Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [166]
Terry and I plunge into discussion of the future. Terry is, as he says, restive at the moment – wants to unleash his straining enthusiasm in some direction, but doesn’t know where to go. The Tony Hendra pirate film, The Legend of the Nancy Hulk, is still on offer and could tie him up for six or seven months on a major project. I read it at Southwold over the weekend and feel Terry shouldn’t do it. Although very funny in some ways – the awful pirate crew are a fine invention – it seems to me to be very second-hand Python. Its costume and period flavour lend a similarity to the Grail which is just not backed up by the originality of the writing.
Wednesday, December 10th
To see Dr Freudenberg – as my cold had developed into a regular and implacable headache. In the waiting room, with her little baby, was Lindy, wife of Nick Mason of the Pink Floyd. She was cross – her appointment had been at 10.30, it was now after 11.30. A nice chat. They’re not sending their child, Chloe (a little younger than Willy) to Gospel Oak, partly because the classes are too big. I sympathise. She grumbled a little about the legion of financial advisers, etc, which come automatically with all the loot Floyd must be making. They’re not the house in Switzerland, private jet mob, though – it’s state schools and Kentish Town, and they can’t stand the thought of having to leave England for tax reasons. The wealthy anti-rich.
Freudenberg says I have a touch of sinusitis and bronchitis.
Arthur Cantor rang and tried to ask Helen and me out to see the new Ben Travers farce The Bed Before Yesterday at the Lyric. Every date he suggested was already full. ‘This is getting like the Cheese Shop,’ rumbled Arthur. We settled on Monday next. For some reason he has a soft spot for me, and he asked if I would write a play for him. He was very keen and said he would commission it. He sounded as though he wanted me to sign then and there, so I retreated into the Palin shell and promised I would think about it. I really wouldn’t mind writing a play – on my own. But I immediately felt guilty about Terry and cross with myself for feeling guilty and really in quite a muddle.
In the evening we drove over to Wimbledon for a party at the house of Jacqui, David Wood’s1 new wife, next to the Crooked Billet beside Wimbledon Common.
Talked with Andrew Lloyd Webber – he of Superstar fame – who made a fortune from a smash hit as soon as he left Oxford.2 A rather nervous, soft-spoken chap, he said his investment in the Python film was the only thing keeping him going at the moment – after Jeeves.3 He promised to send me a review in a Toronto paper in which the reviewer raved about Python and slammed the indecency in Jesus Christ Superstar]
As we drove back across London from this convivial houseful, we passed the police cordons around Dorset Square and, as we waited at the traffic lights, we looked across to the anonymous first-floor flat in Balcombe Street which has suddenly become the focus of national attention. In the flat are a middle-aged couple and four Irish terrorists, one of whom may be, according to the police, the organiser behind the London bombings and shootings of the past two winters.
The flat was floodlit. Groups of police, smiling, telling jokes, stood around at the barriers. There was a Thames TV van with a camera crew on top – even location caterers. It seemed quite unreal. Surely it must be night filming? Surely it must be a scripted adventure? But I suppose in that little living room in Balcombe Street, there are five people whose lives have now been totally