Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [327]
Graham Chapman rings from LA. Mainly to voice anxiety over a page of the book he has seen, which, he says, reads like the story of how Eric Idle put the Life of Brian together. GC is much concerned with this interpretation of Python history – probably because he’s not mentioned at all – but it does increase my own concern that this book is becoming Eric’s fait accompli, and we simply must see what is and isn’t in it.
Wednesday, March 14th
Cold and wet. North-easterly winds roll the clouds across and I’m glad we’re not down in Devon trying to pick up shots. In fact the Yarns remain immobilised. Word is that the terms on which the BBC will climb down over the strike are settled, but the strikers have to meet and are unlikely to start the transport moving again until tomorrow morning. So two more unexpected days of peace lie ahead.
One of the many tests of my resolve to write a book this year – when Frank Dunlop rings and asks me if I would like to play in a new West End production of Rookery Nook. Ben Travers revivals are all the thing now, and Dunlop, who sounds straightforward, friendly and totally without bullshit, reckons Rookery Nook is his best.
I’m so looking forward to writing that it would take something very important to sway me. Farce in the West End would be delightful, but I don’t think I really want to make my mark as an actor of farce. Still, can’t put the phone down without pangs of regret.
To dinner with the Davidsons. Sheila Pickles is there. Much talk of LA, from which she has just returned. She stayed with Zeffirelli, who is reported to be very cross with the Tunisians for letting Pythons use his sets, and has threatened to decline Bourguiba’s offer to make him Minister of Culture!
Sunday, March 18th, Black Horse Hotel, Skipton
Drive to the hotel in Skipton where I’ll be staying for most of ‘Golden Gordon’. A short back and sides to turn me into Gordon Ottershaw. A drink and a meal at the hotel – cooked by a chef who has seen the Holy Grail five times and who approached me, with trembling hands, clutching one of our LPs and five or six of our cassettes for signing. He and his wife will look after us well, I think …
Then to the elegant, tasteful portals of Kildwick Hall, by whose mighty fireplaces Laurence Olivier stood in the film Wuthering Heights, and on whose frieze mouldings are the letters W and C – C signifying the Currer family, friends of Charlotte Brontë, and from whom she took her pen name Currer Bell.
Sitting amidst this unretouched history, knocking back scotches in fairly rapid succession, is Bill Fraser, with whom I play the Foggen (scrap merchant) scene tomorrow, and a rather narrow-faced ex-tax inspector, who appears to be the hotel’s only other resident.
Bill F looks older, rounder and a little smaller than I remember him.1 But he is 71 and he has this day completed recording of the Trevor Griffiths’ play Comedians for the BBC. He finished at 5.30 and was driven straight up here. So no wonder he’s winding down.
A joke for bedtime – clamber into my pyjamas, only to find they’re Thomas’s. I laugh out loud and feel very silly with the little jacket half on before I realise.
Monday, March 19th, Skipton
Today the last of the Ripping Yarns gets underway. I’ve no regrets that it is the last one, and yet I’m looking forward to putting it together almost more than any of them.
Bill is quieter this morning – and a little crustier – but he’s good on his lines and turns in an effective performance, though not quite as dominating as I’d hoped. But by half past six we have four and a half to five minutes in the can.
Dickie Betts, the lighting gaffer, specially made a point of coming up to me and saying what a good piece of writing the scene was. This I take as a very high compliment, and I hope it will bode well for the rest of the filming.