Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  2 Iradj Bagherzade inveigled me into an unsuccessful attempt to sell encyclopaedias to American servicemen in Germany during my first summer at Oxford. I sold four sets in ten weeks, one to a family who defected to the Soviet Union.

  3 Friends from Oxford days.

  1 Nigel was one of the cast of the Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival in 1964, with Terry Jones, Annabel Leventon, Doug Fisher and myself. He married the actress April Olrich.

  1 As Updike had his Rabbit, Al had his Fish – Leo Fish, his alter ego and central character of all his novels.

  1 Designer of the first Python book.

  1 This version, directed by John Guillermin, starred Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange.

  2 Katherine Greenwood, née Palin, my father’s younger sister.

  1977

  1977 began with a new departure for the Palin family, a winter sun holiday. We spent two weeks on the West Indian island of Tobago. Helen learnt to stay up on one water-ski and the children loved being by the beach, but according to my entry of January 13th I had mixed feelings about it.

  ‘Seldom have I enjoyed a holiday as much and wanted to get home as much,’ I wrote. ‘I have a feeling my brain could atrophy in this alluringly beautiful part of the Caribbean.’ Once home, and back in my hair shirt, I worked on an article about the holiday for Lee Eisenberg of Esquire, and took it personally to him in New York, only to find he’d resigned from the magazine.

  Meanwhile my father’s condition had deteriorated and he was now permanently in bed at Blythburgh Hospital, just outside Southwold. His previous accommodation, St Audry’s at Bury St Edmunds, had been built as a lunatic asylum, this one as a workhouse.

  Monday, January 31st, Southwold

  Even the old workhouse at Blythburgh looks like a French chateau in the crisp sunny beauty of this winter’s afternoon. Father is lying in bed, with the iron side up, like a cot, his glasses off, his face so thin, his eyes shut and mouth open. He looks more like a corpse.

  For a while he seems bewildered, his eyes stare, as he’s probably just woken up. Then he sees us and his look softens a bit. Colour returns to his face, and he manages to get more words out than usual, though hardly any complete sentences, so you don’t really know what he’s saying.

  Much entertainment from the rest of the ward, though. One rugged-looking old man with large, piercing eyes, beckoned urgently towards us. When Ma went over to speak to him, he fixed her with a very serious gaze and asked her if she was wanted by the police.

  At the next door bed, from behind the curtains, meanwhile, repeated BBC radio acting cries of’Gawd! Oh my gawd! Oh gawd! Gawd! Gawd! Oh bloody gawd!’ I was told that this stream of half-hearted, and yet strangely heart-felt cries is a common sound in the ward.

  When I first came here to see Dad, it was an unfamiliar world, from which I rather shrank back. The sight and sound of twenty old men in one room takes a little getting used to. Now I feel much easier and happier there. The nurses are not only dedicated, but, I think, cheerful and sensible.

  Back to Croft Cottage for local fish (delicious) and a bottle of Alsace and a game of Scrabble and to bed with Doctorow’s Ragtime. In the company of Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit and Commander Peary of the US Navy, January dwindled.

  Tuesday, February 1st, Southwold

  After lunch, drove over to Blythburgh to see Dad. He was in his chair today, dressed and looking much improved. His lack of speech is still the greatest drawback, but he responded with pleasure to seeing us. He seems to drift off, though – as if his concentration easily goes, and he sometimes stares fixedly at some point, as if seeing something we haven’t. His fingers pick at surfaces and edges – whether it’s the corner of the sheet on his bed, or the wooden rim of his table.

  But he’d fed himself lunch, and they were pleased. I hope he has more days like today – and that he doesn’t linger and waste away to his death.

  Wednesday, February 2nd

  Am going to try to keep to a routine of an hour’s work before breakfast. Managed to wake up at ten to eight today, so did 40 minutes. Worked on Shepperton business.

  John Goldstone rings and, in his dangerously persuasive way, makes me agree to meet Don Rugoff, American distributor, for a chat about advertising slogans for Jabberwocky. So I find myself at the Connaught Hotel at ten to six, heavily wrapped up, blowing my nose every four minutes and reading the Evening Standard. Don doesn’t arrive until about 6.15. He seems more like a gargoyle every time I see him. With him is his glamorous assistant, Susan, who doesn’t seem entirely at ease, but then who would be, having to accompany Don all day.

  Up to Don’s room, or rooms. (I like the Connaught. It’s small, intimate and Edwardian – much less dauntingly impressive than I expected.) We drink flat Perrier and Don reels out a list of slogans he’s thought of. It’s back to square one – and I feel depressed and trapped having to re-explain basic principles about avoiding the comparison with Holy Grail, etc, etc.

  But Don has a technique, unsophisticated though it may be, of acquiring co-operation and, as the evening rolls on, we begin to warm to the spirit of the whole silly operation, and run up quite a list of ad-lines. I really liked Don’s ‘At last! A film for the squeamish!’

  Before I leave, just after eight, he’s not only wheedled a whole new crop of ad-lines from me, but also several trailer ideas. Don cleverly flatters me – ‘Oh, wonderful, that’s wonderful’ – thanks me profusely and effusively and shuffles me out into the passage.

  Home, very hungry, by nine. It’s been like a session with a mad psychiatrist.

  Thursday, February 3rd

  Arrive BBC about a quarter to two. Terry Hughes and I lunch in the canteen. I am to meet Jimmy G at 2.30 to discuss the situation. I just learned yesterday from TH – that the BBC will not release him for the filming of the next three Ripping Yarns.

  I had an inkling when he was made Assistant Head of LE Variety last year that this would come. TH has repeatedly said he regarded these shows as the most important and satisfying things he’s done. But he seems to have yielded to the blandishments of high office and, as Bill Cotton sounds to be about to leave Light Entertainment for higher things, I understand their cultivation of the Golden Boy.1 He will remain executive producer, however, and Jim Franklin will direct. Luckily I like Jim and find him unassuming, efficient and very down to earth. But I slightly resent the fact that I wasn’t consulted at all, until a fait accompli had been prepared.

  Jimmy Gilbert tells me the BBC wiped the tapes of the first two Python series! But he is trying to find film copies from all over the world to get together the three early Pythons they’re planning to show in April/May.2

  Tuesday, February 8th

  Finished, at last, a six-month-old pile of fan letters. Mostly from Japan, beautifully written, generally on very delicate paper, and nearly always beginning ‘I am a schoolgirl of 14’, as if to add a frisson of danger for the reader. The language is fine too. Python is translated as ‘Gay Boys’ Dragon Show’ on Japanese TV, and one of the letters eulogises’Upper Class Twit of the Year’, but calls it, splendidly ‘The Aristocratic Deciding Foolish No. 1 Guy’. American letters, too, but coarser and more violent generally, shouting at me off the page.

  In the evening Helen makes a delicious, non-meaty repast for David and Stephanie Leland, who bring Chloe with them to sleep here.

  David is in the process of leaving his agent. As he says, you ‘fire’ solicitors, and you ‘change’ accountants and you ‘leave’ wives and agents. That’s what makes it difficult.

  He wants to do a season of three or four new plays in repertory at the Crucible next autumn. He wants to remove the ‘new play’ from its neat little slot amongst all the trad classical revivals and generally show that the theatre and that playwrights are very much alive and modern in their outlook and topics.

  I suggest that the only way really to ensure that a provincial theatre receives the credit and attention it deserves for pioneering new plays is to have a clause in
the contract which says the play cannot be shown in London for a period of, say, eighteen months from its out of town opening. Then get Tom Stoppard, or some other London darling, to write a masterpiece, and for eighteen months the provincial theatres might be full of coachloads from Hampstead and Kensington.

  Sunday, February 13th

  Our croissants, duly delivered, slipped down a treat and, after breakfast and a quick check to see that Sheffield United had resumed their slide down the Second Division, I took all three children to the Holiday Inn for a swim.

  Rachel ‘helps’ us all get dressed. She likes these sort of activities and supervises most efficiently – wandering up with various pieces of clothing which, if you are not exactly ready, she will drop in a puddle on the floor.

  Monday, February 14th

  It’s another splendid morning and I go down to Camberwell on the bus. It’s good to be able to pace one’s life, so that if I want to take an extra 30 minutes to get to Terry’s by bus I can. The walk at the other end is a slog, but on a day like this it’s all justified by the feeling of busy, buzzing London life all around. Faces in the sunshine. The river sparkling as we ride over Westminster Bridge.

  Terry suggests a beer for lunch and we have a couple of pints at a rather unpleasantly refurbished Young’s pub beside Peckham Common. Sitting next to us are a very odd middle-aged couple, a little tipsy. They have two Pekinese dogs which they treat with affected bantering politeness. The woman licked pieces of chocolate before giving them to the dog and the man accused Terry of coming from Wrexham.

  Wednesday, February 16th

  To the BBC. Meet Jim Franklin and his PA Eddie Stuart. Jim Franklin, straight, direct, likeable, a special effects boffin, who lovingly describes how he yesterday shot John Cleese being run over by a bus with a flowerpot on his head for a Diana Rigg show.

  We talk over attitudes to the shows. Should we have an audience on? Jimmy Gilbert pops his head round the door to say he wants to show it to an audience. When we ask why, he says ‘Because it’s funny.’

  ‘Well, then it doesn’t need an audience to tell people that,’ I counter.

  ‘I’ve heard that before,’ says Jimmy.

  I wouldn’t worry, but he has an infuriating habit of being right.

  Thursday, February 17th

  Down to Camberwell on the bus again. An hour and a quarter door to door. Normal car journey: 35 minutes. Read Memoirs of George Sherston – a world away from Walworth Road in the drizzle. But then not as far away as one might think, for Sassoon is always detaching himself from the stereotyped county hunting image. He’s interested in people, really. And there’s a lot of them in the Walworth Road today.

  A solid work day at Terry’s. By the time I left at five, ‘Eric Olthwaite’ felt in much tighter shape.

  In to London to the studio, passing through Covent Garden on the way. Studios, galleries and smart new restaurants are sprouting daily now. The rush is on to be in the new trendy quarter of London, now that threats of large-scale demolition and ‘development’ seem to have receded. Once again feel that going in with Terry G on Neal’s Yard was one of the best things that could have happened to a lad with £70,000 to spend.

  Drop in at Penhaligon’s to buy some of their aftershaves, which brighten up my mornings immeasurably. Talk with Sheila Pickles,1 who I think at first thought I was something the cat had brought in. I had on my Kickers with holes in, my jeans with holes in and my Fiorucci anorak with the hood up. And her shop is very smart.

  Sheila promised to publicise my studio to her well-connected film friends. Zeffirelli apparently is working on the Life of Christ at such a slow rate that Python could still pip him to the post. He has to make it in different lengths for different countries. Six one-hour episodes for Italy, three twohour episodes for the US, two three-hour episodes for the UK. It’s a bit like ordering meat.

  Saturday, February 19th, Abbotsley

  After a bath, in which I read a fascinating chapter from Plain Tales from the Raj – a book of reminiscences about the British in India [by Charles Allen] – and concluded that we must write a colonial Ripping Yarn next year, walked to Highgate West Hill and caught a 214 bus to King’s Cross and then the 9.30 Cambridge train and reached St Neots at a quarter to eleven.

  On the journey read a synopsis sent to me in the post today by Christopher Matthew’s agent with a letter beginning ‘Over lunch with John Cleese, Christopher Matthew said how very much he would like to turn his Sunday Times column – “Diary of a Somebody” – into a television series. John’s instant reaction was that you were absolutely the right person for it.’

  Actually I like the columns – a modern Diary of a Nobody. They’re very well written and he can turn a humorous phrase, but, even if I did have time, I reflected, as the train chattered through the industrial estates of Stevenage and Biggleswade, that I didn’t really want to do comedy all my life. A commitment to this would be a commitment to light, rather parochial comedy for another two or three years, and then I’ll be nearly 40 and too old for the Robert de Niro roles I subconsciously yearn for.

  Monday, February 21st

  Woke feeling gratefully fresh, after a long, deep sleep. Another day of fairly continuous rain showers. Terry came up here to write.

  At two we went up to Hampstead for a pizza and saw the Goodies, Tim, Graham and Bill, all in almost identical blue anoraks walking up Flask Walk ahead of us. Enjoyed ourselves immensely, shouting loud and coarsely after them – ‘Goodies!’ ‘Eric Cleese!’ ‘Do us your silly walk!’ ‘Where’s your bicycle?’ and watching them deliberately not turn around or quicken their pace in the face of this volley. Even at the top of the hill, when we were almost beside them, they only looked round very furtively and then away again. Finally Bill did an enormous double-take.

  Friday, February 25th

  More writing on ‘The Curse of the Claw’. Helen leaves for Amsterdam at a quarter to four [to visit her friend Ranji]. The kids are all very good, though boisterous (Tom has his friend Jud for tea). But I get them all out of the way by 8.15.

  Monday, February 28th

  The weekend with the children was very successful, but rushed, of course. To the Columbia Theatre for the children’s ‘trial’ preview of Jabberwocky. I took Tom and Willy, Nicky1 and Catherine Burd.2

  It still strikes me as a very good film overall, but the high spots – jousts, monster and black knight fights – are so good that I couldn’t help noticing points where the flow of the film – the headlong, extrovert flow – gets snagged up in little scenes which don’t have the vitality of the rest. But the children enjoyed it. For Thomas it was the best film he’d ever seen, much better than At the Earth’s Core or Island at the Top of the World!

  Saw Terry G afterwards. He’d been at the back, taking, as they say in the States, an ‘overview’. He had just returned from a crash course in US film distribution. Apparently, after a week of showings and discussions and soundings, Rugoff’s now convinced Jabberwocky could be a big one, and is talking of ordering 1,000 prints.

  Terry said the energy of this apparently sloth-like man is incredible. They never finished a meal and, when Terry suggested that the reactions to the film were so far all from sophisticated New York audiences, Don Rugoff nearly flew him off to Austin Texas on the spot. But Terry and John looked very happy, both with the States and with the enthusiastic reaction from the kids today.

  To Mary and Edward’s for a very pleasant, effortless Sunday lunch, then Willy is off to another party. The Willy phenomenon has to be seen to be believed. No sooner had the door opened at the house of the party than William was grabbed by two or three girls, and soon a whole crowd of them had gathered around him chanting’It’s William! It’s William!’ and he was borne away into the party by the adoring mob.

  Friday, March 4th

  Python re-assembles. The meeting is at 2 Park Square West, the first time we have met in the Henshaws’ sumptuous and very well-appointed new house [on the opposite side of Regent
’s Park from their previous one]. It gleams and glistens and the front door is being painted as I arrive.

  Eric is there (as usual) already, John arrives shortly after me, then Terry J, and we have to wait for an hour before Graham joins us. We’ve put a rather hard wooden chair out for him with the words ‘Latecomer’s Chair’ written on it, and ‘Dr Chapman’ written across the back.

  But the general tone of the meeting was of optimistic good humour, stretched almost to the point of hysteria. It was almost impossible not to get a laugh. We talked for two to three hours about the script and very silly ideas like a stuffed Pontius Pilate came up. I was in tears on several occasions.

  Eric suggests we do our next Python stage show on ice, but don’t learn how to skate.

  Towards the end of the meeting, Eric asks me if I would be interested in writing for a George Harrison TV special in the States. I say no on grounds of time. Eric, too, doesn’t think he can do it as he appears to have lined up an £800,000-budget film for NBC on the Rutles (Eric’s and Neil’s pop group parallel of the Beatles). Clearly he commands enormous respect from NBC, who are letting him direct the thing as well.

  Sunday, March 6th

  Read Hunter Davies’ article on JC over my croissants. Not a bad article, some nice observations, but Python gets short shrift, and Graham even shorter. Connie, on the other hand, is effusively praised, and I get pulled in too – ‘She’s enormously fertile with funny ideas. Only Michael Palin compares with her for funny ideas.’An unexpected acknowledgement which was nice of him and quite makes my Sunday.

  I thought his mother came off best out of the article. She had some very humorous quotes, if unintentionally so. ‘I know John goes on about us never allowing him a bike. But he didn’t need one. The school was opposite our house anyway’