Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [62]
Almost an hour is spent ringing round the Pythons to get them to a meeting on Thursday to listen to the record. We decide to cut the B side in mono, which apparently will allow the three-track cut to work. So Apple now have the job again.
Looked at a book of Yoga exercises.
Friday, November 10th
In the evening a pleasant meal with Robert [Hewison]. Delicious beef olives cooked by the maestro. As usual I was impressed and injected with academic enthusiasm by the neat order of Robert’s little flat – with its shelfful of Goncourt journals in French, the latest books on Coleridge – of course his great Ruskin collection (Robert is now a B.Litt.).
Monday, November 20th
Arrived back in London after a long weekend in Southwold with Helen, Thomas and William.
Brought two family portraits back home – one of my great-grandfather, Edward Palin, Vicar of Linton, drawn almost a hundred years ago, I guess – a fine looking man – and the other of his wife Brita née Gallagher – she by contrast looks hunched and rather wizened. I should imagine that was drawn nearer the turn of the century. Amazing to think that I have physical genetic links with these remote figures.
I had this wrong. The older lady was not Brita, my great-grandmother, but Caroline Watson, a rich American lady who had adopted Brita when she arrived on a coffin ship in New York in the 1840s, an orphan from the Irish potato famine. I was to discover fuller details from a cousin of my father’s (entry for September 30th 1977). It was such a remarkable story that in 1990 Tristram Powell and I made it into a film called American Friends.
Wednesday, November 22nd
Success with Mark Shivas!
Terry and I talked our way into a commission for an hour-long ‘Black and Blue’ play – with an improvised verbal synopsis which he appeared to be quite pleased with. It required quite a gamble on his part, and we both felt greatly encouraged by his confidence.
Impressed by his modesty and the almost Spartan simplicity of his office. As producer of the highly successful Six Wives of Henry VIII series, he must be one of the most sought-after producers in TV and yet he remains in an anonymous, nondescript, austere office in TV Centre. Such are the artistic attractions of working for an organisation such as the Beeb that they tend to cancel out other disadvantages. After seeing Shivas, we visited Ian MacNaughty and then Terry Hughes to whom we delivered a Two Ronnies script. Ian MacN – with Eke always at his side like a prowling lion to encourage, goad, solace, and generally keep him healthy – was in his office, but he didn’t know for how long. He wants to go freelance next spring, presumably to do another Python film, for we have never made it clear we will be directing it ourselves.
I think perhaps we should now come clean and let him know that there is not much more work for him with Python. He is a much happier man now than he used to be. So any final break will be that bit more difficult.
Monday, December 4th
A very successful Python meeting at John’s. Everyone was remarkably direct about future plans and there was a remarkable freedom of pressure on anyone to fit in with others’ plans. The basic factor in the future life of Python is that John has had enough of Python TV shows – he doesn’t enjoy writing or performing them – the thought of doing any more makes his stomach tighten, so he said. He is the oldest of us, he has done more TV than any of us, and had done twenty-six Frost Reports before any of us really started performing. So he’s ahead of us in the disillusionment stakes – tho’ I cannot agree with him at all about the drudgery of doing TV shows. I find them hard, but exhilarating experiences and I’m still at the stage of appreciating how fantastically lucky I am to have the opportunity to write and perform my own material, on TV, almost free of restrictions. Still, John does not share this view – and will