Friday November 9, 1979

_. Ally phoned me this afternoon to see what I intended doing this weekend. I told her I would ring back in the evening after Dave the Sailor's arrival. I worked until 5pm and then went over to the Eagle Tavern on North Street with Dave Pitts and Steve Burnip to Bob Cockroft's party. [He is defecting from the EP to the YP and is to be Fred Manby's replacement on the People column]. I only intended having a couple of drinks, just to be sociable, and my financial situation is far from healthy, but the paralysing effect of alcohol rendered me insensitive to respectable banter, and I rolled around the walls sloshing Timothy Taylor's ale  over all and sundry. Home by bus at 10:30. I went to see Margaret Phillips at the fish and chip shop on Victoria Road. She came across as cheerful, but said something to the effect  that she occasionally feels her late husband's presence in the vicinity of the deep fat fryer. A framed portrait of the late John Phillips takes pride of place above the list of shop prices. At home I'm still quite pissed. Watched John Cleese and Michael Palin in discussion with Bishop Mervin Stockwood and Malcolm Muggeridge on the subject of the new [Monty] Python epic, 'The Life of Brian'. It's a film I cannot wait to see.

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