Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

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Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 82

by Palin, Michael


  In a sense I feel my big creative push has been and gone – and yet I’m writing as fluently as ever and taking on as much work as in those heady days between ‘68 and ‘75 when we did everything. Will the next direction be into more personal, solitary writing, using Python still as a base? Will Python wither and die of natural causes? John will be 50 in ten years’ time. But then Spike Milligan is well past 50 and still being very silly.

  This extraordinarily pleasant, settled interlude beside the fire lasts only an hour or less and then I’m walking up to a party at Jack and Liz Cooper’s. Full of Hampstead folk.

  Met portly Ian Aitken – Guardian political correspondent – who’s lost his eye. ‘I think the cleaner must have put it somewhere.’ He has a host of wonderful false-eye stories – including the time when he was bathing off Guadeloupe (covering a summit meeting of Callaghan, Giscard and Carter) and his eye fell out whilst diving. Two or three days later an American walks into the press centre and shouts ‘Hey, anyone here lost an eye?’ He had found it whilst swimming.

  Monday, December 31st

  Last day of the 1970s. Clear, dry, fine, cold. Up in time to read work so far on the Gilliam film before taking Granny to Broad Street on the Gospel Oak line to catch the 11.30 to Suffolk. On the way back to Hampstead Heath a magnificently cheery black ticket-collector waived my offer of the extra 16p for my ticket with great bonhomie.’Happy New Year,’ he shouted. It was like the end of A Christmas Carol!

  Friends come round in the evening and we eat Chinese take-away and play games and half watch a poor compilation of the 1970s from BBC TV. As midnight strikes and the first chimes of the 1980s are met by the obligatory cheers of well-oiled Scotsmen on the box, we take photos of ourselves in celebration and agree that whatever happens – barring the work of the Grim Reaper, of course – we will look at these pics together on December 31st 1989!

  1 See footnote, page 563.

  2 Later to direct the Last of the Summer Wine series.

  1 One of Anne’s other clients. Successful commercials director who started Loncraine-Broxton, a novelty toy company. I’d suggested him to the BBC for the yarns. We eventually worked together on The Missionary in 1982.

  2 Alison Davies, our PA at Anne’s office.

  1 Legendary BBC comedy producer and director (Porridge, Butterflies, Last of the Summer Wine). John and Graham particularly liked the sound of his name, and I seem to remember a sketch on At Last the 1948 Show in which every character was called Sydney Lotterby.

  1 Along with John Cleese, he was one of the founders of Video-Arts, who, very successfully, made training films for industry, many of them written by and starring Cleese.

  1 Some readers of the diary may find it confusing that I appear to support both Sheffield football teams (a crime punishable by disembowelment in Sheffield itself). Living in London I’m always glad to hear of any Sheffield success. When I lived in Sheffield I was always a United fan, so that’s what I’ve had to settle for.

  1 Jane Curtin – original cast member and very funny lady. Later starred in Kate & Allie and Third Rock From the Sun.

  1 Production designer on ‘Whinfrey’s Last Case’ and ‘Golden Gordon’, she went onwards and upwards to design some of the BBC’s great period dramas, including Pride and Prejudice, Clarissa and The Way We Live Now.

  1 Maria later played John C’s wife in A Fish Called Wanda.

  1 He starred in The Army Game and Bootste and Snudge, two of the few television programmes which united my father and myself in helpless laughter.

  2 Gordon Ottershaw was the super-fan who smashed up his living-room every time the team lost. Which was most weeks.

  1 Owners of the hotel.

  1 Basil Pao, then working for Warner Bros in LA, designed the book. Now a writer and stills photographer, he has worked with me on six of my BBC travel shows and books.

  1 Scarman upheld the ruling under the Blasphemy Act of 1697 that the Gay News had offended by claiming that Christ was homosexual.

  2 Jonathan James, her new partner, whom she later married.

  3 Arnold Wesker’s wife.

  1 Hungarian-born film producer who founded Shepperton in the 1930s.

  2 Lew Grade and his brothers Bernard Delfont (who abandoned Life of Brian) and Leslie Grade pretty much ran popular entertainment at the time.

  3 A year later Lew Grade went on to make Raise the Titanic, which was such a flop that he famously said it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.

  1 Jack and Liz Cooper were famous Hampstead figures. Jack, who knew Al before I did, looked like the Laughing Cavalier.

  1 Klein later interviewed all the Pythons (bar Graham who was represented by an urn containing his ashes) on stage at the Aspen Comedy Festival in March 1998.

  1 Barrister, playwright, novelist, creator of Rumpole.

  2 A documentary, made for BBCi to mark the tenth anniversary of Python’s birth.

  1 Chris looked after the house while Eric was away.

  2 One of my favourite sketches with John. I don’t think once, either on television or on stage, was I ever able to get through it with a straight face.

  1 Rob Buckman and Chris Beetles carried on the tradition of doctor/comedians (Jonathan Miller, Graham Chapman, Graeme Garden) with The Pink Medicine Show in 1978. Buckman remains a doctor, Beetles runs an art gallery.

  2 The successor to Graham Ford as manager of Shepperton.

  1 Captain of the England cricket team that won the Ashes in 1981. Now a psychoanalyst.

  1 Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader, had just been acquitted on charges of involvement in the attempted murder of his gay lover, Norman Scott. The judge’s summary was seen by many to be blatantly biased in Thorpe’s favour.

  1 Charles Alverson, American thriller writer, and friend of TG, Terry J and myself.

  1 David Collett was Helen’s uncle. When I first set eyes on her, in Southwold in 1959, she was last in a column of sisters and cousins being led out behind Uncle David for an early-morning dip in the North Sea. Something about her obvious reluctance appealed to me.

  1 After regular running at Sag Harbour I decided to make it part of my regime in London.

  1 James E Fixx wrote the influential Complete Book of Running (1977), which used to inspire me whenever I felt like giving up. The author, rather unfortunately, died of a heart attack in 1984, whilst out running.

  2 One had been an all pair at the Joneses’ in London. They were on a budget trip to the US so Terry had asked Al if he could put them up.

  1 Hoagland Carmichael (1899-1981) was a jazz musician and composer who wrote some all-time classics such as ‘Georgia on My Mind’ and ‘Up a Lazy River’.

  1 It was a traditional, bland piece about Venice, made special by John’s commentary – ‘gondolas, everywhere fucking gondolas’.

  1 Nicky Boult, Helen’s niece and a newly qualified teacher, who was staying with us.

  1 And I was. They lived together very happily until Al’s death in 1989, and had a daughter, Gwenola.

  2 Friend and fellow thespian at Oxford.

  1 A fortnightly children’s show in the 1950s, probably my first favourite programme. Hank the Cowboy was a ventriloquist’s dummy and Steve Race accompanied his adventures on the piano.

  1 Its working title was Time Bandits.

  1 They had called for the film to be banned.’Though not in itself blasphemous, it will tend to discredit the New Testament story of Jesus in confused semi-Pagan minds.’

  1 Blunt, son of a bishop, Professor of Art History at London University, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, had been found to be spying for the Soviets for many years. Though he had been unmasked in 1963, he had been allowed to retain all his posts to avoid scandal tainting the Royal Family.

  1 He and fellow-producer Mark Shivas had produced Secrets by Terry and myself in 1973.

  1 A radio phone-in, chaired, as I remember, by Simon Bates.

  1 This was eventually commissioned by Geoffrey Strachan at Methuen and came
out as Monty Python: The Case Against in 1981. It is the first, best and last word on the history of Python’s run-ins with the censor.

  Index

  A

  A1 Dairy, Whetstone High Street, 43

  Abbotsley, Cambridgeshire

  Palin family stay in, 19 and n, 112, 145, 155, 187–8, 214, 279, 290, 365, 373, 385–6, 591

  carthorses, 38

  Jubilee Day (1977), 389

  high winds at, 413

  ABC Bloomsbury, 211, 212

  ABC Fulham Road, 211, 212

  ABC TV

  Pythons co-host A.M. America 229

  Monty Python court case against, 267 and n, 269–79, 289, 319, 323, 324–5, 355, 465

  Home Box Office show, 451–3

  Aberlour House, Gordonstoun, 587

  Abraxas Squash Club, 64

  Academy Awards (Oscars), 454–5, 456, 460

  Academy Cinema, London, 314

  Achmed (Tunisian production head), 492

  Ackland, Joss, 292

  ‘Across the Andes by Frog’ see Ripping Yarns

  ACTT, 75

  Adam, Robert, 154

  Adams, Douglas, 188 and n, 201, 212, 213, 214, 248, 257, 267

  Adams, John, 535

  Adams, Richard, Watership Down, 194, 434

  Adelphi Theatre, London, 202

  Admiral Hardy, Greenwich, 47

  Adnams brewery, 233, 241

  The African Queen (film), 338

  Ain’t Misbehavin’ (play), 563

  Air France, 492

  Air Iran, 278–9

  Aitken, Ian, 608

  Aitken, Maria, 537–8 and n

  Aladdin (pantomime) 51–2

  Albury, Phillida, xiii, 444

  Albury, Robert, 96

  Albury, Simon, xiii, 38, 96, 139, 154, 327–8, 394, 444, 564

  drugs, 66 and n, 67

  going to America, 76–7

  Man Alive films, 77

  watches Secrets, 132

  World in Action, 195

  at premiere of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 226

  likes Tomkinson’s Schooldays, 262–3

  and Shepperton Studios, 332

  Clive Hollick’s wedding, 400

  advises MP on writing, 437

  and MP’s birthday, 551

  Aldershot, IRA bomb, 74

  Aldrich, Robert, 485n

  Aldwych Theatre, London, 235, 294, 295

  Ali, Muhammad, 267

  Ali (Tunisian waiter), 504

  Ali, Tariq, 400

  Alien (film), 447, 555

  All Hallows, Gospel Oak, 586, 603

  All You Need is Cash (film), 400–1, 423

  Allanwater, Stirling, 513

  Allen, Charles, Plain Tales from the Raj, 365

  Allen, Paul, 315

  Allen, Rita, 105

  Allen, Woody, 68, 231, 455

  Alleyn’s School, Dulwich, 316

  Allott, Mr, criticizes The Life of Brian in The Times, 599

  Alpert, Herb, 432

  ALS (Associated London Scripts), 403

  Alter Wirt Gasthaus, Grunwald, 90

  Altman, Robert, 456n, 536

  Alvarez, Al, 136 and n, 404

  Alverson, Charles, 282 and n, 572 and n

  A.M. America (television programme), 229

  Les Ambassadeurs, London, 44–5

  American Friends (film), 97

  Amin (Pakistani botanist), 67

  Amis, Kingsley, 242, 520

  The Alteration, 442

  Ending Up, 404

  The Green Man, 486

  Amnesty International

  1976 charity show, 296–7, 298n, 300–1, 322, 368 and n

  The Secret Policeman’s Ball, 561, 562, 563

  Amsterdam, 366, 422

  Amtrak, 219–20, 527–8

  And Now For Something Completely Different (Pythons’ first film), 14, 40–1, 42–4, 47, 56, 65, 75, 84

  Anderson, Lindsay, 101–2, 103, 425, 470–1

  Anderson, Michael, 406n

  Andrews, Julie, 291, 413

  The Angel, Highgate, 183, 201

  Animal House (film), 528

  Ann (neighbour), 92, 132

  Annie Hail (film), 455, 456

  Another Monty Python Record (LP), 61–2, 82

  Anstey’s Cove, Torquay, 24–5

  Antrobus, John, 593

  Any Questions (radio programme), 72

  Apollo missions to moon, 3, 4–5, 20–2, 427

  Apollo restaurant, Torquay, 26

  Apollo Theatre, London, 317

  Apple Corp, 112, 203

  Apple Studios, 95–6

  Aquarius Club, Lincoln, 70

  Arabs

  Arab-Israeli War (1973), 139

  oil crisis (1973), 145 and n, 147–8

  guerrillas hijack plane, 196

  Arafat, Yasser, 460

  Ardeonaig, Perthshire, 171

  Arista Records, 208, 218, 232, 306, 552

  Arlecchino, Notting Hill Gate, 299, 474

  Armstrong, Neil, 5

  Arnaud, Yvonne, 607

  Arnold, Malcolm, 605

  Arnott, Edward, 46 and n

  Arnott, Jayne, 46 and n

  ‘Arrochense Los Cinturones’ (article), 437

  Arsenal Football Club, 522, 524

  Arts Council, 470

  Ashley, Lyn, xiii, 24 and n, 179, 210, 258

  Ashmore, Joyce, 408–9

  Ask Aspel (television programme), 54

  Aspel, Michael, 54

  Aspen Comedy Festival, 552n

  Aspinall, Neil, 203 and n, 204

  At the Earth’s Core (film), 366

  At Last The 1948 Show (television series), 87–8, 522n

  Atkinson, Rowan, 561

  Attenborough, David, 49 and n, 101, 190–1

  Atticus (Sunday Times columnist), 100

  ATV, 534

  Au Bois St Jean, London, 332, 334

  Aukin, David, 318

  Auntie’s restaurant, London, 348

  Austen, Jane, 201, 317

  Australia, buys Monty Python, 65

  Avedon, Richard, 229–30, 237, 429

  Ayckbourn, Alan, 139n

  Aykroyd, Dan, 456, 458–9, 462, 466, 528, 530

  B

  B&C Records, 111

  Bacton Tower, Lismore Circus, 154

  BAFTA, 425, 426, 442, 542, 585 and n, 586

  Bagherzade, Iradj, 347 and n

  Bailey, Alan, 103–4 and n

  Baker, Howard, 120

  Baker, Richard, 512

  Baker, Stanley, 80 and n, 81

  Bake well, Joan, 13n

  Balcombe Street siege (1975), 260 and n, 287–8

  Baldwin, James, 414

  Balfour, Jimmy, 3 and n

  Ballachulish, filming Monty Python and the Holy Grail in, 166–9

  Bananas (film), 68

  Bangladesh, 67

  Bannister Promotions, 105

  Banqueting House, Whitehall, 133

  Bantry Bay, 521

  Barabbas (film), 352

  Barbados, The Life of Brian rewrites in, 398, 421, 428–35, 519

  Barber, Anthony, 148

  Barclay, Humphrey, 20 and n, 523, 534

  Barclay Hotel, Philadelphia, 219–20

  Barclays Bank, 520–1

  Bardney, Open-air Pop Festival, 80–1

  Barker, Ronnie, 50, 282, 542

  Bark worth, Peter, 450

  Barnes, Clive, 306

  Barnes, filming Monty Python in, 3

  Barque and Bite, Regent’s Canal, 130, 518, 604

  Barrington Court, Gospel Oak, 92–3

  Bart, Lionel, 330n

  Barth, John, The Sot-Weed Factor, 98

  Bart’s Hospital, London, 13

  Bart’s Hospital sports ground, Chislehurst, 74

  Bassey, Shirley, 440, 443

  Bates, Alan, 441

 

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