Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [255]
One day, coming in to the office at six, Ron sat down and viewed all the tapes, finishing at seven that evening. Ron fell in love with them. His only problem then, he said, was to avoid racing to the phone or in ‘any way letting Time-Life know that I thought they were the greatest things I’d ever seen’.
In the end he controlled his enthusiasm, but still found Time-Life asking $500 each for the right to two showings of each programme. Ron, alone, consulting nobody, wrote out the $6,500 cheque one evening. That was his act of faith – for $6,500 is a great deal to a small station.
But the fairytale ending is that the shows were such an immediate success in Dallas that, on the first night an uncut Python show was aired in the US. Ron received more pledges of money to the station than the $6,500 he’d paid for the entire series.
New York got wind of this success and for once the smart East Coast found itself having to follow Texas, but NY paid $2,000 per show. The rest, as they say, is history. One hundred and forty-two stations since bought Python, and Ron is in no doubt that it revolutionised American TV thinking.
Last week Ron saw three of the Ripping Yarns (‘Olthwaite’, ‘Tomkinson’ and ‘Stalag’) and says he is quite sure they will go in the States. After our Sunday lunch we walk up Parliament Hill and down to Highgate Ponds and Ron asks how the Ripping Yarns are financed and whether or not there is any way in which PBS can invest in them at this stage.
Usually these negotiations are conducted through dozens of intermediaries – Time-Life, BBC Enterprises, etc – and this is why it’s such a breakthrough to talk directly to Ron – the buyer – and it must be the first time such a deal has been discussed directly between American finance and the creator of the programmes. So who knows, it may turn out to have been a very profitable walk on the Heath!
Monday, November 21st, Charlbury
Arrive at 3.15. The hotel is unpretentious. My room is spacious, with a low ceiling and two exposed beams – original, I expect, and that means 1700, when the Bell was built. The wallpaper is bright and tasteful – of the pastoral variety. There are two brass bedsteads and a fine bay overlooking the main street. The table is of the right height and reasonably solid, so I set my typewriter up in the bay. By the time I’m ready to write, it’s getting dark. A quarter to four, the worst time to begin. It’s hard to concentrate, to shut out all the new sensations of this place, but I persevere, hoping I’m not disturbing anyone with my tapping, and by half past six have added 1,000 words to the morning’s total.
Take a walk around Charlbury – deserted and bitterly cold. My ears ache in the wind. Glad to get back to the warm, cosy hotel. Ring home. Have a Glenmorangie in the bar and a good meal of haddock in a pastie and pheasant and cheese.
The ambience of the hotel is restful, pleasant and unhurried.
Asleep by 11.30.
Tuesday, November 22nd, Charlbury
Up a little after eight o’clock. A thoroughly refreshing eight hour kip behind me. Pull back the heavy salmon-pink curtains in my little bay and am confronted with clear blue skies and a sun shining brightly on the grey stone cottages across the street.
Bath and breakfast (the breakfast menu is dangerously appetising, and bigger than the dinner menu in the evening). Choose smoked haddock and half a grapefruit. Then a short walk down by the church and back to the Bell to begin work.
Start slowly – still the unfamiliar distractions, which I hope I will get used to – cleaning ladies talking noisily just outside the door, the bus which stops almost outside my window – the everyday life of Charlbury. But I don’t think I would have found a place with much less everyday life, and the hotel grows more congenial every extra hour