Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [366]
Monday, December 31st
Last day of the 1970s. Clear, dry, fine, cold. Up in time to read work so far on the Gilliam film before taking Granny to Broad Street on the Gospel Oak line to catch the 11.30 to Suffolk. On the way back to Hampstead Heath a magnificently cheery black ticket-collector waived my offer of the extra 16p for my ticket with great bonhomie.’Happy New Year,’ he shouted. It was like the end of A Christmas Carol!
Friends come round in the evening and we eat Chinese take-away and play games and half watch a poor compilation of the 1970s from BBC TV. As midnight strikes and the first chimes of the 1980s are met by the obligatory cheers of well-oiled Scotsmen on the box, we take photos of ourselves in celebration and agree that whatever happens – barring the work of the Grim Reaper, of course – we will look at these pics together on December 31st 1989!
1 See footnote, page 563.
2 Later to direct the Last of the Summer Wine series.
1 One of Anne’s other clients. Successful commercials director who started Loncraine-Broxton, a novelty toy company. I’d suggested him to the BBC for the yarns. We eventually worked together on The Missionary in 1982.
2 Alison Davies, our PA at Anne’s office.
1 Legendary BBC comedy producer and director (Porridge, Butterflies, Last of the Summer Wine). John and Graham particularly liked the sound of his name, and I seem to remember a sketch on At Last the 1948 Show in which every character was called Sydney Lotterby.
1 Along with John Cleese, he was one of the founders of Video-Arts, who, very successfully, made training films for industry, many of them written by and starring Cleese.
1 Some readers of the diary may find it confusing that I appear to support both Sheffield football teams (a crime punishable by disembowelment in Sheffield itself). Living in London I’m always glad to hear of any Sheffield success. When I lived in Sheffield I was always a United fan, so that’s what I’ve had to settle for.
1 Jane Curtin – original cast member and very funny lady. Later starred in Kate & Allie and Third Rock From the Sun.
1 Production designer on ‘Whinfrey’s Last Case’ and ‘Golden Gordon’, she went onwards and upwards to design some of the BBC’s great period dramas, including Pride and Prejudice, Clarissa and The Way We Live Now.
1 Maria later played John C’s wife in A Fish Called Wanda.
1 He starred in The Army Game and Bootste and Snudge, two of the few television programmes which united my father and myself in helpless laughter.
2 Gordon Ottershaw was the super-fan who smashed up his living-room every time the team lost. Which was most weeks.
1 Owners of the hotel.
1 Basil Pao, then working for Warner Bros in LA, designed the book. Now a writer and stills photographer, he has worked with me on six of my BBC travel shows and books.
1 Scarman upheld the ruling under the Blasphemy Act of 1697 that the Gay News had offended by claiming that Christ was homosexual.
2 Jonathan James, her new partner, whom she later married.
3 Arnold Wesker’s wife.
1 Hungarian-born film producer who founded Shepperton in the 1930s.
2 Lew Grade and his brothers Bernard Delfont (who abandoned Life of Brian) and Leslie Grade pretty much ran popular entertainment at the time.
3 A year later Lew Grade went on to make Raise the Titanic, which was such a flop that he famously said it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.
1 Jack and Liz Cooper were famous Hampstead figures. Jack, who knew Al before I did, looked like the Laughing Cavalier.
1 Klein later interviewed all the Pythons (bar Graham who was represented by an urn containing his ashes) on stage at the Aspen Comedy Festival in March 1998.
1 Barrister, playwright, novelist, creator of Rumpole.
2 A documentary, made for BBCi to mark the tenth anniversary of Python’s birth.
1 Chris looked after the house while Eric was away.
2 One of my favourite sketches