Saturday, August 12th, Southwold
Sun shone in the morning and tempted us down to the beach. We took the windbreak and an axe, which is Grandfather’s traditional instrument for knocking the windbreak into the sand. It may save him money on a mallet, but one does feel rather sinister taking a wife, two small children and an axe down to the beach.
Sunday, August 20th
Mid-morning, Bill Oddie rang to know if I would like a lift to Clapton for another Monty Python XI fixture. The pretence of the Monty Python XI becomes more and more flimsy – in this match we are only represented by Terry and myself. On the way to the ground, Bill tells me how he and the other two ‘Goodies’ switched on the lights at Morecambe (a quite considerable showbiz accolade). Bill was unashamedly delighted by the fan-worship – especially the drive in an open car along Morecambe front. It’s interesting that no-one in Python – even John in one of his most philanthropic moods – would ever have agreed to switch on the lights at Morecambe.
At Clapton Orient (once a league team) there was a 2,000 crowd, mainly of young kids. Our XI consisted of Terry, myself and Bill from TV plus Frank Lampard and Harry Cripps (both West Ham professionals) and a Millwall player. Jimmy Hill1 led the opposition.
Sunday, September 3rd
Today I was to play cricket for the first time for about twelve years, in a village match organised by Alan Hutchison, John [Cleese]’s ex-Reuters friend. Drove Tim Brooke-Taylor and John down to Bordon in Hampshire, about one and three-quarter hours from London. My romantic image of village cricket was punctured slightly when we arrived. There was no rough and tufty village green, surrounded by neat cottages and a welcoming pub. Bordon is an army village, and we had to drive through the camp to get to the ground.
We found ourselves beside a remarkably professional-looking pitch – almost a Test Match wicket. The opposition, Blackmoor Village, were mostly young men in their twenties and early thirties, and looked to have most of the benefit’s of regular practice. There was no pub, but a pavilion (I think reserved for the officers), which served drinks all afternoon. Our side, plus hangers on, was clearly Oxbridge-based – there were elegant, sharp-featured, well-kept ladies, and clean-cut, straight-backed men.
We fielded first, and their first wicket pair put on about 80 before we got one of them out. Fielding, once one has got over the stark fear of a very heavy little ball travelling straight towards one, can be a most relaxing business. I bowled an over with two wides, two very good length balls, one of which was hit hard at me, and I made the mistake of pretending to catch it. The ball hit me hard on the little finger, on it’s way towards the boundary, but I prevented a run because, as the ball hit my finger, it dislodged a flesh-coloured piece of plaster, which fell to the ground, rooting the batsman to his crease in horror.
Tim bowled two overs, which were both very silly – on occasional balls John would run in front of him up to the wicket, then peel off just before Tim bowled. One of the Blackmoor team was out to a blatant throw – but they had us by the short and curlies anyway – so they accepted the comedy with good grace.
Enjoyed seeing Tim again – and it is refreshing to talk to someone of our age and background, outside the Python group. Tim will take on almost any work, and seems untroubled by the search for quality. This means he gets less frustrated, and more money, than we do.
Monday, September 4th
Python reassembled at Terry’s after three months off. Everyone seemed happy to be starting again. Eric had had a recurrence of his liver trouble, and was not drinking, and Graham was one and a half hours late.
A cautionary visit from John Gledhill in the late afternoon. He brought us the latest figures for the film – which most of us had been conditioned into thinking was one of the box-office successes of the year. But up to about five months of its release, the net take (after Columbia had creamed off their share) was only $227,000. We do not start to make a penny until it has passed $500,000 and even if it took $1 million, we would still only stand to make £2,000 each. So the film, which John G reckoned had made us into world stars, has still only brought us £1,000 each. This had an amazing effect on the Python group. Suddenly everyone wanted to work. Within half an hour we had agreed on a third LP for the Christmas market, another book for next year, and a film script as soon as possible. No talk of holidays this time.
Thursday, September 14th
A week of great activity. In five days we have assembled a third Python LP to be in the shops for Christmas. Over half the 50–60 minutes’ worth of material is new, and, unlike the second LP, everyone has contributed to the writing. Among the new ideas for the record were a ‘B’ side consisting of four concentric tracks, all starting at different places on the first groove, so that the listener could get any one of four different versions of the ‘B’ side; also there was an idea for an extra large record cover, two foot square; a ‘free’ ‘Teach Yourself Heath’ record included in the LP, which would use actual Heath speeches to analyse his voice, and teach people the best way of reproducing it. The title we settled on was ‘A Previous Monty Python Record’.
We met for lunch and a final read-through of material and, at 5.30, André,1 the engineer who is doing our new LP, came round and we spent a couple of hours going through the script for sound effects and music cues. Fred Tomlinson and his singers2 and Neil Innes, ex of the Bonzos, had to be contacted about music – but by 8.00 last night the material was in typeable shape and ready to be sent off to John Gledhill.
I took half an hour off for a run on the Heath – a last futile attempt to prepare my system for the onslaught of German hospitality – and then took Helen out for a meal. She had worked hard looking after six writers and two children during the day, as well as ironing and sorting out my clothes for three weeks in Munich.3 We ate at Abbots in Blenheim Place, St John’s Wood – a small restaurant with a large and interesting menu (red mullet, pigeon, etc), but full of a party of visiting American businessmen, and English people on a ‘smart’ night out. But it did us both good to leave the house for a while, and made it a very happy last evening.
Friday, September 13th, Munich
Apart from Graham feeling a little sorry for himself, the six Pythons all seemed on good form on the plane. At the airport we were thoroughly frisked for weapons and the plane had to delay take-off for half an hour whilst the baggage was searched. All these extra precautions were a result of the shootings of the Israeli athletes and the Palestinian guerrillas at the Munich Olympics last week.
As we expected, this year was more businesslike – we spent the afternoon in costume fittings, and it wasn’t until the evening that we had time to relax. Alfred [Biolek, our German producer] and Ian had fallen out for some reason, which is not a good start, and Ian and Eke1 didn’t join us for a meal. After the meal, the inevitable Why Not? Club [well-known from our previous Munich filming]. It had been enlarged and repainted, and we were treated to some classic examples of the Why Not’s ‘see and be seen’ philosophy.
Edith, the proprietress, looking even more like a model out of a very high-class shop window, was soon working hard to mix a powerful concoction of celebrities. After a while the words ‘Swiss fashion photographer’, ‘model from Berlin’, ‘Austrian TV writer’, all sounded the same, as the music of Gilbert O’Sullivan blasted out, and one mouthed greetings to shadowy faces in the gloom. Highlight of the evening was when Alfred appeared at my side, in a state of high excitement, to announce that Christine Kaufmann, Germany’s leading actress, and ex-wife of Tony Curtis, was not only here tonight, but, and here Alfred became almost uncontrollable, she loved Monty Python!! Soon she was brought to our table, and the meeting of the greats took place. She wore her black hair long and unstyled, wore a simple dress, and her face was thin, fine-boned and un-made-up. I liked her at once, but conversation was made doubly difficult by the music, and by her boyfriend, a German disc-jockey, who chattered about the wonders of Python without even a break for commercials. He was clearly the kind
of person who was used to being listened to, rather than listening, had an annoying habit of referring to Python as being very popular with ‘all the intellectuals’.
After their whirlwind visit, their places were taken by yet another model – this time a real head-turner, with carefully arranged red hair, a rich suntan, and a thin cotton shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Apparently, Thomas2 assured me, she had been in Playboy magazine. I drank the last remains of my white wine. Miss Playboy’s photographer escort, meanwhile, had ordered a magnum of Calvados.
Outside it was 1.30 and raining. I walked home with John – wet, shabby, tired, but still just celebrities.
Wednesday, September 20th, Hohenschwangau
Filming in Neuschwanstein Castle. A clear and sunny day. In the distance the sun picks out the snow on the mountains of the Austrian Alps. It’s a perfect day for throwing a dummy of John Cleese from the iooft tower of the castle to the courtyard below. The tourists watch with great interest – an English couple and their young brother-in-law can’t believe their luck that they’ve found Python in Germany. We finish filming by 11.00 and now have a break until 6.00 for we are night-shooting inside the castle. (Apparently we are lucky to have received permission – for the last crew to film here was Visconti’s film of King Ludwig, and apparently they had messed the place up a bit, and urinated in the fine Wagnerian interiors, and were generally unlikely to be asked back.)
I was playing Prince Walter, described in the script as ‘rather thin and weedy with a long pointed nose, spots, and nasty unpolished plywood teeth’. The make-up man, George, made a superb job of personifying this creature. My own hair was laboriously curled with hot tongs into a silly little fringe, which made me look like an underfed Henry V, and it took almost two hours before I was ready with my long turned-up nose and spots, to leave the Hotel Müller and be driven up to the castle.
A perfect Gothic horror evening – a cool breeze, and a full moon, glimpsed through the trees and occasionally blotted out by scudding clouds. As we drove through the silent and deserted stone archways of the castle, there was but a single light shining high in the dark walls. Ludicrously clad, wearing a silly false nose and carrying a crate of beer for the unit’s supper, I was led through echoing passages and through stone-vaulted halls towards the filming.
Thursday, September 21st, Hohenschwangau
Another fine, sunny day. Into Prince Walter outfit. Sat around outside the hotel thus attired, read Raymond Chandler, wrote postcards and confused the tourists – who start to appear in droves at about 11.30, are everywhere like insects, and like them, disappear in the cool of the evening. Filmed beside a lake. Eric played his guitar, the crate of beer was kept warm in the water of the lake, and Connie Cleese raped me (on film). What more could a man want of the day?
Friday, September 29th, Munich
Only last night did I learn for certain that today we were to do the most complicated sketch of all – the Hearing-Aid’ sketch – an old 1948 Show sketch in which I was given joint billing with John. We could only use the shop to do it in after 8.00, so it was a most uneven and awkward day. As we rehearsed Ian took a phone call from his P.A. in England. She had received a note from Duncan Wood in which he ordered another round of cuts in the current Python series.
Terry J sees it as part of a plot to keep the BBC out of any major controversies until the charter has been renewed in 1974. Ian MacNaughton feels that he will be out soon anyway, as the LE bosses hardly talk to him now, and he is prepared to fight with us against this decision. Maybe we cannot win, but I feel it is as important as anything not to lie down and accept this censorship. John C, for the record, wants to avoid any confrontation with Bill Cotton and Duncan Wood, he wants a chat over dinner, and a bit of gentle bargaining.
Thomas came in later on in the rehearsal and added to our increasing feeling of paranoia by telling us that Hans Gottchild, the enormous, Hemingway-bearded head of Bavaria TV had been most displeased with the Python rushes, calling them ‘dilettante’.
By the time we had filmed as coal miners at the full-scale model of a coalface in the Deutsches Museum, I felt quite exhausted. All I wanted was a sleep, and all I was going to get was an under-rehearsed, complicated five-hour sketch.
As it turned out the evening was not too bad. We worked in long takes, which required great concentration, but made the whole process seem faster. It was about 10.45 that John and I ended the sketch by hurling ourselves out of a very expensive Munich optician’s, on to a pile of rugs and cushions.
Saturday, September 30th, Munich
Caught an S-Bahn train to Starnberg, where we are all expected for food and drink at Eke’s father’s lakeside house.
John C was there, myself, Eric, Terry G, Graham, Roger Last,1 Terry and Alison. Everyone was in mellow, gentle moods – perhaps just suffering from tiredness. There were no confrontations, explosions, truth games or any other games. Eke had cooked bean soup and delicious pork and garlic, and we mostly sat in the kitchen swapping stories and drinking wine.
Arrived back at the hotel about 12.45, dog-tired, to find that I had been moved out of my room as two time-honoured guests had arrived late in the evening. I was greeted by the manageress and her effusive assistant, who were both a little worried about my reaction – especially as they had done all the moving. I wasn’t unduly concerned where I slept, so they must have been quite relieved at my reaction, but then I found that I had been quartered, not in a separate room, but in a small bed in John Cleese’s room. This did niggle me, partly because John’s room smelt of stale cigarette smoke, and I was feeling quite fragile in the abdominal area, and also because of the attitude of the lady who had arrived for my room. There was no word of apology – she was merely concerned to let me know what an inconvenient day she’d had. I went to bed ruffled. John arrived in a mellow mood about 1.15 and offered me brandy. I remember reacting to this with a slight feeling of nausea.
Sunday, October 1st
Woke at 7.00. Splitting stomach ache, violent diarrhoea. I would have to be in John’s room. Tried to make diarrhoea as quiet as possible. Only the evening before we had been laughing over the fantasy of a ‘Hotel Noisy’, where a high standard of noise was maintained throughout, and here I was, up at sparrow’s fart, rocking John’s lavatory. John sportingly maintained he heard nothing.
Monday, October 2nd
Arrived back after rushes at about 7.45. There was a call waiting for Terry from Midhurst – it was Nigel1 to say that their mother had been taken to hospital. Terry was immediately on to BEA to book a plane back to England. He was in a rush and a hurry, but seemed to be in control. Al came upstairs and broke down and cried for just a moment – there was no flight back to London tonight from anywhere in Germany
Thomas [Woitkewitsch] was fortunately here to help, and he started to ring charter flights and private air-hire firms. The irony of the situation was that we had all been invited to Alfred’s to watch an Anglo-Dutch comedy show which Thomas had produced. As Terry phoned Chichester Hospital from Alfred’s bedroom, the strident shouts from the telly grew louder and more disconcerting. I sat and talked to Graham in the neutral room. He had spoken to the ward sister and she had told both Graham and Terry that her chances of recovery were minimal. Graham argued clearly and reasonably, and yet still sympathetically, that it was not worth Terry’s while trying to charter a plane to London in order to see his unconscious mother.
It was about 10.00 when I saw Terry in his room. He was sitting in a wicker chair, he seemed composed, reflective and rather distant. I clasped him around the shoulders. He said he was happy just to ‘sit and think about her’. Graham and I left, and went next door to the Klosterl, for a meal with Alfred, Thomas and Justus [our cameraman]. Not a great meal. Back to the hotel at about 11.30.
A note from Al was stuck in my door. ‘Terry’s mother died at 9.20. He has gone to sleep with the aid of a sleeping pill.’
For a moment I felt a strange stifling surge of sadness. My eyes welled with
tears and for a few moments the news hit me really hard.1
Wednesday, October 4th, Munich
In the hotel I was waylaid by Madame, offering me a bottle of brandy as recompense for being thrown out of my room last Saturday. I didn’t accept it, but did drink a couple of schnapps with her, and listened to her problems – which seem infinite, ranging from lack of sleep to lack of guests. She seems an unhappy lady intent on making herself more unhappy.
Little time for a bath and a dollop of Yardley’s Black Label Talc, before being collected by my driver for the last time, and taken to the end-of-filming party at the Alter Wirt Gasthaus in Grunwald. He was in a sharp suit and seemed to be positively sparkling with anticipated pleasure.
NB: An important clue to the somewhat enigmatic character, whose driving has so often filled me with fear – he and his wife perform in blue films. Felt less afraid of him when I heard this.
Thursday, October 5th, Munich
A clear, crisp, cold clinical day. Paid my £40 phone bill. The lady at the hotel shared with Monika2 this impression of distant suffering – both had an air of melancholy about them. I wonder if this is to do with the German past. Ostensibly, and materially, more people in Germany seem to enjoy better conditions than in England – the economic recovery from the war has been massively successful. I should imagine that the psychological scars must run deeper.
Must read more German novels – for here if anywhere is a chance to try and prove Solzhenitsyn’s point that art and literature are the only spiritual ambassadors between countries. Will re-read Gunter Grass’ Tin Drum.
Flew back to London with John and Eric. John is a good travelling companion in so far as he is nearly always recognised by stewards and stewardesses who pamper him blatantly; and Eric and I were able to catch a little of this reflected blandishment.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 13
