Fortunately the combination of the champagne and Gilliam and Simon A and the Coopers all get to work on him. We have a little speech from yours truly and Willy presents Al and Claudie with portraits of them!
My mother survives, indeed flourishes, on all of this. The fire crackles. Clare [from next door] makes a superb theatrical presentation of two dressed salmon. The French contingent smoke themselves silly and a good time is had by all.
Al and Claudie are the last to leave. Al, with a few nips of Laphroaig and a good chat under his belt, steps out into the wet streets at seven.
Take my mother to see Life of Brian. The Plaza is packed. A sell-out. I think she enjoyed it, except for a few qualifications about the ‘Crucifixion’ ending. But the fact she’s awake at all at the end of a day like this, says a lot for her strength and stamina. Remain virtually incognito and afterwards we slope off to the Dean Street Pizza Express.
Tuesday, November 27th
A grey, unprepossessing day. Damp and quite warm. Take Al and Claudie out to Heathrow to catch the two o’clock Pan Am return to NYC. Al, leathery tough though he may look, is a softie at heart, and confesses that he is very frightened of what might happen when they arrive at NYC immigration. But I try to cheer him up and give him and Claudie a small book of Bewick’s woodcuts with careful and finely-drawn vignettes of an idyllic and calm rural world – long before US immigration regulations and Kennedy Airport.
I hear Mervyn Stockwood announced his resignation today. I also hear that he has cancer and drinks heavily to douse the pain.
Wednesday, November 28th
As November, and our two-week Python writing period, draws to a close, I find myself fighting for time. Suddenly everyone wants me for something or other. Quite apart from TG’s film looming, I’m also contacted by a BBC Manchester TV features producer, who wants me to do a programme on railways for him; four or five managements have written expressing interest in my play.
Mel Caiman is almost daily in touch, like a sheepdog trying gently to bring me into the fold of his new humour mag. I have a book review for New Yorker magazine, which I must do by December ist and today I have to present the Melody Maker pop awards at lunchtime and talk to Hunter Davies for a piece in the Sunday Times.
A hired car smoothes me down to the Waldorf Hotel in the Aldwych, where I spend the next three hours, drinking and talking and only for about twenty minutes mounting a stage and presenting eighteen or twenty ‘trophies’ to the MM readers’ favourites.
Met Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats – the current articulate pop idol, just down from a tour of Scotland. He was unshaven, slouched and wore a loose-fitting yellow velour suit that looked as though it had been slept in since Carlisle. An anti-hero for the times. Nothing spruce, no bright eyes, needed here. He’s a very rude man and shows his bottom at the coach window to passing old ladies. I liked him a lot.
Friday, November 30th
Collect Terry and Maggie and we drive out in the Citroen to George H’s for a Python dinner. George scuttles around putting records on the juke-box, playing silly pieces on the piano and generally trying to make everyone feel at home – whereas all the guests are of good bourgeois stock and far more ill at ease with George’s unpredictable caperings than with standing sipping champagne and making polite conversation.
Cleese and I decide that the house would make a superb set, for a period film. We agree to write a farce together set in Friar Park.’Ripping Towers’ suggests JC’s blonde and lovely girlfriend (whom I’ve not seen before).
The table in the dining room is set splendidly. Table seating has been worked out by Olivia, who clutches a piece of paper as nervously as George earlier pottered with the juke-box. I end up sitting next to George, with Joan and Derek [Taylor] and Eric up our end. Excellent food, especially the salmon, and 1966 claret which was virtually on tap.
George confesses to feeling uncomfortable with a ‘posh’ evening like this, which I find reassuring – all the glitter and glamour that money can buy, all the success and adulation, has only affected our George very superficially.
Monday, December 3rd
To JC’s, via the bank. Coffee, a chat. JC very indignant over decision of Southend and Harrogate councils to ban Brian from their towns. It’s suggested we take big ads with all the good reviews and paste them up on hoardings in the aforementioned towns with big stickers like ‘Banned In Southend’ across them.
Then to reading of material. JC and GC, some very funny material (at last) of the British Raj sort. Gilliam has a wonderful idea for a cartoon in which the town fights the countryside – and one marvellous idea of Central Park in NYC spilling its banks and flooding the city with green.
All in all we have about 30 minutes of a very good TV show to show for our two weeks on the film. But morale is high – we seem to be getting on together well. TJ harries and hurries, but the rest of us seem moderately un-panicked.
An over-sybaritic lunch at the Pomme D’Amour in Holland Park rather flatters us. TJ suggests Benn is one of the best politicians around, which makes JC twitch uncontrollably. ‘Why is John so afraid to be left-wing?’ pleads TJ, ingeniously.
Tuesday, December 4th
I have been offered a one-hour documentary on a railway journey through England after a mention of my railway enthusiasms on Personal Call1 and I’ve had a letter from Weidenfeld and Nicolson who want to read my novel after a chat with Hunter Davies!
Wednesday, December 5th
Work at Ladbroke Grove. John is half in pyjamas, half in clothes and dressing gown. He says he’s not very well, but we sit in his kitchen and a list is made up of the first two weeks’ certs. Kashmir and army are strong, but there is no coherent theme yet.
We break up soon after four after John threatens to call the police to have us removed.
To the school carol concert at All Hallows Church. Willy is the percussionist and Tom and Holly are the two clarinettists. Tom sits so straight and blows so hard it brings tears to my eyes. Sing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ lustily.
Thursday, December 6th
Another grey, unreal awakening. It’s ten past eight and feels like the middle of the night. Complete the Oxford Union speech on the motion ‘That civilisation ends at Watford’. I’m quite pleased with it.
Sit in a half-mile-long, three-lane jam from White City to Acton. Little to do but sort out the cassettes in the glove compartment, listen to tapes and buy an evening paper, from kids who walk amongst the stationary, helpless cars selling Standards with the headline ‘Garages Running Dry’. Yes, there’s another dispute featuring the country’s top blackmailers – the poor, oppressed tanker drivers, who realise the enormous power they hold and are putting the screws on for the second Christmas running.
Decide to call in at Stanton St John as I’m early and, if I’ve learnt one thing from regular debating at Oxford and Cambridge it’s to avoid the pre-match meal. So I find myself stumbling, in the dense and unaccustomed darkness, up the driveway of Robert H’s little cottage. I see a light is on and, sure enough, Robert is inside, with a bottle of wine warming on the mantelpiece, a small wood fire, Radio Three simmering away with some piano concerto, going about his business of being a writer.
I do like and admire Robert’s self-contained world. I couldn’t honestly see myself sitting alone in a cold Oxfordshire cottage, without carpets, midst a slight smell of damp, working. It seems so cut off. Cut off from my sort of life, I suppose.
We talk over his proposal to write an official Python biography, which was turned down by the chaps – for the moment anyway. I don’t think people could face any more interviews about the past. But I will press for Robert to be made chronicler of the Brian struggle. I think there is a useful book to be done on the whole controversy and its various manifestations.1
Arrive at the Union at 8.10. The usual collection of rather smug, self-important little poseurs and meek women with them who look much more interesting.
I rise to speak at 10.35 – ha
ving sat for two and a quarter hours on the hard bench. Peter Sissons of ITN sat next to me and I whispered to him as ten o’clock struck that this is the moment when I always decide never to do another debate.
Walk round the Radcliffe Square for old times’ sake.
Home by five past one. Read Decline and Fall. Asleep by two.
Saturday, December 8th
Drive up to a party in Hampstead at half past nine.
I get talking to a lady – a forceful, well-preserved middle-aged lady (who might have been Mrs Foot) – who knew all about the Gospel Oak Redevelopment Scheme. I asked her if it was just a combination of a genuine desire to house as many people as possible as decently as possible, as quickly as possible, and to do this according to new Corbusier-esque principles which the architects had eagerly espoused.
She said that the scheme was a result of these two ‘forces’, but added, most positively, a third – corruption. T Dan Smith of Newcastle was just unlucky to be caught out, she reckoned – the corruption in awarding of contracts in schemes was widespread throughout Britain, and Bruno Schlaffenberg – the planner of Gospel Oak, who once said ‘Ze English must learn to live in flats’—was not immune.
Later in the evening I was introduced to James Cameron, one of my great living heroes. He has only been out of a long hospital spell for three days. Like Michael Foot, he seems to be cracking up physically, but on great form mentally. He tried to write in hospital, but reckoned it was impossible – ‘Every ten minutes people are coming to stick something up your bum.’
We talked of Malcolm Muggeridge, and Cameron, with his peculiar, hissing, rather blurred delivery (caused, I’m told, by having to work hard to keep his teeth in), said he hadn’t seen the interview but ‘One must remember that Malcolm was, for many years, a promiscuous, drunken bum.’ He said this cheerfully, with no malice.
I was able to express my admiration for the man and his work. He brushed the compliment aside – ‘… Well, ten years ago perhaps!1
Monday, December 10th
A run is a must today. Rewarded with warm, refreshing sunshine. To lunch at the Barque and Bite with Ken Stephinson, BBC Manchester producer who wants me to do the Great Railway Journey with him.
I like Stephinson immediately. He’s easy company and straightforward. He knows what he wants – he wants to make this journey the best of the lot (and there are others written and presented by such luminaries as Ludovic Kennedy, Julian Pettifer, Michael Frayn and so on). He has ambitious plans for shooting – and clearly loves film and filming. It seems hardly likely to be unpleasant work, but whereas he says all the other presenters are on twelve-week contracts, he would be happy to adapt as much as he could to my needs.
Thursday, December 13th
Work on Gilliam film until midday then down to Covent Garden – to be bought yet another lunch. This time at Poons, by Peter Luff.
Peter, eager and enthusiastic as ever, had sent me some ideas he’s been mulling over for a TV series on Values – contrasting the unity of tribal values in the primitive tribes he and his organisation, Survival, are trying to protect, and the complex structure of values based on a split between the intuitive and the empirical which characterises our own society. Good basic questions are asked. I have to be strict with myself and express great interest but, looking at my diary, appear to have no time for any major involvement for one and a half to two years. Peter says he’s rather glad he doesn’t find himself in that position.
Friday, December 14th
Determined to produce a sizeable slice of Time Bandits script for TG to read later today, I worked hard on ‘Napoleon’ and ‘Robin Hood’ scenes throughout the morning. The still clear skies lured me out on a run, instead of lunch, then, after a bath, I committed a rather rushed song called ‘I Was Born Sir Keith Joseph’s Double’ to tape as my only contribution to this afternoon’s ‘Python Sings’ record meeting.
Round to E Idle’s in Carlton Hill at 2.30. Terry J had written ten songs or fragments of songs. All rather sweet – sung into his pocket tape-recorder in Terry’s delightfully doleful voice, which wanders occasionally into areas of deep tunelessness.
Take Willy and Tom to the school. The concert is not quite as enjoyable as previous years’. W plays Sir Lancelot and it’s rather touching watching him mouth the other actors’ lines before he speaks. Tom is ‘Sloth’, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but they have to sing some endlessly tedious sub-Elgarish song by Malcolm Arnold. Needless to say the audience is ecstatic.
Sunday, December 16th
On our own until midday, when TG comes by with David Rappaport, who we both hope will be the leader, Randall, of the dwarf bandits. He must be in his thirties and is about the same height as Rachel.
He is wonderful company – articulate, bright, extrovert, immediately easy and likeable. He’s grumbling about his part in Cinderella in Newcastle – everyone takes the panto so seriously (in the cast, that is), that he feels that his and Sylvester McCoy’s anarchic, spontaneous, disciplined lack of discipline is not being sufficiently used.
He eagerly accepts an invitation to lunch and has a rather chaotic Sunday repast with us. Then I take him up to TG’s again. I’m very encouraged, meeting him, that he will be our man.
Wednesday, December 19th
No business lunch today – in fact after this afternoon business at Palin Ltd will be closing down for nearly two weeks, until the 1970s have been tidied away and January – which is nose to the grindstone month – heralds in nose to the grindstone year.
Run in celebration across the Heath. The balmy westerlies, which somehow skewed round warm air destined for the Med onto the Heath in early December have been replaced by biting, piercing easterlies, which will have Londoners filling the pubs and wine bars and reaching for the second bottle of ginger wine if they continue over Christmas.
Thursday, December 20th
First really cold morning for a while. The Mini won’t start, which makes me want to kick it, but the Simca, the French alternative, purrs instantly into action.
Take Tom, Willy and Tom’s friend Glen to a lecture by David Fanshawe at the Royal Geographical Society at 2.30. They’re televising the lecture and the first person I recognise is the burly, barrel-like, uncompromising figure of Ted, the lighting rigger who I remember most from the night-shoot party in Kent on ‘Roger of the Raj’.’You must be a millionaire by now Mike,’ he says cheerily. I laugh. But I know he’s keenly aware of the fact that I might be.
Lord Hunt introduces the lecture. Fanshawe is quite a jolly character. Typical British explorer type and it’s good to see they’re still making them. ‘This is the hut where I recorded this priceless music, the chap outside’s got leprosy – you can see that there.’
But always unexpected touches – he shows us the simple rush mat he always sleeps on, saying that the mat is all he needs, that and four sleeping pills. He then gets the kids to hold up the box of Mogadon as evidence of the sort of thing the modern explorer carries.
He’s keen, enthusiastic about life, music, the world – his motto is ‘Every day is a day of praise and history’. He records African tribal music and harmonises it with Western choirs into a mass he calls African Sanctus – and it is exciting, stirring, powerful music.
Friday, December 21st
Drive up to Southwold to collect Ma. An unexpected white Christmas scene at Reydon. A shower of snow followed by sharp, bright sunshine makes the countryside look beautiful. But on the way back a storm replaces the showers and it’s hard going on the A12. No-one is gritting or clearing the snow and sometimes I feel as though I’m going into a black hole as I push on past the massive, terrifying, hurtling bulk of forty-ton super-trucks, hurling mud and slush at the windscreen.
Sunday, December 23rd
Deep in the murky depths of pre-Christmas. Flat skies. Chill, damp, grimy weather. The newspapers forecast a white Christmas for the south of England. The colour supplements are flaccid and empty – all advertising budgets spent.
The recession is just around the corner, but seems to be being staved off for the moment. Brian is top film in London yet again and the Life of Brian book is up to No. 3.
Next door to an excellent little party at Clare’s. Oak Villagers do give good parties and it’s marvellous not to have to drive. Hugh Latimer, Clare’s father, a wonderful, extrovert theatrical, tells me a story of how Yvonne Arnaud had once had ‘too many greens’ at lunch and in the matinee farted so severely that the curtain had to be brought down early.
Thursday, December 27th
Rain throughout the day. Great weather to be indoors before a roaring fire.
Helen’s mother reminisced over supper about H’s eccentric relations, including Norah Gibbins who, among other things, tried to raise money for orphaned German boys during the First War and slept outside all year round in her garden at Seaford, under a cover of parachute silk. I must say Rachel has inherited the genes of a remarkably strong set of maternal grandparents.
Sunday, December 30th
A cold, dry day. Light the fire in the morning and sit beside it with Ma, reading Sunday papers.
Decade spotters seem to be rather disappointed with the 1970s. The decade of selfishness, narcissism, introversion, etc, etc. I suppose for me it’s been a ‘decade’ of general upward progress – in status, work, earnings, freedom and enjoyment of life. Personally I’m well pleased. The 1980s will be interesting. Python has established itself and we are now in an almost unassailable position of respect and comfortable living – and we now have to face up to the prospect of what the hell we do with this respect, freedom and comfort. They’re not always the bedfellows of creativity.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 81