Iain Johnstone

Iain Johnstone celebrates the centenary of the ‘Duke’ and recalls a memorable holiday off the Mexican coast with the toupee-less Hollywood legend Had he lived, John Wayne would have been 100 on Saturday. I knew him. In the spring of 1976 he invited me to go on holiday with him on the Wild Goose, his converted minesweeper. The plan was to cruise up the Pacific coast of Mexico. He told me to go to the Acapulco Hilton and he would call me when the ship was ready to sail. It was a heady time in Acapulco: Howard Hughes, who had been bed-ridden in the penthouse of the Princess Hotel, was rumoured to be dying and there was a chase on as to whether the Mexican police could get the body and the death duties or whether Hughes’s henchmen could smuggle it out of town. They did.

Some years ago I was writing a script with John Cleese in Los Angeles and we went for dinner at a buzzy brasserie called Chaya. When the waiter brought our steaks he also brought a $200 bottle of St Francis Cabernet Sauvignon. We hadn’t ordered it; the waiter said it was a gift from some anonymous diners. John suggested to the waiter that they come by our table as they were leaving the restaurant. It turned out to be Keanu Reeves and a couple of chums. They joined us for a drink and then the most remarkable thing happened: they started to re-enact scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, from the knights who say ‘Ni’ changing their name to ‘the knights who say Ekki-Ekki-Ekki-Ekk-PTANG. Zoom-Boing.