Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  We’re in the fortunate position of not having to rely on reviews to sell our seats. Despite the fact that Drury Lane holds 2,200 people, we are booked solid for two weeks, we have extended our run to three weeks, and at every performance there are apparently touts out the front selling tickets for £5–£10.

  Whilst we were Gumbying at Drury Lane, there was an election – one of the most exciting for years, in which Heath failed to frighten the country into massive anti-union protest and came out with fewer seats than Labour. Heath has not yet resigned and, as I write, is busy haggling with the Liberals and others to try and form a coalition. Suddenly British politics have become alive, volatile and exciting.

  Monday, March 4th

  Into our second week at Drury Lane, and a lot of business to do during the day.

  Meet with the Henshaws1 and Nancy L and Ina [Lee Meibach].2 There were some sandwiches and white wine. Under discussion was Nancy’s official future with Python. At a recent meeting we decided to put Nancy in charge of our new music publishing company, Kay-Gee-Bee Music Ltd, and also to give her control of records and recordings and all future contracts.

  Ina waxed lyrical about the future of Python in the States – and rather frightened everyone by talking of a 15% fee for Nancy’s work. We still see our roots as an English TV comedy show, and I think we are all wary of the American monster, where everything can be so BIG and success can be so ENORMOUS and so on and so on.

  The live show has been a must for pop personalities. Mick Jagger and Bowie have shared a box – rather off-putting, actually, they were right beside the stage – and Ringo has twice been to see it.

  Tuesday, March 5th

  The Tories finally gave up trying to form an anti-Labour coalition and Wilson is PM again. A great appointment is [Michael] Foot, as Minister of Employment.

  Friday, March 8th

  In the throes of a heavy cold – woke up after a night of sneezing and running nose with an incipient sore throat. And two shows tonight. I really felt low, and very worried that my voice would not survive especially as we do not have another night off until next Tuesday. Rang for an appointment with Doc Freudenberg [my GP], but he was fully booked. I was advised to go along and wait. Rang Terry and cancelled our work plans for the day. Got to the new health centre in Kentish Town and waited there for two hours before seeing Freudenberg. He prescribed penicillin for the sore throat, but was really more interested in how the show was going!

  Eventually got home and went to bed about 2.00. Very low ebb. Slept on and off and listened to the radio. Feeling a helpless lump. Down to the theatre at 7.00. Drank lots of hot lemon and was helped by a throat spray. Strangely enough, although it seemed unimaginable to perform two shows when I was lying sneezing in bed this afternoon, once at the theatre it became a job which had to be done. For four hours I almost forgot about the cold, and the combination of theatre lights, leaping about on stage and having to concentrate the mind on acting probably did me more good than a day off.

  Friday, March 15th

  An easier week, this third one. Tonight is our last show of the week, and we also had Tuesday off. Also the two-shows-an-evening dates are all behind us, so the pressure of the first two weeks has eased considerably. My cold is a lot better and the voice is bearing up well. We have at last completed the Python film script. Terry and I, as usual, did most of the rewriting. It took us a week and a half of very solid work, and today we completed that by deciding formally to cut the ‘King Brian the Wild’ sequence – the film is now shorter and has more shape.

  This morning we met at Terry Gilliam’s at 10.30 to read through our rewrites. The BBC had a sound team there. They are anxious to do an Omnibus programme on Python. None of us is particularly keen to be subjected to the sort of documentary which we’re always sending up, so we were all a bit lukewarm towards the slightly pushy producer who was present at our meeting. A concentrated three-hour session on the film. Little argument, except over the ‘Anthrax’ sequence, and at 2.00 we had agreed on a final script. All of us, bar John, went to a Chinese restaurant in Belsize Park to celebrate.

  Saturday, March 16th

  Angela had said that two weeks ago, when she went up to Southwold, Grandfather had deteriorated rapidly.

  He was seen last night by a psychiatrist from St Audry’s Hospital in Woodbridge, and his condition was serious enough for him to be taken in first thing this morning. He didn’t go by ambulance – he went in the car with my mother and a nurse, but it sounds as tho’ his brain is now so affected by the Parkinson’s that he may never see Croft Cottage again.

  I rang my mother this evening. She sounds relieved that he’s at last being properly looked after – but even so said she misses him.

  Friday, March 22nd

  Tonight there are some shouters in, and a drunken group up in a box. The week’s audiences have been capacity, apart from Monday and Tuesday, and, rather than become jaded, the show has brightened up a bit, and we’re enjoying it more than ever. John has added little embellishments to ‘Silly Walks’ in order to corpse me. Terry and Graham, as the two Pepperpots, have a continuing battle with each other centring around lipstick and names. Graham’s lipstick tonight stretched round his mouth, up and over the top of his nose; Terry had a phone number written in lipstick across his chest. They also have fun with names – starting by calling each other comparatively simple medical names (Mrs Scrotum, Mrs Orgasm), they have now become wonderfully obscure – Mrs Vas Deferens – and tonight’s masterpiece from Graham was Madame Émission Nocturnelle.

  In the ‘Custard Pie’, when I have to shout ‘Hey Fred!’ at Terry G, I have varied the names a lot – but none with greater success than ‘Hey Onan!’. That was a week ago, and I haven’t had so many people laughing on stage since. Tonight, however, I could tell that John C was reacting to the noisy crowd as he usually does, by tensing up, and ‘Pet Shop’, normally a corpser’s delight, was rushed through at quite a lick.

  Saturday, March 23rd

  Last night tonight.

  This was the show that Tony Stratton-Smith was recording, and yet responses to such great favourites as ‘Silly Walks’ were the worst ever. Graham was very fuddled through ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ and in the ‘Election’ sketch, John forgot a fairly important line and ‘Parrot’ ended prematurely after I replied ‘Yes’ instead of’No’ to John’s query about the slug, ‘Does it talk?’ He chased me off the stage claiming afterwards he was too tired for ad-libs.

  Champagne and scotch on stage for the company and friends. The stage hands were in sentimental mood and genuinely seemed to have enjoyed the four weeks. By an extraordinary coincidence there is a man who works front of house in the Theatre Royal called Mr Gumby. He was small and middle-aged and looked a bit like what I imagine Richard Goolden looks like as Mole in Toad of Toad Hall. He kept insisting that I call him Leslie, and I realised I was repeatedly calling him Mr Gumby, just to relish the name. Anyway, I got the cast to sign my Gumby handkerchief for him, which will surely confuse him even more.

  Tuesday, March 26th, Southwold

  Up to Southwold on the train. Met at 11.30 at Darsham by Mother. From Darsham we drove into Wickham Market and had lunch at the White Hart, then drove on to St Audry’s Hospital near Bury St Edmunds.

  Up anonymous institutional corridors smelling of disinfectant, until we reached the Kenton Ward on the second floor. It was a long room, bigger than I had expected, with high walls. About twenty beds neatly set out. In the first part of the ward the TV was on and about fifteen or sixteen men were slumped in chairs around it. I didn’t notice them at first because they didn’t react at all as we entered the ward, whilst the three or four nurses and two male attendants sitting at a table beyond a glass partition turned immediately. There was little sign of life from the inmates.

  Then I saw my father sitting on the side of his bed. Here was the man who played football with me, who ran along the towpath at Shrewsbury when I rowed in Bumpers, who used to try and teach me to overc
ome my fear of the sea at Sheringham. He was now sitting on his bed with his head bent, muttering to himself, and picking with helpless hands at the cord of his pyjamas, which were open, exposing his white stomach. He didn’t look up as I approached him – he didn’t hear as I talked to him. When eventually one of the male nurses came across and, like dealing with a child, firmly but pleasantly did up his pyjamas and put on his dressing gown, he at last looked up. His eyes were heavy and dull, with a film of moisture across them and a rim of white along the lower lids.

  George helped him round to a chair and we sat down to talk. ‘George,’ Daddy explained, was a man ‘whose instructions it was best to ignore.’We later found out that ‘George’ was really called John and clearly he depended on him – but his old cantankerous nature had not wilted entirely. As we sat, he talked almost non-stop. He would start long descriptions about what had happened that morning and the story would wander into flashbacks of the past with an undetectable deftness that many film directors would envy. He was talking about how he had been on the lavatory that morning – and suddenly said that he finished on the loo at 10.47.

  ‘10.47?’ we asked.

  ‘Yes, that was the train to Shrewsbury’, he went on, ‘which they used to drag me on to kicking and screaming.’

  He had some strange Pythonesque fantasies in his mind too. Apparently the hospital was run by the Japanese, and last night one of the patients had sat on a ‘beautiful’ marmalade cat, which had had surgery this morning.

  After talking for an hour or so, we were asked down to see Dr Hyde, who is dealing with the case. On the way to his office we passed a line of old padded cells – they looked like stables with strong wooden doors, with a spyhole in each. They were going to be knocked down any time now, said the doctor. He was a tall, thin, wispy-haired 4oish man – the kind of brainy boffin who moves rather nervously, and throws his body around in a slightly unco-ordinated fashion. Eminently accessible, he seemed to want to answer all our questions. I guessed afterwards that he was trying to be optimistic. I don’t think he holds out much hope for my dad. He has cerebral arterial sclerosis, like having a prolonged stroke, and, although he has made progress since entering St Audry’s, the general pattern from now on will be downhill. But how much does my father still know about where he is, and who we are? How seriously should we take his desire to come home? It would be awful if his perception was much clearer than we thought, that it was just his body which had failed him. The doctor was noncommittal, but did say that we should try, in any way, to give him some hope, something to look forward to – perhaps in a week or so we could take him out in the grounds in a wheelchair. He didn’t hold out much hope of him ever coming home again.

  Wednesday, March 27th, Southwold

  The paper full of the Budget details. The Daily Telegraph came out in its true colours, saying that this, Healey’s first Budget, would hit the managerial classes. I weep for the managerial classes. May they be spared the worst – to sell their second car, to have to change the BMW for an Austin because it uses less petrol. To have to have one instead of two gin and tonics when they get home after a hard day’s managing. Grudgingly the Telegraph mentions the rise in pensions for old people – the £500m subsidies for basic foodstuffs like bread and milk and meat and fish, the reductions in National Insurance contributions and in income tax for those earning less than £3,000 a year. It sounds to me to be a good, fair, just Budget – an attempt to solve inflation and help people who suffer most from it – i.e. those who can’t afford one car let alone two, and those who can’t afford one gin and tonic, let alone two. Mind you, it’s easy to say this from the lofty heights of one who could afford an entire quart of gin every evening.

  We got to the hospital at about 6.45. The inmates of the ward were queuing up for a milk drink. The nurses were talking amongst themselves – they obviously try not to mollycoddle the patients too much. My father was on his bed again, away from the others. He was agitated about something and tried straightaway to tell us about it – but his stammer was too bad. His lips couldn’t form any sound, they just opened and shut like a fish. We got him up and he walked, with a stick and unaided, around to the chair where we had sat yesterday. Like yesterday, once he was in the chair, he talked a little more fluently. Today his mind was on some sort of meeting there had been in the ward – a man had spoken for three-quarters of an hour – it was some sort of Farmers’ Union meeting.

  He didn’t seem to take a lot in, until we discussed our chat with the doctor yesterday. Then he appeared to know that Easter was in a fortnight, and when I said we would take him out for a drive then, or in a chair around the grounds, he looked up and said quite clearly and emphatically, ‘But I want to come home.’

  Saturday, April 6th

  Ten past seven in the evening, writing the diary out in the garden. In the last week everyone’s been coming out of doors again, in the wake of an early blast of summer. Hyacinths, providing a delicate whiff every now and then, are just about on the turn, but they’ve been out in profusion. Wallflowers of deep yellow and deep red and a single small white daffodil are out at the moment.

  After lunch today Eric and Graham came round for what was to have been a Python (less John) meeting’re the new TV series.

  We have to decide whether or not the VTR dates which Jimmy provided in February are still practical. Things look bleak. The dates were fixed at a time when we were only doing two weeks at Drury Lane instead of four, and we have enormously underestimated the amount of time which the two Terrys will have to spend on the film. They will neither of them be able to concentrate for any length of time on a new TV series until late August – which is when Ian wants all the scripts in. So either Graham, Eric and I write all the scripts, which I think is out of the question, or we make an awkward compromise and start to film one month later, or we put the whole thing off until the spring. Eric, who has a small TV series of his own planned for January ‘75, is keen to leave the series till the spring of next year.

  After our meeting in the sunshine, Eric stayed on here to bath (for his bathroom has been half-demolished by a gas explosion last week! Firemen and police rushed round. Eric said it was rather like a sketch – with firemen drinking cups of tea in the sitting room!) – Helen and I took our relentlessly energetic boys for a long overdue walk to the Heath. Thomas kept finding pieces of china in the huge piles of earth dug up where they’re enlarging Parliament Hill running track. Promised to start a museum for him when we got home.

  Sunday, April 7th

  Rang Terry J. He was of the opinion that it would be impolitic to alienate the BBC by refusing at this stage to do a series it had taken so long to set up. As Terry’s attitude was a rather key factor (for he will have to work incredibly hard if he is to contribute much to the series and edit the Python film) I was quite heartened. Certainly the most comfortable solution would be to do the series on the dates offered. Terry was more worried about finding a new direction and positive and strong ideas for the series, so I left him to have a think and call me back later. Eric was basically quite easy-going and adaptable, provided he could safeguard his three months in France during the summer.

  Monday, April 8th

  Tony Stratton-Smith rang in the evening – he had been listening to the Python Live at Drury Lane tapes and was enthusing as only Strat can. He wanted to release a live album in June, as the high point of a Python month – a big promotional push to boost sales of all our LPs. Tony reckons this Python month could shift another 80,000 or 90,000 of our records, which, as he says, would keep us off the breadline during the summer! A lucky coup is that NME [New Musical Express] want to issue 400,000 Python flimsies as a give-away with their paper in late May.

  Thursday, April 11th, Southwold

  Helen, Angela, Granny and I arrived at St Audry’s Hospital at about 4.00. Grandfather was sitting watching TV. He got up when he saw us and seemed to recognise the four of us and be genuinely pleased to see us. He was in day clothes for the first
time, and looked 100% better, tho’ still a little stooped and his eyes were moist.

  Fortunately, due to his much improved state, I was able to talk quite matter-of-factly to him about the problems of getting out. He wants to come back straightaway – he lives in a half real, half fantasy world of telegrams from Granny to say he’s coming out, recommendations from the doctor – everything he says is geared to his release from this ‘Institution’ as he calls it. He has tried to get out twice, and has been discovered by nurses half-way down the stairs. One nurse was treated to a volley of abuse, so she says, when she tried to stop him.

  But today he was negotiating tenaciously with me, like an ageing politician trying to strike one last bargain, pull off one last coup.

  Easter Sunday, April 14th, Southwold

  Drove over to St Audry’s after breakfast to bring Grandfather home for the day. (It’s nearly a month since he went into hospital.)

  Took him some clothes and a box of chocolates for the nurses. They dressed him behind some screens, while I spoke to Mr Smy, the charge nurse. We were talking fairly softly, but when I mentioned to Mr Smy that Grandfather recently had been very confused there was a shout from behind the screen – ‘I’m not confused.’

  Sun shining as we drove back to Southwold – the sharp cool wind at least had blown fogs and hazes away and the countryside looked fresh and green. A great day for colours, heavy dark shadows on the pine trees, and a vivid, almost luminous green on some of the fields.

  We had a chicken casserole for lunch and he drank a glass of Alsace wine. Afterwards he pottered around the house, looking in all the rooms, trying to make helpful comments, but they generally came out as grumbles. His life is very much geared to his current obsessions, and these obsessions are nearly always anxieties and problems. There seems to be nothing that makes him happy any more. He told me he dislikes all the nurses, and clearly he is finding it very difficult to be told what to do by people who, as he says, ‘have an inferiority complex’ (a social inferiority complex, he means), which they take out on him. He even said they mutter about Mummy after she’s gone because ‘she’s well-dressed and well-spoken’.