I settled down in the waiting room and snoozed. At 8.45 I began to feel very hungry – I’d been up for two and a half hours. I found a nurse and, with breakfast in mind, asked her what state Mrs Palin was in. The nurse giggled a little and said ‘She’s delivered.’ A little boy – 6lb 120z.
There Helen was – in a very modern delivery room – looking for all the world as if she’d just been to the shops and back. Hair neat and unsweaty, face a healthy, unruffled pink. Apparently she had given birth in the admissions room just after 8.00 – she had been bathed and was being put in a wheelchair to go up to the delivery room, when she had to tell them that the baby’s head was sticking out. The doctor was off having breakfast, so two nurses delivered the child.
After tea at Mary’s I visited Helen at 6.30. William, or Matthew as he then was, was small, wrinkled and wizened. When I touched him his face creased into a look of bitter discomfort and annoyance, but I really loved him.
Friday, November 20th
Back to filming. Unsettled, mainly wet weather, set the schedule back, but I enjoyed the day – it was somehow less bewildering than yesterday.
At lunchtime I bought ten bottles of wine and we all celebrated William’s birth. Eric was appalled by the name William and felt Matthew much less boring. Terry was the opposite.
It’s funny, but I have doubts about Matthew – as Terry said, it’s ‘Hampstead children with page-boy haircuts’. Happy with William.
Monday, December 7th
As I lay, half-awake, watching William being fed, the lights all went out. It was the first power-cut I can remember since the days we lived in Sheffield, caused this time by a work-to-rule of the electricity supply workers. Our lights were out for two hours. Apparently they were switching off selected areas in rotation. The work-to-rule is now three days old, and we have had five power-cuts, the longest being three hours yesterday afternoon.
Tuesday, December 8th
A Python cast lunch at fashionable Parkes restaurant in Beauchamp Place.
At our luncheon – I had lamb which was mainly very expensive – we talked about the future. It seems that all of us are prepared to start work on another TV series next November, except for John. He claims to want a year off to read and absorb knowledge, and possibly travel, and generally improve his mind, and yet he has accepted a commission to write at least six of a new series of Doctor in Love for London Weekend, a series which has apparently plumbed new depths of ordinariness. So, I have a feeling that John will be only too keen to write another series of Monty Python in twelve months’ time.
Graham will be writing some more shows for Ronnie Corbett. Eric is quite keen to work on the screenplay of a film idea suggested by Ian – about bank-robbers marooned on Skye – but I fear I may have dampened his spirits rather heavily, by showing less than enthusiasm for it as a Python idea.
Terry Gilliam is writing cartoons for Marty, and then, we hope, directing a half-hour script on which Terry and I started work this morning.
Wednesday, December 9th
I wasn’t required on the last day of shooting, but a car collected me in the evening and took me down to Greenwich for the end-of-film party at the Admiral Hardy.
Everyone was smiling, embracing, promising, exaggerating, confessing and forgetting in the manner of business parties – and show business parties especially. It had been a happy film, because each day made people laugh, but if it had been made in a time of full employment, when producers and production managers had to pay a crew well to keep it, our film would have been in trouble, for the relationships between the cheese-paring producers and the hard-working crew were at times near breaking point – only the precarious employment situation in the film industry kept some of the men at work.
This evening the power-cut in the Hampstead area caught us in the sauna at the squash club. Total darkness descended as I was about to leave the shower, clutching my towel. Candles were soon provided, but I dread to think how some of the members might have taken advantage of the total darkness.
Thursday, December 10th
Rung by the BBC and asked if I would like a three-day trip to Munich with Ian at the beginning of next week – to discuss possibility of a co-production between Monty Python and fellow funsters from Bavarian TV.
This evening I repaired to Devonshire Place to have some more dental surgery – the first for almost a year, at the hands of Mr Powell. It was only one tooth which required treatment, and Mr Powell’s new surgery is so comfortable that it’s a pleasure to lie there. Whilst he was working on it, he called in a colleague who was most impressed by my condition. ‘I’ve never seen that before,’ he told Powell, gazing at my mouth – I felt a surge of pride in these rotten old teeth, and am fully expecting to be visited at home by reporters from Dental World.
Was seized with desire to sit in a cinema and, after a quick meal, went up to the Haverstock Hill Odeon to see John Boorman’s Leo the Last. However, some 30 minutes into the film, at a point when it looked as though it could suddenly become interesting, the lights failed. The dreaded power-cuts, which had only yesterday left me blind and naked in the sauna baths, had struck again.
Tuesday, December 15th
In the evening we go round to Graham Chapman’s for food, drink and Monty Python No. 12. It is the first time that Helen and I and William have been out in the evening since W’s birth. Plenty of time to reflect on this, as I carry William up five flights of bare concrete stairs to the Chapman penthouse.
It was really an evening for Python authors and their wives/lovers – and it worked very well; there was a happy and relaxed atmosphere. However, for some reason John was unable to come. Graham was obviously very disappointed – but it is difficult to tell what he is thinking on evenings like this. He is so busy in the kitchen preparing food. We eventually eat, ravenous, at 10.45, after which he seems to pace about in a most unsettled way. It is strange that someone who takes so much pride and care in producing such excellent food has absolutely no idea how to serve it. The delicious meal of lamb, stuffed with salmon, was served with all the style and elegance of an army kitchen. But the company was good and the drink was abundant, and the show – which was the first one of this new series that we recorded – had edited together well, and was especially good because of the diversity of ideas: the false ‘Black Eagle’ pirate opening, the dirty phrase book, the paintings going on strike in the National Gallery. Terry Gilliam’s 2001-style animations, the Ypres sketch with its false starts, the over-acting hospital, were just a few of them. By general consent, one of the best shows we’ve done.
Sunday, December 20th
I got ready for the third successive drinking evening – this time it was the BBC Light Entertainment Group who were the hosts.
The only remarkable thing about an evening which is really only any night in the BBC Club – with slightly better food – was the attitude of the Programme Controllers. An article in The Times on December 16th had detailed, fairly prominently, the continuing saga of Python’s mistreatment by the BBC Programme Planners. Stanley Reynolds was the author, Terry Jones his chief informant, and about 80% of his article was correct and true (which is high by journalistic standards).
David Attenborough, who is, I believe, Assistant Controller of Programmes,1 edged his way over to me quite early in the evening and began some rather nervously jocose banter.‘I feel I ought to come and talk to you – being one of those responsible for the repression of Monty Python.’ But he made the point that the programme had done extremely well as a result of the BBC’s treatment – which is an argument one cannot deny, and any altruistic feelings for the viewer in regions that don’t get Python, must always be tempered with the knowledge that it’s because of them we get assured repeats, and the extra loot which accompanies them.
Paul Fox, on the other hand, seemed genuinely aggrieved – not that he questioned our grounds for complaint, he seemed chiefly appalled that Stanley Reynolds had got the story. ‘That drunken, etc, etc,’ mutte
red Fox, standing in the middle of the hospitality suite, like a great wounded bear.
Monday, December 21st
In the afternoon collected the new car – a Simca 1100 GLS. A five-door estate in the best functional French tradition. At least, when I picked it up at the garage, it was clean and sparkling and looked absolutely brand new. When I bought the Austin Countryman three and a half years ago, it looked as though it had been standing in the rain for several weeks. So this, at least, was a good start to the justification of my decision to buy French rather than English.
Thursday, December 31st
1970 drew to a close in bitterly cold weather. Apart from some dubbing still to do on the film, Monty Python is finished – we spent almost a year on one thirteen-week series and six weeks making a film – now it remains to be discussed as to whether or when we do another series. In December Terry and I have almost completed a 30-minute TV show for Terry Gilliam to direct but, apart from this, and the possibility of more Python, the future is tantalisingly empty. John, Eric and Graham all seem to have gone back to writing for other people – Marty, Ronnie Barker, in John’s case Doctor at Large – all of which is sad, for we have achieved a big success with our own show and yet only Terry and I seem to be progressing on from Python, rather than helping other shows to emulate it, and we are earning less money for our troubles.
We spent the last hours of 1970 down at Camberwell, where Terry and Alison served up a truly epic meal – antipasta, salmon, pheasant, delicious chocolate mousse, cheese, two kinds of wine and a menu!
So 1970 went out with a well-satisfied belch.
1 Serious BBC2 arts programme, fronted by, among others, Joan Bakewell.
2 Father of Graham, my childhood friend from Sheffield.
3 Spike’s 1969 series Q5 had been an inspiration to us. It had been directed by Ian MacNaughton.
4 Head of Arts Programmes at BBC.
1 Camden Council had a ten-stage plan for the re-development of Gospel Oak. This involved knocking everything down and starting again. Oak Village was stage ten, and because of resolute opposition from residents and media was able to stem the tide. A compulsory purchase order had been dropped in 1968, though hovered as a threat until the early ’70s.
2 Marty Feldman, one of the At Last the 1948 Show team, and co-writer, with Barry Took, of much radio comedy. He was now a star in his own right.
3 Tony Hancock’s brother, ran an agency which represented, among others, Eric Idle and Bill Oddie.
1 Jill Foster, our agent. She worked for Kenneth Ewing at Fraser & Dunlop.
1 In partnership with Frank Muir he had written some of the best radio comedy including Take It From Here, one of the few programmes to bring my mother, father and myself together round the wireless.
1 Abbotsley, near St Neots in Cambridgeshire, home of Helen’s mother, Anne Gibbins. Helen’s father, a farmer, died in 1963 at the age of 53, from heart complications that would now be dealt with by routine surgery.
2 Helen’s niece, then four years old.
1 David Jason had been one of the cast of Do Not Adjust Your Set, produced by Humphrey Barclay, yet another of the Cambridge comedy mafia, who also produced The Complete and Utter History of Britain for Terry and myself in 1968–9.
2 1969 film, directed by John Sturges, starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman.
1 Michael Mills, Head of Comedy at the BBC, was the man who green-lighted Python in the summer of 1969. Despite a disastrous meeting at which we could give no satisfactory answers to any of his questions, he came out with the memorable words, ‘All right, I’ll give you thirteen shows, but that’s all!’
1 Screenplay about a penis transplant, eventually filmed, starring Denholm Elliott, Hywel Bennett, Britt Ekland and others. Betty Box, producer, and Ralph Thomas, director, were responsible for a string of Pinewood Studios hits, including Doctor in the House.
1 Lyn Ashley, Eric Idles wife.
2 Eric and John decided to stay. In John’s case a lucrative decision as he later based Fawlty Towers on Gleneagles.
1 Carol Cleveland, who understood the Python style so well she became almost the seventh member of the team.
2 Connie Booth, actress and co-writer of Fawlty Towers, married to John Cleese.
1 ‘Book of the Month Club Dung’, which found its way into Show 6 of the second series.
1 Classically-trained Shakespearean actor and director.
1 Helen’s younger sister.
1 The It’s Man was a cross I’d made for myself, by suggesting that at the start of each show a haggard, wild-eyed old man should stagger out of incredibly uncomfortable situations, lurch to camera and with his last breath squeeze out the word ‘It’s’. I was unanimously chosen to play the part, one of the most consistently uncomfortable in Python.
2 Controller, BBCi.
1 A sketch from the Oxford days, which involved an enthusiastic foreign salesman extolling the virtues of Tide, apparently unaware that it’s a washing powder. He eventually pours some into a bowl, produces a spoon and, with a big smile, eats it. Horrible to perform as, for some reason, I never got round to substituting the washing powder for something edible.
2 A Scottish folk-singing duo, one of whom was Gerry Rafferty and the other, Billy Connolly.
1 Jeremy, Marcus and Camilla, the children of my sister Angela and her husband, Veryan Herbert.
1 A quintessentially British humorous and satirical magazine which first came out in 1841 and ran for 150 years. With readership declining from a peak of 175,000 to some 8,000, it was finally closed in 2002.
1 In which John plays a crazed RSM teaching a bunch of squaddies how to defend themselves against bananas and various other forms of soft fruit.
2 A group, formed in 1963 in Liverpool, performing sketches, poems and songs and comprising John Gorman, Roger McGough and Mike McCartney, Paul’s brother, who appeared under the pseudonym Mike McGear.
1 All three were friends from Oxford. Paul and Simon were both barristers and Jenny, née Lewis, a singer and poet.
1 Shabby, a disgusting man with a pet goat, who appeals to the father of a beautiful upper-class girl (Connie Booth) for her hand in marriage, but spoils his chances by, among other things, gobbing on the carpet.
1 Labour Foreign Secretary in 1966. Resigned in 1968 after differences with the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. Liked a drink.
2 Later the legendary Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army.
1 Edward and Jayne Arnott, neighbours.
1 In fact, he was Director of Programmes.
1971
Friday, January 8th, Glasgow
Caught the 10.05 ‘Royal Scot’ express at Euston. Terry, Alison and I were travelling to Glasgow to see the production of our ‘Aladdin’ pantomime at the Citizens Theatre. It was a dull, rather misty day as we tore through the Midlands towards Crewe.
Eating a meal on a train is one of the great pleasures of life. How else could you have soup with Wigan all around you, steak and kidney pie as the expanse of the Irish Sea approached nearly to the window, and coffee with the fells and crags of the desolate Lake District on either side?
Our rooms had been booked in the Central Hotel, which adjoins the station. It is a railway hotel, built in monumentally impressive proportions in the great age of railway expansion. The walls were about three foot thick, with about fifteen foot width to play with on each step of the mighty staircase. After leaving our bags, we decided to walk in the direction of the Citizens Theatre.
We never did reach the Citizens, but we did find a bar, with very old brown, varnished tables and a wooden floor, and we did meet three shabby men, one of whom told us at great length why he was an alcoholic, and then asked for one of our empty whisky glasses. With elaborate furtiveness the rather sad-eyed, younger man of the three took the glass towards his flies, unbuttoning his coat at the same time. I watched amazed, and then a little relieved, as he produced a surreptitious bottle of what looked like sherry and filled the alcoholic’s glass with i
t.
We walked back to the hotel, bathed, and took a taxi across the river to the Citizens Theatre where Aladdin by Michael Palin and Terry Jones was the first pantomime the Gorbals had seen for years.
The theatre is a neat size, with a circle and a balcony. We were met at the door, and ushered into the Manager’s office. The Artistic Director, Giles Havergal,1 we learnt, was in Tangier. After seeing the pantomime, we understood why. None of the cast seemed to be able to act too well – they certainly didn’t seem to be enjoying it – and, despite the enthusiastic support of the kids, they hurtled through it. What few gems of wit there are in the script were lost forever, and the creation of atmosphere, which is perhaps something the script does best, was spoilt by the speed and incomprehension of the line delivery. The principal boy had been taken ill and the girl playing her looked marvellous, but acted like a Canadian redwood. The love scene with the princess was one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever witnessed – combining, as it did, her extraordinary lack of acting ability and the princess’s extraordinary lack of charm.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 8