-blink. The only man who could successfully wrestle a tank full of sharks who'd missed lunch, he is still a very close friend of mine if anyone is thinking of suing me....

A Cambridge University Union debate where I made my point as a guest speaker by appearing dressed as a carrot and saying nothing. Ariadne Papanicolaou, the President, did not find this witty.

Possessed by the same urge to do exactly the wrong thing at Queen's University Belfast, I found myself launching into an Ian Paisley impersonation. 'Smash the Papist Swine with the Iron Boot of Protestant Enlightenment' I bellowed, before hiding under a table....

I also remember waking up on the floor of the first-class

I. There is no English equivalent for this colourful oriental usage, meaning literally 'quail-ness'. Quails in Bengal are a great delicacy so an object of great 'Kwalitee' is equal in value to a large number of quails. The nearest English idiom would be 'good-thing-ness'. But that does not quite catch the suggestive essence of the original.

lounge of a Boeing 747 at 35,000 feet, not knowing how I'd got there - where I was going to, or where I'd come from, and not caring.

But all that is so much hot air behind the fridge....

'Behind the fridge?' squawks Lady Bracknell. 'Oh come on,' hisses George Bernard Palin, 'We're still waiting....'

But my mind is elsewhere....

CHAPTER NINE

Brendan and Jimmy

Marxist Microfilm. Mr Thing And His Radical Alternatives To Prison. Unbearable Heartache.

I had spent most of the morning trying to explain the meaning of the word 'door' to a pretty young member of the Workers' Revolutionary arty¹; nothing complicated, just the *word 'door', as used in the context of departures. She, it appeared, was an out-of-work but rich young Hampstead actress, who had a real feeling for the person at the pitface. Her empathy for the working person had come to her in a vision she sustained during a two-week starvation-course at one of England's most expensive health farms near Redgrave in Dorset.

At first I was thrown by the novelty of such a pretty young slip of a thing expressing intelligent and earnest concern for the welfare of the masses. I was actually considering matrimony, until I realized that she hadjust explained for the third time how our so-called Socialist government was in fact a Wily Fascist Dictatorship; bugging their telephone-calls (you could tell

i. A recently formed Trotskian-Marxo-Lenitic-Kierhardoid-Sarahbern-hardital cahoot.

because whenever you spoke to another party member there was always that feeling that you just knew that someone else was listening - why else the ominous absence of tell-tale clicks?); obstructing their arrangements for meetings by failing to allow them to use Wembley Stadium free of charge; but, worse than that, constant prying (a landlord they had had under surveillance had almost certainly been seen sieving through one member's used cat-litter for Marxist microfilm). In short, one no longer had the individual freedom to plan a society in which such bourgeois concepts as privacy would be smashed.

I began to feel that she had been sent by some Outside Force to teach me the meaning of the words 'paranoid schizophrenia'. I explained, as charmingly as I could, that I thought she was a stupid little rich girl, while pushing her finally through my hinged barrier of wood.

David had sensed a nutter as soon as she walked in. He had wisely spent the morning making artichoke omelettes, and gave me an understanding grin as I bolted the door. I gave him a hug, and, as I tasted the latest omelette, he poured me a gin and tonic and we stared through the kitchen window at the sky over Hampstead Heath. Our home had survived another invasion; we were lucky; we could take on anything together.

'Ah! What a waste of a morning,' I said. 'Perhaps I can get down to some work now... I'll just nip down to the Monarch and meet Bernard. We've got to finish that Doctor script this afternoon. Back at half two.'

'Half three,' said David.

'No, I really am determined to make an effort today... half three at the latest.'

'OK, see you later.'

'Bring! bring! bring!' hazarded the phone.¹

'It's all right,' I said, as David motioned me not to answer it. 'It's not the Workers' Revolutionary Party... Mmmm?... Yes... Yes... Well, we do need a new cleaner.... Three mornings a week... Hang on a moment.'

I put my hand over the mouthpiece.

'David, there's this man from Radical Alternatives to Prison who's been given my name by the Gay Liberation Front. Apparently there are two Irish boys, been in Ashford Reformatory

i. See note I on page 137.

awaiting trial, they were caught in the Isle of Man with a pair of knickers stolen from Woolworths, they were out of work and had nowhere to live. Apparently he's managed to find acceptable accommodation and a job for one of them, you know, so that it would be dealt with more like petty theft rather than some sex-crime, and he wondered if we could find a job for the other one/

'Well, we do need a cleaner,' said David.

'So I'll say yes? Twenty pounds a week for three mornings?'

'Right,' said David, 'they can't be any more weird than the others we've had. That's a good idea, that's a much better way to help people.'

I agreed, and the man on the phone sounded very grateful.

I picked up The Times¹ and loped off to the Monarch with a 'that's the way to do it' kind of feeling towards the Workers' Revolutionary Party.

The Monarch was a splendid pub in Chalk Farm run by an exemplary ex-tank-driving Jewish matriarch. While she was engaged in sweet-talking a previously ranting methylated-paddy to the street you could ask her: 'Hey Romi, 23 across: "Grasp receipt and eat for a change - 9 and 6"?'

"Cigarette papers"-easy. Now don't bother us again until you've had that cut seen to - have you got 14 down yet?'

'Not yet.'

'You're not likely to - it's "Panariste" - one of the King of Antioch's wives' waiting-women - bit unfair that one. Right, same again for everyone?'

Well, all we've written today is:

'INT. HOSP. CORRIDOR. DAY

ENTER PROF. LOFTUS.

PROFESSOR LOFTUS (brusquely): Morning...' said Bernard McKenna. 'So we'd probably better be going after the next one after this.'

Writing afternoons often started like this - a few drinks over The Times crossword, followed by a few drinks and then an exhausting workout on the pinball machine with a few drinks, then a few drinks afterwards. That particular week we were at a difficult stage, trying to write the eleventh episode of a series of thirteen half-hour situation comedies - Doctor at Large. Not

1. Which I take for the crossword only.

inspiring the white heat of creativity that lends itself to a half a shandy and a cheese sandwich. In fact we were two weeks late in the delivery of that particular episode and the day before we'd even tried seeking sanctuary at our local church (thinking that Humphrey Barclay, a then TV producer, would not dare to challenge its sanctity). It was locked and shuttered. We shouted through the letter-box. This produced no reaction - except from passers-by. Pity. Could be one of the Church's few remaining useful functions.

At that time the Gay Liberation Front had begun its struggle against sexual oppression: men were up in arms to be arm in arm, women wanted to be fathers and the other way round; closet doors were blasted off their hinges and I had bought them a defiant tea urn for their meetings. Denis Lemon and friends also at that time¹ had held a meeting at my flat in Belsize Park which was the beginning of Gay News. I myself was going through a Militant Homosexual phase. An ordinary pub in Chalk Farm seemed like a sensible place to be wearing flowered shirts and pink trousers like a badge. And a badge.

Later that evening the pinball still attracted us more than the script. In the middle of getting my highest score of the day I overheard a remark from some people at the bar. The word 'Jessie' had been used. I looked over and saw two Glaswegian-style football supporters talking to a 'local'. I walked over to the bar, excused myself for intruding and told them that I was a homosexual and didn't much care for sniggering snide comments from ignorant people. Perhaps I could tell them a few things about their misconceptions. My friends at the pinball table stiffened, sensing imminent violence. Number one Glaswegian stared straight into my eyes and I stared back. After a long pause in which a fight to the last cell between his excitatory and inhibitory neurones hung in the balance, he said, 'That was fuckin' brave, that.'

'Not really.'

'No. That,' he repeated to his friend, 'was fuckin' brave, you know just to say that, like that, and that. Fuckin' great. I mean he didna know us, we coulda fuck'n killed 'im — 'a mean, what you havin' mate?'

'Well I was just leaving...'