Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [100]
Ina waxed lyrical about the future of Python in the States – and rather frightened everyone by talking of a 15% fee for Nancy’s work. We still see our roots as an English TV comedy show, and I think we are all wary of the American monster, where everything can be so BIG and success can be so ENORMOUS and so on and so on.
The live show has been a must for pop personalities. Mick Jagger and Bowie have shared a box – rather off-putting, actually, they were right beside the stage – and Ringo has twice been to see it.
Tuesday, March 5th
The Tories finally gave up trying to form an anti-Labour coalition and Wilson is PM again. A great appointment is [Michael] Foot, as Minister of Employment.
Friday, March 8th
In the throes of a heavy cold – woke up after a night of sneezing and running nose with an incipient sore throat. And two shows tonight. I really felt low, and very worried that my voice would not survive especially as we do not have another night off until next Tuesday. Rang for an appointment with Doc Freudenberg [my GP], but he was fully booked. I was advised to go along and wait. Rang Terry and cancelled our work plans for the day. Got to the new health centre in Kentish Town and waited there for two hours before seeing Freudenberg. He prescribed penicillin for the sore throat, but was really more interested in how the show was going!
Eventually got home and went to bed about 2.00. Very low ebb. Slept on and off and listened to the radio. Feeling a helpless lump. Down to the theatre at 7.00. Drank lots of hot lemon and was helped by a throat spray. Strangely enough, although it seemed unimaginable to perform two shows when I was lying sneezing in bed this afternoon, once at the theatre it became a job which had to be done. For four hours I almost forgot about the cold, and the combination of theatre lights, leaping about on stage and having to concentrate the mind on acting probably did me more good than a day off.
Friday, March 15th
An easier week, this third one. Tonight is our last show of the week, and we also had Tuesday off. Also the two-shows-an-evening dates are all behind us, so the pressure of the first two weeks has eased considerably. My cold is a lot better and the voice is bearing up well. We have at last completed the Python film script. Terry and I, as usual, did most of the rewriting. It took us a week and a half of very solid work, and today we completed that by deciding formally to cut the ‘King Brian the Wild’ sequence – the film is now shorter and has more shape.
This morning we met at Terry Gilliam’s at 10.30 to read through our rewrites. The BBC had a sound team there. They are anxious to do an Omnibus programme on Python. None of us is particularly keen to be subjected to the sort of documentary which we’re always sending up, so we were all a bit lukewarm towards the slightly pushy producer who was present at our meeting. A concentrated three-hour session on the film. Little argument, except over the ‘Anthrax’ sequence, and at 2.00 we had agreed on a final script. All of us, bar John, went to a Chinese restaurant in Belsize Park to celebrate.
Saturday, March 16th
Angela had said that two weeks ago, when she went up to Southwold, Grandfather had deteriorated rapidly.
He was seen last night by a psychiatrist from St Audry’s Hospital in Woodbridge, and his condition was serious enough for him to be taken in first thing this morning. He didn’t go by ambulance – he went in the car with my mother and a nurse, but it sounds as tho’ his brain is now so affected by the Parkinson’s that he may never see Croft Cottage again.
I rang my mother this evening. She sounds relieved that he’s at last being properly looked after – but even so said she misses him.
Friday, March 22nd
Tonight there are some shouters in, and a drunken