When I did socialise, it was with people I’d met in New York; and two of them were to become very important in my life. The first was a management consultant called Nick Walt, whom I met at a party; he worked with the Boston Consulting Group, although he was from a different Boston, in Lincolnshire. He was insanely polite and overbearingly consider

politeness and inability to shake off people who were being a pest, had developed an annoying habit since his arrival. Every morning, after we arrived at the beach, he would wander off on his own, chatting to people at random, until he came across someone – always a man – whom he judged to be outstandingly boring. He would talk to them until he had

The one and only sketch Graham and I wrote for the show that, judging from internet viewings, has stood the test of time concerns two airline pilots who become so bored on a long-haul flight that they decide to amuse themselves by making ambiguous announcements to frighten their passengers: Captain (John Cleese): (over intercom) ‘Hello, this is you

voluntarily, when there was absolutely no kind of geographical loyalty involved, was an act of such utter pointlessness that I felt rather in awe of Nick. I had been reading about existentialism; here was someone living it, someone who accepted the concept of an act of Free Will in a Meaningless Universe, and was taking it to a new level. Given Nic

Marty, who was always amused by my painful

Exam panic now peaked. One evening I was looking so depressed that Martin Davies-Jones picked up the old-fashioned gas ring on which we could boil a saucepan, and offered it to me. I didn’t even smile. In the event, though, my fears turned out to have been misplaced. The exam papers were not bad, and all the

When you encounter a culture totally uncontaminated by logic, it eventually undermines your reliance on reason. For example, Johnny Lynn walked into a department store in search of cufflinks. ‘Where do I find cufflinks?’ he asked. ‘Try the tobacco counter.’ ‘No,’ said Johnny, indicating the cuffs on his shirt, ‘cufflinks.’ ‘Yis. Try the tobacco cou

Mr Pest: How about Grate Expectations? Assistant: Ah yes, we have that . . . He goes to fetch it and returns to the counter. Mr Pest: . . . That’s G-r-a-t-e Expectations, also by Edmund Wells. Assistant: I see. In that case we don’t have it. We don’t have anything by Edmund Wells, actually – he’s not very popular. Mr Pest: Not Knickerless Nickleby?

got every laugh, never missed a beat, my timing was exquisite; I was relaxed, disciplined and hilarious. There had been nights when I’d got most of the sketches dead right, but never before had I done the whole show impeccably. I was superb. (Please remember we did about 180 performances and this happened just once.) The result: exhilaration. And t