Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [219]
Tuesday, December 21st
Another very dark day – it’s been like this now for a week. Real Day of Judgement conditions. To Park Square East for a final Python reading meeting.
High standard from John and Graham, Eric average and Terry’s and my first offering frankly bad. A poor rewrite of a poorly written original is never going to stand much chance before this audience – and it bombs embarrassingly.
A second very encouraging piece from John and Graham – about the crowd outside Brian’s home being talked to sharply by Brian’s mother.
My personal gloom finally lifted by the reading of our piece about Brian and Ben in the prison and the Centurion who can’t pronounce his ‘r’s. This five- or six-minute piece, read right at the end of the meeting, with both GC and JC poised to leave, really brings the house down. It could be pre-breaking-up hysteria, but it’s a good note to end this six-week writing stint.
John Goldstone rings to say the censor has seen Jabberwocky and, subject to the removal of one ‘bugger’, given it an ‘A’ certificate.
Wednesday, December 22nd
To the Coronet Viewing Theatre in Wardour Street to see the two Python German TV shows in order that we may finally decide whether to buy them for Python Productions or not.
The first German show, in German, is, apart from ‘Silly Olympics’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and one or two bits of animation, fairly difficult to follow and looks a little rough, whereas the second looks smooth, polished and expensive. John is anti buying them and Eric very pro.
In the end I side with Eric. The money we use to buy the shows would otherwise be taxed very heavily and I feel that it is a good principle for us to buy the world rights to our work wherever they become available. John keeps saying ‘My mother’s in London’, but he agrees before leaving to the purchase of the shows (cost around £42,000, largely owing to the strength of the Mark and weakness of the pound). Eric agrees to undertake their re-editing.
So Python finally breaks up for Christmas and for me a huge pile of work, stretching unbroken from October ‘75, which I once thought insurmountable, is over. Six weeks of comparative freedom from schedules stretch ahead.
Soho is packed with pre-Christmas shoppers and King Kong posters are going up outside the Casino in preparation for the biggest ever simultaneous world-wide opening, as I walk back to my car.1
Thursday, December 23rd
To Southwold on the 9.30 from Liverpool Street.
Ma and I drive over to Blythburgh Hospital to which Father has recently been moved.
Surprised at the number of people packed into the ward – twenty-two I later discovered – but as he is wheeled by a cheerful Pakistani nurse – a young man with a ready smile and an apparently total resistance to the rather depressing conditions around him – I notice how small he appears, almost shrivelled in his chair. He reacts to seeing me, with a half-smile of pleasure, but after five minutes of talking his eyes wander and he appears to switch off.
Whilst we were having lunch at Croft Cottage, we heard, via various phone calls, that Aunt Katherine2 had died of a heart attack in the night. This was totally unexpected. Aunt K was always the most vigorous and vital life force – loving her work, although she always seemed to have too much – whereas Uncle Hilary, her husband, has been very ill, with an apparently uncurable long-term depression, and has been suicidal over the past month.
Still, we had to tell Father about the death of his only sibling. I wondered how he’d react. For a moment it looked as though he would completely break down. His mouth hung open and seemed about to form a word, but couldn’t. His brow contracted, his eyes took on a stare of what looked like disbelief and began to fill with water. It’s difficult to tell the extent of his feelings behind the mask of Parkinsons.