Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [29]
As it turned out the show was about love and sex and permissiveness – a variety of sketches apparently about the danger of a sexual revolution – when sex becomes an order, when permissiveness is not only approved of but essential, but without feeling and without emotion – destroying both the romantic young lover and the mackintosh-clad old man.
It is quite a common statement nowadays that sex kills love, and it is often put forward by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, but I felt a sympathy for McGough’s writing – I don’t particularly like aggressive sexual attitudes, the Danish porno fairs, the Oh! Calcutta celebrations of the sexual act, the ‘frank, outspoken article’ and the ‘frank, outspoken interview’ with the latest ‘sexologist’. But all this seems to me infinitely preferable to repression of sex and illiberal or intolerant attitudes being accepted as ‘morally correct’. The public discussion of sex must, I feel, help more than hinder, encourage rather than depress – and I’m not sure whether McGough would ultimately agree with this.
Saturday, November 7th
Slight scare this evening. After spending the late afternoon painting Thomas’s room, Helen had quite severe contraction pains. We were due to eat out at Paul Collins’ that evening, picking up Simon and Jenny Hawkesworth1 on the way. At 7.45 there was panic. I was finishing the painting, Helen was worrying about imminent childbirth and Simon and Jenny were waiting for us to collect them. However, Helen was reassured by a phone call to Dr Graham Chapman, and we bundled Thomas into the car and arrived at Paul’s house in Barnes about 8.45.
Helen did not have a baby.
Sunday, November 8th
I do seem to play a lot of seedy, unsuccessful and unhygienic little men. After washing my hair and shaving at 7.00 in the morning I am driven to work and immediately my hair is caked down with grease and my face given a week’s growth of beard.
Ken Shabby1 was especially revolting, with an awful open sore just below the nose. But Terry J (who has seen the rushes) is worried that it was shot with too much emphasis on Shabby and not enough wide shots to create the joke – which is the relationship of this ghastly suppurating apparition to the elegant and tasteful surroundings.
Monday, November 9th
We are filming now at the empty, recently sold A1 Dairy in Whetstone High Street. The immediate significance of filming in Whetstone is that, for once, it favours those who live in North London – i.e. G Chapman and myself – who have long since had to leave earlier than anyone else to reach locations in Ealing, Walton-on-Thames and points south. Now we reap an additional benefit of Hampstead living – half an hour extra in bed – and when I am being collected at 7.30 each day, in darkness, the half hour is very welcome.
The dairy premises are so far excellent for our sketches – for they have the same rather dreary atmosphere of failure which characters like Scribbler and Mr Anchovy and the marriage guidance man are born from.
It takes a long time to set up the lights and to lay the track for the first shot. My hair is greased heavily and parted in the middle. It lies clamped to my head like a bathing hat.
Once the first shot is done, progress becomes faster. From the performance point of view, I enjoy the security of being able to do a performance several times and, with the sketch actually done in sections, one is not so worried about remembering words. I enjoyed one take particularly – I felt I was working hard on it and my concentration never dropped.
Thursday, November 12th
Shooting at a pet shop in the Caledonian Road. It’s a grey, wet, messy day and this particular part of the Caledonian Road is a grey, wet, messy part of the world. In the pet shop there is scarcely room to