Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  Thursday, February 19th

  Down to Wimpole Street (for the second time in a week) for a medical examination for insurance for the City Center Show. After having my throat, eyes, balls, back, thighs, glands and penis examined (in a way which made me feel more like a racehorse being checked for doping), I took myself off to South Kensington to Willy Rushton’s apartment in Old Brompton Road. It looks out over one of the busiest, most cosmopolitan, open-all-night stretches of London, just by South Ken tube. WR describes it as rather like a ‘cold Tangier’.

  Ian Davidson, Terry J, Willy and myself are performing’Custard Pie’1 at a charity show at the Old Vic on Sunday night in memory of an actor called James Mellor, whom, it transpired as we sat around the table at Willy’s, none of us actually knew. Willy R does rather a lot of these good causes (shows for Angola, Chile, refugees, etc) and we fantasised on the idea of professional charity performers having a ‘Chile show’ that ‘might run’ and ‘a week on Namibia in June’, etc, etc.

  Willy knocked back two and a half pints very swiftly and, about 9.00, we made our separate ways, to meet again at the Old Vic on Sunday. ‘I’m never quite sure where the Old Vic is,’ says Willy, in his famous crusty-colonel voice, which, as far as I can gather, is his actual voice. I like him. He makes you laugh, and enjoys being made to laugh himself.

  Sunday, February 22nd

  At the Old Vic, Albert Finney is on the stage sorting out the acts.

  We run through ‘Custard Pie’, then hang around in the not altogether convivial atmosphere of dozens of well-known faces. Jimmy Villiers, Mike Jayston (they are familiar via the footy matches), John Le Mesurier, Julian Holloway, Barry Rutter, Glenda Jackson, Gaye Brown, George Sewell, Joss Ackland, Ron Pickup, Bernard Cribbins (lovely feller) etc, etc. Everyone being a wee bit defensive, so am quite glad when we four dilettante comedy artists, who find ourselves at the end of a bill lasting at least three hours, leave the claustrophobic clutches of the Old Vic and end up across the road in the George Inn, London’s last galleried pub. Inside, on uncarpeted floors, with black beams and yellowing walls and benches and tables, we find the perfect place to while away a couple of hours. We drink a few pints and swap stories of old cabarets.

  Back at the theatre we stand in the bar and watch the performance on closed circuit TV. It’s 10.00 and they are still doing the second act – we are at the end of the third.

  Willy R was now on the double scotches and philosophising about this being the ideal way to go to the theatre. Sitting in the bar watching it all on TV – perhaps all the theatres in London should be wired up so, drink in hand, you could switch over to the Wyndhams when you got bored with Ibsen at the National.

  We went on eventually and did our bit. Albert Finney was drinking champagne and swaying about a little as he introduced us. We proceeded to do less than the best version of’Custard Pie’, but no-one cared by then.

  Tuesday, February 24th

  Worked a near four-hour stint this morning on the ‘Mystery at Moorstones Manor’ whodunnit story. Useful reading it to the Herberts on Saturday night last, their reaction helped me to sort out a new sense of direction for the sketch – which is nearing an ending – as TJ arrives up here about 1.30.

  We chat, Terry had a bad week for writing last week – he was buying cars for Nigel, etc, and lost all the afternoons. My strategy of fairly disciplined writing and trying hard not to get involved in side work has paid off with the whodunnit, which TJ liked a lot and he’s taken it away now to think of an ending.

  Wednesday, February 25th

  Work on the ‘Curse of the Claw’ – a story begun by Terry and featuring the wonderfully scabrous Uncle Jack, the boy/narrator’s hero who has all the diseases known to man, at the same time.

  Both Terry Hughes and Jimmy G were on the phone today to firm up arrangements for the twelve Ripping Yarns. Python film writing is now almost certainly shifted to November/December this year, leaving September/October free to film two Ripping Yarns.

  Then comes the problem of the day – a bulky script bound in livid purple and called Jabberwocky, which was dropped in by T Gilliam yesterday for me to read. He wants me to play the part of Dennis, the peasant, one of only two central figures in the script. It sounds something I would like to be involved in, but will require a two-month commitment in the middle of the year.

  Talking to Jill F on these matters, she tells me that she had been asked about my availability for a new Tom Stoppard play at the Open Space. Job of jobs! Delight of delights! But unfortunately it’s in April and I’ll be treading the boards on Broadway. Well, near Broadway.

  Friday, February 27th

  I work through until 5.00. Steady and pleasing progress on ‘Across the Andes by Frog’, one of three storylines which are already in sight of an ending.

  The last two weeks’ work have been very prolific and satisfying, with only a couple of days when I chased a red herring and got stuck up a gum tree in a cul-de-sac, and very little dull stuff. Most of the writing has been a pleasure to read the next morning, which is the best test of quality. I enjoy the writing, I enjoy my house, my family and, more than anything I enjoy the feeling of seeing each day used to the full actually to produce something. The end.

  Monday March 1st

  A cloudless, blue-sky day. London sparkles, everyone and everything looks better for this dose of reviving spring sunshine. To the Aldwych Theatre for the first of my lessons with Cicely Berry – premier voice-training lady of British Theatre (so everybody says).

  She concentrates on transferring my breathing from the top of the rib-cage to the stomach. Once, and she says it will take time, but once I can feel myself breathing out of my stomach, then the tensing of shoulder and back muscles will not affect my voice production, as happens now. Read out Dylan Thomas poem and tried the new breathing techniques. I see her again on Friday.

  Call from TG. He says that Sandy Lieberson, producer of Jabberwocky, is now going off the idea of Michael Crawford and is almost persuaded to employ me. Apparently the condition he made today is that J Cleese should be in it as well. TG rang John and offered him a couple of days’ work in August. John apparently accepted without wanting to see the script.

  Wednesday, March 3rd

  Writing at home during the day. Terry is scribbling down in Camberwell. In the evening a meeting with Michael and Anne Henshaw’re what to do with the Palin millions.

  As I sit, like a spectator at a game of tennis, watching Michael and Anne lob and volley tax avoidance chat, very little of which I begin to understand, I feel that same surge of panic in my ignorance as when I was taught maths at school, and as the problem, equation, or whatever was remorselessly expounded, I found myself nodding helplessly along with the rest of the class, knowing full well I didn’t know what was being talked about, but realising that if I asked I would still panic again when it was explained. I sometimes think the Inland Revenue are doing me a favour – it would be the simplest thing to let them do all the sums and take the money and pat me on the head and leave me to the rather modest way of life which is the despair of a true accountant.

  Thursday, March 4th

  TG rang this evening. Evidently, after some hassles with ‘them’ – i.e. the producers – he has finally persuaded them that I should play Dennis the Peasant in Jabberwocky. So, contracts permitting (and I’d do it for no money anyway), I shall be filming from July 27th to the end of September, and straightaway after that filming two Yarns.

  Drove down to Terry J’s for a couple of hours of reading new material. London splendid in the hazy sunshine.

  ‘Across the Andes by Frog’ and ‘Mystery at Moorstones Manor’ are virtually complete and over the last couple of days I’ve made some headway elaborating on TJ’s very funny start to ‘The Wolf of the Sea’.

  A couple of bomb explosions as we’re eating our supper. That makes three today, but no-one hurt in any of them.

  Start to read Jabberwocky again – realise that I get peed on twice by p
age fifty!

  Friday, March 3th

  To the Aldwych Theatre for another session with Cicely B. Cicely as usual exuding her air of comfortable friendliness. She’s the kind of person you meet once and would tell everything to.

  Another very satisfactory hour’s session on the voice. I do think I know and can actually now put into practice the main part of her advice, which is that we should breathe up from our stomachs, which is, after all, the centre of the body, and try and forget chest and shoulders. I try Gumby at full stretch a few times. Cicely cowers away.

  Tuesday, March 16th

  Harold Wilson is resigning. Quite a bombshell, for there were none of the usual press leaks. But he has just ‘celebrated’ (as they say), his 60th birthday, which is a very statesmanlike thing to do, and Harold, of all recent Western politicians, from Kennedy and Johnson through Brandt and Nixon and Maudling and Thorpe, is still clean – so presumably he’s getting out while the going’s good. Still, he’s been PM for nine years and was becoming as secure a British institution as the Queen or Bovril.

  Terry G rings, distraught. The Neal’s Yard property is in jeopardy1 – evidently the owner, who had constantly reassured TG it was his, now says he has another buyer. TG very worried, as he has bought the film equipment and needs to set it up somewhere before April 5 th – end of tax year!

  In late afternoon, down to Covent Garden with TG to look at premises. It’s exciting down there – a lot of well-designed shop-fronts, and well-renovated, sturdy old buildings. Art designers, film and recording studios, craft shops and ballet centres are moving into old banana warehouses and there’s a good healthy feeling of an area coming to life again. Neal’s Yard premises look perfect for us. I hope we don’t lose them.

  Monday, March 22nd

  Arrived at Anne’s about 10.00 for the first read-through of material for an ambitious charity show in aid of Amnesty International. As I’m parking outside Park Square East, I nearly run over Jonathan Miller – who is to produce the Amnesty show – loping towards Anne’s door. His curly hair is unbrushed, his clothes are an unremarkable heap of brown, and his eyes look a little red. He greets me very cheerfully.

  As we go upstairs, I catch sight of a gun mike pointing in our direction and a blinding early morning sun shining directly at us suffuses the scene with a Gala Premiere-like quality. The mike and the camera belong to the Roger Graef team, a ‘specialist’ documentary group, whose typical product is the long, minutely-observed documentary of people at work. Evidently they are going to trace the whole process of putting on the Amnesty show. They try to work as unobtrusively as possible. They don’t use any artificial light and Chas Stewart, the cameraman, usually crushes himself discreetly, if uncomfortably, into a corner of the room. Only the flick of the gun mike is impossible to ignore.

  Jonathan Miller is disarming and jokey, and not at all daunting, as I think I had expected. He certainly has a very encouraging attitude to the Amnesty show. Organise it, direct it, by all means, but let’s keep the feeling of a spontaneous, anything-might-happen evening.

  After a half hour’s discussion and coffee – when it was agreed that Peter Cook should take over Eric’s role as the condemned man in the ‘Court Sketch’ and that Terry J should be transferred to a Cook, Bennett, Miller sketch, in lieu of Dudley Moore who is in the US – Miller left, but with a very good parting shot. He gazed out of the windows into Regent’s Park and murmured nostalgically, ‘I used to play in those gardens when I was three. I remember a girl of eight asked me to show her my cock … It’s never happened since,’ he concluded, rather sadly.

  R Graef is a very bright, approachable and likeable man. He shares the view of the Weekend World team that news presentation is, generally speaking, dead and flat and goes on to say he feels TV as a whole fails to involve its audience. His prolonged documentaries are an attempt to involve the TV viewer, without the smooth, glossy aids of well-worked storylines, and rather by presenting real people ‘warts and all’. His technique begs a lot of questions, but it’s refreshing to talk to someone who feels that something can be achieved on TV and is not for ever shaking his head sadly and saying ‘Well of course, it would be lovely to do this, but …’

  After lunch Terry and I play squash. Not a bad game, considering we both had curry behind us. Terry has a theory this is why Pakistanis make such formidable squash opponents.

  Tuesday, March 23rd

  At 12.00, via the bank to Anne’s to drop off visa forms plus ghastly photo of Helen for States. Then to Fetter Lane for an extremely civilised hour of culture with Robert. We had lunch (white wine, smoked ham, Camembert and granary bread and salad) and I looked over Chris Orr’s Ruskin etchings,1 which will be the basis of the book I’m funding. I like them very much. Quite different from what I had expected, they are full of references to Ruskin’s (Chris Orr’s) sexual repression and fantasies. This theme gives the etchings a clear unity, but within that there is a wealth of detail and some very successful theatrical effects in the etchings themselves.

  To Liverpool Street to meet my mother off the Ipswich train. Bring her back home for a cup of coffee and a quick glimpse of her youngest granddaughter. Father is in Southwold Cottage Hospital for two weeks. He’s resigned to it, but not happy about it, but Mother really does need the breaks if she’s to survive.

  From here I take her down to Angela’s, where she’s to spend the next couple of days. As I leave Angela tells me that she is really feeling awful – she’s in the grip of a repetition of the depression which hit her over ten years ago. She’s on pills and anti-depressants, but these seem to do nothing for her confidence, though they may overcome the symptoms for a while.

  She warned me that Ma would have to hear about it all and, as she put it, I would ‘have to pick up the pieces’ when Ma came over to stay with us on Thursday. I walked back to the car feeling almost as Angela was – on the point of tears. I feel so helpless.

  Friday, March 26th

  At the Tate Gallery for the Constable exhibition. It really was packed and, not having the time or the inclination to join the line of people two or three thick slowly moving round the 300-odd works in the exhibition – like a crowd lining up to pay their last respects to a dead monarch – Granny and I weaved in and out, wherever there was a gap. Once again, with pictures like the Haywain, seeing the original makes one aware of what a gross disservice to the painter are reproductions – and especially with a popular and acceptable painter like C, whose paintings are on matchboxes, chocolate boxes and soap boxes ad nauseam. There is so much delicacy of detail in the Haywain that these reproductions miss totally and it’s really a far better painting than its clichéd popularity led me to think.

  I go and do some shopping in Long Acre and Piccadilly – a gorgeously rich blue sky, Londoners on their way home blinking in the bright sunlight, buildings picked out in sharp definition by the evening sun. I could have enjoyed London for another couple of hours, as it emptied for the weekend, but I had to get home.

  To bed late again. Can’t bear to think of what there is to do before we fly off to New York now – only just over a week away!

  Sunday, March 28th

  Spend the morning at a rehearsal for ‘Poke in the Eye’.1

  Jonathan Miller took the part of the director. Rather well, I thought. He made intelligent suggestions, managed to avoid sounding bossy, kept the work-rate going steadily, and didn’t at all justify John Cleese’s early grumpiness. ‘I wrote a film for Video Arts yesterday about how to chair a meeting, and one of the most vital things is for the chairman to have done his homework,’ said Cleese icily.

  John is, on a good night, one of the world’s greatest corpsers.’ And I am not far behind. Silly Walks at Drury Lane, 1975.

  Passport photo, 1975: big collars and mad, staring eyes. Why did anyone allow me in their country?

  On Central Park South, first New York publicity trip, March 1975. I am reading from the guidebook, which always used to annoy Graham.

 
Terry, Ma, Jeremy Herbert, Al and me, Camberwell.

  Helen, Rachel, Will and Tom with friends Diana and Sean Duncan on their boat, Pilcomayo, on the River Dee, 1975.

  Fans in America, 1975. Graham lights up behind me.

  Python publicity photo with Neil Innes selflessly standing in for Terry Jones.

  Summer of ’75, Three Men in a Boat. Stephen Moore, myself, Tim Curry and Montmorency the dog.

  Prelude to disaster. The photograph sequence (followed by the boat getting trapped in the lock gate). Uiree Men in a Boat, June 1975.

  With Ma and sister Angela at Dulwich.

  Next generation. Miles Innes and Tom Palin became good friends during hive at City Center, New York, 1976.

  Rachel, Helen and the back garden, Gospel Oak, London, 1976.

  ‘Peter Cook, who apologised for his slightly glazed state saying he was recovering fiom a long night… discussing Lenny Bruces drug problem – steadfastly refuses to learn the words of the Condemned Man in our “Court Sketch “.’ Amnesty show at Her Majesty’s. (March 31st, 1976)

  My vocal nemesis, ‘Gumby Flower Arranging’ at full blast. City Center, New York, 1976.

  ‘You’re Pythons. Do something funny fir me! An unpleasant little episode at the Bronx Zoo, New York. (April 20th, 1976)