* Since I wrote this passage some poor sod of a local radio DJ was forced into resignation for playing an old recording of the song. Oh lawks.

* In the real sense of willy-nilly. Not in the sense of harum-scarum or all over the place.

* A once common phrase that no one seems to know any more, but is worth looking up.

* After three series a BBC executive eventually cottoned on to the terrible truth that the name of Everett’s female vulgarian, Cupid Stunt (‘all in the best possible taste’), could be crudely spoonerized. She was forbidden from reappearing. A new, seemingly identical, character called Mary Hinge popped up in the next series. ‘Now you see that’s better,’ said the executive. ‘You don’t need to be smutty to be funny.’

* As with smartphones, coke lore had it that storing the damp wrap in rice would eventually dry it out, but it never worked for me.

* I haven’t … except to correct hasty typos.

† We didn’t.

* Technically Anteros, of course, but what the hey?

† The second best in central London. The best is, of course, that of the young man memorializing the Machine Gun Corps in Wellington Place. His matchlessly perfect buttocks present themselves to anyone travelling south along Park Lane towards Hyde Park Corner. One never minds a red light there.

* Pronounced like the mint you were a long time ago urged not to hurry and Andy the tennis champion.

† Moray played the definitive Colonel Bantry all those years ago with Joan Hickson’s equally definitive Miss Marple.

* In other words by grape variety – Sauvignon Blanc, Shiraz, Merlot, etc. – as opposed to the confusing traditional British manner of listing by estate without any mention of the grape. This once pioneering approach is now standard practice, of course.

* As in Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, only more lively and convivial.

* See Moab is My Washpot.

* Not to each other. Two separate ceremonies.

* Feeble ref. to the Mujahadeen, who were one of the Afghan insurgency forces in the old Soviet–Afghan war.

* After all, the royal family have a house not far from me, and Princes William and Harry have been known to pop into one of my favourite pubs in the county: that being the case, some git off the TV is hardly going to cause excitement.

* Famous in the wider world for his naked balloon dance. He drowned, aged fifty-five, much mourned by what was then the oxymoronic alternative establishment. His stand-up act was, I need hardly add, staggeringly unfunny in a way that must have taken enormous effort. He himself was astonishingly funny, however. Go figure.

* Slimline it may have been called, but it imparted no such thing to my increasing bulk.

* I once heard someone say they’d really enjoyed the new Hare piece at the National …

* I was wise enough to run the manuscript of this book by Hugh to check for accuracy. I am sometimes accused of a good memory, but it is only good for useless things. Hugh’s is both compendious and useful. I quote his response to the paragraph above: ‘… not that it matters, but it was definitely Rowan who did the hoovering. I also distinctly remember him driving to the petrol station – the only place open on New Year’s Day – and coming back with fig rolls, for God’s sake. They might have been there since the previous New Year.’

* Not tired enough to sleep, obviously …

* Ex-President of the Cambridge Footlights. Before my time, but he co-produced our 1981 tour of Australia, magnificently described in The Fry Chronicles.

† Terrifically funny American stand-up comedian. ‘I can’t understand why cosmetics manufacturers make perfumes that smell of flowers. Men don’t like flowers. If they want to attract men they should bring out a scent called New Car Interior …’

* For all I know this is deeply unfair, and Time Out welcomed us with lavish praise. We were too scared to look. I remember years earlier Rik Mayall opening a Time Out to see a review of the second series of The Young Ones. ‘“Nothing like as good as the pioneering first series,”’ he read, then spluttered, Riklike, ‘but they hated the first series. Bastards!’

* Her husband, Richard, was an RAF pilot.

* I bore in mind the fact (told to me years ago by my mother, who knows these things, when watching a Mills film) that Sir John had been for fifty years on the Hay Diet. When he was a young man he had developed a stomach ulcer, then the most common cause of death of men under forty in Britain. Today, of course, suicide is the most common. Someone recommended to him the Hay Diet, in which protein and carbohydrates are never combined. Vegetables are ‘neutral’. You can have steak and salad or pasta and salad. You can have cucumber sandwiches, but not cheese rolls. Ham and eggs for breakfast or just pancakes. You get the idea. His ulcer was allayed, and for the rest of his life he remained trim.

* He had been unable to see properly for at least five years by this time and spent much charitable energy helping the Royal London Society for the Blind.

* Almost certainly Valery Gerghiev, who has since become a kind of friend.

* Some might think the anagram rather appropriate given the astounding settlement awarded her when JC and she divorced. I couldn’t possibly comment.

† A BBC Radio 4 arts programme, forerunner of Front Row.

* Comedy POW drama written by David ‘Reggie Perrin’ Nobbs. I had filmed it with Hugh Bonneville, Nicholas Lyndhurst and others earlier in the year.

* Usually notorious for bowing out of parties with a gentle yawn at about 9 p.m.

* Wasn’t so easy to ‘source’ a book in the days before the World Wide Web and Amazon and so on …

* TV chat-show host: a simply adorable man who died from Hepatitis B in 1988.

* Jamie struggled after Russell’s untimely death in 1988 but then wrote the wonderful At Swim, Two Boys, one of the best Irish novels of the past however many years.

† The wicked cad in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, whose casual allusion to how good a parson he would have made had he minded to become one so shocks Fanny, the heroine, who is shocked by everything, to be honest.

‡ And rightly. It went on to win the Hawthornden Prize (which had been recently resurrected by the munificent Dru Heinz, widow of the 57 Varieties chap), and the author, Tim Pears, went on to write the hugely successful In a Land of Plenty.

* Ben played Verges.

* A lot fewer than there are now, Stephen young sausage.

* Alphonsia Emmanuel and Tony Slattery, who were also in Peter’s Friends. Richard Curtis of Four Weddings fame unkindly remarked that surely Alphonsia Emmanuel is a drag name … you might think that, but I c. p. c.

* Tony S.

† Still together *sentimental gulp*.

* Now between £300 and £700 p.d.

† Sean Connery’s 1983 remake of Thunderball. Rowan Atkinson made a brief appearance in it.

* Producer of Not the Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder and – in 2003 – QI.

† I meant that I usually hook.

* Now known the world over for his portrayal of the Downton butler.

* Not even vaguely like Boyle’s Law, Stephen, which is to do with gases.

* Last three named all BBC high-ups of the time. Checkland (known as ‘Chequebook’ as he came up through the ranks of admin and business rather than programme-making) was Director-General.

* In The Picture of Dorian Gray it’s a schoolroom in which the eponym hides his portrait, not – as everyone says – an attic. But only I would be so pedantic in a diary.

† Subsequently re-revived by Rowan Atkinson.

* The splendidly mad old producer of The Goon Show, Till Death Us Do Part and, in 1982, Cambridge Footlights for the BBC with me, Hugh, Emma and Tony S.

* Hemmings.

* My beloved nephew George. All three of my nephews are equally beloved of course. No nieces sadly; sister and sister-in-law just weren’t concentrating. Actually, it’s the sperm that determines gender come to think, no pun intended. Help, I’ve become infected. Writing footnotes in diary style now. It’ll be exclamation marks next!! Oh merciful heavens!! No!!!

† The painter and sculptor. She had been commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to paint a picture of me, which she had long wanted to do anyway.

* The sainted Edwina Curry was bringing a Private Members Bill before the House of Commons to make the age of homosexual consent equal to the heterosexual age. At the time the gay age of consent was twenty-one, the original Wolfenden Report recommendation, passed into law thirty-odd years earlier. Final equality had to wait until 2000, three years into the Blair administration.

* 0-86719-371-9.

† Kim was seven thousand times more likely to know. He was a chess master and had been at school with Nigel Short. Taught him the French Defence and its many variations, Kim’s favourite for black.

* The last Governor of Hong Kong, who oversaw the rain-sodden handing over of the Crown Colony to China in 1997. At time of writing Chairman of BBC trustees and may well be the last of those too, given the corporation’s plight.

* Norman Lamont had been sacked a few months earlier as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Prime Minister John Major. He made a snidely neat resignation speech in the House: ‘This government gives the impression of being in office but not in power.’

† Supposedly the composer of Purcell’s ‘Trumpet Voluntary’, although I have heard a theory that it was by someone called Mud.

‡ Then Deputy Director of the BBC.

* Trying by diplomatic means to stop the slaughter in the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia.

* Blackadder the Third’s Mrs Miggins.

* Then running the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, formally head of Channel 4.

† He was sadly to be wrenched away from the world by leukaemia six years later, while working on the musical version of The Producers with Mel Brooks.

* Allergic to standard champagne, but not pink. Go figure. A pink champagne socialist.

* As Wilde’s nemesis, the Marquess of Queensberry.

* Ha! We didn’t know at the time that she had had an affair with the future Prime Minister, John Major, in the mid-1980s.

* Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and so forth.

* I simply don’t know what I was thinking of. A white stretch limo? Maybe they weren’t so hen-party back then. But still …

† Producer of the first Monty Python film and impresario responsible for popularity of Oh, Calcutta!, The Rocky Horror Show and too many others to mention. Mad on tennis.

* No, Stephen, it would appear that you didn’t.

† For the 2000 Summer Games.

* Deeply unpleasant soubriquet for Cambridge’s Graduate Centre.

* Well, all right, he was Austrian, but you know what I mean.

* Perudo is a dice game that uses bluff, often called the Liar’s Dice of the Andes. I described it as the second most addictive thing to come out of South America.

* Carry on Cabby, Coronation Street. Once I’d got to know her better it wasn’t that surprising she was in Maggi’s company.

† RAF station where Richard, husband to Jo and father to George, was based.

* Sadly the Newton was somewhat before its time, but it was indeed the way technology was going. Hand held, touch screen (although with a stylus) … many things to like and admire in it.

* Known as ‘The Understanding Barman’. Quite proud of it now. I think we thought it was a satire on Ronnie Barker-style innuendo, but of course such innuendo is funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8ko2nCk_hE.

† My electronic calendar confirms that 10 October 1993 was indeed a Sunday.

* This is awful. I met Bernie Taupin a year or so later and found him to be just about the most endearing fellow you could ever encounter, not in the least self-deluded or spoiled by his enormous success with Elton.

* Indeed they did. Bob Spiers, now deceased sadly, was an old hand from the Golden Age who had directed dozens of episodes of Dad’s Army, Are You Being Served?, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum and, crucially, the second series of Fawlty Towers, which rendered him holy. Jon Plowman: an old friend from Granada Alfresco days who would go on to be probably the BBC’s longest-serving head of comedy, ushering in Ab Fab, The Office, Little Britain, etc.

* Now a Labour MP and dashing broadcaster who makes fine documentaries on history.

* An earlier book of mine, a salmagundi of writings that you are sure to find delightful and a perfect gift too, for a hated one.

† Director of two series of Jeeves and Wooster, also now sadly no longer with us.

* Charles directed Brideshead Revisited at some preposterously young age and married Phoebe Nicholls, who played Cordelia (quite brilliantly).

† Producer brother of actors James and Edward.

* Just the Diet Coke would now keep me awake for hours, let alone the Naughty Coke.

* Astoundingly prolific and successful lyricist, often in collaboration with John Barry.

* See earlier.

* Which he has comfortably done. Well on his way to thirty now. Still a poppet.

† i.e. Write a sketch.

* Ian Brown, film producer friend.

† Alfredo Fernandino, Peruvian founder of the club situated in the almost unbelievably narrow passageway next to the Coliseum Theatre in London’s St Martin’s Lane. From a powerful Peruvian family, he introduced Perudo to Britain and marketed it with his friend Cosmo Fry. Cosmo Fry, elegant playboy, distant cousin, chocolate heir.

* The fatwa still very much in place then.

* I think I’m right in saying that the student Derren Brown was in this queue and that I encouraged him to work hard at practising his magic. Oh dear. Condescending or what?

† The screenwriter daughter of Joe Slovo, a leading anti-apartheid voice. As a Communist Jew, Joe Slovo was one of the Afrikaner right wing’s most hated figures. He became a minister under Mandela and died in 1995.

* Spanish for a quiet Sunday, but you knew that.

* Polish-born but British couturier, whose frocks were much favoured by Princess Diana.

† Where the headquarters of the Labour Party were then situated.

* BBC producer (yes he does spell his forename like that) best known for his collaborations with Dennis Potter and Simon Gray.

† The actor who played Uncle Mort in I Didn’t Know You Cared, way back before you were born. Also the narrator in Tales from the Long Room. We had both been in the happy West End flop Look, Look! the year before.

* In its old-fashioned sense of ‘gargle’ or ‘snifter’. A drink in other words.

† Novelist wife of Maurice Saatchi, now sadly deceased. Known for powerful, rather shocking short novels with one word titles: Damage, Sin, Oblivion …

* Christopher Wood, designer. Now attached to Johnnie Shand Kydd, the photographer.

† BT chief, chairman of endless boards – BBC Governors, Royal Shakespeare Company, etc. Good egg.

* Head honcho at W. H. Smith as mentioned earlier: the last family member to lead the company.

* A stage musical, not the peculiar television event.

* I meant James Dreyfus, unless he subsequently changed his name. Later to achieve fame in the immortal Gimme Gimme Gimme.

* I was Rector of Dundee University: by this time I think I was partway through my second three-year tenure. The honorary post, unique to the ancient Scottish universities, involves looking after the interests of the students, who vote for their rector. I would come up by train to attend meetings of the University Court and hold ‘surgeries’.

* PR and editor respectively at Heinemann, publishers of The Hippo.

* Director of series 3 and 4 of Jeeves and Wooster, sadly snatched from the world way before his time.

* The magnificent James Villiers (pronounced the smart way to rhyme with ‘millers’). In the 1960s he was apparently twenty-somethingth in line of succession. John Osborne was said to have produced a typed list of the nineteen from the Queen downwards who came between Villiers and the throne. He had this list mimeographed and distributed to friends: ‘If you meet anyone on it,’ he ordered, ‘kill them and before we know it Jimbo will be King and it will be Gin and Tonics for everyone for ever.’

* Made Up (to protect identity).

† English National Opera Company, resident at the Coliseum Theatre, when not on tour with their English-language productions of the great opera repertoire.

* Lloyd’s, the insurance organization, had suffered catastrophic losses, which were passed on to the Names who subscribed to various underwriting benches, in their jargon. Henry Blofield the cricket commentator (brother of the man after whom Ian Fleming named his most infamous Bond villain) sadly came out a loser.

† Simon is the much-praised founder and leading light of Théâtre de Complicité, a hugely successful company that has won more awards than any other of its kind all over the world. Annabel now mostly directs opera but collaborated many times with Simon McB.

* Adorable old-fashioned English don at Cambridge. Great expert on those marvellous Powys siblings, John Cowper, Llewelyn, Philippa and T. F.

† Queens’ College’s drama club.

* Who turned out not to be gay at all, for the record.

* Not the same person as Vic Reeves.

† Comedian and writer, sadly taken from the world by cancer in 2004.

‡ Fellow Cantabrigian: she directed our 1981 Footlights show The Cellar Tapes, voiced for Spitting Image and starred in Dead Ringers.

* Better known as Marilyn Coles. Highly intelligent and deeply charming, she married Victor Lownes, the American boss of Playboy’s British operation.

† Ben’s long-time manager. Still ‘in post’.

* The immortal Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served?, of course.

* Alan Rickman was cast as Colonel Brandon, and Hugh made do, hilariously, with Mr Palmer.