Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [63]
The next major factor was that Eric and Graham especially were concerned about making some money next year – so far, making a film is the least lucrative thing we’ve done. To solve this we decided to try and fix up a two-or three-week university tour in April, on the lines of our successful Coventry Festival show a couple of years ago.
Later in the evening, Eric rang me up – still a little worried about where work, therefore loot, was to come from in the next year. I had mentioned my keenness to do some more TV next Christmas and Eric was ringing to lend support to this. Has today seen the first seeds of a new post-Python TV series, without John and possibly without Graham, or will we, as I forecast, find ourselves all together again next December?
It rained all day. I gave up [John Barth’s] The Sot-Weed Factor on page 440 and started to read Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie, by the fire.
Tuesday, December 5th
Drove to Harrods to see around their own chocolate factory – the first breakthrough in our protracted attempts to gain some first-hand experience of a chocolate factory for our ‘Black and Blue’ script. Harrods was like an ocean liner in the dark, rainy, wild evening. A Mr Jackson from the confectionery department, white-haired, but probably no more than 50, with a knowing smile and a rather self-deprecating manner, took us into Harrods underground travel network via a Colditz-style entrance behind the butchery department. We walked under Knightsbridge, feeling even more as tho’ we were in an ocean liner – only this time in the engine room.
The chocolate factory was small and personal. None of the machines was enormous, and the whole process seemed to be on a human scale. We saw Harrods exclusive after-dinner mints being stuffed into their little bags by middle-aged working-class ladies; presumably to be elegantly extracted by rich and well-perfumed hands in some Kensington salon. Also I was amused to see how the delicate marking was placed on top of each Harrods ‘Opera’ chocolate. A matronly cockney lady dipped into the liquid chocolate mixture and inscribed these magnificent chocolates with a deft flick of her nose-picking finger. This was the ‘hand’ in the ‘hand-marked’ chocolates.
Thursday, December 7th
In the morning I worked up at home, writing on a little further with the ‘Black and Blue’ script. Terry was returning this morning from Liverpool, where he had been chairing a meeting about ‘cooking and cholesterol’, so I was on my own.
At 12.30 arrived at TV Centre to see a playback of our controversial Shows 12 and 13, which Duncan Wood and Bill Cotton have told us must be amalgamated into one, on the grounds of their (to them) offensive tastelessness. Today was our last chance to change this decision, for rather than accept their judgement and trim the shows, we had asked at least if we could see again what we were being accused of, and we had asked that Paul Fox might view the shows as well.
This he was doing in an upper room of the BBC at the same time as we were seeing them in a lower room. Both shows had generally scatological themes, but in nearly every case the naughty material was hardly worth making a fuss about, and most of it was less questionable than some of the material in the first two series (viz. the mother-eating sketch). Neither show was our best, but I certainly could see no earthly reason for combining the two and wasting an entire show.
That evening I was very glad to hear from Ian that Fox had felt this way too, and had insisted on far fewer cuts than Wood and Cotton – which goes to prove that either prurience or cowardice, or a mixture of both, are important factors in LE’s official judgement. This was the first time we have ever divided the BBC hierarchy – and the appeal to Fox has this time come out to our advantage. I shall be able to approach him in a new light at the BBC LE binge in a couple of weeks.
Tuesday, December 12th
Terry and I are now well into a writing routine and we’re making