8.30: Limousine arrives, pack the cases and the best journey of all begins – out to Kennedy, with Alan Price’s ‘O Lucky Man’ score playing on the cassette, with a kind of appropriateness. I had seen the hard side of New York today, the constant pressure to say something, to stand up in case people don’t recognise you. That’s the trouble with the city, that’s why it’s unrelaxing – because of the fear that if you sit down and relax for half an hour everyone will forget who you are.
Monday, May 10th
Last twelve months have been the driest since records began in 1727. Drought conditions near in some parts of the country. Cathy Gib took it all very seriously and was going around putting bricks in the cisterns.
TG and Maggie come round in the evening – talk of Jabberwocky. It may now be largely shot in Chepstow and Pembroke Castles and far less in Shepperton Studios than originally expected. I approve. Arthur Lowe wants to be in it, but Iain Cuthbertson has said no.
Monday, May 17th
Began a Ripping Yarn script about a Northern family, but was only able to work on it for about an hour, then a series of prolonged phone calls.
With Helen to the Academy, where we saw Spirit of the Beehive, a beautifully photographed, unpretentious, unspectacular, gentle Spanish film by Victor Erice. Delightful and satisfying. And afterwards Piero kept his restaurant upstairs specially open for the two of us (even the guitarist came back and played for ten minutes!) – superb meal. Piero has achieved a consistent excellence at the Pavilion, which has never let us down.1
Wednesday, May 19th
The weather’s cooled down perceptibly. Writing easier and actually I make a good start on a First World War Ripping Yarn set in a prison camp.
Down to 14 Neal’s Yard, which is, since last Monday, the leasehold property of Messrs Palin, Doyle and Gilliam. We discuss how the buildings will be used. André and the studio are settled and it’s looking good. He could have builders in on Monday.
Home around 8.00. Watched Liverpool win UEFA Cup Final at Bruges.
Thursday, May 20th, Sheffield
Caught 13.05 from King’s Cross for the opening night of Their Finest Hours.1 Arrive at the Crucible about 7.15. Jill Foster is there and we meet Norman Yardley and his wife as well. Yardley, a childhood cricketing hero,2 is gentle and genial and his wife, a bright attractive lady, is nice to us as well
As soon as Underwood starts I know we’ll be alright – the audience warm instantly to the situation, the cast play it impeccably, the pace sustains and so do the laughs, coming with a volume and consistency which I just didn’t expect. The whole of Underwood works like a gem, including the ending, when an entire cricket team walks through and the mother rises up to the strains of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. Came out feeling almost tearful with emotion and gratitude to David Leland and the cast.
Buchanan was slower, but the effect of the boxed-in cast worked superbly. Clarity a problem, but much, much better performance from Philip Jackson as the Italian – he was splendid – and Julian Hough hardly missed a laugh as the Frenchman. Again the audience reaction sustained well, apart from a morose, fidgety lady, who finally left half-way through Buchanan and was, I heard later, the Guardian critic!
Friday, May 21st, Sheffield
Woke up in the small hours with a dream of awful reviews. Terry had had exactly the same dream!
At 7.30 a knock on the door – a cup of tea, The Times and the Morning Telegraph. Nothing in The Times, but I hardly expected it – but Paul Allen in the Morning Telegraph gives us a useful and quite charitable review. He was impressed with the experiment with the boxes, and also said there were ‘breathtakingly funny moments’. Read it again while shaving. Fourteen years since I last searched the Sheffield papers for the theatre reviews!3
Outside my window it’s a bright, sunny morning. Directly below me the forlorn and deserted platforms of Victoria Station, once the starting place for Sheffield’s own prestige express – the Master Cutler. Now it’s boarded up and even the track has been taken out on Platform One. Allow 30 seconds for bout of railway nostalgia.
Downstairs to meet Jill and very crumpled Terry – I tell him to go back to his room and get up again. Despite a lot of discussion on how much better it is to go back to London early and not lose another Ripping Yarn writing day, TJ remains unhappy about not talking to the cast – even though David isn’t planning to meet them until this afternoon. Even after we’ve left Sheffield on the 8.30, ordered breakfast and settled down, Terry is still itchy with indecision and at Chesterfield, our first stop, he suddenly grabs his bag and, with a muttered ‘I’m going back’, he disappears off the train.
The bemused restaurant attendant has just cleared away Terry’s breakfast things when he reappears. ‘It’s 55 minutes until the next train back,’ he says resignedly, and sits down and comes back to London.
A bad review in The Guardian, coldly and heavily giving away the plot and all the surprises (such as they are) of Buchanan and saying that if Their Finest Hours could have been Their Finest Minutes it would have got a few more laughs.
Strangely enough, no sooner am I back in London and at my desk than Bob Scott rang from the Exchange Theatre, Manchester, to ask me to do an ‘evening’ up there later in the year. He knew the Guardian reviewer and confirmed she was a sad lady, who even found Strindberg light.
Good news from David Leland later in the day, telling us the Crucible want to extend its run beyond June 5th.
T Gilliam drops in to say John Bird has plumped for the part of Reek in Jabberwocky, and Harry H Corbett for the Squire. Both pleased me – they sound very right. John C has now definitely backed out, but apparently rang Terry G and was very contrite and even offered to come and talk about the script with him.
Finally got down to reading some more of Al Levinson’s long, unpublished novel, Millwork. Like most books it repays a longer session rather than three pages at a time before falling asleep. Am getting quite involved.
Saturday, May 22nd
Lunch down at Dulwich. Angela looking well and tanned. She plays tennis very regularly now (to keep her from sitting in the house brooding, she says). Much more positive, or certainly less negative, than when I last saw her. Veryan is away walking the Ridgeway.
Jeremy hovers, trying, whenever he can, to get in a plea for his latest passion – owning a moped. He’s not allowed to ride one for a couple of months, but apparently most of his friends at Alleyn’s School have them. He shows me his electric guitar. Looks fine, but he’s trying to play the Led Zeppelin songbook, before he’s learnt basic rock ‘n’ roll. I can understand how his few oft-repeated heavy rock chords can send Angela batty.
I feel sorry for Angela, suddenly confronted with Jeremy’s emerging independence. Just how long should he stay out at the pub listening to Meal Ticket tonight? Either she’s cautious or she’s taking a risk. No solution. I suppose we’ve got it coming.
A pleasant wander around Crystal Palace Park with the kids. Lots to see and do. The prehistoric monsters on the islands are still one of the sights of London; there’s a little zoo where goats and sheep wander around ‘mingling’ with the crowds. Rachel loved them – and wandered around in primal innocence tapping rams on their bottoms and laughing.
Sunday, May 23rd
Sunny and dry again. After morning’s swim at Holiday Inn and completion of a letter to Al L, we drive over to the Davidsons’ for lunch.
Ian tells a good Barry Humphries tale1 – apparently Barry was in full swing as Edna in his show at the Apollo, when a man in the front row, ever so discreetly, ever so carefully, left for a pee. But he couldn’t really escape Edna’s eye and Edna remarked on his absence and talked to his wife for a while about his waterworks. Having found out the man’s name, Edna and the audience plotted a little surprise for him. So when he duly reappeared from the gents and made for his seat, once again stealthily and soundlessly, without disturbing a soul, Edna gave a cue and, as he was half-way down the gangway, the entire theatre chanted
‘Hello Colin!’
Wednesday, May 26th
Drive down to Terry’s in late morning for a combined session on Ripping Yarns. Don’t really get down to work until after lunch. TJ has made a very funny start on an episode centring round a vicar and an adoring women’s club who all want to marry him. Nicely written nineteenth century polite language. We chat about it and decide it could make a half hour of the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights, Brontë/Austen/Eliot style. Lots of repression and social restrictions and smouldering passions and breaking hearts.
I read ‘Escape from Stalag Luft 112B’, which I’ve been working on these past seven days. Despite one or two blockages, it wrote itself fairly easily and Terry was very pleased. He thinks it’s nearly half an hour already. Within a few minutes of talking about it Terry came out with a very clear and funny ending, so I don’t think we were over-optimistic in thinking that we have another Ripping Yarn as good as finished and a strong idea for a fifth script. I took the vicar and left TJ with the escape.
Tuesday, June 1st
I find myself at the door of the Hampstead Theatre Club. This highly-respected little theatre still has the air of a gypsy caravan in a bombed site.
Meet David Aukin at the door of the caravan. He looks thinner, otherwise the same as when he and Rudman were carrying off the glittering prizes on the Oxford stage in ’62/’63. Mike Rudman joins us. He has that slight edge of American forthrightness, or aggression, or perhaps directness, which always makes me a little uncomfortable. I reach quickly for my English defence – and make a few jokes.
My task is to deliver the scripts of Finest Hours to him, in the hope that he will be able to go and see the plays and maybe bring them back to the Theatre Club. For some reason I am still a little uneasy as I push them – for I feel that they’re lightweight.
Off about 7.00 to drive down to Whitechapel Galleries, where Chris Orr is having his first complete exhibition and his first exhibition in London.
After a few attempts, find the Whitechapel Galleries – they’re well off the beaten artistic track, in the Jewish East End a few doors down from Blooms Deli, which makes me agreeably nostalgic for New York, and facing out over the bewildering, traffic-filled wilderness of the new, improved, enlarged Aldgate roundabout for cars and not people.
Chris Orr is very helpful and shows me round his stuff. Find a mutual admiration for the work of Pont, the 1930s cartoonist, whose gentle, satirical studies like ‘The British Character’ come to mind when you look at some of Chris’s finely-drawn pictures.
Robert shows me the ‘rushes’ of the first Signford production Chris Orr’s John Ruskin, which is out in a couple of weeks, but later he tells me of a much more interesting proposition involving buying a fifteenth-century barn, owned by New College, Oxford. It could, R thinks, be bought for a song, and both Helen and I liked the adventure of working (Harold and Vita-like!) on an old, historic hulk and literally shaping the interior ourselves.
Wednesday, June 2nd
Have to buy the Mirror today as the first page trails a picture of John and Connie and the heading ‘When Love Turns Sour at Fawlty Towers’. Inside, disappointingly accurate account of J and C’s new living arrangements, whereby they share the house, but not the bed.
The boiled egg is scarcely dry upon my lips, when a man from the Evening News rings asking for JC’s phone number. I decline to give it as politely as possible – but nearly spill the beans about the time John … later, later.
Wednesday, June 9th
Terry rings. Mike Rudman of the Hampstead Theatre Club has read Their Finest Hours. He loved Underwood and disliked Buchanan. Underwood he wants to bring down and put on, and tentatively asked if we would be prepared to accept a commission to write another one to go with it! Back to square one.
Dave Yallop, friend of Graham’s, and one of the few men I’ve seen tell Frost to shut up and sit down (when Dave was floor managing Frost on Sunday), wants to write a documentary about Python’s court experiences in the US. Dave has good credentials – he wrote a respected and hard-hitting documentary on the Craig-Bentley case, and he’s approaching the US case from the anti-censorship angle, which could and should be aired. It appears that Rik Hertzberg’s prestigious New Yorker piece has started a few balls rolling since it was reprinted in the Sunday Times.
G Chapman, whom I also spoke to, is well set in his new career of film producer (on The Odd Job). Only yesterday he’d tried to get hold of Jack Lemmon, through his agent, a Mr De Witt – only to be told by a secretary that he couldn’t speak to Mr De Witt, as he’d just died!
Thursday, June 10th
Work on a possible new Ripping Yarn – ‘The Wreck of the Harvey Goldsmith’, just because I like the title.
Squash with Richard1 in the afternoon and Ian and Anthea D and Michael and Anne Henshaw to supper. We watch Monty Python Series Four repeats. It’s ‘Golden Age of Ballooning’, a very rich show and I still can’t quite figure out people’s disappointed reaction to it when it first went out. Interesting to note in Stage today that after its second programme, Python was rated by Jictar1 No. 2= in the London area and 5 in the south (both times above Porridge). In the rest of the country, nowhere.
Sunday, June 13th
Finish the day, and Al Levinson’s Millwork, sitting outside my room in the gathering dusk with a glass of scotch. I liked the novel in the end, after a sticky start. It’s warm and friendly and sympathetic and generally full of Al’s humanity. Must write my review to him tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 15th
At five o’clock this evening to Neal’s Yard. Four or five builders working in Andre’s studio; they glower at me rather resentfully as I wander in, looking as if I owned the place, which of course I do. Terry Gilliam has summonsed me to my first piece of work on Jabberwocky – to do a scene with an American girl, Deborah Fallender, whom TG wants to screen test as the Princess.2
Upstairs, in Terry’s part of 14/15 Neal’s Yard, Julian has set up the camera. Terry Bedford, his small frame bulging a little in places, indicating incipient symptoms of the good life, which he must be enjoying as a highly paid member of the world of commercials, has already stuck a pair of tights over the lens to achieve his award-winning soft-lighting effect.
Deborah is very nervous, but quite sweet, and with a good sense of humour. We do the scene two or three times – unfortunately it reminds me so forcibly of the Castle Anthrax scene that I can’t tell how good or bad it is.
To meal at the Siciliano with the Walmsleys and Simon A. Jane W very fed up that ‘Kojak’ -Telly Savalas – has today won a libel suit of £34,000 damages at the Old Bailey. He sent each member of the jury a signed photo of himself with ‘Thank You’ written on. Now, as taxi drivers say, there must be a sketch there. Jane W has interviewed the said Savalas, didn’t like his pushy arrogance one bit, and finds it easy to believe the libel.
Thursday, June 17th
At 11.30 have to drive over to the Beeb to meet Fred Knapman, senior designer at the BBC, who’s going to show me a possible Peruvian village set for ‘Across the Andes by Frog’, out at Pinewood.
The set, on a back lot, is in quite a run-down state (T Hughes tells me it was made for Dirk Bogarde’s Singer Not the Song), but for that reason rather good for our purposes.
They are preparing for a new James Bond film at Pinewood – starting shooting in August – and a 300-foot-long, 40-foot-high steel-frame building is being erected there for one set-up! I feel very cheap, grubbing around the decaying back lot!
Down to Regent’s Park for a Python Annual General Meeting. We have three companies – Python Productions Ltd, Python (Monty) Pictures Ltd and Kay-Gee-Bee Music Ltd. We manage to go through the official convening and closing procedure of all three companies in four minutes!
Terry J models the Python T-shirt, which is approved, with a few design alterations.
Finally we agree to spend £30,000 on acquiring full rights from Bavaria TV to the two German specials.
Ta
xi back with Dr Chapman, who has had a very tiring week film producing – and finds the whole thing much harder than he expected. Apparently Peter Sellers is very anxious to do The Odd Job – and is muscling in through his agent – whereas Graham wants Peter O’Toole in it, but O’Toole is less bankable’ than Sellers.
Monday, June 21st, Southwold
My father’s 76th birthday. I decide to go up to Southwold for the day, which is a pleasant way of giving him a present and marking the occasion, even though I suppose I should be writing away in London.
He’s watching the Test Match on TV when I arrive at Croft Cottage. I take him cards from us all and a collection of reminiscences from a BBC Radio series about the British in India from 1900 on, which I hope will find an echo amongst his own memories of India, which seem to become more vivid the older he gets.
A bottle of champagne for lunch and a little stroll outside on the lawn, where a year ago we were drinking and eating with quite a crowd as we celebrated his 75th. Today just me and Mother, but he has had a letter from Angela and Aunt K [his sister].
Head down over lunch – he must concentrate all his energies on getting the food into his mouth, and cannot talk. Even after lunch, when there is discussion as to what to do in the afternoon, he cannot manage to make the word, so he writes down ‘Rhododendrons’.
I take him for a drive to see the rhododendrons, which flank the road near Henham in lush profusion at this time of year. Sadly they’ve been heavily trimmed back and there’s little to see, but he’s enjoyed the ride in the car and didn’t seem to want to do anything more ambitious.
Read Pirsig’s Zen and the Art on the train back and found the simplicity and effectiveness of some of his words of wisdom revelatory. A sort of enlightened calm had taken hold of me by the time I got home. I really was reacting to things in a quite different way. Books affect me a little like that anyway, but this more so than any I have read.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 44