In the afternoon Terry came here. He thought of ‘The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief’ as a title for the new LP. We played squash at 4.30. Just for name-dropping purposes, Al Alvarez1 was there, extolling the beauties of his villa near Lucca in Italy. I felt like a holiday all over again.
In the evening I gave Graham, John and David and Nancy a lift down to Terry’s, where we spent a jolly evening watching old Python shows. I must say, I can’t share Terry’s enthusiasm for re-viewing of the shows. They seem far too ephemeral to me. Interesting imperfections.
Optimistic developments today – it’s rumoured that the BBC will offer us seven Python shows next year.
Wednesday, September 19th
Lunchtime meeting at Methuen’s to discuss promotion of the Brand New Bok. Interesting social differences between the publishing crowd and the B&C Charisma Record crowd. Publishing is white wine and lunches at Rules – Charisma is beer and shorts at the Nellie Dean and afterwards at the Penthouse Club. Today it was all white wine, sandwiches and smiles in the office of David Ross, a small, sharp-faced Scot, who is in charge of their publicity. Advance sales have already totalled 105,000 and the book isn’t out until Nov. 1st. There were copies there for all of us. I was pleased with the way it looked – once again the artefact had exalted the material, and I was relieved that the vast amount of sexual content in the writing was arranged so that the book didn’t appear totally one-track minded.
One of the great satisfactions of the book was the success of the lifelike dirty fingerprints printed on every dust-jacket. Our publisher Geoffrey Strachan told the story of an elderly lady bookseller from Newbury who refused to believe the fingerprints were put there deliberately. ‘In that case I shall sell the books without their jackets,’ she said and slammed the phone down so quickly that Geoffrey was unable to warn her that beneath each dust-cover was a mock soft-core magazine, featuring lots of bare-bottomed ladies beneath the title: ‘Tits and Bums, A Weekly Look at Church Architecture’.
Saturday, September 22nd
Out early to buy breakfast for Pythons. A sunny morning, a crisp autumnal edge to the air in South End Green. It’s funny how autumn seems to have started so punctually. 9.30, Eric arrives – the first time I’ve seen him since we parted company at Los Angeles Airport on June 28th.
John’s here, all smiles – and in fact everyone except Terry G. Orange juice, hot croissants and coffee, then a big read through of material for the new album. A sketch which Graham and I collaborated on yesterday has John and Eric in stitches. But still nothing very exciting. One section of a ‘Phone-In’ type sketch, which Terry and I wrote, is about the only piece that has everyone rolling about.
Tensions flare at the end of the meeting when Terry, in passing, mentions that Mark Forstater will be fulfilling a kind of producer’s function on the film – John reacts strongly, ‘Who is this Mark Forstater?’ etc, etc.1 John has a way of making it sound like a headmaster being crossed by a junior pupil, rather than equal partners in a business disagreeing. Terry quite shaken and retires to the kitchen to avoid exploding.
Around 1.30 everyone leaves except Eric, who is in a cheery mood and anxious to find out about future of the group who met this morning. He and I drive down to Camden Town, and buy a kebab at Andy’s, then come back here and talk. Eric in a much more obliging and co-operative frame of mind than he has been in the past. He says he is living on no money, and I believe that from anyone who comes from Earl’s Court to Gospel Oak by bus at 9.30 in the morning.
Wednesday, September 26th
Terry and I went up to the Flask in Hampstead and had a good air-clearing talk about the future. We both feel now (c.f. flight to Calgary three months ago) that another series of Python for the BBC – with John writing a regulation three and a half minutes per show – is not worth doing, certainly at present, if at all. I was not encouraged enough by the material we wrote for the record to believe that Python has vast untapped resources. I think we may be straining to keep up our standards and, without John, the strain could be too great. On the other hand, Terry and I do have another direction to go in, with a play in commission and another on the stocks. We work fast and economically, and still pretty successfully together. Python it seems is being forced to continue, rather than continuing from the genuine enthusiasm and excitement of the six people who created it.
Monday, October 1st
Sunny and warm. Took Thomas to school. Now he doesn’t even need me to come into the playground with him. We cross the road, past the lollipop man, and then Thomas asks me to stay on the corner and runs the last twenty yards up to the school gate on his own – with his blanket and his apple.
One of my earliest memories is of the school hall at Birkdale, with my mother saying goodbye and leaving me standing there with my shoe-bag, bitterly unhappy. I must have been Thomas’s age, just five. 1948.
Drove up to André’s to listen to the tapes of the LP. Some sounded very flat. Terry G, Terry J and myself discuss possibility of an extraneous sound effect running throughout the record (e.g. Indian attacks or a cleaning lady using carpet sweeper, etc) – which could be faded up to enliven some of the less exciting sketches.
Wednesday, October 3rd
A Parents’ Meeting at Gospel Oak School. Went in with Christine1, met Jean Oddie on the door, she introduced me to Adrian Mitchell and wife.2 They were all in a long line outside enjoying an illicit cigarette before the meeting began. Meeting attended by 150 or so parents. Headmaster says this is remarkable attendance. He has been asking around other schools and finds that most have less than ten parents along to meetings like this. But Gospel Oak does demonstrate what tremendous differences there can be between schools within the state system.
This school has a nucleus, or perhaps even a majority, of enlightened, liberal, Guardian-reading parents, who are concerned about their children and the way they’re brought up, to the point of obsession. They not only read books and articles about education, they also write them. It must be one of the most literate, articulate parent groups in the country. The school functions better through this interest – more time can be spent teaching the kids than disciplining them, and everyone seems to benefit all round. But the disparity between Gospel Oak and other schools the Head Teacher mentioned is disturbing – for when people talk of state education as providing equal opportunity for all kids, they are in cloud cuckoo land. I’m just glad Thomas is at Gospel Oak where opportunities are more equal.
We elect a Parent Manager for the ILEA Manager’s board, and then are shown a 20-minute film about child molesters. Quite well-made, I would like Tom to see it. A discussion on the merits of the film afterwards. Lots of articulate women. There must have been upwards of 100 psychiatrists among them.
‘Discover for the first time the full story of my great-grandfather, Edward Palin, who married Brita Gallagher, an orphan of the Irish potato famines of the 1840s.’ (September 30th, 1977)
‘Sorted through an old chestful of grandfather’s papers … In the Shrewsbury and India days much evidence that he was quite a character “always looks as though he has done something wicked but never has” – school report from Shrewsbury.’ (April 15th, 1975)
‘In 1966 my parents, Edward “Ted” and Mary Palin, retired to a village just outside Southwold in Suffolk.’
With Ian Davidson at a Python rehearsal in the tank-top days, 1970.
Charity football and experimental beard, 1970.
Pythons at play, Germany, 1971.
Filming kamikaze Scotsmen at Norwich Castle, 1971. With Eric Idle and Hazel Pethig.
With ‘Auntie’ Eric. ‘The Cycling Tour’, Python, 1972.
‘Almost two years and nine months to the day since we shot our first feet of Python film, we were at Windsor to shoot what is probably our last: With Ian MacNaughton. (April 6th, 1972)
Helen’s mother and her grandsons, Willy and Tom, Abbotsley, 1972.
Helens sister, Cathy, with Tarquin at Abbotsley.
&
nbsp; Helen attempts a circumcision, local fete, 1972.
Heyday of the flares. With Tom at home, 1973.
‘The longest day and my father’s three-quarter century’ My mother had baked him a cake in his house colours from Shrewsbury School (June 21st, 1975)
John turned to me and said “No”.’ The unconventional end of the ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch on my thirtieth birthday. (May 5th, 1973)
‘The first TV play written by Terry and myself … had been given a blaze of pre-publicity.’ The launch of Secrets. (August 14th, 1973)
‘How do you know he’s a producer? Hes the only one who hasn’t got shit all over him.’ Eric, myself (as Mud Eater) and Mark Forstater, Holy Grail, 1974.
‘First day of filming. Graham got vertigo… and Eric and I and John sat around listening to stories from the mountain rescue boys about how many people perish on the mountains each year.’ (The Holy Grail, April 30th, 1974)
‘How can you react without laughing to a broad Glaswegian accent saying “Of course I’m French, why do you think I am using this outrageous accent?”.’ (May 11th, 1974)
Graham as the lecturer, Terry G, Terry J and myself take up positions for the ‘Custard Pie’ sketch, 1975.
‘The Surprise Pie.’ Terry and myself at Drury Lane, 1975.
Monday, October 8th
On Saturday afternoon Thomas’s fifth birthday party. Twelve kids altogether.
Sunday spent playing with Thomas’s new toys and reading about the Arab-Israeli War, which had broken out that morning with all the inevitability of the sun rising. Took Thomas and Willy up onto Parliament Hill to try and fly his new kite. Heard someone describing to a group of friends some of the jokes from our second German show, which had gone out on BBC2 the night before. Couldn’t fly the kite. Packed it up, and walked home ignominiously.
In the evening Hazel and Andrew,1 Roger Last and Simon Albury round. We watched the start of a new Frost Programme series – it was about private education. It started such an animated discussion in the room that we soon ignored the telly and turned it off. Conversation at last killing the art of television.
First day of legal commercial radio. Very dull. Newsreader couldn’t read news properly.
Tuesday, October 23rd
At 5.00 into a quite eventful Python meeting. Everybody is present, tho’ Graham’s about half an hour late. This is the second of our ‘chase Gledhill’ meetings. Gledhill looks more relaxed and cooler than when I saw him at his Barbican flat a week ago. Then I thought he would crack up within a day or two. Now he seems more confident. He takes control from the start, and offers for discussion a number of fairly unimportant points. Do we want to appear on the Russell Harty Show? Everyone says no, apart from Graham. We are into royalties on the second record! £19 each. And who wants to go to Denmark for a two-day publicity trip?
Having cleared these out of the way there is discussion about the [Michael] Codron2 offer of six weeks, starting at Christmas, in the Comedy Theatre. Eric and John are very keen. Terry G less keen, myself very anti. For some reason I find myself in the rare position of being out on my own (tho’Terry J, I think, feels the same, but is keeping tactfully quiet to avoid accusations of a block vote). Briefly, I see it as six more weeks of a show which I find very dull, and here we are going to the West End, forsaking our Rainbow/pop following – which, John says, ‘scares the shit out of me’ – for the £2.50 circle and front stalls audience, with a show that seems to me full of old material – some of it done in the West End before. What has become of Python the innovator? Are we at the end of our creative careers, at the tender ages of 30-32?
Graham arrives, I think a little fortified, and from the stage show the talk goes on to accounts. Graham is the first to attack fiercely. He says we have asked for the accounts for long enough, and John has done nothing – but John G produces an envelope and, with a triumphant smile, reveals – six copies of the company accounts. A breathing space, everyone feels better, Graham looks discomfited. John G follows this up with optimistic details of payments to come within the month. Such is the success of this move, that he manages to get away with the extraordinary revelation that Tony Stratton-Smith does not have the money for the film. Tony’s offer, we had been constantly assured, was the one cert, in a changing world. Then I notice the beautifully presented accounts are only for the year up to October 1971! They are two years behind.
At last the attack develops. Gilliam rants and raves and expresses his frustration very forcibly, banging the chair. Eric is very quiet. John C wades in, tho’ not ruthlessly. I try to tell John G why we are dissatisfied – that he has for too long been giving us definite optimistic pronouncements which turn out to mean nothing. Graham gets angry again, and John G reacts – cleverly, in retrospect – with injured aggression. He fights back. ‘Then why not get yourself another Python manager?’ he says, sweeping his glasses off with a flourish. You could have heard a pin drop in Waterloo Place this uncommonly mild October afternoon. John G, unconfronted by a barrage of protests, moves quickly on, but into an area where, for the first time, he commits himself too far – ‘Frankly, as far as I am concerned, Python may not be here next year, and I’ve got other eggs in the basket which I have to develop as well …’ Still no reaction. He retracts and returns to safer ground, ‘In any case, I think this is the only area where I may not have produced the goods.’ Here followed the most damning silence of all. We’ll see what develops.
I left the meeting feeling pleased with myself for not giving in over the stage show, but with the unhappy feeling that somehow we must do something for the sake of the group. As Terry G says, there is a danger that we should become too purist, and in rejecting everything because it isn’t quite right, we end up with nothing but principles.
Thursday, October 25th
To the office of Michael White in Duke St, St James’s. A successful and fairly prestigious young impresario – Sleuth, Oh Calcutta! and many other well-known titles on the framed playbills around his office. Pleasant, disarming, unpretentious feel to the offices.
John Goldstone1 was there and Mark [Forstater], and we started to chat after White had offered us a drink. He and Goldstone seemed to share many of our feelings about what the film should be like. White talked of the ‘really good comedy film’ which has yet to be made. What he meant was, I think, that our film should not depend on TV for anything more than a sales impetus, it should be a film of merit in itself. Such intelligent interest in our film we haven’t encountered before. All in all it was an amicable meeting – but then John Cleese in Cambridge Circus was one of White’s prized talents 12 years ago, and Terry has also been in a revue which White backed.
Tuesday, October 30th
Tonight a long phone call from John Cleese. He proposed asking John Goldstone to our Python meeting on Thursday to explain the deal and tell us where and if he thought Mark would fit in. In the end we agreed to ask Mark along first, just to give him a hearing – but even then I was made to feel I had wrung a major concession from John.
Wednesday, October 31st
John Gledhill rang this evening. The clash comes nearer. I told him we were meeting Mark tomorrow. He was taken aback, but recovered. ‘He’s no negotiator, anyway,’ says John. Finally he says, of course, whatever Mark’s function, he, Gledhill, will do all the deals. I ring Mark later. Mark wants to do all the deals because he says that Gledhill is very bad at it – and was embarrassing at a meeting with Goldstone recently. So, the collision may come earlier than I thought – perhaps tomorrow. Co-operation, as an option, seems to be receding. It’s all a long way from being out there filming and I find it depressing to have to get into this personal tangle. Especially as there is no villain of the piece, no easy target whom we can slander and malign. Both Gledhill and Mark are nice people.
Evening a little brightened by the extraordinary latest news from Washington. Two of the most vital tapes, which Nixon has finally agreed to hand over, do not exist. On a vital John Dean conversation – t
he machine wasn’t working!! The Nixon/Gledhill situations do have a number of parallels. In either case there is a central figure who has far more work and far greater responsibilities than he can cope with, and yet is determined to fight, by some very devious means, rather than relinquish any of this work or any of these responsibilities.
Thursday, November ist
Surprise, surprise. A cordial, relaxed, totally constructive meeting at John’s. All of us present, and Mark as well. Mark explained the film deal, thoroughly and efficiently, and also gave us a run-down on how he would hope to be involved in the film, and how much of a cut he would like.
At 6.00, a party at Methuen’s to launch the Brand New Bok. No famous names, instead representatives of the printers, blockmakers, binders, etc, who had been involved in actually making the book. During the party Gledhill had very good news about the NFFC,1 who were only too keen to go ahead with Python, White, Goldstone. John had with him a sheet of Heads of Proposals, which towards the end of the party he was getting people to sign. I couldn’t take much of it in at that time, but seeing other signatures, and presuming it was merely a contract for story development in order to get the £6,000 front money, I, too, signed.
Monday, November 5th
Another Python meeting chez Cleese. When I arrived there at 1.00 John Gledhill was sitting on the arm of a sofa looking wide-eyed and uncomfortable. Also there were Mark, John C, Eric and Graham. No-one seemed to be talking to each other. It was like a morgue. Then Terry J and Gilliam arrived, and we walked up to Tethers for lunch and a chat.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 20
