Surfers Paradise.
This is rapidly turning into the Magical Luxury Tour. I go from the calm and peace of a cabin in the woods in the lovely rolling hills of the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast into a Louis The Four Star Palace in the sky.

I had not visited Surfers Paradise before but it’s somewhat like Miami, though the high rise buildings are more modernistic. Less Miami than Fort Lauderdale. And not a trace of Art Deco. (The most famous hair dresser in Miami.)

Not for the first time I bless the saintly Major Cleese for including me on this expedition. A journalist yesterday tried to get me to dump on him, and I genuinely couldn’t think of anything nasty to say. Anyway that’s their job. My job is to not read them.

From my enormous luxury bed I have the balcony windows wide open to catch the fresh air from the rolling breakers of the Pacific Ocean. Not a surfer in sight. It’s more a surfer free paradise. But they’re probably all still in bed with each other. Through the enormous luxury bathroom with hot tub and spa there is an enormous picture window that shows me the entire range of coastal hills. Two perfect balloons float gently by.

There are two pools here, one of which contains fresh sea water, has a beach and includes a reef with real fish, which they feed every morning. The fishy buffet was excellent last night although my son and I got stuck into the Caiparhino’s so we were in a pretty good mood to begin with.

No wonder they call it the Gold Coast. It must cost a ton putting us up here.

Luckily we’re sold out at Jupiters, which is where our tour opens tonight and which turns out to be a huge Casino undergoing refurbishment. John and I are also undergoing refurbishment as we try and remember what we are supposed to do on stage. It’s a gentle afternoon run through of our strange show, and our promoter tries not to look too panic stricken as we wander around on stage pretending we know what we’re doing.

The amazing Simon, who is not a magician, but close, makes everything perfect before we get there. Lighting, sound, guitars, video cues, all perfectly in place. He is our stage manager, a Canadian, whom John relentlessly teases and who is as good natured as could be.

My son Carey, who kindly drove me here, manfully sits through our stagger-through and is surprisingly encouraging. He may give both of us acupuncture before the Brisbane show…

What sort of show is it? Well it’s an odd beast, a feathered camel, a flying donkey, a floating piglet, an underwater eagle, gourmet spam, somewhere between Jerry Lewis and geriatric..… hard to describe, but quite fun to do. It’s never the same twice, or as John puts it “It’s never the same once.”

We have called it sit-down comedy, because there are large leather arm chairs in which we sprawl, but don’t worry, we do stand up from time to time, and we do try to make you laugh. It’s somewhere between a discussion, a clip show and a revue. There are a few sketches and I do a few songs, and that is why today’s entry will be very brief. I must work on my words. One of the sketches is a Memory sketch and for about the first two weeks of our Florida Tour people couldn’t tell whether we had genuinely forgotten our lines or whether it was part of the sketch. A very useful cover, because of course it was the former, but they laughed anyway believing it was the latter.

This time I’m trying something new in my solo slot – what, you’ll remember your words? No. I’m going to use a clip of George Harrison and sing along with him in the only song we ever wrote together. Comedy buffs will know what this is, but it is a genuine Harrison/Idle song and I won’t give away the joke. We each have a 20 minute solo slot in Act Two before we reunite for the Q and A. I asked if this time it could be T and A, but sadly it’s not that sort of show.

So now I genuinely must stop and rehearse. Well perhaps a swim, and then a huge breakfast, and then a massage,.. No I must be strong. You wouldn’t catch Michael Palin enjoying himself on his tours. I must prepare for my audience. The show must go on…. It all starts at 8!

Sphincters crossed.

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