Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [123]
‘Try the high-pitched, deep voice and don’t emphasise the bit about “warm” and “springy”.’
‘You don’t want them emphasised?’
‘No, not emphasised, but just strongly delivered.’ Etc, etc.
Whilst John and I were involved in this quite appallingly worthless artefact (‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Mikey,’ said John), a pillar box exploded in rush-hour Piccadilly, less than a mile away All part of the IRA war.
Friday, November 29th
5.30: Arrive at 22 Park Square East [Michael and Anne Henshaw’s home] for a Python meeting. Nothing of great interest until we start, in the absence of JC, to discuss ‘Next Year’.
Eric:’Does anyone feel like me that the TV series has been a failure?’
One can almost feel the ‘Oh, no, here we go again’ ripples spread round the room. So we are into the area which had surfaced briefly at the Old Oak Club at the beginning of this month and which had submerged, I hoped finally, during the last three weeks. The area of Eric’s Doubt. If pushed he will say he regards the series as a near disaster, beneficial to none of us. If one counters with the fact that nearly all the major newspapers have come round to the view that Python without John was worth doing again, Eric retreats into a ‘Well, if you believe the press you’ll believe anything’ attitude.
TG and I are both keen to do another seven. I am decided in my own mind that the last six have been good enough, and well-received enough, to try and complete a further seven – as a group, using TG and Eric more fully and TJ and MP less.
Then, after half an hour or so, Eric is suddenly agreeing, not only to the series, but to a rescheduling of dates taking us up to July. He doesn’t look all that happy, but he seems to have agreed. So Python carries on. Then we elect a new Chairman by playing stone and scissors. I win, so Terry G has to be the new Chairman.
I caught up with Eric as we got outside the front door and asked him whether he was really happy about what had been decided. He feels that he no longer gets satisfaction out of Python because it is restricting. His writing and his ideas come up against the T Jones wall and he has no longer the stomach to keep fighting every inch of the way over every inch of material. Also he feels that, with John no longer there, he hasn’t an ally. Having unloaded himself of this much, we say goodnight.
Saturday, November 30th
Eric comes round about 3.00. He suggests going for a walk. So, Eric and I set off for the Heath, both of us in thick coats, the watery November sun sinking splendidly as we reach the top of Parliament Hill. It’s so like le Carré1 I have to pinch myself.
Eric goes through his reasons for dissatisfaction. (I learn later from Terry G that Eric is reading Sartre at the moment – he was reading McLuhan a month ago when he was arguing that the content of Python books is quite unimportant compared to the form – and during the filming in Scotland he was reading Machiavelli. TG thinks if we can get at Eric’s library cards, we can get at the man!) He feels Python no longer works as a group. The formula is dull, we no longer surprise and shock, we are predictable. But he clearly misses John a great deal. None of us are as good as John or ever will be, he says.
Lynsey de Paul2 moved today. I shall miss the slightly sexy, exotic atmosphere she gave the street, but not the drunken groups of local morons who try and sing’No Honestly’ outside her house at 11.30 at night.
Sunday, December 1st
Grey, but dry day. Two long phone calls’re Python in the morning to TG and TJ. I have an instinctive warmth towards TJ – and yet TG is the only person whom I can now talk to fully and objectively about Monty P.
Mary and Edward [Helen’s sister and brother-in-law] come round to supper in the evening. I have a rather good theory that in twenty-five years’ time there will