Arrived at 8.30 at the White Hart Hotel in Exeter. An historic inn, with it’s history quite spectacularly displayed – beams, torture instruments on the walls, cannon, etc. But a fairly cosy, un-smart bar, where Ian, Eke, Graham and John and Douglas (Graham’s writer friend from Cambridge)1 and others all sat.
Thursday, September 12th, Exeter
Today the weather was grey and rather miserable and, owing to a wrongly chosen location, I stood around for two hours in full drag, false eyelashes and all, before shooting for the day was cancelled. Eric and I walked up to the casde, or what remains of it after Cromwell. The weather began to improve and we wandered around some gardens, then, both in rather a silly mood, walked back through the town and stopped at a shop which was prominently displaying ladies’ panties with little messages on the front. We went inside. A chunky, middle-aged lady assistant, looking rather like I had done an hour previously, came up to us.
‘Oh, she’d love a pair of these,’ she said to us.
Eric indicated me, ‘No, they’re for him.’
I told her I wouldn’t be able to get them over my head.
‘We’re looking for some with the AA sign on them,’ said Eric.
She took this quite seriously and helpfully said ‘We did have some with road signs on.’
‘No, it’s AA ones we want,’ Eric confirmed.
We later bought some dressed crab and ate it with our tea back at the hotel.
Friday, September 27th
Filming aboard HMS Belfast moored by the Tower of London. I was to go along there at lunchtime, meet them and prepare for quite a long sketch to be filmed on Westminster Bridge in the afternoon. The rain fell heavily and persistently all morning and I arrived at HMS Belfast at about 12.45. ‘Oh, the BBC, yes/said an obliging Petty Officer. ‘You know where the bar is, don’t you?’
Well, I found the BBC ensconced, incredibly happily, in a warm, busy bar amidships – the only oasis of light and warmth and cheerfulness on board this steel-grey hulk. Terry, with an angelic smile, recommended the rum. Ian was as red-faced as I’d ever seen him on this filming. Outside it still poured. The morning’s shot had been completed, but with much laughter amongst the crew of Belfast – for Graham was dressed as a Captain in full drag. ‘Better keep Les below decks,’ and other naval banter was apparently heard.
On from Belfast, in heavy drizzle, to our rendezvous point in a car park beside County Hall. When we arrived it was raining heavily again and it was obvious they wouldn’t be able to film for a while. However, in the car park there just happened to be an enormous marquee, with ‘2nd International Festival of Wine’ in large letters outside. So I added four glasses of wine to my rum and lagers and, when we actually came to start filming, at about 4.00, beneath the South Bank Lion, I was in an extremely cheery state and ready for anything.
The advantages of being dressed as a policeman are that I was able to stop four lanes of traffic on Westminster Bridge at rush hour, walk across the road, hit Terry, dressed as a lady, grab his armchair and walk back across the road with the cars still respectfully at a standstill!
Disadvantages of being dressed as a PC were that, as I waited for the cue for action, I would be approached by Americans asking where they could find a restaurant where they wouldn’t need to wear a tie and harassed motorists asking me where the GLC licensing department was. One old lady approached me, stared hard at my false moustache and said, ‘What are you? Real or a fake?’
‘Have a guess,’ I said
She surveyed my loose moustache and pinned-up hair for a moment, ‘You’re real.’
Tuesday, October 1st
In the evening we had an investors’ preview of Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the Hanover Grand.
Tony Stratton-Smith was there, and Ali and Brian Gibbons – the financial wizards behind Charisma. I chatted up Madeline Bell to try and get her to appear as the Romettes in the next Python record1, and there were a lot of beautiful people, presumably Pink Floyd and their wives, and also Maggie Gilliam, Carol Cleveland and Helen, who had never seen the film before.
Mark had to make an announcement before the film explaining that it was not yet finally cut. But the result was even more disastrous than I’d thought. It was one of those evenings when Python flopped. There was some laughter and there was some enjoyment and there was polite applause at the end. Michael White and John Goldstone wouldn’t speak to us. White walked out at the end, giving Terry G a brief and non-committal pat on the shoulder.
Undoubtedly the poor quality of the print hadn’t helped. A couple of times there were booms in shot which killed the scenes after them. The soundtrack had been so realistically and thoroughly dubbed by Terry G and John Hackney that the slightly gory sequences had a sickening impact which didn’t help loosen people up.
I didn’t, I must admit, immediately look to technical faults to explain away my acute discomfort through most of the showing. I just felt, looking at it, that there were not enough jokes there. The film was 20% too strong on authenticity and 20% too weak on jokes.
None of the investors seemed anxious to shake us by the hand or even tap us on the shoulder. Only Tony Stratton-Smith came up and was clearly distressed to see us unhappy. He tried everything to jolly us up, for which I’m eternally grateful. The room was too hot, said Tony, the drink wasn’t free, the projection was terrible – which in fact it was.
Terry J clearly felt that what was wrong was there was too much animation and too noisy a soundtrack. Both faults of TG. Poor TG. He had to put up with stick from Mark and Michael White later in the evening, and has been working eighteen hours a day on the film.
Helen and I went on to a meal at Rugantinos with Eric and Lyn. Eric had walked out half-way through the viewing.
Wednesday, October 2nd
Spent a most uncomfortable day in a studio jungle at Ealing, trying to portray the almost unparody-able David Attenborough. We got the make-up on, hair pinned up, bladder stuck on and wig over that – but after nearly an hour it wasn’t quite right. Then suddenly I made a face that caught Attenborough and made the whole ensemble work. I spent the rest of the day trying, with various degrees of failure, to recapture this expression.
The discomfort of the make-up was nothing, compared to the special effect required to make Attenborough sweat profusely – this consisted of pipes thrust up my trouser legs and under my armpits and connected to the water supply for the studio. Unfortunately, for some reason, the supply wasn’t working and I had to stand around in the tubes, anchored to a long rubber pipe for about 30 minutes before I could be reconnected to another studio! When the shot was eventually ready, it was impossible to do a fully practical rehearsal, so I was half-way into a take of a long speech when I felt ice-cold water pouring from my armpits.
From filming, I drove straight to Regent’s Park and a Python film meeting. Michael White was the surprise guest – he had come along, he said, to tell us not to be too disheartened about the film. There were things that could be done to save it. It was, in his opinion, far too bloodthirsty, far too unpleasant in its atmosphere; almost every scene, he complained, showed death, disease, dirt or destruction, and his feeling, and the feeling of many people at the showing, was one of profound depression after seeing it.
It was not easy to take the whole White approach as The Word, but several aspects of it rang true.
TG stayed quiet and didn’t fight. Graham bristled at every criticism of the violence – he regards it as important, honest, etc, etc. Terry J, like a cat with his hackles up whenever Mark’s around, prowled the room, arguing fiercely that it should never have been shown in its unfinished state, that the film we saw on Tuesday was a badly-edited cut, full of mistakes, and that anyone who had seen the viewing a month or so ago would realise what damage had been done.
Thursday, October 3rd
A rare day of sunshine – even tho’ it was cold. Drove Graham down to Motspur Park, where we were filming a cricket match. Graham still mightily depressed
about the reaction to the film. He really does feel that we are in danger of being panicked into drastic alterations to what he considers is one of the best pieces of work we’ve ever done.
A mournful drink after lunch with Ian, Terry and Graham. Eke has gone back to Germany and Ian has reverted to the spirits, which Eke seemed successfully to divert his mind from. In the afternoon he could hardly stand up and at one point he actually fell backwards over the camera tripod.
Apart from this afternoon, Ian has been a changed man – confident, cooperative and always in control, both of us and the crew.
Saturday, October 5th
At 10.00 down to the Henshaws’ for a meeting about the film with Eric, Terry G, TJ, Gra, Mark and John Hackney, the editor.
The meeting, which Terry J had wanted to make very brief (his point being that there was very little to do to the film apart from losing all the ‘improvements’ made over the last four weeks), lasted solidly from 10.00 until 5.00. Everybody had their say about every part of the film. Eric and Mark won a point over the Three-Headed Knight (which all the rest of us who were actually in England working on the film in the summer thought was disastrous), which is now back in for us to look at. The animation has been cut down (the first time I can remember in all Python history when we have actually chopped any of TG’s stuff). Some of Neil’s music was thought to be not right, so we are putting on a lot of stock music. We have lost more of the ‘Ni’ sequence. There was nearly deadlock over re-shooting the very important opening joke with the coconuts. Mark clams up on any mention of re-shooting and TJ rises accordingly.
Thursday, October 10th
The second election this year. I feel more strongly pro-Labour than I did in February. Then it was a case of voting on the single issue of stopping the country grinding to a halt as a result of E Heath’s appalling misjudgement of the ‘have-nots’ and their strength. Since then the record of the Labour government has been impressive. They actually have held back rising prices, they have kept mortgage rates down, they’ve cut VAT, they’ve introduced fairer legislation on the sharing of North Sea Oil revenues and, on the international front, they have been a strongly heard voice in Washington and in the Common Market, and they have actually produced the ‘social contract’, which seems more than just another economic formula for trying to save the British economy (again) – it is an attempt to use and build on a sense of corporate responsibility among the working classes, which men like Sir Keith Joseph1 would deny they ever had.
So that’s why I once again found myself in the Polling Station at Tom’s school, at 9.15 on a wet October morning, voting for Jock Stallard2 for the second time in a year.
Friday, October 11th
The Labour overall majority is three. Big gains by Scottish Nationalists. The Liberal revival failed again – their share of the vote was down – and the Tories lost about twenty seats.
Monday, November 4th
As soon as we got to rehearsal today and started to read through the ‘Mr Neutron’ script, an almost tangible blanket of gloom fell on everyone. The script was bitty, and rather difficult to read, admittedly – it’s a show where we only need ten minutes’ studio – but this alone couldn’t account for the unprecedentedly dolorous mood around the table. Then I tracked it down – it was emanating from Eric. Eric, who can so often be the life and soul, was very deep into one of his dark, silent moods.
Because Eric was in France for all but two weeks of the entire writing and planning stage of the series, there is very little of his contribution in the series. In a welter of bitterly delivered contradictions, he criticised us for not accepting his half-hour, and at the same time bemoaned the fact that we wrote half-hours at all. He didn’t like writing stories, he liked writing revue.
At lunchtime came a fresh jolt from the BBC. In Graham’s speech as the Icelandic Honey Week rep – very funny and all recorded – they wanted the lines ‘Cold enough to freeze your balls off, freeze the little buggers solid in mid-air’ cut from the tape, as well as one ‘piss off’ (we could keep the other). Jimmy had apparently said very strongly to Ian that ‘if and when Python Productions made their own series they could say what they like’, but for now they must accept what the BBC say. Censorship in fact. Yes, says Jimmy, it is ‘censorship’. We had already burned off most of our frustrated anger at the BBC’s decision to omit the word ‘condom’ from that show. I mean, if condom is considered a bannable word on British TV in 1974, what hope is there!
One of Jimmy’s reasons for this fresh bout of anti-sexual censorship is that we are going out at 8.30 on BBCi when the shows are repeated. So, from lunchtime today, we are faced with an important decision. Do we let the BBC change Python into a soft, inoffensive half-hour of pap, or do we fight to keep its teeth, its offensiveness, its naughtiness? Do we have to conform or disappear?
Came home to cauliflower cheese, a couple of glasses of white wine and a sit by the fire whilst I watched Panorama on the World Food Conference in Rome. Within the year one in five of the world’s population will suffer from starvation. It’s like saying they’ll suffer from death.
How small and insignificant it makes the events of today seem – and yet they have left me quite drained.
Tuesday, November 5th
Tom very pleased with himself this morning as he has learnt to tie his shoelaces. He keeps tying and untying them and had to show Mr Jarvis1 how to do it. Helen later tells me they kept on coming undone as he walked to school.
A few fireworks at the Guedallas’, and quick drink, then Robert H came round for the evening.
Robert thinks we ought to stop Python whilst we’re still at the top. I think 31 is a little early to quit – but a few more mornings like yesterday could change my mind.
Wednesday, November 6th
Rehearsals a lot more convivial today, but Graham is feeling very low, as in Monday’s editing Terry and Ian decided that, in view of the censorship cuts demanded by the BBC, the entire Icelandic Honey Week speech from Show 2 would have to be taken out. The loss of three sentences at the BBC’s behest has therefore effectively castrated a funny, absurd, harmless and well-performed little piece.
Anne Henshaw2 came to the rehearsals to give us some money from the book (which seems set for some good sales again this Christmas – the Papperbok is No. 3 in the best-selling lists, below Watership Down and Lyall Watson’s Supernature) and she also showed us a letter from the financial front-man at Charisma, which tried to argue that we were not owed £11,000, but nearer £6,000. This is clearly not true, so the situation there is deteriorating rapidly. Anne is going to keep plugging away at them, but it seems as though Python may find itself in the courts for the first time. What a depressing week it’s turning out to be.
Friday, November 8th
Nancy rang from New York to say she was ecstatic about the critical success of the TV show in New York, and especially over a rave review to be published in the prestigious New York Sunday Times in a couple of days. Boston and Philadelphia have bought the show.
Saturday, November 9th
Our fifth recording. Graham is round here in a mini-cab at 9.30, catching me with the toast and marmalade fresh in my mouth. But we are round at Eric’s by ten to ten, and at the BBC 25 minutes early (a record, I think). Not a great deal of pressure this week as 19 minutes of the show are on film. So it all goes smoothly and unremarkably. For the fireside scene in which the Trapper and Captain Carpenter talk to Teddy Salad, the CIA agent disguised as a dog – John Horton and Richard had excelled themselves – Richard just working the dog with his hand right up its backside was funny enough.
At the end of the dress run-through, Jimmy Gilbert appeared, a little awkward perhaps, but clearly on placatory mission. Great show last week, he said, and apparently the viewing figures – at 5.8 million for Show 1 of the fourth series – were the best on BBC2, apart from Call My Bluff!! This doesn’t strike me as all that wonderful.
Wednesday, November 13th
After rehearsal
today Anne Henshaw came to tell us that Charisma are, in fact, broke. How serious it is we don’t know – but at least they admit that we are owed £13,000 and presumably this money increases every time someone buys one of our records.
Thursday, November 14th
Simon A came round. He had been at a union meeting called to talk about the next step in his continuing war against the producer and editor of World in Action, who, in their bid to lure Granada reporters up to Manchester, have taken the unprecedented step of threatening to fire those who won’t come. It sounds as though a fearless World in Action exposé of World in Action is required.
SA has been working for the last seven weeks gathering material for a programme on police corruption. He says the information is incredible. Corruption starts early in the Metropolitan Police, when bobbies, in order to be well considered, are judged on the number of arrests they make. According to SA’s sources, it is commonplace therefore for vagrants and down-and-outs to be quite falsely charged with trying to break into cars, etc, etc. The corruption at the top is almost institutionalised. One forgets the close social connections between police and the underworld. In many cases there is a mutual respect, in some real friendship – and SA says a man like James Humphries, the recently gaoled Soho ‘porn king’, was a regular dinner party guest of senior policemen.
Tuesday, November 19th
A clear, sunny morning. London is drying out after a week of heavy rain. The pound at its lowest level ever yesterday, share prices down to 1958 levels, the miners’ rejection of a big productivity deal, and another report from the Hudson Institute in Paris, which prophesies that Britain has had it, and in the 1980s there will be a decline in living standards, which will leave us on a level with Spain. Certainly we have already made our mark on Benidorm, so maybe UK and Spain should amalgamate and go into leisure in a big way, and leave the smooth, Tonik-suited executives of Germany and Holland to run our business for us.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 27
