Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [362]
Friday, November 30th
Collect Terry and Maggie and we drive out in the Citroen to George H’s for a Python dinner. George scuttles around putting records on the juke-box, playing silly pieces on the piano and generally trying to make everyone feel at home – whereas all the guests are of good bourgeois stock and far more ill at ease with George’s unpredictable caperings than with standing sipping champagne and making polite conversation.
Cleese and I decide that the house would make a superb set, for a period film. We agree to write a farce together set in Friar Park.’Ripping Towers’ suggests JC’s blonde and lovely girlfriend (whom I’ve not seen before).
The table in the dining room is set splendidly. Table seating has been worked out by Olivia, who clutches a piece of paper as nervously as George earlier pottered with the juke-box. I end up sitting next to George, with Joan and Derek [Taylor] and Eric up our end. Excellent food, especially the salmon, and 1966 claret which was virtually on tap.
George confesses to feeling uncomfortable with a ‘posh’ evening like this, which I find reassuring – all the glitter and glamour that money can buy, all the success and adulation, has only affected our George very superficially.
Monday, December 3rd
To JC’s, via the bank. Coffee, a chat. JC very indignant over decision of Southend and Harrogate councils to ban Brian from their towns. It’s suggested we take big ads with all the good reviews and paste them up on hoardings in the aforementioned towns with big stickers like ‘Banned In Southend’ across them.
Then to reading of material. JC and GC, some very funny material (at last) of the British Raj sort. Gilliam has a wonderful idea for a cartoon in which the town fights the countryside – and one marvellous idea of Central Park in NYC spilling its banks and flooding the city with green.
All in all we have about 30 minutes of a very good TV show to show for our two weeks on the film. But morale is high – we seem to be getting on together well. TJ harries and hurries, but the rest of us seem moderately un-panicked.
An over-sybaritic lunch at the Pomme D’Amour in Holland Park rather flatters us. TJ suggests Benn is one of the best politicians around, which makes JC twitch uncontrollably. ‘Why is John so afraid to be left-wing?’ pleads TJ, ingeniously.
Tuesday, December 4th
I have been offered a one-hour documentary on a railway journey through England after a mention of my railway enthusiasms on Personal Call1 and I’ve had a letter from Weidenfeld and Nicolson who want to read my novel after a chat with Hunter Davies!
Wednesday, December 5th
Work at Ladbroke Grove. John is half in pyjamas, half in clothes and dressing gown. He says he’s not very well, but we sit in his kitchen and a list is made up of the first two weeks’ certs. Kashmir and army are strong, but there is no coherent theme yet.
We break up soon after four after John threatens to call the police to have us removed.
To the school carol concert at All Hallows Church. Willy is the percussionist and Tom and Holly are the two clarinettists. Tom sits so straight and blows so hard it brings tears to my eyes. Sing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ lustily.
Thursday, December 6th
Another grey, unreal awakening. It’s ten past eight and feels like the middle of the night. Complete the Oxford Union speech on the motion ‘That civilisation ends at Watford’. I’m quite pleased with it.
Sit in a half-mile-long, three-lane jam from White City to Acton. Little to do but sort out the cassettes in the glove compartment, listen to tapes and buy an evening paper, from kids who walk amongst the stationary, helpless cars selling Standards with the headline ‘Garages Running Dry’. Yes, there’s another dispute featuring the country’s top blackmailers – the poor, oppressed tanker drivers,