Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [311]
Saw George’s four-month-old boy, Dhani, then his other recent enthusiasm, his book. Called I Me Mine, it’s an expensively leather-bound collection of his songs with his own hand-written notes and corrections.
We find out that George is just older than me. He was born February 1943. He is quite struck by this and, as a memento of him being just older, gives me one of the glass eyes made for his Madame Tussaud’s dummy!
Derek Taylor and Joan arrive later and we eat a superb Indian meal cooked by Kumar. Quite delicious and delicate.
Derek tells of the horrors of LA that have driven him back to England – to a farmhouse in Suffolk. So humourless and depressing were his colleagues in Warner Records, that Derek took great pleasure in puzzling them by eccentric behaviour. He would insist on playing Hollywood record moguls a tape of Violet Bonham-Carter3 being interviewed. They sat there polite but utterly bewildered. ‘Twenty minutes’ peace,’ Derek recalled with feeling.
Monday, November 27th
Taxi arrives when I’m half-dressed, just before eight. Haifa cup of tea, then leave for the BBC at 8.15. To Studio 4A at Broadcasting House for Start the Week, with Richard Baker – a jolly, harmless, middle-of-the-road therefore well-liked chat show, which goes out live.
RB frightens me with quick asides like ‘We’ll be talking travel … oh, and bicycles … so if you’ll get some travel and bicycling stories together … Right, we’re on air.’
Not as hair-raising as I thought. I manage to hold my own, though Sandra Harris, who interviews me, is another of those people who feel the need to describe me as a ‘nice middle-class boy’.
Drive over to Gough Square. It’s nearly half past three and the shafts of sunshine are few as the buildings of London block out the low November sunshine. The city seems all in shadow. I tape a pre-recorded interview for London Broadcasting. Catch a glimpse of a visitors’ book which is lying open – the last name is M Thatcher, H of C. Think of writing G Rarf, London Zoo, but refrain.
Before Christmas the Ripping Yarns book was published and my signing tour began, as they still do now, in Scotland.
Tuesday, November 28th, Stirling
Leave King’s Cross at 11.55 on the Aberdonian.
Arrive in Stirling at a quarter to seven. Met by student organisers who say they have had to move the audience to a larger lecture theatre. I’m told the Literary Society (whom I am addressing) usually expect 80 or 90 for a visiting speaker, but 250 have turned up.
Give my talk eventually to a full house, ranged in front of and above me along steeply-banked rows of desks. Analysis of my method of writing doesn’t go down well, but any jokes or sketches are rapturously received.
Wednesday, November 29th, Stirling
Up at a quarter to nine. Comfortable night in excellent, clean and well-equipped hotel. Breakfast alone with a Scotsman (the newspaper). Then walk down to Allanwater, away from the main road and along a path which follows the river. The air is clean, fresh and cold. It’s marvellous to be in Scotland. I relish the short walk inordinately, gratefully drinking in the air and the sight of a quiet, full river flanked by bare-branched beech trees.
I still am affected by a post-Tunisian euphoria. A delight in being wherever I am, provided it’s not Tunisia.
To Grant’s Bookshop in Stirling for my first signing session.
Despite a big window display, the attendance at the signing session is not good. I console myself with the fact that thirty books were signed after last night’s talk and publication isn’t really till tomorrow. But I sit at my table with embarrassingly large piles of books beside me and sign less than twenty in one-and-a-half hours. At one point an irate lady who obviously thinks I work here, comes across and complains that a book about angling she bought for her nephew has two pages stuck