Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [27]
Monday, October 19th, Southwold
Left Abbotsley at 11.00 and drove over to Southwold, leaving Helen and Thomas to stay at Church Farm. The Suffolk countryside seems to be at its best in autumn, and the drive was beautiful. We ate lunch together, and then Father and I drove into Southwold and walked along the sea front. It was cool and sunny, and practically deserted – the season seems well-finished. Saw welcome additions to the Southwold scene – two Adnams drays, with big dray-horses. They have only just been introduced – to deal with local deliveries, apparently to save the money on lorries. I must say they add to Southwold’s atmosphere – it’s a town that absorbs progress and innovation in only very limited amounts and this technologically retrogressive step is quite in character.
Tuesday, October 20th, Southwold
During this afternoon the weather turned suddenly and dramatically from the reflective, gentle calm of a sunny autumn morning, to an angry sky, N.W. wind and driving rain. At the harbour, the sea was as high as I’ve seen it, with breakers crashing against the harbour wall. As I write this diary in bed, the wind is still strong outside, but the heavy rain has stopped.
Tonight we ate liver and kidneys, with a bottle of St Estèphe, and watched Monty Python. One of my favourite shows – with the bishop film and the poet-reader, the Gumby announcements and the strange chemist’s sketch. Went to sleep with the comforting sound of the wind buffeting the windows.
Wednesday, October 21st
The Punch1 lunch, to which we had been invited by Miles Kington (a friend of Terry’s at Oxford, and mine as well in London), is a traditional affair. Originally it consisted of the contributors only, who met, once a week, to discuss subjects for the political cartoon. It is carried on now as a meeting-place for journalists, humorists and writers generally, who may be regulars on Punch, or prospective contributors.
We assembled with the other guests for pre-lunch drinks – names I have known so well for so long became faces – Norman Mansbridge, E H Shepherd, the appallingly unfunny David Langdon. I met the editor, William Davis, an economics journalist, probably late thirties, possibly describable as a ‘whizz-kid’. His humour I find very ponderous – he nearly always has a serious political or topical point to put over, and yet, because he is editing Punch, it is given an ill-fitting and tenuous humorous context. When Davis attempts politics and humour, humour loses – unlike Norman Shrapnel of The Guardian or, to a lesser extent, Alan Watkins of the New Statesman, who seem to mix the two well.
We were shown in to lunch. About twenty or twenty-five of us around a large table; on the walls of this dining cum conference room were framed covers of old Punches, photographs of the staff past and present, famous framed cartoons, etc, etc. I sat next to Miles on my right and Vincent Mulchrone on my left. Mulchrone is a well-known feature writer on the Daily Mail. A very amiable man, with a North Country accent (I really expected him to be Irish), he was exceedingly self-effacing and seemed more keen to talk about moving house than his journalistic adventures.
At the end of the meal, as we drank coffee and brandy and smoked cigars, Davis hammered on the table and the traditional scavenging of ideas began. It was very reminiscent of Frost Report conferences four years ago. It was ironic that the man who provided most of the ideas for Punch’s Christmas edition was John Wells – a regular contributor and ex-editor of Private Eye, the magazine which has probably done more harm to Punch’s circulation than any other. Terry and I also suggested quite a number of ideas, as did B.A. ‘Freddie’Young – Punch contributor and theatre critic of the Financial Times. But he was the only one of the ‘older