Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  At 6.30, Granny and I drove him back to the hospital.

  Monday, April 15th, Southwold

  After lunch, built a new piece of fence for Granny, whilst she and Helen sorted through an old chestful of Grandfather’s papers. Letters from Shrewsbury home to his parents, old school reports, Indian Railway timetables, dance cards from Poona, with the names of his partners for the evening marked.1 A fascinating collection – in the Shrewsbury and India days much evidence that he was quite a character, enjoyed life and was sociable: ‘always looks as though he has done something wicked, but never has’ – school report from Shrewsbury.

  His later letters to the head of Edgar Allen’s,2 for instance, complaining that the £1,600 salary he was receiving in 1960 was hardly sufficient for a ‘public school-educated, university graduate’, have a much more hopeless air about them.

  But Thomas and Willy love his old bundles of cheques and Thomas has taken to playing’bank managers’.

  Tuesday, April 16th Southwold

  Woke feeling refreshed, then suddenly my heart sank to my stomach as the full weight of work about to descend, the number of small problems, things to be done, things to avoid being done, hit me. A silly reaction, to be so bowled over. It will disappear when I am up and doing things, but the pleasure of being in Suffolk, remote from all phone calls, deals, confrontations, etc, etc, is just beginning to sink in, and I think the sudden realisation that the brief rest was over and that tonight I would be back among the pressures, hit me harder than usual this morning.

  We had a superb little lunch, it being our eighth wedding anniversary, with a half-bottle of Bollinger, and delicious freshly caught cod with mushroom sauce.

  Drove home via St Audry’s where we stopped off to see Grandfather. As I took him back after a short walk to the car park, he mounted the stairs to the ward with a heavy sigh and murmured, ‘Here we are … the via dolorosa,’ and he stood at the window, waving, trying to smile as Thomas (unconcerned of course by the fate of his grandfather) and I walked away in the late afternoon sun to our car. It could have been heart-rending, but I am trying to keep the whole thing in proportion, and not become too emotional about his condition. It may seem heartless, but it’s the only way, I’m sure.

  Monday, April 29th, Ballachulish, Scotland

  Sitting down to write this overlooking the broad sweep of Loch Leven. Below me cars are queuing for the Ballachulish ferry, across the water the sun shines through a break in the cloud, pinpointing a small white-washed group of cottages and emphasising the green of the fields running down to the water’s edge. Beyond them the mountains rise into the mist. A tranquil sort of morning. We have been in Scotland a little over twenty-four hours. On Saturday night I said goodbye to Helen and the boys in the usual unsatisfactory way – a rushed meal together – a ‘Quick, can you sew on this?’ and ‘Have you seen my that?’ sort of leavetaking. I won’t see them again until May 25th. Still, Scotland has been very welcoming, and I feel relaxed and comfortable and invigorated here, after the busy two weeks since we left Southwold.

  During that time we rehearsed the film [Monty Python and the Holy Grail], inevitably rewrote some of the scenes as we did so. But it came to life during rehearsal – we began to laugh at each other’s performances again, and from being rather an albatross of worry round our necks (finance, script, etc, etc) the film became enjoyable and fun.

  I’m trying to think how I can begin to chronicle all that happens on this film. Will try a kind of shorthand and see if it works.

  Tuesday, April 30th, Ballachulish

  First day of filming. Woken at 6.45. Sunshine streaming through the curtains. Into chainmail and red-cross tabard. A difficult day today – the Bridge of Death scene where Eric and I die and Lancelot is arrested by the police. Dangerous too – from what I hear. Difficult decision over Galahad’s blond wig. Instead of noble and youthful, I look like I should be serving in a supermarket. End of Galahad as a blond.

  Such is the economy on this film that not only do the actors have a minibus rather than cars to go to the location, but they also have to drive it.

  John (Lancelot) and I (Galahad) driving up through Glencoe in a Budget Rent-a-Van in full chainmail.

  Scrambled up to the Gorge of Eternal Peril – this took about 15 minutes of hard climbing.

  Camera broke midway through first shot.

  The day is hastily re-arranged and, from having been busy, but organised, it was now busy and disorganised. The sun disappeared. John Horton’s smoke bombs and flames worked superbly. Graham as King Arthur got vertigo and couldn’t go across the bridge. He spent the day rather unhappily cold and shaking. Eric and I and John sat around listening to stories from the Mountain Rescue boys about how many people perish on these spectacular mountains each year. Five or six deaths usually.

  Terry J comes up to me in the afternoon and says he’s ‘a bit worried about Terry G’s priorities in choice of shots’1 – we run two and a quarter hours overtime, until nearly 8.00. Everyone in the young unit seems happy enough.

  Enjoyed the sight of Hamish Maclnnes, head of Mountain Rescue in Glencoe, flinging rubber corpses of knights into the gorge. More terrifying ledges to climb round on tomorrow. I hope Gra’s OK.

  Back at hotel at 8.30 for large Bell’s and a bath. Couldn’t really face the four-course hotel meal, so sat in the bar with Eric, drinking scotch and watching card tricks.

  But Sunday night was the most eventful, when I giggled a great deal over the menu after some very high-quality grass of Eric’s, and Graham ended up being seduced by an Aberdeen gentleman on a fishing holiday. Graham resisted evidently, but was well pissed and woke me about 1.00 banging on my door saying he was Ethel de Keyser2.

  On Monday night he woke me again just after I’d dropped off, when I heard him in his room saying’Betty Marsden!’ rather loudly in a variety of silly ways.

  Tuesday night, however, he was kind enough to be content with putting a note under my door with ‘Best wishes, Betty Marsden’3 written on it.

  Wednesday, May 1st, Ballachulish

  At lunchtime still no word that we were needed. Eric and I sit in the quiet, well-kept garden beside the hotel, thinking we’re rather like officers at the Craiglockhart Hospital,1 sitting waiting to recover before being sent back to the Front. Eric says he’s Sassoon, and I’m Wilfred Owen – who had ‘a bit of a stocky body’.

  Lunch with Mark, Eric and John, who is trying to read a book of philosophy and is constantly rather cross – but quite fun. He continually goes on about the ‘bovine incompetence’ of the waitresses – who are certainly no Einsteins, but good-hearted Scottish mums.

  After lunch the unreality continues. Eric and I go round to Ballachulish House to play croquet in the sunshine. Ridiculously idyllic. The Lady of the Manor, a tweedy, rather sharp Englishwoman, appears with an enormously impressive, kilted, very red-faced Scottish laird, who leaves in a large old Lagonda. All too Dr Finlay for words. Eric idly fantasises we may have caught them ‘in flagrante’.

  After the croquet and a few words with the Lady of Ballachulish, more sitting in the disabled officers’ garden. At about 3.30 the call comes. Sir Robin and Sir Lancelot drive their Budget Rent-a-Van up to Glencoe, complete with a message from the producer to say we must stop by 6.00. At about 6.00 we are hanging onto the ledge above the gorge waiting for a long shot of the Bridge of Death. Terry J directs Terry G to get some more dirt on his legs (as the Soothsayer).

  Then suddenly John Horton’s effects go off, a few flares, firecrackers, smoke bombs, then, surprising everybody, huge mortar blasts which send scorching barrels of fire high into the air – the grass and trees are burning. No-one (except John H) knows where the next blast will come from. Gerry Harrison shouts, TJ shouts. John’s stand-in races across the bridge with suicidal courage, only to be told to get back again as the camera can’t see anything through the smoke.

  I think we may have a few more days of difficulty before the film gets together. TG was very unhappy
as he sat on the top of the mountain. And Galahad drove the van back.

  Rather sad notices around Ballachulish today asking for volunteers to join an army for a scene tomorrow. They’re only getting £2 and I think even the Scots will baulk at that.

  Cocktail bar – 8.45. Neil [Innes] arrives from London via train, bus and foot. Great rejoicing. Within an hour he’s on the piano, spurred on by Eric, and a bearded left-handed Scots accordion player and a guitarist materialise from somewhere and the Ballachulish Hotel resounds with rather raucous sing-along.

  Thursday, May 2nd, Ballachuish

  Woken by whine of my tape recorder about 1.00. Woken again by Neil plus guitar coming in to sleep in the spare bed in my room about 2.00. Finally woken by loud sneeze at 10.00.

  Eric and I have another lazy day at the rest home for officers, while Graham and Terry are finding the Castle Aaargh! We go to the location about 2.00, and they still haven’t had a lunch break.

  Graham is getting shit poured all over him. He’s taking a great deal of punishment in these first few days of filming.

  Wonderful chaos round about 4.00. Out on the island the motor boat which drove the wondrous ship in which Arthur and Bedevere reached the Castle Aaargh! broke down and Terry J was left drifting across Loch Leven with the radio communication set. Terry G, in great Errol Flynn style, leapt into another dinghy, pushed it out with a flourish, but failed to make the engine work and was left also drifting about twenty yards out to sea. The whole scene, enacted in front of a motley army of extras, was great entertainment value – and cheered everyone up enormously.

  Finally, frenetically, the army shot was completed, and, going into heavy overtime yet again, the day finished about 6.20. Or rather didn’t finish, because we then had to drive to Killin on Loch Tay, our next location. Graham and I in the Mini, driving over the most forbidding, lonely landscape in Britain as night fell – rain, mountains on either side, huge black clouds hanging on their summits.

  Friday, May 3rd, Killin

  At last a chance to see the scenery we drove through last night. We are filming in a cave three or four miles beyond Ardeonaig, and the road winds rather prettily along the side of Loch Tay. From where we are filming – a rather tough ten-minute climb from the road – you can look down the length of Loch Tay and across the other side to the mountains, tipped by Ben Lawers (nearly 4,000 feet). A spectacular location, but soon filled with the flotsam and jetsam of filming – boxes of equipment, tea urns, Land Rovers churning up and down the hill with lights, and wood for the construction team.

  A slow day’s filming, it seems. Rather a lot of worried faces when we run into overtime again. Hazel especially has hardly had a moment to organise herself and her costumes, and looks completely shattered.

  Julian [Doyle] took me aside after filming today as we walked down the hillside and said he was worried that the way things were being shot this week was putting a big strain on the budget (almost the entire £1,000 allowed for overtime was spent in this first week) and there would have to be some compromises by the Terrys somewhere along the line.

  So we had a meeting at the Killin Hotel tonight in among the costumes, and the production/direction points of view were put forward. I think Terry G accepted that they would have to simplify the shooting script and perhaps compromise on some of the locations. Terry J was less compromising, but in the end everyone decided that we should postpone final decisions on Hadrian’s Wall, etc, for a week, to see if we could catch up. It was also decided not to move to Doune until Monday.1

  Saturday, May 4th, Killin

  A good day’s filming at last. Even John and Eric aren’t grumbling, even tho’ we go into overtime again. John Horton’s rabbit effects are superb. A really vicious white rabbit, which bites Sir Bors’ head off. Much of the ground lost over the week is made up. We listen to the Cup Final in between fighting the rabbit – Liverpool beat Newcastle 3–0.

  More good rushes in the evening. The boat that takes them across to the Castle Aaargh! looks really magical. It will give the film just the right kind of atmosphere and build-up to make the non-ending work. Terry Bedford’s2 effects, especially his fondness for diffusing the light, work superbly.

  I bought drinks for everyone at dinner as it’s my birthday tomorrow, then had a couple of smokes with Neil, went for a walk and shouted abuse at a Celtic supporter on a bicycle. Utterly collapsed about 11.00.

  Sunday, May 3th, Killin

  Thirty-one. A birthday on the road again. Slept until 10 or 11 – at half past eleven a knock on the door. It was Neil, complete with a birthday present – three ducks, a yo-yo and a junior doctor’s kit! Downstairs about 12.00. The foyer of the hotel was littered with Python gear. Hazel was working on costumes and the other half of the hotel foyer was full of Make-up’s wig boxes. Neil and I decided that it would be best to avoid the Killin Hotel for the day. Drove up into the Ben Lawers National Park. We walked for nearly three hours in total solitude, and managed at last to reach a patch of snow – about 2,600 feet up.

  We drove back around Loch Tay – passing on our way the town of Dull – which was exacdy as its name suggests. We couldn’t even find a shop to buy a postcard with ‘Greetings from Dull’ – so we stopped for tea at Weem. Tea and scones served by a Scottish lady with a soft, high-pitched voice, in a reverential atmosphere rather more like a funeral parlour than a hotel. Bought Neil a meal at Ardeonaig – where we found Eric, who had been spending the weekend there, away from the rest of the unit. He sent me a silly birthday message on a meringue, which was delivered to the table, and also bought me a bottle of champagne. I was nearly tempted to stay at the Hotel Anthrax, so lulled was I by the meal and the wine and the attentions of one of the ladies – but fortunately my 31st birthday passed celibately and Neil and I drove home about 11.30.

  Monday, May 6th, Killin

  Eric and I dressed as monks (gear that really rather suits us) toiling up to the cave at 8.30. Very clear sky and the sun is already hot. Quite a long piece for me today as the monk who reads the instructions about the Holy Hand Grenade. As the sun is so bright, all the camera angles have to be changed, and the actors, so much fodder in the process of film-making, find themselves standing on a steep slope, precariously perched barefoot on rather slippery mud. All the knights are in the stream down below. Terry J gives me a good piece of direction which makes my perf. more silly and lively. But it is a hard morning’s work for everybody. For the first time we see the pages – they are weighed down with very heavy packs and their first movements have to be uphill over rather difficult terrain. Everyone very near the end of their tether – Graham shaking and quivering with suppressed neurotic rage – when lunch break is called at 2.30.

  I’m not needed in the afternoon, so go back to the hotel and decide to go off early to Doune. Rang home first, and spoke to Tom, who burst into tears, and all I could hear was his sad pleas that he wanted his Daddy back home. Quite disconcerting and left me feeling very depressed. Then the car wouldn’t start. But John C (to whom I had promised a lift) helped me to push it up the main street of Killin to a garage, where a Scottish Jimmy Cagney promised me he would ‘charge it for a wee while’, as the battery was flat.

  JC and I sat on the rocks on the Falls of Killin – those same falls of which Helen had sent me a postcard in 1962, which put us back in touch after a year and turned our little Southwold romance into an Oxford romance as well. Oh, how soppy.

  John and I talked about life. I sympathise quite a lot with his urge to be free of the obligations and responsibilities of the Python group – but I feel that John is still tense and unrelaxed with people, which compounds his problems. He has more defences than Fort Knox.

  But he was very enjoyable company and, after we collected the car from Mr Cagney, we drove into Doune, stopping at Callander to have a leisurely meal at a sixteenth-century hunting lodge turned into a hotel – full of antiques, old prints, a rather delicate atmosphere. John and I talked about psychoanalysis – John is going to a new
man, who he reckons has changed him greatly – told John to try harder to do things which he enjoyed, and not to accept work he didn’t enjoy. Hence JC went to Kenya for two months and says he has never since felt the psychosomatic symptoms which he always used to get while working.

  And so to Doune at 10.00. This is to be our home for the next two weeks.

  Tuesday, May 7th

  Up at 7.15, after a rather uncomfortable night. The walls of the room are paper-thin and, tho’ I have a spacious double bed, I was continually woken by strange sounds from the pipes and the plumbing – including an irregular dripping noise – rather like a Chinese water torture, which went on all night, and which I could never track down. John and Eric equally disaffected with the Woodside and later today they move out to a hotel in Dunblane which apparently has sauna baths and a swimming pool. But the Woodside has a rather friendly, welcoming atmosphere downstairs which I would be sad to miss. So I decide to stay.

  Today we shoot the Camelot musical sequence. A long and busy day for 50 seconds’ worth of film. Dancers dressed as knights wrecking Camelot. In the middle of the day Mark has arranged a press call, but as the two Terrys are busy directing, the brunt falls on Eric, Neil, John and myself. The usual questions: who is Monty Python? How did you all get together? Obvious questions maybe, but they drive us potty. Lots of photos – can you all put your heads round the shields? Etc. Eric and Neil try to escape, Colditz style, by walking out of the gate when Mark isn’t looking, talking terribly urgently to each other – they made it back to the hotel before being recaptured.