Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [37]
We went for a walk along Southwold front, in the gathering dusk. There was an exceptionally beautiful sunset – so many shades, from rich deep red to delicate pale pink. We drove on to the Common for a while and watched it.
Wednesday, February 10th
We lunched today at the BBC, Kensington House, and talked with the producers of The Car versus the People, a documentary in which we have sadly become involved in. The lunch was quite pleasant – little was decided, though much was said, but we did meet Bill Tidy, one of the funniest cartoonists in the country. In fact, it is very, very rarely that a Tidy cartoon doesn’t raise at least a titter in me. He’s a Yorkshireman, beer-drinking and unaffectedly open and straightforward. He carries around with him the convivial atmosphere of a local pub on a Friday night – evident in the way he leans back in his chair and the way he tells stories. He seems to be getting enormous pleasure out of life. He has, it turns out, a child who is either ill or handicapped, and one is enormously glad for the child’s sake that it has him as a father.
After our lunch grinds to an inconclusive halt at 3.00, we make our way over to TV Centre to appear on Ask Aspel – a show, compered by clean-shaven, charming, man for all seasons Michael Aspel. The idea is to play clips from BBC programmes which children have requested. Apparently they have a request for some Monty Python clip almost every week – giving the lie perhaps to Paul Fox’s confident assertion that Monty Python would never work in a pre-nine o’clock slot.
Monday, February 15th
Decimal Day. Today, not only our old currency, but a small portion of our everyday language dies for ever and is replaced. In looking back, this day will perhaps appear as just another step away from the archaic obstinacies that set Britain apart from other countries of the world, and a step which should have been taken much earlier.
Funnily enough, I find myself resenting the new decimal coinage far less than the postal codes (which I fear will one day replace towns with numbers – and after towns streets, and after streets …?), or the all-figure telephone numbers which dealt one mighty blow to local feeling in London and, in the process, made it practically impossible to remember phone numbers.1
But the decimal coinage system seems to clarify, rather than confuse. I have no sentimental regrets at the passing of the threepenny bit, or the half-crown, only slight irritation that the sixpence – an old coin – should be incorporated into this new system, even temporarily, and also that for some inexplicable reason a number of smaller shops are still working in pounds, shillings and pence.
Wednesday, February 17th
At 3.00 I arrive at the studios of Advision to do a voice-over for a Chesswood creamed mushroom commercial. It is the first of about half a dozen voice-over offers which has come to anything – which is pleasing because, of all the pride-swallowing things one does for money, voice-overs are the least painful. They generally take up only an hour or so of one’s time, your face does not appear to link you with any product and the money is useful but modest enough to allay any guilt feelings about selling out.
There was the usual gaggle of advertising men present and, judging by the subtlety and intellectual complexity of the advert, six reasonably intelligent wombats could have done the job just as well.
Sunday, February 28th
I had been feeling guilty for some weeks that I had made no effort to follow up my decision to have William christened at St Martin’s, the local church standing amongst the rubble of the Gospel Oak rebuilding scheme. And today I took the snap decision to go. I was