Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  We had an Indian meal at the Karachi restaurant across the road and Tom bought us champagne. I don’t think he really expected us to accept it, but it set us up well for a final three hours of some very difficult dubbing, where often there was no guide track at all – and we had to work out from our rapid lip movements what on earth we were saying. But at last, just after 12.00, we finished the last of Tim’s many voice-overs. It was about Harris being a Pole and Tim had got the giggles over it earlier on and been unable to do it.

  Home and a bath about 1.30.

  Tuesday, September 30th

  To the TV Centre at 10.30 for a day of production meetings on Tomkinson’s Schooldays.

  After Judy Parfitt turned down the part, I asked Tom, Tim and Stephen at the weekend for ‘Gwen Watford’-type ladies, and Stephen Moore said, ‘Why don’t you ask Gwen Watford …?’ So today this is just what we did. I spoke to her agent, who was very approachable, and then to the great lady herself, and she was interested enough to ask for a script – so we’ve sent one off this evening and are just keeping fingers well crossed.

  Ian Ogilvy is also on, as far as I know, so it’s becoming an all-star cast – apart from myself.

  Finished at the Beeb about 7.00. Had a drink at the Sun in Splendour, Notting Hill on the way back with Terry J. He is a little vague and not entirely happy about what to do next. I said I was also vague – and intentionally so, enjoying, as I am at the moment, a sort of directional limbo, trying to absorb influences from all sides, without having to commit to any long-term projects. For the first time we actually talked about whether he should go and do something on his own. I said I didn’t want to drag his heels as well as my own.

  Friday, October 3rd

  At 5.15 arrived in taxi at the BBC’s Paris studio – which is not in Paris, of course, but in Lower Regent Street – for recording of Just a Minute. A few people from the queue came up and asked me for an autograph – and there was my face on a display board outside. Inside, the peculiarly non-festive air which the BBC (radio especially) has made its own – everything from the colour of the walls and the design of the furniture to the doorman’s uniform and the coffee-serving hatch seems designed to quell any lightness of spirit you may have.

  Then I met Clement Freud. He stared at me with those saucer-shaped, heavy-lidded eyes with an expression of such straightforward distaste that for a moment I thought he had just taken cyanide. The producer, John Lloyd1 – a ray of light in the darkness that was rapidly closing in on me – hurriedly took my arm and led me aside as if to explain something about Clement F. It was just that he had a ‘thing’ about smoking – and for some inexplicable reason I had just taken one of John L’s cigarettes. Still, this blew over.

  A depressingly half-full house filed quietly in and at 5.45 the contestants -three regulars, Freud, K Williams, the rather forbiddingly authoritative Peter Jones2, myself, not exactly in my element any more – and quiz master Nicholas Parsons were introduced to friendly applause and took our places at our desks. The three regulars have been playing the game together for five years – Williams and Freud for eight – and it shows. They are smooth and polished, they know when to ad-lib, when to bend the rules a little, and when to be cross with each other. I buzzed Clement Freud when he was at full tilt and, when asked why, I apologised and said I was testing my buzzer. That’s the only time I saw him smile in my direction.

  The game became easier, but I never mastered the technique of microphone-hogging which they all have perfected.

  Before I knew it, two shows and about an hour and a half had passed and it was all over. I signed autographs. Peter Jones was very kind to me and complimentary, Freud I never saw again and Nicholas Parsons was the only one to come round to the pub and drink with us. Us being myself, Douglas Adams (who had recommended me to his friend, the producer) and John Lloyd. They seemed to be quite pleased with me and Peter Jones, as he left, said he would see me again on the show. I gather some guests manage it (Barry Took, Katharine Whitehorn) and some don’t (Barry Cryer, Willy Rushton) and at least I wasn’t considered amongst the don’ts.

  From the Captain’s Cabin to the Work House – the studio in Old Kent Road where we are to re-record ‘Lumberjack Song’.3 The Fred Tomlinsons have been rehearsing for an hour by the time I arrive (just after 8.00), and up in the control room are Eric and George Harrison. George grasps me in a welcoming hug and Eric pours me some Soave Bolla.

  Downstairs, noisy rumblings of Fred Toms. I get down there to find them in the usual hearty good spirits – no Soave Bolla in evidence down there —just huge cans of beer and cider!

  Instead of dividing the song and introduction up into different takes, we just launch in, and soon we’ve done three versions straight through and my voice is getting hoarse from all the added shouting at the beginning. But one of the takes seems to please everybody.

  George, Olivia, Kumar,1 Eric and I leave in George’s BMW automatic for a meal. We drive, if that’s the word for George’s dodgem-like opportunism, to the Pontevecchio in Brompton Road.

  George’s a vegetarian, but he managed to demolish some whitebait quite easily, and did not pass out when I had duck. (I noticed everyone else ate veg. dishes only.)

  Saturday, October 4th

  At half past four drive up to collect Eric and take him out to George’s house in Henley to mix the song we recorded last night. Eric philosophical about his recent separation from Lyn. He laughed rather ruefully when he told me he’d taken Carey out to the 200 this morning – ‘With all the other divorcees,’ as he put it. But he cheers up when we get to Henley and in through the gates of Friar Park, the magnificent, opulent and fantastical mid-Victorian Gothic pile which George bought seven years ago with the Beatle millions. George’s flag flies above its mock embrasures – it’s an Indian symbolic design of the sun and the moon and bears ‘om’ mantra.

  In the gardens there are grottoes with mock stalactites and stalagmites in mock caves and there are Japanese houses and Japanese bridges and all kinds of other ways in which an enormously rich Victorian can spend money on himself. George has endorsed it all by cleaning everything up and looking after it and generally restoring the place to its former splendours. The nuns whom he bought it from had let it rather go to seed and, according to George, had painted swimming trunks on the cherubs and cemented over the nipples on some of the statues.

  It is delightful just to walk around and examine the intricate details of the carving – the recurring naughty friar’s head motif— even in evidence in brass on every light switch (the face is the fitting – the switch is the friar’s nose). It has none of the feel of a big draughty Victorian house, but one can’t escape the feeling of George somehow cut off from everyday life by the wealth that’s come his way.

  Maybe he feels the same way, for almost the first thing we do is to walk through the grottoes, across the lawns and down to the elaborate iron gates and into the world outside. Henley, with its narrow streets and the fine church tower standing protectively over the little town, with thickly wooded Remenham Hill looming behind.

  This was the town my mother was born and brought up in – in fact, she had been to Friar Park for tea when it was owned by Sir Frank Crisp, a barrister. Strange to think of the circumstances that brought me into Friar Park sixty years after she came here for tea.

  Anyway, we all walked down to the local pub – where we drank Brakspear’s Henley Ales and played darts.

  George was clearly anxious that we should stay the night, play snooker on his Olympic size snooker table, smoke, drink, mix the record and generally enjoy ourselves. But this was my second evening devoted to the ‘Lumberjack Song’ and I wanted to be back with Helen, so I reluctantly resisted most of the mind-bending delights of Friar Park and stuck to a couple of glasses of white wine.

  Half-way through the evening, George went out into Henley and returned with vast amounts of vegetarian food from a new Indian take-away that had just opened. We all ate too much – George dipping i
n with fingers only.

  Home about 4.00. Helen not pleased, as she had really expected me a lot earlier – and I very indignantly tried to tell her how much hospitality I had had to refuse, to get back even by 4.00. Still, it’s no time of night for an argument.

  Wednesday, October 8th

  Lunch with Gwen Watford, who has agreed to take the part, and Ian Ogilvy. Realise that there are several peaks of nervousness in one’s first half-hour show, and one is meeting the other actors – especially when they are as exalted as Gwen W Will they be right? What will be their attitude to the piece? Is it just a light diversion which they needn’t bother with much? All anxieties dispelled on first meeting. Gwen I met in the make-up department, where she’d come for a wig fitting. She’s charming and very approachable, and, like Ian Ogilvy, straightforward and down-to-earth.

  Thursday, October 9th

  Just as the week seemed to be settling down smoothly, ‘Lumberjack Song’ rears its ugly head again. Anne rings to say that Tony Stratton-Smith still prefers the Drury Lane ‘Lumberjack’ to the new version so laboriously conceived last weekend.

  There is a definite split on the two versions of the ‘Lumberjack’. Graham and Adams have been in after lunch (Anne said she wasn’t quite sure how compos Graham was) and prefer the Drury Lane version. Terry J prefers Drury Lane. I really feel they are so different from each other in style as to be incomparable, and I feel I would hate the weekend’s work just to go out the window. Eric has rung. He has ‘flu and is not happy at all. He positively doesn’t want Drury Lane.

  Friday, October 17th, Dorchester—London train

  Rattling back home after the week’s filming on Tomkinson. Amazingly we are still able to have a meal on the train at 9.30 – a not unpleasant British Rail steak.

  I think it has been the most solid week’s work in my life. Since Monday morning I have been totally involved – in the setting-up and shooting, as well as the acting, of almost every shot. The feeling of responsibility tightens the concentration and, though the actual application is hard, it’s the only way — especially as I feel TJ is waiting just behind me to take over. I don’t mean that in any malicious sense, it’s just that I fear his enthusiasm – it’s the sort that is so deeply felt it keeps me on my toes, because I must keep thinking of ideas first.

  At the moment, sitting back as the train roars towards London, I feel as happily and justifiably exhausted as I have done after any filming in a long while. Not only have I enjoyed the extent of my own involvement, I’ve enjoyed working with Terry Hughes. After the physical and mental strain of Ian Mac, Terry is more easy-going, open, adaptable, never rattled, never defensive – I suppose it stems from the fact that he has no-one to fight. He is a blue-eyed boy at the BBC – director of The Two Ronnies, at present the No. I show in the ratings – whereas Ian was always at loggerheads with his employers. And Ian had six Pythons to cope with, Terry H only has two.

  Tuesday, October 21st

  Down to Ray Millichope’s1 at 10.30 to see the rushes. Terry H, Terry J and myself crowd around Ray’s Steinbeck2 at his new cutting rooms next door to the Nellie Dean pub in Carlisle Street. Euphoria gathers as we watch almost two hours’ worth of rushes.

  I feel very, very happy this afternoon as I drive back home. I think for the first time that Tomkinson is going to work in the area in which it is most distinctive – the area of quality, of atmosphere, of style.

  Friday, October 24th

  This morning we (i.e. the Pythons) are to meet Alan Freeman for an interview for some US radio programme he does. Freeman is one of those folk heroes of the sixties – Pick of the Pops, etc – who’s still around and amazingly durable in the ‘70s. Graham tells me he’s keen on motor bikes and leather and men.

  I was twenty minutes late, but the first one there. Greeted with the same warm enthusiasm which gets Freeman so much work. His shirt is a little tightly stretched over a few folds of good living, and he seems a little hot in the face. He talks compulsively and shows me into the flat, furnished lushly with a great deal of ormolu and marble and rather fussily camp objects. A cigarette lighter is never a cigarette lighter … It’s a gun or a sea-shell. A very likeable man – who endeared himself even more to me personally by raving about the Python credits. Said he was embarrassed that he didn’t know our names, but he’d rung Python Productions for photos and they said they hadn’t any.

  Alan F taped quite cheerfully. He asked me if I ever regretted not playing a musical instrument and I got going on that. When he wasn’t asking questions, we (Terry G, Terry J, Gra and myself) fell into a rather serious vein and talked about the problems of the world, etc. Graham said contraception and the control of the population was the world’s major problem. At least he’s doing his bit to limit the population.

  John C, not unpredictably, was absent from all the various Python functions today, but the last of his Fawlty Towers series had me laughing as long and as loud as anything since Hancock and the Vikings – which must have been 15 or 16 years ago.

  Wednesday, October 29th

  Just after 9.30 this evening, when I’m getting my Chinese take-away out of the oven, and my bottle of champagne out of the fridge, prior to watching England v. Czechoslovakia all on my own, I hear the dull thud of a blast. It could be anything, but it’s a measure of the times that I am certain it was a bomb. Sure enough, on the 11.30 news there are the familiar pictures of ambulance, police cordons, etc, etc. At 9.40 a bomb went off in an Italian restaurant in Mayfair. No warning – eighteen injured. But the fact that I heard the explosion in our kitchen seemed to bring the whole horror closer to me – and genuinely set me thinking as to what I would do with myself and the family if a totally indiscriminate bombing campaign (as this recent one seems to be) continued in London.

  No conclusions of course. I shall carry on shopping in the West End, parking in the West End, working in the West End, eating in the West End, as everybody else will – all helpless potential victims.

  Saw Stephen Frears and Annie Zelda in the Welcome Chinese earlier. Three Men is ready, apart from the music. Stephen quietly, with eyes slightly mischievous, murmurs, ‘The word is it’s good.’

  Saturday, November 1st

  Studio recording day for Tomkinson’s Schooldays. I estimate this will be getting on for the seventy-fifth half-hour I’ve performed in and helped to write since Do Not Adjust Your Set began in 1967.

  I feel more and more confident as the day goes on. Strangely enough both Gwen and Ian are a little less at ease. After all, neither of them have ever done a TV show to a live audience – whereas for Terry and myself this is our world, for both of them it’s an unfamiliar territory. But both play well during the recording and the audience seems to receive the show with many laughs.

  I am racing around changing like a mad thing, and at the end of the one and a quarter hours recording, I think I’m the least qualified person in the entire studio to judge how it went. A feeling that I cannot get rid of is that the studio scenes received less reaction than they should have done – but everyone seems happy.

  Tuesday, November 4th

  Reactions to Saturday night’s recordings have been so far favourable. Anne H and daughter Rachel liked it very much. Robert H enjoyed it and laughed a lot, but thought I was a bit Whacko!1 I’ve had two long chats with Simon Albury, who liked it generally, but felt that there should have been more character detail – the School Bully especially, he felt, was one-dimensional and didn’t like him at all – whereas Graham Chapman (the only Python apart from TJ at the recording) thought the Bully was very good. More basically, Simon felt that I came out of it too softly, self-effacingly and passively – if the object was to make it into a Michael Palin series.

  On the phone today with TJ the difficult question of Tomkinson and our own working relationship came up. Tony Hendra (of National Lampoon) had offered him a pirate film to direct. Terry was writing back to say he couldn’t do it – whereas in fact he really didn’t want to do it because it woul
d mean a lot of hard work which he didn’t have time for if we were working on the series.

  Well, we eventually talked it out over lunch at the Brasserie du Coin in Lamb’s Conduit Street. I suppose it was a little awkward, as it always has been whenever we’ve had to stop and examine our relationship – which has, for ten years, grown, stretched and adjusted itself by fairly effortless natural processes.

  Terry said that he didn’t feel particularly frustrated or unfulfilled by the imbalance of writing and performing on Tomkinson and he would be quite happy if that same imbalance were to occur in a future series, but what he wanted to establish was that his own ideas and suggestions were treated with equal importance – if they weren’t, and if I were ‘in control’, then it would not be a relationship he was satisfied with. He thought it quite reasonable if I should want to be ‘in control’, but then it would be a Michael Palin show and not a Jones/Palin show, and, in that case, TJ would be happy to come in and edit and work on scripts after I’d written them and do some performing if needed, but in the meantime would rather get his teeth into another project of his own.

  However, I value Terry and his judgement too much to just use it for a half-day every two weeks – and I know that Terry would never be happy if he didn’t have the freedom to contribute and develop ideas from the start. So, though I do want to keep it the Michael Palin show, I do not want to lose Terry and so we agree that it will be an equal talents, equal involvement show.

  All happy at the end of the meal – except that I can’t quite see how it can be equal if I am to do the bulk of the performing.