Saturday, August 1st, Roques
I write this by the light of the Lumogaz lamp on the round wooden table in the barn at Roques. Outside the barn it is a still, dark night, behind us a wooded hill rises steeply and, above the trees, the stars, many more than one sees in England. The crickets make a continuous background noise, like an electric fence, small insects land on the paper and have to be pushed away. It is 9.30, Mary and Helen, looking quite preggy now [she had become pregnant again in February], are cooking pork chops over an open fire.
We have been officially on holiday for a week. The last recording was Show 6 on July 23rd. Eric was the first to go, he flew to the south of France on the 24th. On that day the rest of us met Roger Hancock for lunch and formed Monty Python Productions Ltd, on the corner of Dean St and Shaftesbury Avenue, after a convivial, but expensive and badly-served meal at Quo Vadis restaurant – where you eat surrounded by photos of the stars, taken at the restaurant. Each photo seems to have caught the victim unawares.
Graham flew to Corfu on the Saturday morning, secure in the knowledge that his extraordinary gamble in trying to write Monty Python and thirteen Ronnie Corbett shows at the same time had been successful, for the simple reason that everyone had done the work for him on Monty Python. In fact on Monday, when John went off to Rome for two days’ filming prior to a holiday in Rhodes, Terry and I were, as usual, left to pick up the pieces, tie up the loose ends and make sure that Ian was happy from the writing point of view before we all vanished.
We left home in the Austin to drive the 600 miles to Roques. Apart from taking a wrong turn at Tonbridge, which caused our first momentary panic, we arrived at Lydd, on the tip of that monotonous V of reclaimed land which contains Camber Sands and Pontins Holiday Camp, Dungeness Atomic Power Station and its spider’s web of power lines, and Lydd Ferry Port.
The buildings of the Ferry Port rather unconvincingly carry the traditional airport jargon – Departure Lounge, Departure Bay, etc, etc – but, when you come to move to the plane, you leave a pleasant English tea room to find that only five cars and eight people are on your flight. A rather old and battered nose-loading plane, proudly bearing the title ‘City of Aberdeen’, stood on the tarmac. Thomas was fascinated, as he has recently taken to pointing at planes quite vociferously, and to see one at such close range, and then to get on it, and then to take off, was all too much. He kept pointing out of the window at the wing and saying ‘Plane?’.
Down below, the last sight of England I remember was a field next to Lydd Airport, which we passed just after take-off, littered with dismembered aircraft.
A delightful journey. The plane never seemed to go above 5,000 feet, it was a clear sunny day and the Palin family made up one third of the total personnel. Very homely – and only 25 minutes before we were flying over the lush dunes and neat holiday houses of Le Touquet.
Le Touquet Airport perpetuated the Trips Round the Bay atmosphere which characterised the whole flight. For some reason or another we didn’t have the green insurance card which indemnifies one against third party accidents on the Continent, so, within thirty yards of where we first set foot in France, I parted with 70 Francs (about £5 10s), an auspicious start.
With very little trouble about driving on the right-hand side – at Le Touquet they break you in easily – we drove off towards Rouen, lunched in a field near Crécy, and arrived for the evening at L’Aigle, a town in southern Normandy, where Edward had recommended we stay at the Hotel Dauphin.
On Thursday morning, we had croissants and coffee in bed and left at 9.00 for what we hoped was a straight 350-mile drive through the Loire and Perigord to the Lot.
But things have a way of happening unexpectedly, and we were not fifty yards from the hotel when the exhaust pipe broke in two. The sun was already high in the sky, and my French was not very confident as yet, and it was therefore a most frustrating two hours whilst we waited for a garage to repair the exhaust, gazing imploringly at small enigmatic Frenchmen, watching for the slightest trace of sympathy or urgency.
Eventually it was mended and we left L’Aigle at 11.15. Soon a warning light on the dashboard frightened us enough to turn off the engine and cruise downhill to another garage. We found that this light meant that our oil filter needed to be changed in the next 300 miles, but this was little consolation as we ground our way to the town of Montoire, where we bought bread and lunched in a hot and insect-ridden field. This was the nadir of our journey. We were only about 100 miles from L’Aigle, the car seemed to be cracking up, and the heat was making things even worse. But after lunch Thomas slept for about two and a half hours and we made good time, crossing the Loire at Amboise and reaching La Trémouille, well into Limousin, before stopping for tea. I decided that we might as well press on and try to reach Roques that night.
Roques is an old farmhouse made primarily of local limestone, and looks solid and attractive, with plain wooden roofs and floors. Downstairs there is a kitchen cum eating cum sleeping cum reception room with a large fireplace. Off this is the main bedroom. Stairs ascend to a long room, one half uninhabited, and the other half now inhabited by the Palins. It’s rather like a loft, with a dusty wooden floor, but a newly improved roof. Below the ground floor is the washing/bathing room. Again a long room, of which one half is tiled in local red tiles, with a recessed circular shower area and a double basin. At present they are awaiting the attentions of a M. Prunier to connect up the cold water, but hot water is as yet provided either by boiling or by the Baby Burco.
Eating and cooking during this hot, dry weather take place in the barn, which is open on one side and is swathed in early morning sun, which makes breakfast a great meal.
All in all, Roques is solid and simple. One is a long way from telephones and television, there is no water, but there is electricity. The silence is frightening, but the satisfaction of the solitariness after London is worth everything.
We eat well here and drink the local wine – and by local, I mean grown one mile away by the small farmer who used to own Roques, M. Lapouge.
Thursday, August 6th, Roques
The hot weather continues. It’s now a week since we left London and, apart from one stormy evening, it has been sun and clear skies.
Today I decided to go and visit the local médecin. This was mainly a result of Helen’s prompting, and by the continuance of the discomfort which I’ve been getting every time I pee.
I arrived at his house about 10.00 and his son was lolling about the garden. No sooner had I asked where the doctor was, than the youth motioned me to follow him and leapt on his motorbike. With him and his friend giving me a motorcycle escort, I proceeded in triumph for the 200 yards to the doctor’s surgery in the Boulevard Gambetta. Here I waited for nearly an hour and a half until the doctor called me in. His surgery was filled with cigar smoke. I reeled off my carefully prepared speech and all was well until he started to question me. ‘Quand vous pee-pee,’ he kept insisting, and there was I referring proudly to ‘la urine’. He was rather aggressive in the face of my blank incomprehension, and when I came away I had a number of incredibly complicated instructions, which I did not understand, and a consultation fee of 16 Francs – about 25/-.
It was 11.45 and I had with me a sample bottle which I was to fill and take to the chemist. As I drove home, angry at thus wasting a morning, I remembered that the chemist closed at 12.00 for about two hours, so that it would be much better for me to deal with it all before 12.00 than to have to return after lunch. This caused me to take the side road in an attempt to find a quiet, private place to fill my tiny bottle. But the houses were much more prolific than I had hoped and I ended up shielding myself against the car and, with some difficulty, directing my urine into the bottle, the remainder trickling over my hand. This was the end of stage two of my morning of bitter frustration. Stage three began when I found that the medicines prescribed for me at the chemist’s totalled 146 Francs, and included four large phials of intramuscular injections – which I had t
o take to the hospital on the next four days for injection dans ‘la fesse’ – in the buttock.
The day at last picked up. We’d decided on a sightseeing trip. The drive was pleasant, we were in no hurry, and I was laughing quite happily at my experiences with le médecin. Then fresh trouble broke. Just as we were about to drive up to Domme, the bastide town, there were frightening grating noises from the gearbox. It had finally packed up in three gears. The noise was like a football rattle. I’m sure that the accumulation of tribulations had produced a numbing effect on me, for I felt only a moment’s bitter anger, then passed quickly to the state of resignation. We drank an aperitif whilst waiting for a garage to confirm what we already knew. The gearbox, which showed signs of collapse at the beginning of the year, had chosen the small, rather unattractive town of Cenac, 600 miles away from home, for its final death rattles.
Tuesday, August 11th, Roques
At lunchtime Cathy Gib1 innocently queried whether or not Thomas was on Helen’s passport as well as my own, for Helen is taking him back to England. Of course, he was only on my passport. Swift action demanded a phone call to the nearest British Consulate – in this case Bordeaux.
The British Consulate was perturbed at the lack of time to fill in the various forms, so Edward, Mary and myself set off in the Triumph for a totally unscheduled trip to Bordeaux – a 150-mile journey.
At La Rede, about one hour from Bordeaux, it became obvious that we wouldn’t arrive before the Consulate closed at 5.00, so I made another phone call and, after becoming slightly eloquent with a woman who suggested we come along tomorrow morning instead, I eventually received an assurance that someone would be there till 6.00.
So began the last breathless lap. Edward drove manfully and, with the help of a brand-new autoroute just before Bordeaux, we reached the city at 6.00. Directing from the Michelin Red Guide, I frantically guided Edward through the Bordeaux rush hour until, at 6.10, we reached the Cours de Verdun. I leapt out, clutching passports, and arrived, dishevelled and breathless, at the Consulate.
There, all was calm. An official, and he was, in every sense of the word, an official, had happily stayed on and, in an atmosphere rather like that of a benevolent but uninspired English master’s study after school, I signed the various forms. He proudly produced a number of impressive stamps and, over all this, the last great emergency of a holiday full of emergencies, the Queen gazed down impassively on her tousled subject.
On the way back we ate in Verdelais, just across the wide Garonne from Langan. It was an excellent meal offish soup (in which I committed the most risible faux pas – tucking in to the red-hot anchovy sauce, which I’d mistaken for the soup itself).
Was heavily bitten in the night and slept badly – only one really good night in twelve.
Sunday, August 23rd
The last week has been spent filming in or around London, ending up at our traditional location – Walton-on-Thames – on Friday. It was less hot this time than in the past – I noticed this because for the last shot of the day I had to stand beside a fairly busy road clad in the It’s Man1 beard and moustache and a bikini. Next to me was John Cleese, also in a bikini.
Saturday, September 19th
Our running feud with the BBC Planners has come to a head, for not only is the new series going out at a time – 10.00 Tuesday – which is also the regional opt-out slot, so Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Midlands and the South don’t see M Python, but there is to be a break after three episodes when Python will be replaced by ‘Horse of the Year Show’.
Our only positive reaction in this matter was to write a very gently worded letter to Paul Fox2 expressing our disappointment. Last Wednesday we were visited at rehearsal by Huw Wheldon, managing director of BBC TV. It was obviously a peacemaking mission – an attempt to cheer up the lads on the shop floor – an exercise in labour relations. But in his favour it must be said that he did come, he avoided being patronising or pompous, he had arranged for us to see Paul Fox next week, and he had rung the Radio Times editor to ensure some more publicity.
We were all extremely deferential, but the visit made us all feel a little better – I suppose we were disarmed by the mere fact of such a deity deigning to notice us, let alone enthuse over the programme, and it does make us feel in quite a strong position for next week’s meeting with Paul Fox.
Sunday, 20th September
Terry arrived at 1.00, and together we went up to Graham Chapman’s to prepare our material for a charity show – in which we are doing 30 minutes. It’s in aid of Medical Aid for Vietnam – which J Cleese refers to as ‘Grenades … er … Elastoplast for the Vietcong’. But officially the proceeds from this evening’s show will go to providing medical aid for those civilians involved in the war in Vietnam, who do not receive US aid. I think this is a very humane cause, and I believe that the Vietnam war is an international tragedy, in which one can no longer talk of the right side or the wrong side, or the right solution or the wrong solution, but one can at the very least help all the thousands of civilians who are dying or injured. If I really thought that the money I helped to raise was being spent on killing people, I would not have done the show, but I trust Hanoi – certainly as much as I trust the Americans, if not more.
We ate an excellent roast beef and Yorkshire lunch at Graham’s, rehearsed rather frantically – we are still looking for scripts to learn the words from – and set off in Terry’s car along the gleaming new Westway to the Questors Theatre at Ealing.
The feeling, as we worked through the lighting plot with Ray Jenkins, a TV writer who asked us to take part, was very much like the Etceteras’ Sunday revues, which I produced at Oxford in 1964 and 1965. ‘Light stage left, light stage right’, ‘cross-fade’, ‘blackout’, etc, etc. The adrenaline was flowing healthily as we waited to go on for our first spot at the start of the show.
But the first we knew about the show having started was a hissed urgent voice on the intercom, ‘Monty Python – you are two minutes late on, we are waiting for you.’
One or two people were starting a slow handclap as we reached the wings. We launched into the familiar ‘Tide’,1 then the interview with the Minister whose leg drops off, a monologue called ‘Co-Ed’ and finally ‘Working Class Culture’. By the time we’d finished we had won the audience back, but immediately all the good was undone, as the group who were to follow us – ‘Humblebums’2 – did not know they were supposed to be on, and were obviously going to take some time to set up their amplifiers, speakers, etc. There was no compere to explain to the audience, just an awkward silence. We eventually leapt into the breach, did a few silly walks and whatever quickies we could remember.
The Humblebums were from Glasgow – and played rather gentle, attractive songs, there was an African group beating out some ethnic melodies which came nearest of everything to taking the roof off the place, and top of the bill was the classical guitarist John Williams – who was not only a fantastic guitarist, but a beaut guy. He was, I must add, a Monty Python fan, so there was a good deal of mutual admiration.
We taxied home at 11.30 feeling very happy and pleased we had done the evening and, who knows, we might have helped someone somewhere to put a rifle … er … bandage on …
Thursday, September 24th
At 6.30 we all trooped up to the sixth floor for our meeting with Paul Fox, Controller of Programmes, BBC1. A slightly comic entrance. We knocked tentatively at his door and went in, nobody was in the ante-office, everything was tidied up and deserted. We had been standing some moments in the outer office feeling a little disorientated when Paul Fox’s door opened and this bulky man with a generous nose and large ears appeared, Paul Fox, no less. He was clearly more nervous than we were – but then he was in a fairly indefensible position, and there were six of us.
Inside he poured us drinks and there was the usual difficulty over seats – offices just aren’t built to accommodate the Monty Python team.
Fox started by explaining why MP went out at 10
.10 on a Tuesday night. Two things I felt were wrong here. One was his premise that it wasn’t a pre-nine o’clock show, although I would reckon 8.30 would be its ideal time, judging from the reactions of my ten-year-old nephew Jeremy, his six-year-old brother Marcus,1 and the large teenage section of the audience at the shows.
But Fox was conciliatory throughout. He sugared the pill with promises of a repeat of eight episodes of Series 1 immediately following our present series and, next year, a total repeat of Series 2 at a national time. He clearly realised that he had underestimated Monty Python, but his apologetic manner did encourage us to talk freely with him about some of our other complaints, e.g. lack of any BBC publicity for the new series, the removal of our invaluable researcher, the budget (which he hotly defended as being above average for LE [Light Entertainment]: moot point) and the two-week break in our transmission after the first three shows. Obviously we could not get him to change his mind, but we came away from his office after one and a half hours and several drinks feeling optimistic that we had at least said everything we wanted to say, he had been friendly and one hopes he was also receptive.
Back home in a cab.
Sunday, September 27th
No papers for the last week owing to some strike by the delivery people – but this morning I felt the need for some Sunday reading, so I drove down to Fleet Street and bought an Observer and Times from a man in Ludgate Circus. A lot of people milling about in Fleet Street – looking out for lone newspaper sellers, or calling at the Daily Express building – the only paper which seemed to have a stock of copies at its office.
4.15. Visited National Film Theatre with Simon Albury to see Arthur Penn 1922 – a documentary about the director of Left-Handed Gun, Bonnie and Clyde, The Chase, Little Big Man and a great number of Broadway theatre successes, especially The Miracle Worker.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 6
