For the first time in my comedy-writing life I now had to produce scripts on a regular basis, and this brought with it a simple problem: I would start the morning with a blank sheet of paper, and I might well finish the day with a blank sheet of paper (and an overflowing waste-paper basket). There are not many jobs where you can produce absolutely

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Writing and performing in these six shows taught me an important creative principle: the more anxious you feel, the less creative you are. Your mind ceases to play and be expansive. Fear causes your thinking to contract, to play safe, and this forces you into stereotypical thinking. And in comedy you must have innovation because an old joke isn’t f

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rewrite in evening, but by now we have lost all confidence in it, so start thinking of new sketch to replace it. Eventually think of one. Write it. Fourth day: Rehearsal. New sketch doesn’t work. We stop rehearsing early so we have extra time to come up with new sketch. We are feeling tired and a bit anxious, and don’t like any of our new ideas as

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As for me, although my contribution to the show was small, and sometimes absolutely minute, being involved in it proved an extraordinarily valuable experience. The three-times-a-week live performing of material, sometimes written only six hours before, forced upon me a different mindset from the one I’d had in The Frost Report. There I could aim to

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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

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everything I said was ‘on record’, and so being acutely afraid of making any remark that might not be one hundred per cent factually correct. To make matters worse, I had felt all my life that my opinions were pretty worthless as I lacked the information, the life experience and therefore the authority to pronounce on anything, whether a play or a

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He starts looking carefully all round the carriage. After a pause . . . MF: I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with B. Or J. B or J. JC: How could it begin with a B or a J? MF: For various reasons, none of which I am at liberty to divulge. B or J. Easy . . . JC: What’s the answer? MF: Ectoplasm. JC: Ectoplasm? MF: Mr B. J. Ectoplasm. He

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The purpose of all the bustling was to get me into a waiting car, which was to take me to the BBC TV Centre to be interviewed on Late Night Line-Up, an arts-oriented discussion programme that ran for many years during the 60s. I was to be questioned by Michael Dean, who introduced me by reference to that night’s Frost Report and went on to ask me a

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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

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