Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [257]
We then went on to order a bollocking for Methuen for their pusillanimous handling of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (book), but the cover of the Instant Record Collection was greatly approved of. Thank you, Terry Gilliam (though I don’t think anyone got around to saying that).
The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations have been on to us – they would like to include some Python lines in their new edition. This iconolatry is greeted with such suggestions as ‘That is my theory and what it is too’, ‘What’s ten quid to the bloody Midland Bank’, and ‘His hobbies are strangling animals, golf and masturbating’.
Wednesday, December 7th, Sheffield
To Gospel Oak School at 2.30 for William’s Christmas Concert. This year he’s a Roman centurion. Less lively and spontaneous than shows in the past – the heavy hand of religion?
To St Pancras and the Sheffield train. Meet up with Terry J – we’re off to spend an evening at the Crucible Studio, where David Leland’s Season of New Plays is in its last week. Sit on the spindly plastic seats in the buffet car, which would appear to be deliberately designed to stop people idling their time away in the buffet for reasons of comfort. But, warming ourselves with scotches, TJ and I manage to last the whole two and a half hour journey on these nasty little things.
Chat about Python. TJ is fond of pointing out that we have all become harder, tougher individuals as a result of Python – though I think he regrets the loss of the team spirit. He thinks he’s softened. He no longer holds views – or perhaps he no longer propagates views – with the same intensity. He’s determined to play the film easily.
See two plays. The second, an Irish play called Says I, Says He, by one Ron Hutchinson, excellently performed. I am very receptive to a bit of the Irish – the prose is full, flowery and flowing and the language constantly rich. Makes English seem very dry. It’s about gunmen in the end, of course. The wastefulness of the Irish is utterly depressing. At least they go down talking well.
After the plays, a kebab and retsina and several jugs of red wine with David and a director from the Royal Court called Stuart Burge, and a lady from a theatre in Amsterdam which specialises in putting on new foreign plays. NB – where is somewhere like that in London?
Thursday, December 8th
Back to London on the Master Cutler – 7.20 from the Midland station. Meet Stuart Burge and friend and join them at breakfast.
He is late fifties, of the old establishment who were once angry young men. Tells a good story of how he brought over a young Greenwich Village folk singer for a BBC TV play many years ago. The guy was obviously high when it came to the read-through at some North Acton boys’ club – though at that time people didn’t really understand non-alcoholic highs. Anyway, the folk singer was Bob Dylan and he sang ‘Blowing in the Wind’ in this BBC play, for probably the first time ever outside of the Village. The BBC have since destroyed this momentous tape.
This evening to Gospel Oak again for Tom’s concert. A very loose adaptation of’Cinderella’, complete with skateboard sequence. Tom amazed me with the supreme confidence of his performances – whether in the chorus singing ‘Consider Yourself’ with real enjoyment and wholehearted participation, or giving a very passable impression of Elvis in a pop group, or his tour de force – a rather arch version of ’You Are My Sunshine’ – he was certainly not the retiring Tom I expected to see.
Afterwards so many people came up – sharing my astonishment, but saying how good he was – that I felt very proud, and happy for Tom, too. He likes acting, he says now. If he ever does tread the boards, I think his career will date from December 8th 1977!
Friday,