by John Cleese
Jimmy looked round, almost irritated that he’d been interrupted.
‘What?’
‘Er . . . well, Jimmy . . . I don’t think this is . . . quite right yet.’
‘It’s fine, Harry! You’ll make it funny . . .’
And he turned back to a conversation that was clearly of more interest to him; and Harry just sat there, looking quite dejected, and rightly so, at the prospect of labouring his way through unfunny material in front of countless silent audiences, while his agent, having treated Harry’s query with something approaching contempt, raked in the royalties without needing to make any further effort.
Being so low in the pecking order, and a yellow-belly by inclination, I said nothing. I felt impotent. But that this lovely man should be so callously exploited by a lazy, soulless agent made my blood boil. And I vowed to myself that I would never, NEVER be so ‘nice’ and agreeable and co-operative that bullies and slackers could walk all over me and force me to do things that I might be ashamed of. And I think I can claim that I’ve usually managed to curb my placatory tendencies, and go toe-to-toe when necessary. This, as it happens, is seldom required, and when it is I don’t exactly enjoy it. Nevertheless, as a therapist once said to me, ‘If people cannot hear you, you may need to raise your voice.’ For any Daily Mail journalist reading this, I should explain he was speaking largely metaphorically.
Fortunately Harry liked the sketches I wrote for him, and so did the audience. All, in fact, went very smoothly with our collaboration. The only slight hiccup I can recall occurred when he was reading a monologue off the autocue, and one of his new contact lenses started to rotate, and he had to take it out. I’d never seen one like it: it looked as though it had been part of a milk bottle. He must have had to put his eye in it, rather than vice versa.
Meanwhile I had been asked to perform in my first movie: a film called Interlude. It was a straight part, with only a couple of slightly humorous lines, but I was very excited nonetheless. The role was that of a PR man at a TV company who is looking after a young woman journalist who has come to the company’s studios to interview a famous Austrian conductor. An affair ensues between the conductor and the journalist.
Filming took place in the same Wembley TV studio where a few months before I’d done all the Frost programmes, so the setting could not have been more familiar, especially as my very first scene took place in the canteen. As I settled in to my first ever day on a feature film, several things surprised me: the sheer size of the crew – there must have been thirty-five in the canteen, all carrying out various jobs; the length of time between each camera set-up; the charming old-fashioned courtesy of the crew (everyone called me ‘sir’); the number of takes it required before anyone decided we could move on. I was also deeply impressed by the sedate, polite atmosphere, and the sheer efficiency of the crew. (An actor once told me the difference between British and French film crews: the former are great craftsmen who seldom go to the cinema, and never discuss ‘Film’; the French argue passionately all the time about ‘Cinema’, but aren’t that hot at their jobs.) This efficiency, I later discovered, was partly down to the director, Kevin Billington, a man of immense energy, but also calm and effortlessly friendly, who thought and spoke with unusual clarity. Thanks to him, the crew always knew what they were doing, and what they would be doing next. Later I was to work with many directors who operated in a very different way, substituting a mood of hushed panic for Kevin’s calm progress.
So my first experience of filming was hugely positive. I even got on well with the star, Oskar Werner, although he had viewed me suspiciously for the first couple of days (he was much shorter). Then we got talking about food, and we never looked back.
Unknown to me, while I was beavering away on my various projects, a lot was happening on the Chapman front. When he got back from Greece, he called and invited Pippa and me to a party in Hampstead. We went, found it very crowded, and after we had all greeted each other I drifted off with some other friends to watch a nail-biting football match on the TV. When it finally ended, Pippa was standing there.
‘Graham’s gone.’
‘Oh! Well, I’ll see him on Monday.’
‘He wanted to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘I’ll tell you in the taxi.’
(In the taxi.)
‘He had to go, but he gave me a message for you. He’s come out.’
‘He lives in Hampstead.’
‘No, he’s . . . he’s decided he’s gay.’
‘What?’
‘He’s homosexual.’
‘Who are we talking about?’
‘Graham!’
‘Graham who?’
‘Graham Chapman!’
‘Yes, I know! But who does Gra say is gay?’
‘He is!’
‘ . . . I’m sorry. I’m lost . . .’
‘Graham Chapman . . .’
‘Yes . . . ’
‘Has decided he’s a homosexual. He wants you to know he has a boyfriend.’
‘What is this all about?’
‘It’s true!’
‘But why is he trying to wind me up?’
‘He isn’t!’
‘Is it a bet?’
It’s a good thing the taxi ride to Kensington was a long one, because Pippa needed every minute of it to convince me. While in Mykonos, Gra had met an impressive Swede called Stig, and Stig had convinced him that when he got back to London he should tell all his friends he had been living with his boyfriend, David, ever since they had met in Ibiza over a year before.
As we got out of the cab:
‘Graham wants you to tell Marty.’
So I telephoned Marty and we had an identical conversation, except that I was now doing Pippa’s lines, and Marty was doing mine. The only difference was that Marty got quite irritated.
‘John, it’s eleven o’clock. Why are you calling me?’
‘I just told you!’
‘Please, don’t mess me around any more. It’s not funny . . .’
Graham always used to say that I was shocked when he came out. That implies some sort of moral objection. Untrue. I was not ‘shocked’, I was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very surprised.
I had known Gra for over five years and he had always worn brogue shoes and cord trousers and a sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows, and he had been a beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, rugby football-playing medical student. In the 60s, if you were wondering if someone might be gay, these habits were not thought of as dead giveaways. Unless, of course, the person in question was female.
Gra now organised a coming-out party, and all Gra’s friends met David, and a good time was had by all. In retrospect, the most surprising thing (after the news) was how little anything actually changed. It certainly didn’t affect our writing relationship. But I think our material was getting better as we became more experienced and confident.
The second series of The 1948 Show was due to start in late September, so Tim, Marty, Gra and I settled down to write. We saw no need to make alterations to the format or the style of the show, but we now had a much clearer idea of what we were trying to accomplish, and that, combined with greater confidence, and the fact that we no longer had old material to fall back on, led to scripts that were more zany, madcap and off the wall – and therefore getting closer than ever to Monty Python.
As the series progressed it became obvious to us all that Marty was growing stronger and stronger as a performer: his technique had improved remarkably quickly, and the need for intense rehearsal sessions with him became much less frequent. Vocally he was not the finished article, as his odd voice production meant that he sometimes lost the rhythms of sketches that were heavy on dialogue, but if he could just respond to questions, rather than taking the lead in a sketch, he could be hilarious.
John Cleese, in a suit, sitting at an office desk. Marty Feldman enters, as Spriggs.
Marty Feldman: Yo
u asked for me, sir?
JC: Ah, Spriggs, it’s you.
MF: Is that all, sir?
JC: No, Spriggs, sit down, please.
MF: It wasn’t me, sir.
JC: Last week, Spriggs, I had to investigate several serious complaints against you . . .
MF: Oh, sir . . .
JC: About forty thousand . . .
MF: Sorry, sir.
JC: That’s a lot of complaints, Spriggs.
MF: It is, sir, lots.
JC: About Monday’s incident.
MF: Oh, sir . . .
JC: Last Monday, Spriggs, you were scheduled to drive the 10.15 to Bristol. But you didn’t, did you, Spriggs? You took a cattle train, didn’t you?
MF: Yes, sir.
JC: Why, Spriggs?
MF: I like animals, sir.
JC: You like animals?
MF: Yes, sir. Especially cows.
JC: So you took seven hundred of them. The entire London to Brighton cattle train. To Manchester.
MF: Yes, sir.
JC: Why Manchester, Spriggs?
MF: I’ve been to Brighton, sir.
JC: But you ignored all the signals!
MF: I was out of the cabin, sir . . .
JC: Sitting on the engine, flying your kite – yes, I’ve seen the photographs. What are you laughing at, Spriggs?
MF: I’m trying to break the ice, sir.
JC: Don’t push me, Spriggs. Now, about Manchester Cathedral . . .
MF: I forgot to stop, sir.
JC: Yes, I know, Spriggs. The traffic police have told me. So has the Archbishop. He has described the arrival of you and your locomotive in the nave during the 49th Psalm in no little detail. Seems to have been an unnerving experience for the entire congregation, Spriggs.
MF: I said I was sorry, sir.
JC: He goes on to say, Spriggs, that when he tried to restore calm by mounting what was left of the pulpit, you started shunting operations in the east transept . . .
MF: I was in his way, sir . . .
JC: Then why did you release all the cows?
MF: I panicked, sir, I couldn’t see in all the steam!
JC: Nor could the congregation, Spriggs, that’s why all the cows came as such a shock! The organ and the clanking and the hot steam all would have been alarming to an agnostic, let alone those who believe in the wrath of God. Even the Archbishop said he thought it was the end of the world.
MF: I can pay for the damage, sir. I took a collection . . .
JC: Yes, the Archbishop’s told me. No, Spriggs, I’m going to punish you.
MF: Oh, sir . . .
JC: You are to write out fifty times, ‘I must not drive my trains into Manchester Cathedral.’ Now get out!
MF: Yes, sir.
JC: Oh, Spriggs?
MF: Yes?
JC: Where are last week’s lines?
Finally, I want to present to you part of the best sketch Marty and I ever did together. This time he was leading the dialogue as Mr Pest, but he was word-perfect, and pitch-perfect.
A quite spacious bookshop. A customer enters and approaches the counter, behind which stands an assistant.
Assistant: Good morning, sir.
Mr Pest: Good morning. Can you help me? Do you have a copy of Thirty Days in the Samarkand Desert with a Spoon by A. E. J. Elliott?
Assistant: Um . . . well, we haven’t got it in stock, sir.
Mr Pest: Never mind. How about A Hundred and One Ways to Start a Monsoon?
Assistant: . . . By . . . ?
Mr Pest: An Indian gentleman whose name eludes me for the moment.
Assistant: I’m sorry, I don’t know the book, sir.
Mr Pest: Not to worry, not to worry. Can you help me with David Coperfield?
Assistant: Ah, yes. Dickens . . .
Mr Pest: No.
Assistant: . . . I beg your pardon?
Mr Pest: No, Edmund Wells.
Assistant: . . . I think you’ll find Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield, sir.
Mr Pest: No, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield with two ‘p’s. This is David Coperfield with one ‘p’ by Edmund Wells.
Assistant: (a little sharply) Well, in that case we don’t have it.
Mr Pest: Funny, you’ve got a lot of books here.
Assistant: We do have quite a lot of books here, yes, but we don’t have David Coperfield with one ‘p’ by Edmund Wells. We only have David Copperfield with two ‘p’s by Charles Dickens.
Mr Pest: Pity – it’s more thorough than the Dickens.
Assistant: More thorough?
Mr Pest: Yes . . . I wonder if it’s worth having a look through all your David Copperfields . . .
Assistant: I’m quite sure all our David Copperfields have two ‘p’s.
Mr Pest: Probably, but the first edition by Edmund Wells also had two ‘p’s. It was after that they ran into copyright difficulties.
Assistant: No, I can assure you that all our David Copperfields with two ‘p’s are by Charles Dickens.
Mr Pest: How about Grate Expectations?
Assistant: Ah yes, we have that . . .
He goes to fetch it and returns to the counter.
Mr Pest: . . . That’s G-r-a-t-e Expectations, also by Edmund Wells.
Assistant: I see. In that case we don’t have it. We don’t have anything by Edmund Wells, actually – he’s not very popular.
Mr Pest: Not Knickerless Nickleby? That’s K-n-i-c-k-e-r . . .
Assistant: No!
Mr Pest: Or Quiristmas Quarol with a Q?
Assistant: No, definitely . . . not.
Mr Pest: Sorry to trouble you.
Assistant: Not at all.
Mr Pest: I wonder if you have a copy of Rarnaby Budge?
Assistant: (rather loudly) No, as I say, we’re right out of Edmund Wells.
Mr Pest: No, not Edmund Wells – Charles Dikkens.
Assistant: Charles Dickens?
Mr Pest: Yes.
Assistant: You mean Barnaby Rudge.
Mr Pest: No, Rarnaby Budge by Charles Dikkens . . . that’s Dikkens with two ‘k’s, the well-known Dutch author.
Assistant: No, no – we don’t have Rarnaby Budge by Charles Dikkens with two ‘k’s, the well-known Dutch author, and perhaps to save time I should add right away that we don’t have Carnaby Fudge by Darles Tikkens, or Stickwick Stapers by Miles Pikkens with four ‘M’s and a silent ‘Q’; why don’t you try the chemist?
Mr Pest: I did. They sent me here.
The character of Mr Pest suited Marty so brilliantly that we reprised it several times, but now making him more physically destructive, leaving behind vandalised sets as well as broken psyches. Marty was so funny in these sketches that people rightly recognised his emergence as a real star.
Meanwhile, there was one incident, quite unrelated to Gra’s new lifestyle, which in retrospect seems significant in terms of the light it sheds on my collaboration with Gra. At the end of the filming of Interlude my new friend Oskar Werner had given me, as a memento, the baton with which he had been conducting the orchestra. I really treasured it. Gra noticed it on my desk one day, I told him the story of how I’d acquired it, and he asked if he could pick it up. I said, ‘Yes, of course’, and he started flexing it, bending it in an arc, but doing so a little harder each time. I nearly said, ‘Careful’, but it felt unnecessary. Then Graham flexed it very hard, and it snapped. And what was so odd was that he didn’t seem at all surprised or put out. He just said, ‘Oh’, and then put the pieces back on the desk, and then in a completely neutral voice added, ‘Sorry.’ I was bemused, but in the tradition that became so much a part of Monty Python, said nothing.
Looking back on this with the benefit of hindsight, what Gra treated as the most trivial matter, comparable to dropping a biscuit on someone’s carpet, might have been a sign of some competitiveness between us that was never acknowledged. I say this because I intuitively connect the baton story with something that happened quite early on in the Python era. G
ra arrived for rehearsal and immediately (and untypically) started telling us all about a dream he’d had the night before. He found that he’d been made Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was sitting at his desk, issuing orders and signing important papers, and lording it over his civil servants and having a wonderful time being king of the castle, until he discovered that the Prime Minister . . . was me. The way he told it was quite painful: the news about my status really did shatter his dream. The glory of being the second most powerful man in Britain had vanished without a trace . . .
By November 1967 I was beginning to feel I badly needed a break. Between March 1966 and then I’d done:
Frost Reports: 27
1948 Shows: 13
Frost Programmes: 40+
I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again: 41
Film scripts in production: 2
TV pilot scripts: 1
TV appearances: 12
Film appearances: 1
But now, I seemed at last to have a bit of time to myself, and I found my mind turning to some unfinished business.
Sometime during the course of the second series of The Frost Report in the spring of 1967, I received a ‘Dear John’ letter from Connie. She felt that our geographical separation meant that it was not possible for the relationship to develop naturally, and she wanted us to become ‘just dear friends’. It was a sweet and affectionate letter. It was also a shock. I could understand her decision – and when someone wants to break up, it has always seemed to me futile to try to prolong the agony – but I also felt very sad. I have the clearest memory of sitting on a park bench on Shepherd’s Bush Green, just fifty yards from the beautiful old converted theatre from which we used to transmit the show every week. There’d been a break in camera rehearsal, when I’d wandered outside to gather my thoughts, and I found myself quite seriously considering whether I should just give up show business and go to New York to live, and perhaps earn my crust as a writer, or even a banker. After all, two of my Cambridge friends were banking away happily in Manhattan . . . and the relationship with Connie could blossom naturally there.