Friday, May 21st
Eric is busy on the Monty Python book, but Terry Gilliam is fighting his way through, and perhaps out of, a lucrative ‘Marty’ [Feldman series] contract. The American TV people will not let Terry use any nudes, or even see the cleavage at the top of a pair of buttocks, and his Christmas card film, which went out in England in a children’s programme on Christmas afternoon,1 has been banned altogether from American TV. Such is television in the land of the free.
Sunday, June 20th
The first day of recording on our second LP in the Marquee studios. It was a good feeling to be working on Sunday in the middle of Soho – and the session is run almost entirely by and for ourselves. Unlike our previous BBC record there is no audience, and we are able to do several takes on each sketch to try and improve on it. This is very beneficial in one way, but I shall be interested to hear whether we need the impetus of a live audience – whether in fact we subconsciously concentrate harder and bring the better performances out of ourselves if we have an immediate soundboard for our antics. There is one very amenable young engineer, and Terry J is producing.
Monday, June 21st
Another day spent in the recording studio in Dean Street. We worked hard, but my doubts about the record began to grow. Firstly, because it contains fewer bankers (i.e. strong, memorable sketches) than the first record. This is partly explained by the fact that the more conventional verbal sketches translate easily onto record, whereas the more complicated, tortuously interwoven sketches of the second series lose more away from their visual context. I am still worried by the lack of a reaction to our recording – but I put this down as much to my own weakness of judgement as anything. More seriously, I wish that everyone had been prepared to put some work into the writing of the record.
Thursday, June 24th
Leaving the studio at 3.15, Terry and I had about two hours to buy assorted props and costumes for a cabaret at the University of East Anglia in the evening. It was a hot day and, to my added frustration, the shops around Camden Town and Hampstead were all closed. I was looking for old coats, berets, scarves, etc, for Ken Shabby – and there is little worse than driving in a hurry on a hot day round closed shops to try and find torn old clothes. However, the Simon Community in Maiden Road was open, and proved to be just what was wanted – but there was hardly time to throw the things in a suitcase, with toothbrush and black velvet suit, before the taxi arrived and we were taken off to Liverpool St.
There were thousands more people equally hot and equally hurried, and we only just managed to get seats in the restaurant car. John and Connie arrived with about 20 seconds to go, complete with cage and stuffed parrot.
We rehearsed the cabaret – it was about 50 minutes’ worth – and arrived at the ball by about 10.00. We were shown to a cabaret room and a succession of the usual, rather anxious, slight, dishevelled officials came to tell us what was going on.
The University of E. Anglia, like many of the newer English universities, has had a fair amount of publicity for its sit-ins, protests, marches and other symptoms of left-wing radicalism. I was surprised, therefore, that this element seemed to be quite absent from the ball. They appeared to be an audience of exactly the same people who Robert [Hewison] and I performed to at Oxford about seven years ago.
Wednesday, August 4th
Meeting this morning between Charisma Records and John Gledhill, Terry Gilliam and myself to discuss the record cover. Our suggestion was not the easiest thing to sell. A classical record, with everything crossed out rather crudely and ‘Another Monty Python record’ scribbled in at the top. On the back a 97% authentic spiel about Beethoven and about the finer points of his Second Symphony – but, for those who can bear to read it through, it is gradually infiltrated by tennis references.
Charisma seem almost an ideal record company – or indeed company of any kind. Their offices in Brewer Street are functional, rather than plush, set on three floors above a dirty bookshop. Tony Stratton-Smith, who founded the company, has a tiny office at the top, with two hard wooden benches (giving the little room a rather ecclesiastical feel), a desk, a table, and an interesting selection of moderniana on the walls. They do not seem to have any fixed attitudes to their products, they seem to take decisions with the minimum of fuss and, what’s more, they agreed to our record cover – which is quite a risk for any company.
Thursday, August 5th, Southwold
Caught the 8.00 train from Gospel Oak to Broad St. Thomas stood at the door to wave goodbye in his pyjama top – he was very good until I had almost reached the end of the village, when I heard a beseeching shout of ‘Kiss! Daddy. Kiss! Kiss!’ as I turned the corner.
From Broad Street I walked down to Liverpool Street Station, which, at 9.15 in the morning, is like swimming against a very fierce current – such is the surge of people pouring up the approach that in a momentary flash of panic I wondered if I would ever make it to the station. It was a rather frightening sight – this sea of faces. It was like some clever documentary maker’s piece of film illustrating the increasing conformity of people’s lives.
Ate breakfast on the train and was met at Darsham Station at 11.30.
Daddy and I walked across the common to the Harbour Inn. The L-Dopa tablets seem to have completely stopped his Parkinsonian trembling – but they cannot disguise his increasing vagueness and the difficulties of keeping up with what is happening around him.
In the evening I walked up the lane towards Frostenden. It was a clear evening and the sun shone on the gold fields of corn through the trees which side the road and straggle the landscape rather haphazardly, not in neat copses or woods like in chalk country. The effect was warm and secure and reassuring. At the same time, in London, Richard Neville1 was being sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment for publishing the Schoolkids issue of Oz. I can’t help feeling that he would have appreciated this countryside for the same reasons that I do – and yet the only way society has of dealing with his imagination and intelligence is to put him away for over a year.
Wednesday, August 11th
Drove down the A3 through the Surrey Green Belt to visit one of Helen’s friends from teacher training college – it was looking very green today, and the woodland, with patches of rough heathland emerging from the trees, dispelled the usual feelings of claustrophobia I have when driving through England’s most middle-class county.
After lunch I left the women and children and drove the five miles or so into Guildford, a town with many more old and fine buildings than I remember before. I went to what must be one of the largest, and certainly the most haphazard second-hand bookshop in the country -Thorp’s. It took me nearly one and a half hours to cast a very cursory glance over about 70% of their stock – shelved in a variety of different little rooms and one big timber-roofed chamber, in such a way that makes one suspect that the disorder is all part of a careful filing system, which takes years to appreciate fully.
I bought a handsome volume of Bulldog Drummond stories. I felt I ought to have an example of this unique genre – the public school, ultra-xenophobic spy story. It makes great reading – everyone is always ‘fixing’ each other ‘with piercing stares’.
At supper I got into conversation with our hosts about the Oz sentences. Clearly, and rather disturbingly, their minds were made up – Oz and its editors were evils that had been judged guilty, and let it be a lesson to all others who are threatening the moral fibre of our society, and the most alarming thing was that they did not have a clue as to what Oz Schoolkids issue was. They automatically thought it was a collection of obscene material which the editors had written to try and corrupt schoolchildren. They were quite taken aback when I told them that the issue had been written by schoolkids – and that the jury had acquitted them of the charge of corrupting children’s morals. They had complete misconceptions about hippies – J said he wouldn’t dare get into an argument in case they set on him. They talked about ‘London’ as a descriptive term for all rath
er suspect, critical, left-wing, un-British opinions, and implied that it was here in Surrey that the ‘English way of life’ would be defended to the bitter end.
The four-month gap at this point is the result of that diarist’s nightmare, the loss of an almost complete notebook. According to family folklore it was dumped in the rubbish bin by my son William who, at the age of one, had developed a great interest in putting things inside other things. Whatever happened, it never reappeared. Momentarily bereft, I felt like giving up the diary altogether but the loss made me realise that it had become such a part of my life, that it was inconceivable to jettison it. If anything, I compensated by writing more.
Friday, December 24th
Yesterday I found a smart gallery in Crawford Street and ended up spending £45 on a primitive of two cows painted by someone called Beazley in 1881. Actually I didn’t know it was a primitive – the cows looked perfectly normal to me – but it’s a very in-word in art circles at the moment, and I think it means that commercially I’m onto a good thing. Be that as it may, I’m glad to have the painting, because at last I’ve found something that I really enjoy looking at – and the serenity of the two cows is quite infectious. In my quest for pictures I went into another art gallery in Crawford Street and spent an uncomfortable few minutes looking round under the baleful eye of a drunk proprietor – and I mean really drunk, full of self-pity, with red, streaming eyes and almost unable to utter a word – whilst across the table sat a young man gazing impassively at him. As I left the owner tried to get me to have a drink with him. I declined and his face dropped as if he had been bitterly hurt.
Saturday, December 25th
A rather fine, sunny morning, and for the first time in our marriage we woke on Christmas morning in our own home.
Thomas saw James across the road, and then they both saw Louise looking out of her window, and soon there was an impromptu gathering of little children comparing presents on the pavement outside our house. The quiet of the day, the sunny morning and the neighbours all talking made me feel very glad – about staying in London, and about living in Oak Village. If it doesn’t sound too pedantic, I felt that this was how city life should be.
Monday, December 27th
In the evening I was part of a rather curious function at the Abraxas Squash Club. This took the form of a fancy-dress squash match between Monty Python and the Abraxas staff, with John, Terry and myself representing Python.
Terry was dressed in oversized trousers, John as a ballerina in a tutu, and I had borrowed the wasp’s outfit from Hazel [Pethig]. Playing as a wasp may have looked spectacular, but it was in fact rather difficult, as part of the costume consisted of two extra legs, to the end of which – on Helen’s suggestion – I had tied two extra pairs of gym shoes. However, when I tried to make a shot, these spare legs would swing round and nudge my aim. In consequence I lost all three games to a man dressed as a savage.
Tuesday, December 28th
To the Odeon Kensington to meet my mother, Angela, Veryan and the three kids and take them to see our film And Now For Something Completely Different. It lasted eleven weeks at the Columbia and took nearly £50,000 at that cinema alone (over two thirds of the cost of making the picture). Its one week at Oxford ran into four weeks as a result of the demand, and it was held over for an extra week in Leicester and Liverpool. All of which bodes well for a film which Terry and I thought would be received with jeers.
We all sat in almost solitary state in the 80p seats at the front of the circle. It was a strange feeling – here I was sitting next to my mother, who had only come to films with me as a rare treat when I was young, watching me on the big screen. Unfortunately the tedious repetition of old material in the film hardly swelled my mind with pride.
Friday, December 31st
Harold Nicolson used to sum up his year on December 31st with a few pithy words. It’s a sort of diary writer’s reward for all those dull July 17ths and October 3rds. (Will I still be keeping my diary on Dec. 31st 1999? Now that’s the kind of thought which gives survival a new urgency.)
1971 was my fifth full year in television and certainly on the face of it we have achieved a lot. A TV series, which has reached the sort of national notoriety of TW3. ‘Monty Python’, ‘Silly Walks’, ‘And Now For Something Completely Different’, etc, have become household words. The TV series has won several awards during the year, including the Silver Rose of Montreux. The second Monty Python album has sold over 20,000 copies since release in October, and Monty Python’s Big Red Book completely sold out of both printings within two weeks. It has sold 55,000 copies, and 20,000 more are being printed for February. In London it was top of the bestseller lists. And finally the film which we made a year ago and were so unhappy about, looks like being equally successful.
From all this no-one can deny that Monty Python has been the most talked about TV show of 1971 – and here is the supreme irony, for we have not, until this month, recorded any new shows since October 1970.
The split between John and Eric and the rest of us has grown a little recently. It doesn’t prevent us all from sharing – and enjoying sharing – most of our attitudes, except for attitudes to work. It’s the usual story – John and Eric see Monty Python as a means to an end – money to buy freedom from work. Terry J is completely the opposite and feels that Python is an end in itself – i.e. work which he enjoys doing and which keeps him from the dangerous world of leisure. In between are Graham and myself.
1 Who first commissioned the panto for the Palace Theatre, Watford.
1 1554—86. Complete Renaissance man and along with Charles Darwin and the founders of Private Eye, among the most famous old boys.
1 Our own area code changed from GULliver to the soulless 485.
1 Racehorse owner, John Betjeman fan and general bon vivant, Tony started Charisma Records. He died, much missed by all, in 1987.
1 An attempt to produce a Euro-comedy link-up to mark May Day. We were chosen to provide the British segment, for which we created a number of very silly traditional dances.
2 John was always getting offered cabaret engagements, and he preferred to do them with Terry and myself than on his own. They paid quite well. He gave them up after being savagely heckled by London University medical students.
1 A monologue I wrote for the 1965 Oxford Revue at Edinburgh. I always preferred to write and create characters rather than jokes per se, and this depended very much on performance.
1 The brainchild of German producer and Python fan Alfred Biolek, this was to be a show written by and starring the Pythons, speaking German. It was duly recorded at Bavaria Studios in Munich in early July 1971. As least I can now sing ‘Lumberjack Song’ in German – a great way of clearing crowded ski slopes.
1 On Do Not Adjust Your Set.
1 The editor of Oz magazine asked for teenage schoolkids to put together an edition. The ‘schoolkids’ produced an issue which put Neville and others in the dock at the Old Bailey, accused of corrupting morals and intending to ‘arouse and implant in the minds of those young people lustful and perverted desires’. His long hair was ordered to be forcibly cut.
1972
Sunday, January 2nd
In the morning, Rolf, Ranji [Veling] and I went for a long walk on the Heath and talked about Rolf’s pet subject – how to simplify life. He feels that the problems of pollution or increasing crime or mental illness are the result of us all wanting and being offered too much.
I’m glad that there are cars and planes and television and washing machines, and I think we cannot suddenly pretend that they have not been invented – but I feel we must control their use, and that they should be used not to dictate but to stimulate. Any urban planning should include an open play area at least twice the size of the car park, instead of the opposite; there should be severe restrictions on cars in central London – but above all, in every area there should be greater encouragements for people to meet and talk – not in official meetings or on two nights a w
eek, but all the time. There should be space indoors and outdoors, where people would want to stop and gather. At the base of every block of flats there should be a big, well-furnished well-equipped coffee shop or restaurant, a big foyer with papers, magazines, books on sale – and even a few fairground attractions. It would mean a radical re-direction of funds available for housing, but one quarter of the vast wealth in the hands of private property developers would, I think, help to equalise a system which at present is doomed – the colossal difference in living conditions which is being widened every day as new council estates are built on the cheap – and with them is built boredom, jealousy, repression, anger …
Helen and I drove over to Simon Albury’s flat in Ladbroke Grove. Simon was fairly high when we got there, as were David and Stan. Unstoned were most of the wives, David’s sister Rosemary, and ourselves. Source of the stuff was R.1 I drank bourbon and smoked occasionally, and heard riotous tales from Rosemary Dodd about her Cordon Bleu cooking for the nobility. She had worked with the Queen’s cousins for some time, and apparently they drank so much that at one meal there was a special footman detailed to stand behind the hostess and hoist her politely up every time she sank beneath the table.
R, as lithe and big-eyed and diffident as ever, suddenly becomes animated. He is smoking his third or fourth joint of the evening (no passing around here – it’s R’s joint) and telling me of his poetry writings. After a long and serious build-up I was expecting The Waste Land at least, but what I got was ‘Zim, Zam, Zap, the Zimbabwe is going to Zap you man’ – as Simon A remarked, ‘Pot never helped anyone.’
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 10
