Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [281]
Even after the confessional there was no time for the scrub I needed, for I had to be raced the length of the studio, tearing off my soutane as I rocketed through the audience, in order to make a change into a Very Famous Actor. This time I was locked in a trunk with my smell.
Half an hour of high-pressure insanity had gone by before I was able to stop and think and gauge reactions to the hideous occurrences during the opening monologue. Lome, who was on the floor throughout the taping, was the first to try and convince me that the opening had been hilarious – and I realised that nobody knew the hell of embarrassment I’d been through. After all, you can’t smell on TV and the camera was never close on my arm -and anyway, it all looked like sea-food salad. No … it was great, they all said.
The ‘Holmes’ sketch came to life – or as much life as it’ll ever come to -which was especially rewarding as we approached one o’clock. Lome was cutting and changing and reshaping even as we were on the air, and we lost a sketch before one, and the farewells and thank yous and it was all over.
Nancy had a huge magnum of champagne ready, but I hardly had time to drink any. Many congratulations, but I think mainly just the joy of relief – of having done it. Completed this ‘dangerous’ show, as Lome called it.’Come and meet a fan’, I was asked, and rushed from my champagne, which everyone else was drinking anyway, to meet a scrawny, freckled youth in loose clothes, who was introduced as Jeff Carter, the President’s son.
Up to Lome’s office to see the tape. It did look monstrously funny. Bill Murray thought it was the best show this year. Everyone very happy.
Sunday, April 9th, New York
Woke just before seven. Head and senses centrifugal. My condition brings to mind Yeats – ‘Things fall apart the centre cannot hold’. Shower, Alka-Seltzer, and I sleep again until ten. Amazing how resilient is the human system.
There are two fans outside my room. Yesterday one of them tried to reach me posing as an NBC cameraman. Now, as I first venture out, they’re there. A big fellow and a girl. Unattractive, damp-handed. They look frightened. In the lobby a tall, elegant girl with dark glasses approaches and hands me a picture she’s drawn of myself and Rachel (taken from a photo in a Central Park playground nearly two years ago).
Around five, people start arriving for a small party which I felt I should give for production team and cast. Partly because my suite needs filling up. Now they arrive, I’m feeling low on energy and would really rather be sitting in an aeroplane. But the place fills up. Nancy has brought wine, Laraine N brings hot bagels and cream cheese, and I try to make the superhuman effort to bring together the disparate elements of my own friends, who have only me in common, and the Saturday Night Live folk, who have each other in common.
John Belushi has flown back to complete his movie, but his wife is at the party, and Dan, Bill, Laraine and Gilda and a lot of the writers turn up. Many of them bringing presents. Tom Schiller (he who was wont to tap on my dressing room door and shout ‘258 minutes please, Mr Palin!’) has brought me Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
The cast end up smoking in the bedroom and watching a TV programme on airline hijacks. Ed Goodgold was not impressed by last night. His angle seemed to be that I was too good for the show and shouldn’t soil my hands. I like Ed, but sometimes I think he’s away in a too-private world. When I spoke to Lome on the phone he said he had heard good reactions. Paul’s had rung especially to say he liked it.
The Essex House party is still in uproarious form as I leave for the plane. Dan, Bill and I perform our Chilites routine and I am given a send-off at the lift, at the front desk and at the limousine.
At the airport the check-in girl complimented me on the show, as did a couple of passengers.
Unspeakable joy of sinking into an aircraft seat and being