Tuesday, January 4th
At Terry’s when Amin – a Pakistani from Alison’s Botany Department — returned from Pakistan. He was out there throughout the brief India – Pakistan war – in which East Pakistan was finally taken by the Indians on behalf of the Bengalis who live there. It was a short, sharp war, which has resulted in the setting up of the independent state of Bangla-Desh. Amin was bitter about the Pakistani surrender, and his primary reaction seemed to be emotional – hurt national pride, and a desire for revenge – but as he talked it was clear that he also had a secondary, more realistic reaction, which was relief that the war had ended, and the hope that India and Pakistan would now live together. It was a strange sensation, sitting in a comfortable south London sitting room, hearing from someone who only a month before had been living through air-raids, in a country where the old and infirm had come down from the mountains to the ioo° desert to fight – clad in furs and skins.
Friday, January 7th
Back into our routine again – a week of dubbing, writing, rehearsing, and recording.
Today there are two major sketches – one with Graham C as Biggies, using generally abusive language, dictating a letter to King Haakon thanking him for the eels, and finding out Algy was a homosexual – the other was a parrot shop type of sketch with John as a customer in a cheese shop, and myself as an obliging assistant, who has none of the cheeses the customer asks for – and John goes through about fifty, before shooting me. Typical of the difference in writing since the first series, is that, no longer content to just write in a cheese shop as the setting, there are throughout the sketch two city gents dancing to balalaika music in a corner of the shop. Our style of humour is becoming more Goon Show than revue – we have finally thrown off the formal shackles of the Frost Report (where we all cut our teeth), and we now miss very few chances to be illogical and confusing.
Tuesday, January 11th
This evening, in order to cheer ourselves up after a day in which it rained solidly, Helen and I went to see Woody Allen’s film Bananas, and another comedy Where’s Poppa1 at the Essoldo, Maida Vale. Both the films made us hoot and roar with laughter – though neither added up to much – there were just delicious moments of comedy. Bananas was rather like a Python show, with the same kind of feverish pace and welter of jokes and joke situations. Where’s Poppa was another very funny Brooklyn Jewish comedy.
Came back feeling very much better. Read more of Charlie Mingus’ autobiography ‘Beneath the Underdog’ – amazed at the speed of the book and the great turns of phrase and styles of speech which Mingus and his Watts friends speak. Conditions may have been bad and Whitey may have been a continuous oppressive force, but they knew how to have a good time – and there’s much more spontaneity and honesty and good, plain communication in Mingus’ world than there is in our own.
Saturday, January 15th
At home doing odd-jobs for most of the day. In the afternoon a giggly phone-call, and a girl from Roedean, one Lulu Ogley, rang from a phone box with some of her friends. They wanted to know what I was really like!
Lulu spoke rather like Princess Anne, but asked fairly sensible questions, whereas her friend was unable to bring herself to ask whether or not I was married. Last night John Gledhill gave me a phone number from an anonymous girl who wanted to contact me, and a few days back I received a rather sultry photo from a girl of seventeen. Altogether most disturbing.
Monday, January 31st
At lunchtime I went for a run across the Heath, and had that rare and pleasurable sensation of running in a snowstorm – the snow silencing everything, emphasising isolation, but cooling and soothing at the same time.
The papers and news today are full of Bernadette Devlin’s physical attack on Mr Maudling in the Commons.2 The shooting of thirteen Irish Catholics in Londonderry yesterday has made England the most reviled country in the world. For almost the first time in the whole of their impossible task in Ireland, the troops seem to have been guilty of a serious misjudgement. Now Bernadette shouts loudly and viciously for revenge. It all seems a most unpleasant and violent spiral, but surely now the British government must start to take the Catholics seriously.
Tuesday, February 1st
In the evening we met Terry and Al for a drink at the Lamb in Lamb’s Conduit Street, and afterwards they took us out for a meal to a hitherto untried restaurant, La Napoule in North Audley Street.
Terry became very excited and emotional about Ireland and the Londonderry march. He totally blamed the government – on the grounds that they are the ones who hold the position of power, and they are the ones who should be held responsible for any trouble. I argued realistically rather than instinctively that, as the government had rightly or wrongly taken the decision to ban marches, this decision had to be enforced, hence the presence of troops. The marchers must have expected some trouble for they are quite well aware that any march attracts groups of people who want a fight and will do anything they can to provoke one. The soldiers must have panicked and fired at random, but the explosive situation was caused by the stubbornness of the government and the anger of the Catholics.
I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so – but the inaction of the government and especially Maudling’s statement last night that any yielding to Catholic pressure would be ‘surrender’, smacks of Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam and makes me angry and frustrated with Heath’s unpleasant government.
Thursday, February 3rd
After a morning’s work at Camberwell, we drove over to John’s for lunch and a chat about possible new additions to the cabaret at Nottingham University. We decided to put in ‘Argument’ sketch – a quick-fire Cleese/Chapman piece from the new series, and one or two smaller additions such as the ‘Silly Ministers’ and the ‘Time-Check’ – ‘It’s five past nine and nearly time for six past nine. Later on this evening it will be ten o’clock and at 10.30 we join BBC2 in time for 10.33. And don’t forget tomorrow, when it’ll be 9.20,’ etc, etc.
We caught the 4.50 St Pancras to Nottingham train – spread ourselves over a First Class compartment and rehearsed.
Apparently the demand for tickets had been so great that we had been asked to do an extra performance, with about 700 students at each. They were a very good audience, not drunk, intelligent and appreciative. Our performances were a little edgy, as we were doing new material for the first time, but the second house – at 9.15, was much better. We did about 40 minutes each time, and were paid a little less than £200 each for the evening. In between shows we were visited by interviewers from student papers, rag magazines, Radio Nottingham and the revue group – all of whom were ushered into our presence in a carefully supervised way, making one feel like a visiting Head of State. We then travelled the thirty-odd miles to Lincoln, where we were to do our third cabaret of the evening, at the Aquarius Club.
A little side door next to Woolworths led us into this charmless little club, where two of the first people we saw were police, and the other two were bouncers. There seemed to be a general air of anxiety and unease about the management of the club, but I suppose this was their natural manner, in the best Vercotti1 traditions. We were led upstairs through a very small room so thick with smoke that it felt as though they were doing laboratory tests to see how much humans could take before passing out. As the time for the cabaret drew nearer, we became quite fatalistic about it and decided to tell them from the start that we were unarmed. A minor scuffle broke out nearby, the basins in the gents were full of vomit and there was a general brooding feeling of squalor and suppressed violence. Imagine our great and pleasant surprise when we started the cabaret and, apart from two girls in the very front, they not only listened quietly, but also roared with laughter.
Sunday, February 6th, Southwold
Arrived at Croft Cottage at 9.45. Both parents looked well. It was a dull and rainy day and not one to lure us outside, but I did cycle to Wangford before lunch and afterwards
we walked along the sea front at Southwold. It was a heavy sea, with a strong on-shore wind piling up big breakers. We heard later that one man had been drowned and three others miraculously saved when their fishing boat upturned off this very beach a few hours earlier.
At home in the warmth of Croft Cottage, we shut out the miserable day and ate, drank, watched television and talked. The march of civil rights protesters at Newry this afternoon turned out to be entirely peaceful, which was a tremendous relief after last week’s shootings in Londonderry. In the news pictures from Newry one could see cameras – still, film and TV – everywhere, waiting for the violence that caught the media unprepared in Londonderry.
Still Mr Heath and this complacent, indolent, arrogant and unfeeling Tory government refuse to try and ease the situation. Talk in the papers of troops being brought in to deal with the miners’ strike – altogether I feel disgusted and depressed by the heartlessness of this government towards the underprivileged. From now on I am a fervent socialist. (This could change within a week – ed.)
Thursday, February 10th
Assembled for an all-Python writing meeting at Terry’s at 10.00. John sends word that he is ill. Extraordinarily sceptical response. However we work on, and for a laugh decide to write a truly communal sketch. Accordingly all four of us are given a blank sheet of paper and we start to write about two exchanges each before passing on the paper. After an hour and a half we have four sketches – with some very funny characters and ideas in them. They may all work if interlocked into a four-sketch mixture. Eric suggested that we all be very naughty and go to see Diamonds are Forever, the latest of the James Bond films at the Kensington Odeon. After brief and unconvincing heart-searching, we drive over to Kensington – but, alas, have not been in the cinema for more than 20 minutes when the film runs down. After a few minutes there is much clearing of throat, a small light appears in front of the stage and a manager appears to tell us that we are the victims of a power cut (this being the first day of cuts following four weeks of government intractability in the face of the miners’ claim). For half an hour there is a brief, British moment of solidarity amongst the beleaguered cinemagoers, but, as we were shirking work anyway, it looked like a shaft of reprobation from the Great Writer in the sky.
Friday, February 11th
So serious is the emergency that there are now certain areas which three or four times a week will be designated ‘high risk’ and liable to up to eight hours power loss per day. Camberwell must have been one of them, for we worked by oil lamp-light from 10–12, and from 3 until 5. At 5.00 drove in to Python Prods, offices to meet Alfred Biolek, here on a five-day flying visit. He told us that the show we made in Germany had been shown with generally favourable reactions and he wanted us to fly over for a weekend and discuss plans for a second German-made programme in September.
Home by 7.00 to a darkened house, so I reckon I have spent eleven of my working hours without electricity today. The news is exceptionally gloomy. The miners have refused to break and the emergency will last for at least another two weeks. A nauseating Heath speech on TV and the awful complacency of Lord Stokes1 on Any Questions moves me to send £50 to the miners.
Sunday, February 13th
General feeling of utter gloom from reading the papers – the power emergency, the civil war in Ireland, the imprisonment of anti-Smith people in Rhodesia, all rather unpleasant. Shinwell2, a politician of sixty years’ standing, was on the radio saying that this emergency was worse than the General Strike of 1926, because the feeling in the country was more bitter, and it does seem that Heath and the Conservative government – who pledged themselves to ‘unite the country’ when they were elected – have, by their non-government, succeeded in polarising it more than ever.
Monday, February 14th
Drove down to Terry’s and we worked at putting a show together. Driving home has become quite an adventure now, for with the power-cuts I never know which traffic lights will be working and which won’t. Street lights have generally been turned off, and when there is a blackout as well it becomes quite eerie. Driving at rush hour round the darkened Elephant and Castle, with hundreds of cars and as much light as a Suffolk lane is a disconcerting experience. But in a way it seems to take some of the urgency and aggression out of driving.
Tuesday, February 15th
At 10.30 Eric arrives and we work together rewriting three film pieces of Eric’s for the next six shows. (Terry is having a day at home.) Our next power-cut comes at 3.00, and we carry on working by candlelight, waiting until 6.00 to do our typing. I must confess to quite enjoying this enforced disruption of routine. It appeals also to that yearning, deep in the back of one’s subconscious, to be controlled by the elements – it’s a form of security against all-powerful technology. The security of having to stop certain activities when the sun fades and the light goes. After all, only three generations of Palins have known electric light – before that stretch back the influences of many, many ancestors who lived in a permanent power-cut.
Saturday, February 13th
The coal strike is over. Yesterday the Wilberforce Court of Enquiry recommended 20% pay-rises for the miners on the grounds that they were a special deserving case. The miners didn’t accept immediately and in late-night bargaining with Mr Heath, secured even more concessions. The picketing was called off at 1.00 this morning, and the miners, after a ballot next week, should be back at work at the weekend. They will have been out for eight weeks -and the country, we are constantly told, is losing millions of pounds due to industrial power-cuts. It seems to me that the Wilberforce report has shown the government to be completely and utterly responsible. The miners ‘special case’ is not something which Wilberforce himself has discovered – it was clear to anyone before the strike started – but the government, faced with either admitting that their incomes policy was unjust, or trying to break the miners, as they did the electricity workers last year, chose to try and break the miners. In the end the miners won – and the weeks of reduced pay and unemployment which they had added to their already unpleasant working conditions, were made worthwhile. I regard my £50 as well spent!
An interesting sidelight to the strike has been the almost uninterrupted rise of the Stock Exchange during the weeks of crisis.
Monday, February 21st
Took a day off from writing to sort out various dull items of household management and run on Hampstead Heath in the drizzle. In the evening Graham Chapman and David and Barry Cryer1 and his wife Terry came round for a meal. Graham arrived rather drunk and sullen after a bad day’s work, and was rather bellicose to start with. At one point he started into a violent tirade against carpets, and how much he hated them. Barry Cryer remains the same – funny, considerate, straightforward and modest, a winning combination, which has been absolutely consistent since he first introduced himself to me at my first Frost Report meeting six years ago. He is the perfect antidote to the introverted unpredictability of Graham, and we all had a splendid evening.
Tuesday, February 22nd
The weather is still grey and dismal. At 2.30 the news comes through of an IRA bombing at Aldershot. An officers’ mess has been blown up in retaliation for the killings in ‘Derry. But the casualties are five cleaning ladies, one military vicar and one civilian.
Wednesday, March 15th
At Bart’s Hospital sports ground at Chislehurst we spent the day filming Pasolini’s version of the Third Test Match – complete with a nude couple making love during the bowler’s run-up. Two extras actually obliged with a fully naked embrace – which must be a Python ‘first’. The filming went smoothly, as it has done all this week. John C hasn’t been with us, as he dislikes filming so much that he had a special three-day limit written into his contract.
This evening Helen went out to her pottery classes, and Terry J, Terry G and Viv Stanshall came round for a meeting. The reason for this particular combination was that Viv Stanshall (whom we last worked with on Do Not Adjust Your Set – a
nd who has since been doing some very weird and imaginative and original pieces for radio, as well as occasional gigs) had been in touch with Terry G to enlist his co-operation in a musical cartoon – ideas by Viv Stanshall, pictures by Terry G.
However, at the moment Gilliam is going through a spell of disillusionment with animations. He no longer enjoys doing them, and claims his ideas have dried up as well. He is much more keen on directing or writing live action, and this he wants to do in collaboration with Terry J and myself. Gilliam felt that the injection of non-Python ideas from Viv might actually get us going on something, instead of just talking. We all got on well, we ate Helen’s fantastic pâté, frankfurters and sauerkraut, and drank several bottles of Sancerre.
In the general mood of confidence and optimism which the Loire had generated, we decided to try and find backing for a 90-minute, feature-length film involving the four of us. Watch this column for further exciting developments.
Thursday, March 16th
Another good day’s filming, ending with a marvellously chaotic situation at a flyover building site at Denham on the A40.1 was narrator in front of the camera, describing how work was going on a new eighteen-level motorway being built by characters from ‘Paradise Lost’. So behind me were angels, devils, Adam and Eve, etc, etc. All around us was the deafening noise of huge bull-dozers. We were trying to time the take to the moment when the largest of these mighty earth-movers came into shot. So amidst all the dirt and mud and noise you would hear Ian shouting ‘Here he comes!’ Rick the camera operator shouting ‘Move your harp to the left, Graham!’ George dashing to take Adam and Eve’s dressing gowns off, then the earth-mover would stop and plunge off in another direction, and all the efforts were reversed.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 11