Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [59]
So Helen and Muriel’s husband Bob went looking for this character, and took themselves by surprise when they rounded a corner and literally bumped into him. Helen – quite courageously, considering he had an Alsatian dog with him – asked him what he was doing in the Guedallas’ house. Declining explanations, he made a run for it and Helen, not Bob, made a grab for him. He easily pushed her away and ran off. Bob shouted valiantly after him, ‘We’ve got your identification.’ And he was gone.
Helen had already rung the police. They soon descended in droves – local fuzz and Scotland Yard. The unfortunate telly-snatcher didn’t stand a chance. He was picked up almost immediately and so were the TV and the stand. Helen was quite the local hero, and very pleased with herself.
Saturday, October 21st
Dinner across the road with the recently moved-in neighbours, Rod and Ann. Ann (we found out) is the sister of John Sergeant, who was in revue at Oxford two years after me, and with whom I once did some sketch writing about four or five years ago. He acted in the Alan Bennett series On the Margin as Bennett’s straight man1 and then left comedy for news – worked at Reuters and now with the BBC as a sound reporter.
Tonight we were reunited. We spent a very enjoyable evening, and I was especially interested in his stories of reporting from Vietnam and Belfast. Vietnam is badly beaten up, but not such a totally flattened country as people make out – the on-the-spot action news film, which the American networks put out as reports from the battlefield, are all taken by South Vietnamese cameramen. In Ireland everyone reads the papers avidly. The IRA leaders are available at all times to talk to newsmen if you know the right number to ring. John was hijacked in his car once by an IRA man who threatened to blow his brains out if he tried to resist.
Monday, October 23rd
At 8.00 I went out to a Gospel Oak meeting. There are quite a number of consultative meetings held in and around Oak Village, as the whole area is being subjected to such massive redevelopment. In 1951 the first redevelopment in Gospel Oak was Barrington Court – by Powell and Moya. It’s a long, ten-storey block, but is as good as many present-day functional designs, and better than most. The West Kentish Town development followed in the 1950s – it’s not picturesque, but it is low-rise and friendly.
Then a progressive deterioration of architectural standards, which reached its nadir in the appalling block which borders Mansfield Road and is known locally as the Barracks. It is without charm, without style, without any beauty whatsoever – it is essentially a mathematical achievement, a result of juggling a lot of people with a little money, stymied as the Camden planners are now by the general abandonment of high-rise blocks.
Some of the new occupants were at the St Martin’s Church Hall tonight to hear proposals for Lismore Circus renovation and for the next part of the Gospel Oak scheme.
The meeting was entirely staffed by stereotypes. If one had written a play with these characters in it would have been called facile and uninventive. Mr and Mrs Brick of Kiln Place – a physically formidable pair and both with plenty to say forcibly and clearly. The populist vicar, who couldn’t resist occasional semantic jokes; the hard-line Marxist, in a nondescript coat but with a fine, strong, lean face, worn hard and lined in struggles for the proletariat. The woolly-headed liberals, the gentle, embarrassed