This morning I looked through an assembly of the film – from Pilate’s forum up to the crucifixions – and was greatly encouraged.
I’m not quite sure that I’d go along with TJ, who last night ventured to me that it was going to be ‘a masterpiece’, but, having seen the stuff this morning, I feel closer to his judgement than to Terry Gilliam, who spread gloom and despondency over me on Friday morning, as we motored out to Matmata, with his analysis of shortcomings and missed opportunities.
But more of this later. Night has fallen on the end of our seventh week in Tunisia. I feel optimistic about the film tonight and less depressed at the thought of being trapped here for two more weeks. All I have to decide now is which of my two baths to use …
Tuesday, October 31st, Gabès
The violence of the downpour is increasing as I listen. The prospect of an enforced day off tomorrow looks ominously likely.
Yesterday morning I was hauled up on the cross. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, but I was stretched out for half an hour or so whilst various takes of Big Nose were done and, as I write, I’ve numbed a nerve in my left arm and lost some control of my muscles, so the arm keeps rising involuntarily – rather like Peter Sellers’ rogue limb in Dr Strangelove.
Thursday, November 2nd, Gabès
Wake to sunshine. Give Cleese a lift out to the location. Have to wait five minutes at a shop whilst he buys honey and almonds for his breakfast. John is sharing a caravan with TJ and me at the moment, so that make-up can have extra space. As a result I have Cleese, who has a cold, and his girlfriend, Charlotte, who arrives around lunchtime and smokes.
Today we spend most of our time and effort on the final song, which twenty-four crucifees sing as the climax of the film.
I’m in one of the front-row crosses. There’s a slightly heady feeling – a tiny rush of vertigo as I clamber up onto the racing bicycle saddle (which protrudes absurdly anachronistically from an otherwise convincing cross). There’s a certain sense of camaraderie amongst us all as we clip our nails over the top of our hands and push aching arms through the ropes.
Among the few compensations is a wonderful view over the hills of Matmata.
Saturday, November 4th, Gabès
Wake up to grey skies again. The weather is being really unkind these days.
Drive out to the location at Matmata with sinking spirits. Prospects for a return to England on the 13th look in jeopardy as the rain comes down and we wait for half an hour as the water pours across the road so fast no-one dares venture across. One loony tries to get across in a Peugeot taxi, skids in the mud and bounces off one of our Renault 5s.
Sitting in one of the caravans waiting for us to be called, the talk turns to discussion of tomorrow’s rest day. Roy Rodhouse, chief electrician, maintains this film has been a doddle – and anyone who’s feeling the pressure ought to try ‘a day or two with bloody David Lean – then they’ll know what slave-driving is’.
Charles Knode reckons it’s been the hardest picture he’s worked on – mainly because he feels his work isn’t used. For instance this week he’s been up early to dress seventy-five extras each day, and the most they’ve eventually used is six of them.
There’s no consensus of discontent, but from the attitudes of everyone I reckon the most disruptive element in any operation like this is lack of diplomacy – and that means regular attention to every department to make sure they’re given time to air their grievances and lashings of appreciation. In a big unit like this there doesn’t seem to be time to look after everyone like that.
Monday, November 6th, Gabès
Out to Matmata for the last time. Still cloudy, but dry. Much running about, sometimes carrying Terry aloft, sometimes followed by 150 Arabs.
One long chasing shot has to be done all over again after one extra, wearing leather shoes, Terylene socks and smoking a cigarette, stops and looks straight into the lens, before being attacked with angry howls by Habib, Hammeda and the massed Anglo-Tunisian assistant directors.
Friday, November 10th, Carthage
Carthage is a comfy, bourgeois suburb – the Beverly Hills of Tunisia – and there is no centre of the old town and precious little on display to show for the years when people from this shore dominated the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire has been put away, as it were, and the Punic is under the ground.
John dropped in for breakfast. We looked through Three Wise Men together – the steady, unrelenting rain gave us the thought of doing a play about an English holiday called ‘It’s Clearing Up’.
John Goldstone and Tim are of the opinion that we should aim to leave on Monday whatever happens – and that the amphitheatre close-ups and the Three Wise Men can be shot in London. The weather forecast offers no cause for hope.
At three we travel down to the location beside the sea, where amidst the bulky ruins of a Roman baths we are to shoot the Three Wise Men.
The roof of the stable drips occasionally as a welcome reminder that it could have been raining on Jesus’ birthday. The costumes are excruciatingly hard to bear. My headdress is like having a sixty-pound haversack on one’s skull, and both Graham and I have immense trouble with long, swirling trains – as we make an impressive exit, Graham’s train catches on the door, rips down the middle and pulls the door off its hinges.
Saturday, November 11th, Carthage
At the amphitheatre at eight.
The consistent sunshine keeps us moving steadily forward, and my last shot of the movie (witnessed by the British Ambassador, who appears mid-afternoon in the ruins of Carthage and is observed by T Gilliam tapping tentatively on solid rock to ascertain whether it’s false or not) is myself as one of the Revs ‘flitting’ through the streets. Then John, Eric and myself are finished.
Succumb to the temptation of the cool, calm sea and take what is probably my last Tunisian dip. A chill, fresh edge to the water – not a day for drying out on the beach. Instead back into my chalet for a long, lingering hot bath.
November’s connotations seem the same whether in foggy England or sunny North Africa – warm fires, warm baths, protection and shelter are the order of the month.
A fine sunset – a great final curtain. Dinner at the Gulf restaurant with TJ, after rushes. He’s pushed through thirty-six shots today and only the wide-shots of the amphitheatre, with Neil running away from the giant gladiator, remain to be done.
Sunday, November 12th, Carthage
I left the chalet at a quarter to seven.
Eric is outside already, standing on the sea-shore, looking towards the sunrise. A canopy of small, white, grey-edged flecks of cloud dot the sky, changing from rich red to deep gold as the sun slowly rises.
Bernard McK leapt out of his chalet and intercepted me with the joyful news that he had been writing his Robin’s Nest1 episode since three o’clock in the morning and the end was in sight!
Left the cheery Bernard and reflective Eric and climbed up the path, past good, fresh smells of early morning – pine and grass and the hint of soft, sweet scents from bougainvillea and camellia.
Back in London by twelve, but Helen was over at Mary and Ed’s with the children for lunch. Drove over there in the Citroen, and had not gone one mile before I was hit a glancing blow on the back wing from a careering Triumph Herald. I could hardly believe it. After nine weeks’ driving in Tunisia without a scratch (despite all TJ’s warnings about manic Arab drivers) I return to Kentish Town and wham! The driver, a dapper young man with untrust-worthy eyes, actually tried to make a fight of it, accusing me (who had been stationary at a junction) of taking up too much road. I refused to argue, but I was shaking with anger by the time I eventually reached my family.
Tom played me in with a clarinet fanfare. Rachel was shy at first and pretended not to notice and Willy bounded up and nearly bent me double.
Later in the day the man who had thudded into the back of my car appeared contritely at our door to apologise and admit full responsibility! He turned out to be a very fr
ightened, newly-qualified young barrister. His girlfriend had recognised me and given him a frightfully guilty conscience all afternoon. He had finally found my address by ringing up a couple of policeman ‘friends’ who gave him information from the police computer!
Monday, November 13th
Start to dig through the oceans of mail and assorted papers. Appeals from Birkdale Preparatory School, Shrewsbury School, the ETC [Experimental Theatre Club] at Oxford – my past seems to have run out of money.
Otherwise there are those who want a name to boost appeals or appear at concerts – a concert for racial equality in Oldham, Fair Play for Children in Kentish Town, The Association of Boys’ Clubs, Sheffield University Medical Society, The Dog-Lovers’ Club of Northern Kent. One-Parent Families want me to do a Christmas show.
In the evening watch the third of the Monty Python repeats. Shows as old as this diary. Capering around as Cardinal Ximenez in the ‘Spanish Inquisition’.
Tuesday, November 14th
Confirmation of my suspicions that the BBC will not commission any more Yarns after April, on grounds of cost. Jill quotes a letter from John Howard Davies saying that the shows ‘though prestigious’, are ‘beyond the BBC’s resources’.
I am greatly relieved by the news, for the go-ahead on three more would have stretched my/our ideas, would have filled up next year – which is now left tantalisingly clear for any involvement with Lome M.
Mind you, you could say they let us go without much of a struggle.
Friday, November 17th
One of the odd things about the Tunisian trip is that it’s very easy to believe it didn’t happen. It’s as though I’ve been in a time-warp, and I feel as if there has been absolute continuation of my time in England, and that this is mid-September. The Tunisian episode is like the hour a drunk cannot account for.
I suppose this is partly because of today’s summery sunshine, which matches September quite well, if you don’t look at the trees, but mainly because my life in Tunisia was such a neat and self-contained entity. It was nine weeks of creating fantasy – and it’s easy now to see it all as a fantasy anyway. A complete break, in dress, food, habits, climate and surroundings, held together by a story set 2,000 years ago.
Monday, November 20th
To the Hemdale Preview Theatre in Audley Square at four to see the assembly of all the Brian material. Apart from the Python team – all looking a lot more like pale-faced Englishmen after a week of British November – Tim Hampton and John Goldstone, Anne Henshaw, George Harrison and Denis O’Brien were there.
After cups of tea and a 15-minute wait for Dr Chapman, the film starts. The whole preparatory assembly runs two hours and eight minutes.
General consensus is that it’s a most encouraging viewing. Some scenes provoked gales of laughter – including the latter half of Ben and Pilate’s audience chamber, the Hermit’s hole, Brian’s bedroom when the crowd arrive, and the Centurion and Matthias at the door of Matthias’ house (the searching). There was a consistent level of interest and no embarrassments, though I confess to finding Otto dangerously like a cameo sketch.
The raid on Pilate’s palace could be cut down too, by five or six minutes.
Round to Langan’s for a drink, then John Cleese, Anne, John G, myself and Gilliam stay for a meal. We discuss Richard Ingrams (briefly) and his pairing of Citizen Kane and Monty Python in his Spectator TV column last week. He was talking about over-estimated phenomena and thought Citizen Kane quite useless and Python, now he had finally seen it, junk. Quite a refreshing bucket of water after the almost unqualified critical praise which Python has had to endure these last few years.
Tuesday, November 21st
Late in the afternoon, to Robert Maas1 to hear the latest on the Signford tax saga, which broke last August with the issuing of precepts. Maas, admirably downbeat in style, told me that Signford’s status with the tax authorities was still not settled.
If Maas succeeds in persuading the Inspector of Taxes that Signford was not set up with intent to trick or defraud, and that the time gap between the setting up of the company and the performance of the services from which the company derived most of its income was permissible and done in good faith, then Signford will have succeeded.
If not, there could be a bill of £26,000 to pay straightaway, in addition to a personal tax bill up to the end of August ’78 of between £15,000 and £20,000.
But Maas is competent and efficient and very sharp, so I have some hope. At the very worst I still have two cars and two houses and the best-equipped 8-track recording studio in London to show for nine years of Python!
Thursday, November 23rd
Up to Suffolk. The peace and pause for reflection worked almost immediately. As the Ipswich-Darsham train swayed up from Wickham Market to Saxmundham, with still green fields and rapidly emptying oaks and ashes and elms on either side, I suddenly felt very clear about the next year. I would complete the Yarns in March and April, then work from May 5th (a symbolic starting date: 36th birthday) until December 31st on a new novel.
The prospect brightened me, as we passed through Saxmundham and alongside dark, rich, fresh-ploughed fields south of Darsham. By the time I reached Darsham and saw the smiling, diminutive, almost gnomic little figure of my Ma, I knew it was the right decision.
Saturday, November 23th
Embark for George Harrison’s in the Mini.
Arrive at Friar Park as the sun has just set. It must be two years since I came here with Eric to complete the mixing of’Lumberjack Song’ (or was it three?). There’s a blazing log fire in the galleried hall and George has just come in from planting bulbs in the garden. He seems very relaxed and settled into the role of a country squire – his face has fleshed out a little, he looks less frail and tortured.
We have tea and talk about the house and Sir Frank Crisp, the eccentric lawyer who built it.1 And died penniless as a result. My mother remembers Sir Frank hiding behind bushes in the garden and jumping out on her and her sister when they visited the place as little girls.2
Saw George’s four-month-old boy, Dhani, then his other recent enthusiasm, his book. Called I Me Mine, it’s an expensively leather-bound collection of his songs with his own hand-written notes and corrections.
We find out that George is just older than me. He was born February 1943. He is quite struck by this and, as a memento of him being just older, gives me one of the glass eyes made for his Madame Tussaud’s dummy!
Derek Taylor and Joan arrive later and we eat a superb Indian meal cooked by Kumar. Quite delicious and delicate.
Derek tells of the horrors of LA that have driven him back to England – to a farmhouse in Suffolk. So humourless and depressing were his colleagues in Warner Records, that Derek took great pleasure in puzzling them by eccentric behaviour. He would insist on playing Hollywood record moguls a tape of Violet Bonham-Carter3 being interviewed. They sat there polite but utterly bewildered. ‘Twenty minutes’ peace,’ Derek recalled with feeling.
Monday, November 27th
Taxi arrives when I’m half-dressed, just before eight. Haifa cup of tea, then leave for the BBC at 8.15. To Studio 4A at Broadcasting House for Start the Week, with Richard Baker – a jolly, harmless, middle-of-the-road therefore well-liked chat show, which goes out live.
RB frightens me with quick asides like ‘We’ll be talking travel … oh, and bicycles … so if you’ll get some travel and bicycling stories together … Right, we’re on air.’
Not as hair-raising as I thought. I manage to hold my own, though Sandra Harris, who interviews me, is another of those people who feel the need to describe me as a ‘nice middle-class boy’.
Drive over to Gough Square. It’s nearly half past three and the shafts of sunshine are few as the buildings of London block out the low November sunshine. The city seems all in shadow. I tape a pre-recorded interview for London Broadcasting. Catch a glimpse of a visitors’ book which is lying open – the last name is M Thatcher, H of C. Think of
writing G Rarf, London Zoo, but refrain.
Before Christmas the Ripping Yarns book was published and my signing tour began, as they still do now, in Scotland.
Tuesday, November 28th, Stirling
Leave King’s Cross at 11.55 on the Aberdonian.
Arrive in Stirling at a quarter to seven. Met by student organisers who say they have had to move the audience to a larger lecture theatre. I’m told the Literary Society (whom I am addressing) usually expect 80 or 90 for a visiting speaker, but 250 have turned up.
Give my talk eventually to a full house, ranged in front of and above me along steeply-banked rows of desks. Analysis of my method of writing doesn’t go down well, but any jokes or sketches are rapturously received.
Wednesday, November 29th, Stirling
Up at a quarter to nine. Comfortable night in excellent, clean and well-equipped hotel. Breakfast alone with a Scotsman (the newspaper). Then walk down to Allanwater, away from the main road and along a path which follows the river. The air is clean, fresh and cold. It’s marvellous to be in Scotland. I relish the short walk inordinately, gratefully drinking in the air and the sight of a quiet, full river flanked by bare-branched beech trees.
I still am affected by a post-Tunisian euphoria. A delight in being wherever I am, provided it’s not Tunisia.
To Grant’s Bookshop in Stirling for my first signing session.
Despite a big window display, the attendance at the signing session is not good. I console myself with the fact that thirty books were signed after last night’s talk and publication isn’t really till tomorrow. But I sit at my table with embarrassingly large piles of books beside me and sign less than twenty in one-and-a-half hours. At one point an irate lady who obviously thinks I work here, comes across and complains that a book about angling she bought for her nephew has two pages stuck together.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 69