PomPoms Up!
Page 10
Terry Jones was Welsh (and still is), jolly and excitable, and seemed to be always wearing his favourite black leather jacket. I did wonder if he slept in it too. I think Terry J was the most emotional of them all. He would get visibly upset or annoyed about something, whereas the others were better at containing that and he was a bit argumentative. Being quite emotional myself, I felt an empathy with him and found him very easy to communicate with. Even though all the boys were quite wonderful at playing the older women characters, I think Terry J excelled with his rather repulsive harridans who had dreadful, high-pitched, squawky voices. I’m reminded of them every time I hear the seagulls on my roof! There was a bit of Chaplin in him too, as he did some very good miming in several sketches. We had our director Ian, but Terry J would often put his oar in and assist with directing. Not surprising then that he would be the one to direct most of the Python films. He’s also the first one of the boys to have an asteroid named after him!
He married a biochemist, Alison Telfer, during the first series and for a long time they had what appeared to be the perfect marriage – not perfect in the conventional sense, but perfect in that they happily, and quite successfully, conducted an open marriage. I had no idea of course, until Terry told me about it one evening when we were off on location somewhere. I was quite stunned at the time as he didn’t seem the type for such an arrangement! But having been to their home and sat in their kitchen/dining room with their children, they seemed a darn sight happier than a lot of monogamous couples I knew. They did eventually part however, but have remained friends.
Eric Idle seemed the most organised and business-like of the group and I imagined that, if there was any chaos, he’d be the one to sort it out. He was certainly the monologue king! I’ve always had tremendous admiration for the way he could recite streams of text without faltering or even drawing breath! His female characters were a delight too. Whereas the others played rather blousy and vulgar ladies, his were always very posh and prim. Mind you, I always felt there was a slight primness about Eric too.
Eric was a nice chap, but he was the only one that I never felt completely at ease with, as he was always a little bit distant. This might possibly have had something to do with the fact that he distanced himself from the others by writing on his own. He was friendly enough and we worked well together, but he was the only one I didn’t feel I could sit down and have an intimate conversation with…. nor have I ever done so. I wasn’t sure if he appreciated my contribution to the show as much as the others did. It was many years later, when he involved me in the writing of Monty Python Live – the book about the touring days of Python – that I finally felt some kind of rapport with him…. which was nice. Better late than never!
And then there was Michael. Michael is the one who hasn’t changed at all. I thought he was – and still is – the cutest of the bunch. He was not only nice-looking but charming too. He was good-tempered, easy-going, sincere and a little bit on the shy side…. which was rather endearing. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he was genuinely happily married to a lovely lady who he’d met ten years earlier, I think I could have gone for Michael in a big way. As it was…. I had no chance! I can’t imagine that anything or anybody could ever come between Michael and Helen.
I always thought that Michael was the best actor of the group and I felt justified in thinking so when I later saw him in the films The Missionary and A Fish Called Wanda. If he ever gets tired of traveling around the world, I personally would love to see more of him on stage, taking on some serious roles.
Michael, more than the others I think, would write sketches with me in mind. He was always the one who’d say things like, “Carol could take those lines,” or “Let’s get Carol in here.” As the years went on he’d always say the loveliest things about me to the Press. I found it hard to imagine Michael ever getting angry. He must have been so at times, but I never witnessed it. If there’s ever an award made to ‘The Nicest Man in the World’, it should have to go to Michael…. and I’d like to present it please!
In the early days at least, rehearsals were great fun. There was a lot of laughter, larking about and silliness. We moved into the BBC TV rehearsal rooms at Acton, not far from the BBC TV studios at White City. The rooms were huge and there was one door leading from the corridor with a small window in it, which allowed people to stop and look in to see what was going on. When they passed our room they would often take a quick look, then move forward and immediately back again for a double take. They were wondering what in heaven’s name we were rehearsing?!
People often ask me how much of Monty Python was improvised. The answer is…. none of it. They kept it fresh by not over-rehearsing. As they had written all the material themselves, it didn’t usually need the full five days rehearsal time. So, once the boys were happy with what they we were doing, we’d usually do something else to fill in the time, like playing football! All the furniture would be pushed aside and a makeshift goalpost would be erected at each end of the room. As I didn’t fancy being kicked in the shins I was usually the goalkeeper.
I was also allowed to bring my little toy poodle, Bobo, to rehearsals sometimes. Bobo was, by then, getting old and had gone blind. He would sit quietly by my side or on my chair. Nobody seemed to object to him being there and John was particularly nice to him, even though he was more of a cat person.
There may not have been any improvising, but there certainly was some corpsing! One of my favourite moments when everybody ‘lost it’ was in the Mr and Mrs Git sketch. It’s a cocktail party in someone’s home and ‘Mr Git’ (Terry J) is introducing his family. ‘Mrs Git’ (John) is just standing and smiling sweetly while he talks when, out of the blue, she suddenly vomits into her glass! John only mimed this for the rehearsals and saved the gruesome moment for the recording. We all thought we were prepared for it, but when it happened it was so gross and so funny that, try as we may, we were unable to contain ourselves and burst out laughing. The only person not laughing was John, as he now had to do another take with another mouth full of vegetable soup while trying not to genuinely throw up!
On recording day it was customary to have a warm-up comic to get the audience in the mood before we were introduced to them. We had one for the first few episodes, but as we tended to come out and do a lot of funny stuff ourselves he was eventually dispensed with and we did our own warm-up. This of course WAS improvised and would always be very silly. It was all good fun and it got us in the mood just as much as it did the audience. We’d be introduced one at a time, with me coming on last. In the early days of the show it was John who’d always get the biggest round of applause. So, after a while, we’d fool them by announcing John and having me walk out instead; and then sometimes announcing me and have John walk out – all very silly!
I think the reason John got the biggest applause was simply because he was the best known and best recognised from the other TV shows he’d been in. It took a while before the TV viewers got all their names right (rather like Ant and Dec). My friends would ask me which one was Michael and which one was Eric, but they all knew which one was John. He also stood out amongst the others because of his height of course, but there was another reason too. All the boys had their own set of characters to play and most of the characters required lots of make-up, wigs, beards, padding and all sorts of fancy costumes which left them barely recognisable. John however usually played authority figures, which required little, if any make-up and just a suit to wear. You always knew it was John!
In the beginning, a lot of the viewers seemed to think of John as the star of the show, which I couldn’t help thinking must have irked the others somewhat. That would change of course, as time went on, and now they are all equally credited with the show’s success – at least, in England they are. I’m not sure about America though! When I was there not long ago doing a ‘signing’ at a Memorabilia Fair, I still had people saying about John:
“Oh geez, that Monty Python…. he’s so funny!”
There was a great feeling of camaraderie amongst everyone who worked on Monty Python and it was rather like being part of one big crazy family. Many of the crew members would continue working with the Pythons over the coming years, both on film and stage. Maggie Weston did all the make-up on all the TV series and the films. Hazel Pethig has done the costumes for just about every TV, film and stage production we’ve ever done. She’ll be with us again for the O2 Arena final reunion show. The Fred Tomlinson singers were regulars too. The boys had their own repertory of friends and colleagues who’d play other roles when required, such as John’s wife Connie Booth, Eric’s then wife Lyn Ashley, and the director’s wife Rita Davis, all of whom were actresses. Later on, Neil Innes joined us too. I also got one of my glamorous girlfriends in there, Caron Gardner, as well as my husband Peter Brett and of course, my mother Pat.
Mummy, like many of her generation, was not too keen on Monty Python when it first began – she thought it was rather infantile. However she soon changed her mind once she became involved in it. There was one sketch where people are seated in the waiting room outside a doctor’s surgery and my dear mother is there, calmly reading a magazine with an axe firmly planted in her head! In another sketch, The Complaints Department, she sits with a smashed tennis racket over her head.
One day, when we were doing a read-through, the boys realised they had forgotten to cast another male to be in a jungle sketch. Rather than make an urgent phone call, Michael suggested that I do it instead. It turned out to be one of my most enjoyable sketches, because it was so silly! I’m dressed exactly as they are, in khaki shorts and a pith helmet, with a huge moustache and speaking in a very low gravelly voice. There was no disguising I’m a female though, as I still have my lipstick and false eyelashes on. After that they often put me in men’s roles!
I think one of the things the boys liked best about me was that I was game for anything and they certainly took advantage of that! In one sketch I had to jump into a lake; in another I was hoisted about twenty feet up into the air as if I was a balloon; in the Montgolfier Brothers sketch I hung in a very uncomfortable harness as the basket of a balloon; another time I had to fire a makeshift bazooka, which was all too real and frightened the life out of me when it knocked me several feet backwards! The most dangerous stunt of all was when I had to stand on John’s shoulders and then jump backwards to land on my feet. In the scene the shot is reversed, so I’m seen to be jumping up onto his shoulders. Either way it wasn’t easy and, thinking about it now, I don’t know how the hell I did it…. but I did!
Not surprisingly, Valentino wasn’t all that happy about me working with six guys. We’d had our second engagement party but still hadn’t set a date for a wedding, primarily because we were still arguing so much and still about the same thing! He just didn’t trust me…. to the point of sometimes being ridiculous.
He came to sit in the audience and watch the recording of the third episode. One of the sketches was the Restaurant Sketch, in which Graham and I sit down opposite each other at a table in a restaurant and Graham mentions to the waiter that his fork is dirty. The scene develops into bedlam. After the recording all the cast went out to dinner and I was able to introduce Val to everyone for the first time, but he was acting very strangely. He was in a bad mood and hardly spoke to me or anyone, which was rather embarrassing. He finally explained himself when we got home. He accused me of playing footie under the table with Graham, during the recording of that sketch! The wedding was looking further and further off.
I’m always being asked: “What’s your favourite sketch that you were in?” It’s difficult, because there were so many favourites, but I think it has to be the Scott of the Antarctic/Scott of the Sahara sketch which we filmed on a beach in Torquay on England’s south-west coast.
The sketch is about a film crew preparing to shoot a re-make of Scott of the Antarctic on the cheap. The beach is being covered in white foam rubber and white paint in a vain attempt to make it look like the Antarctic. Michael is a movie star called Kirk Vilb – I loved his impersonation of Kirk Douglas – who plays Lieutenant Scott. The scene with him fighting the lion is one of the funniest in the series! John plays the film’s drunken Scottish director, McRettin, and what the TV viewers couldn’t know is that he was doing a send-up of our own director, Ian MacNaughton. I’m the sexy film star, Vanilla Hoare – doing my best impersonation of Marilyn Monroe – who has to stand in a trench in order to make Kirk Vilb look taller. I get very irate after a while and say the lines that I love above all else I’ve ever spoken in MPFC. They are:
“Look, you crumb bum. I’m a star! Star, star, star! I don’t get a million dollars to act OUT of a trench! I played Miss St John the Baptist in a trench, and I played Miss Napoleon Bonaparte in a trench, and I played Miss Alexander Fleming in a furrow… so if you want this scene played out of a trench, well you just get yourself a goddamn stuntman! I played Mrs Jesus Christ in a geological syncline, so don’t you tell me to act out of a trench!”
In the next scene, in slow motion, I’m being chased by a man-eating roll-top writing desk and, as I run, my clothing gets torn off on each of three cactuses – first my fur coat, then my lace dress and finally my bra…. leaving me in my knickers as I run past the camera.
Up until this point I had never refused to do anything that was asked of me, but here we were on a crowded beach with at least a hundred close onlookers and I just didn’t fancy running towards them or the camera with my bouncing bosoms! So instead we did the last shot with me running away from the camera, towards the sea and straight past John sitting at a desk. The director shouted “Cut!” and our lovely wardrobe lady Hazel Pethig rushed up to me with a robe. He then said:
“Sorry Carol…. little problem. We’ll have to go again.”
As I walked back, John looked at me with a big smile on his face and said:
“Sorry…. my fault. I got distracted.”
While in Torquay we all stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel, which was owned and run by Mr Donald Sinclair – the man who John based his Basil Fawlty character on in the TV sitcom, Fawlty Towers. He wasn’t particularly welcoming on our arrival and seemed to be a bit put out that there were so many of us. There were only four hangers in my wardrobe and when I asked for more he said:
“No, I can’t get you any more. Other people need them too. Surely, four is enough, isn’t it?!”
We were all too tired to go out for a meal so we decided to eat in the hotel restaurant for the first evening. There was nobody else there and we were soon to find out why! We were all seated at one big table and had just got stuck into our main course when we were aware of Mr Sinclair watching us intently. After a while he came around and stood directly behind Terry Gilliam and said:
“You’re in England now Sir, and the British use a knife AND fork.”
He then leant over Terry, pointing out the knife… We all sat there with our mouths open, absolutely speechless!
The following day, John, Eric and I were going off to do a radio interview. We handed in our keys to the much friendlier girl at reception and went outside to wait for our car to arrive. Just as we were about to drive off Eric realised he’d left his briefcase sitting in front of the reception desk. He went back in and, not seeing it on the floor, asked the girl where it was. She was rather flustered and seemed embarrassed by the question and said she’d have to go and get Mr Sinclair. Eric called John and I back in so that we could all find out what this man was up to now. When he finally appeared, Eric asked:
“Ummm…. my suitcase?? I left it right here a few minutes ago. Have y
ou got it?”
“No…. it’s outside.”
“Excuse me! Outside where?”
“There, over by the wall.”
We looked and, sure enough, there was his briefcase resting against the garden wall.
“What’s it doing there?!”
“I thought it might be a bomb.”
That afternoon the two Terry’s and Michael all checked out and moved into another hotel. John decided to stay and study Mr Sinclair because he thought he was the rudest man he’d ever met and therefore might be worth writing about some day. I stayed too, because Connie was there and it would be nice to spend some time with her.
I liked Connie, but she was always a bit subdued when in John’s company. John was a big and powerful presence, in every sense of the word, and I felt she was rather overshadowed by him. She was in several MPFC sketches, but never seemed very comfortable doing them. I remember her saying to John once:
“No, let Carol do this scene. She’s right for it…. I’m not.”
Hence, during all the Python years, I never really got to know her, nor did I know how good an actress she was. I only found out years later after they’d divorced. She came to Brighton – where I was living at the time – in a play at the Theatre Royal. She was superb in it, just as she had been a few months earlier when I saw her doing a one-woman play on TV called The Story of Ruth, for which she received critical acclaim. She was a strong and commanding actress and I was thrilled that she’d come into her own at last. I envisioned an exciting career ahead for her…. so I was amazed when she told me over lunch that it wasn’t actually the career she had in mind. She planned on giving up show-business altogether once the tour of the play was over and was going to study to be a psychotherapist – which she now is. I haven’t seen her since then, but if we do meet again I hope it will be because I WANT to see her and not because I need to!