Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  Over to Cadogan Square to talk to Denis O’B. He is off to the US on Wednesday to begin negotiations with Warner’s for the next Python movie. He wants 15% of the gross for the Pythons. Unheard of.

  This afternoon in Denis’ small, rather endearingly cramped upper-room office, with bottles of Penrhos Porter on the table, we talk about Redwood and the future. Denis is hard. He says that he wouldn’t really mind if everyone involved with the studio left tomorrow – he could put people in to run it. He wants to protect and to use my £80,000 involvement in the studio to give me control and a steady profit – and to stop the rather generous but disorganised drift in the running of Redwood’s affairs.

  All good sound business sense, but I have to fight hard for the consideration of the personal side and the relationships and obligations I feel I have with André, which cannot be easily commercially quantified.

  I drive home feeling a little oppressed, knowing that all this will not be easy and feeling that Denis is being more destructive than constructive and is in danger of putting the whole spirit of Redwood and Neal’s Yard – the fun and the enjoyment – in jeopardy.

  Tuesday, October 9th

  To lunch at the Trattoria San Angelo in Albemarle Street with Aidan Chambers, who wants me to write a children’s book for Macmillan.

  He brightens my day considerably. We are both northerners; he has a very blunt and untwee attitude to children’s books. He’s always fighting publishers for the right to be as open as possible with kids and to avoid either patronising or pretentious writing. I agree, for a tiny sum, to write one of the three new books for 8-11-year-olds. He’s trying to get Joyce Grenfell to do the other one.

  Denis calls with another incredible piece of news. Before leaving for the US he was collating all the info on Jabberwocky, saw the agreement with me and was shocked. He could not believe that I was only getting 1½% and told John Goldstone that he would not dream of speaking to Warner’s on Jabberwocky’s behalf unless the percentages for me and TG were greatly improved. Within a couple of hours Denis had upped my percentage from 1½% to eight!

  Wednesday, October 10th

  More extensive coverage of tonight’s Ripping Yarn first episode. I really couldn’t have believed when I came back from Sag Harbor in mid-August to find that all the ITV channels had been off the air for over a week, that they would still have found no solution by mid-October. So ‘Whinfrey’s Last Case’ rivals only Sportsnight – boxing – for the TV viewers’ attention tonight. And it follows twenty-five minutes of MASH, which is the most successful (only successful) US comedy import.

  Watch ‘Whinfrey’ with Nicky1 and Helen. Do not enjoy it at all, but then I never do when watching coldly at home – and especially not after two big-screen showings at BAFTA with laughter and great appreciation. The selective re-playing of the audience track is neither honest nor successful.

  Thursday, October 11th

  It’s a warm and benign morning – and sunshine rather appropriately streams in the window of All Hallows open-plan church, into which Helen and I troop at a quarter to eleven for the Gospel Oak School Harvest Festival Service. As we leave, the vicar beams at me: ‘If they’re all as good as last night, I shall cancel my engagements every Wednesday.’

  Terry J rings to say that the show was approved of very much in Camberwell. So the day is bright.

  Drive to Notting Hill to buy a birthday present for Helen. Wander about. To BAFTA by 2.30 to do an interview with Ivan Waterman of the News of the World. I’m thankful of being warned by Maggie Forwood of the Sun on Tuesday that Waterman was ‘very keen’ and always muttering ‘must make it dirtier …’ He seems to be quite bright.

  But I have to guffaw when, at about ten past three, as burly BAFTA ladies are hoovering under our feet he asks ‘And finally, sex?’

  At nine the phone rings. It’s Al from Sag Harbor. He’s decided to marry Claudie. He wants me to investigate the possibility of a register office wedding in Hampstead in mid-November. He would like a gathering of’just a very few people’ and he and Claudie want to come and stay at No. 2 for a while after the wedding. ‘We’re a couple of old romantics, Mike. She’s rung her sister, and I’ve rung you. You’re the second to know.’

  I am unaccountably depressed by the news. Why he should feel he has to marry her, I cannot totally understand. Lovely girl though she seemed. It’s Al’s huge, warm, lovely, romantic soul welling out of him with happiness. And as such I don’t think he is in a fit state to decide on marriage. He is not yet back in life. He may think he is, but his affair with Claudie is still too much like a dream, I fear, for the reality to be anything other than anti-climax. I would rather big A had got back into the mainstream of life – a job, an interest, a project that brought him back amongst people – than pursuing so single-mindedly a relationship which can only isolate him further.

  I may be wrong in all this.1

  Friday, October 12th

  Up at seven to prepare for departure to Gordonstoun to address the sixth form and the Preparatory School before this day is out.

  In the queue for the Inverness flight, meet Les Megahey.2 He’s off to the Highlands to do a week’s research for a film on Landseer. He’s second in command to H Burton at BBC Music and Arts. Later on the plane – a reassuringly plodding Viscount crossing the country at 320mph – he mentions that if TJ and I, or either one of us, have any ideas for films we might like to do, he does control twenty of them a year, and has a very good relationship with crews and technicians.

  On arrival at Gordonstoun, was taken on a tour of the school site by Graham Broad – the brother of David, my classmate at Shrewsbury in 1960–61. He walked me up the Silent Walk – a mile-long stretch of isolated school site, where boys have to walk in silence as a punishment. Graham assured me, quite seriously I think, that it was alright for us to talk. The trouble is anything he said on the Silent Walk was drowned out by the screaming roar of Nimrod and Jaguar fighters, taking off in pairs from RAF Lossiemouth – about three-quarters of a mile away!

  Tea with the headmaster. A young, bright, effective-looking man, four years my junior. G Broad seems very scared of him. Two sixth-form girls and two sixth-form boys – one with hairy legs protruding from shorts – are also present. A cake is passed around. I feel I must consume my slice. It’s given in that sort of spirit. Everyone dutifully eats their slice.

  At 6.30, as dusk is falling, I leave Gordonstoun and, with the 16-year-old daughter of the prep school headmaster as my guide, drive over to Aberlour House – the prep school of Gordonstoun.

  I arrive just as the smallest boys (many of them, inexplicably, blond, blue-eyed and yet from Peru) are squatting on the floor engaged in some ritual prior to being packed off to bed.

  The headmaster was a quite different character to the steely Mr Mavor of Gordonstoun. Tall, rambling, with that air of slightly disreputable elegance which speaks of nights, rather than days, well spent. Even the name, Toby Coghill, is straight out of le Carré.

  Soon after arriving I’m taken in to talk to a roomful of about fifty boys and girls. They’re all so young – most of them younger than my eldest son – and only a very few put their hand up when I ask who’s heard of Ripping Yarns. But it makes for an easy, jolly, relaxed talk. They’re fascinated by how we nailed the boys to the wall in ‘Tomkinson’. ‘First we select three really naughty boys,’ I began, and they all titter.

  Saturday, October 13th, Gordonstoun School

  Dozed until 8.15, when Mrs M left a cup of tea and orange juice outside my room.

  Thumbed through a book on Gordonstoun School as I sipped tea. Influence of Plato’s Republic on Kurt Hahn’s original philosophy of the school – preserved in the houses, where housemasters are Guardians and heads of house Helpers. But what stuck most in my mind was the reason why one of the Gordon family built the fine stone dovecote in the grounds mid-way through the nineteenth century. It turns out that there is a highly improbable Scottish saying ‘A new doe’cot means a death i’
the family’. He hated his wife, and built four of them.

  Aberdeen by 11.30. Checked car in, walked through drizzle around grey granite squares. A man nearly scared me to death with a bellow of greeting – ‘You’re my hero!’ Neither of us had pencil and paper for autograph, so I gave him my Municipal Arts Society of New York membership card.

  Thursday, October 18th

  Speak to both Jack and Liz Cooper, who are as concerned as I am by our mutual friend Levinson’s precipitate leap into wedlock. Jack wrote him quite bluntly advising that they think a lot more carefully – and just live together. What a fine reversal of the traditional social and moral position – advising someone not to marry but to live together. But, as Jack says, ‘We’re in this together.’

  As I’m sitting trying to look at a rather good TV play by Stephen Lowe, there is a knock on the door and a man from the flats behind our house comes round to see if his escaped owl has taken refuge in our garden. We can’t find it, and he’s rather in despair because it’s one of a breeding pair. Nice to meet an owl enthusiast.

  Tuesday, October 23rd

  T Gilliam is round to borrow a bicycle pump. We end up talking for an hour. Last night TG saw Denis, freshly returned from LA, but found him strangely low. None of the deals he’d gone to the States to make had been made – the main reason being a 30–35% dive in Brian business on the very weekend Denis arrived in the US. So Warner’s were not falling over themselves to sign on any of Denis’ dotted lines. He’s chatting up Paramount now.

  I gather we are now banned in South Carolina – the first state to prohibit Brian – thanks to the activities of that great fighter for human rights, Governor Strom Thurmond. Someone told me of a news item about a cinema in Oklahoma being sued for showing the movie.

  So the backlash has finally hit and Denis is now trimming his estimates about the gross. No longer are we on the upward spiral towards 40 million and beyond; he now seems to be happy to settle for a total of 24 or 25 mill, across the US, which would leave a distributor’s gross of 15 mill. Still way above anything the Grail did, but nevertheless bigotry, prejudice and intolerance – or pure and untarnished ideals – have at last shown there is a limit to Brian’s heady progress. The Promised Land of the dollar millionaires is way beyond us after all. Actually both TG and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Wednesday, October 24th

  ITV returns, the weather changes, grows colder and wetter. The Ripping Yarns, which have been so well received and have seemed to highlight the sunny, gentle, equable days of early October, end tonight.

  The news of Brian seems to set the heady, warm, jacuzzi-lounging, golf course running days in the sun at Fisher’s Island firmly in perspective. Then Python and Brian were unbeatable, set to be the biggest, and Denis was making plans accordingly. Now the brakes are on.

  Even Shepperton suddenly faces an end to the volume of activity which has kept the place full for eighteen months. After Flash Gordon there is not a single movie lined up. Elstree and Pinewood also reflect this lack of activity. The BBC’s plans to hire Shepperton to make films for a year (which would have been excellent for the studios) have been shelved owing to lack of money and union co-operation. The 1980s look bleak – here, as elsewhere.

  Owing to my cold, I’ve put off a proposed curry evening with TJ and Alison at Veeraswamy’s to celebrate ‘Roger of the Raj’ and the end of the Yarns.

  So happily watch at home, with Helen and a half bottle of champagne – and thoroughly enjoy it. ‘Roger of the Raj’ is now, in my book, quite restored to top status. It’s been a long process of rehabilitation after the depths of gloom into which I unaccountably sank over it last summer. It’s now up there with ‘Tomkinson’ and ‘Olthwaite’ as one of my three greats.

  T Gilliam, who is very restless at the moment since ‘Brazil’ has not been accepted unequivocally by anybody, was round again this morning, bubbling over with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment. He has a new plan for a subtle sort of Gilliam/Palin link-up. I will write my children’s book for Macmillan and he will film it! Simple – except that I’m writing a book, not a film script, and I won’t be putting thoughts to paper until January.

  TG is only slightly daunted by this. He still thinks that for the two of us to collaborate on a children’s film – me the basic script and characters, TG with the visual fireworks – would be an unbeatable combination and manage to solve the problem of his almost all-consuming urge to do his own movie in the next two years. Otherwise, he says, he will go mad.

  Thursday, October 23th

  Taxi takes me to King’s Cross to catch the 7.45 to Leeds. Dawn only marginally lighter than the pitch darkness of an hour ago has rather resentfully broken as we move out of the station, as if God didn’t really want today to happen.

  The restaurant car is packed. I sit with David Ross, whom I like more and more each time I see him. Droll Scottish humour. Breakfast as we nip along across a flat landscape, dimly lit by a sullen sky, to whatever awaits us at the Yorkshire Post literary lunch.

  To the Queen’s Hotel. Only Steve Race, a fellow speaker, in evidence. A soft-spoken, humorous man, much concerned with being polite – in the best way. I liked him and had to tell him that he was one of my earliest television heroes. He and Hank on Whirligig.1 It was satisfying to share pure nostalgia with the man responsible for it.

  Into a sort of large public ballroom with windows boarded up. A sea of faces at long tables – maybe 400 people out there. About 10% were what one might call ‘young people’ – under 35. But mostly they were middle-aged, generally female, wearing hats and there to be seen to be there, without exuding any obvious signs of literary curiosity.

  They gave us grapefruit segments, beef in a brown and unexciting sauce, good Brussels sprouts and a trifle which looked like the remains of an unsuccessful heart-swap operation.

  Donald Carroll, an American, spoke first. He mumbled, was a little pissed and his confidence dried up in the face of this monstrous regiment of women. Jilly Cooper, nervous, but attractive because of this, showed that it was possible to make them laugh, particularly if you quoted someone else. I spoke third and delivered a bit of half-farce, half-fantasy which I thought deserved a lot better than it got. There were many laughs, but it was impossible to get this audience to just enjoy itself – presuming, that is, that many of them would know how to go about enjoying themselves in the first place.

  Katharine Whitehorn spoke with the cool, poised, assurance of one who knows exactly where her appeal lies. Quite shamelessly disdainful and Hampsteadian, and she has the profile of a rather beautiful cow. Steve Race was nice and clean and funny.

  Afterwards we signed. An embarrassing moment, this, if you’re not a favoured author. Donald Carroll had not a single taker. I can quite understand how, on the train back, he could refer to today as ‘the worst day of my life’.

  Friday, October 26th

  Anne H has asked to have a meeting with me. She doesn’t look cheerful and what she has to say is disturbing. Her ‘relationship’ with Denis has crumbled to nothing. After various attempts to acquire information (on our behalf) about matters such as copyright of Python material – songs, etc – Denis became very sharp with her and they haven’t spoken for two weeks.

  I had fears that this transition would not be easy, but I am a little worried by the uncompromising toughness that Denis is showing to those who are our friends and those whose value and service to us is proven – Anne and André, to name but two.

  Monday, October 29th

  The weekend at Abbotsley unblocked the system most successfully. Worked in the garden picking apples on Saturday and quite heavy work clearing the banks of the pond on Sunday. But my cold lingers on and I feel uncertain about my Desert Island Discs recording. I know it’s daft to worry, but once you have agreed to do the show you’re committed to a half-hour’s fairly intensive study of yourself and your taste, so it’s worth working on it.

  I spend much of this morning, then, thumbing throu
gh my record collection and re-digesting ideas for my eight records. Eventually come up with a pleasingly Catholic selection: Ellington, Elvis, Elgar, the Beatles, ‘Lullaby of Broadway’, a song from Oh What a Lovely War, some brass band and a Goon Show. And, after many second thoughts, plumped for Thackeray’s Vanity Fair as my book, even though I haven’t yet read it, so impressed and cheered am I by the first forty pages!

  Armed with these decisions, I took a run on the Heath, greatly enjoyable because of the sunshine, and, after a bath, took a cab down to the Garrick Club to meet Roy Plomley for lunch.

  Lovely, rather dusty atmosphere, with fine rooms and above adequate menu. Smoked eels, very tasty and uncluttered kidneys and bacon, a rather average cheeseboard and good house wine. Plomley keeps referring to the club as ‘we’. I think he’s a bit of a snob and not frightfully exciting company. I feel tired and find the effort of making conversation harder than usual.

  Considering he does fifty-two programmes a year and has done for the last twelve years, it’s not surprising, though a little disappointing, that once on air Plomley clicks into a routine. He doesn’t listen all the time and, having confessed he has only seen two Python shows and no Ripping Yarns, there is little chance of a similarity of interests. So it’s a touch formal, but he seems very happy.

  Taxi home and within an hour leave with Helen for a party at the ICA and a showing of Brian for the crew. About 300 people there – all the old faces of those who were either hoisting me up on crosses, or making the crosses, or filming me being hoisted up, one year ago today.

  Afterwards a drink and eats. Much good-mouthing of Ripping Yarns – Chris Miller says that John Osborne raves about me and the Yarns.