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1970

Wednesday, January 14th

Since the last entry, just over four months ago, we have completed the first series – 13 episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The press were unanimously in praise of the show – Milton Shulman wrote a major article on it after the BBC mysteriously dropped it for two weeks after the fourth show, Jimmy Thomas of the Daily Express attacked Frost on Sunday for not realising that Monty Python had changed humour and brought it forward when Frost was trying to put it back, we were favourably compared with Broaden Your Mind in the Telegraph, have had an article in the New York Times and, two days ago, received the final accolade: an appearance on Late-Night Line-Up1!!

Otherwise reaction has been less uniformly euphoric. Doctor Stuart-Harris – now Sir Charles Stuart-Harris since the New Year’s Honours2 – loves it, and a lot of people say it is the only thing worth watching on television. Ian MacNaughton’s mother sits through it in stony silence. Letters of congratulation came from Spike Milligan,3 Humphrey Burton,4 to name but two.

Viewing figures averaged out at three million, not bad for 11.10 on Sundays. Practical results are promises of another series, repeats of this series at a popular time, an entry for Montreux, and a possibility of a 90 minute cinema film of the best of the series for showing in the States. This last is the pet project of Victor Lownes, London head of Playboy, who raves about the show and is, at this moment, in Chicago selling it to his boss, Hugh Hefner.

The most gratifying feature of the show’s success is the way in which it has created a new viewing habit – the Sunday night late-show. A lot of people have said how they rush home to see it – in Bart’s Hospital the large television room is packed – almost as if they are members of a club. The repeats – at popular time – will show us how big the club is!

Yesterday we went further into negotiations about forming Python Productions Ltd – which now seems to be decided – and next week we will set to work producing a film script for Victor Lownes.

In the morning I took Helen to the Tate’s exhibition of Elizabethan portrait painting – called the Elizabethan Image. There were some fine portraits – particularly by Hans Eworth, William Larkin and Nicholas Hilliard – but the subjects were usually titled persons, formally posed, and one longed to see a painter who recorded Elizabethan life on a rather more broad pattern. Two interesting paintings were by Henry VIII’s court painters and were blatant and virulent anti-Papal propaganda. One of them showed the Pope being beaten to death by the four apostles, with all his trappings – the rosary, the tray of indulgences, etc – on the ground beside him.

Tuesday, January 20th

The houses around Lismore Circus are fast disappearing – Gospel Oak is being laid waste. I get the feeling that Oak Village is like a trendies’ ghetto, hanging on for dear life, until the mighty storm of’civic redevelopment’ is over and we can walk once again in a neighbourhood free of noise and mud and lorries and corrugated iron and intimate little rooms with pink flowered wallpaper suddenly exposed by the bulldozer.1 It will probably be another two years before there is any semblance of order from all this chaos – by then I’ll be 28 and Helen will be 29 and Thomas will be three and going to nursery school.

Monday, February 16th

Terry and I have completed two films for Marty’s2 special – written in reluctance, conceived in duty, they are based on ideas of Marty himself. They’re long, but that’s about all. Somehow, since Monty Python, it has become difficult to write comedy material for more conventional shows. Monty Python spoilt us in so far as mad flights of fancy, ludicrous changes of direction, absurd premises and the complete illogicality of writing were the rule rather than the exception. Now we jealously guard this freedom, and writing for anyone else becomes quite oppressive. The compilation of all the last series, plus new links, into the film script ‘And Now For