• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1197 0

at best, at worst a positive awkwardness. As I waited outside the theatre after the show, waiting for John G to sort out which cars should take us home, I felt very depressed. I feel that my contribution to the show is not as great as it could be. I feel that we are marking time – regurgitating old material, milking the public in a way Python never has done quite as blatantly. But as Helen, and Carol’s hubby Peter, who travelled back with us, said, the audience loved it, and with a few changes it has the makings of a great show. We have already made some cuts – ‘Half-a-Bee’ song didn’t even last two performances – but there are others.

Saturday, May 3th, Birmingham

The tour is now in its second week, and we have done eleven shows already. My voice is getting a little husky and I hope that if I treat it carefully it will last tonight’s show at the Hippodrome and three shows in Bristol before two days off in London. And I am, almost as I write, 30 years old. Thirty years old in this Post House, a colourful, but colourless hotel, which could be anywhere in any country. Thirty years old and enjoying all the benefits of standardisation.

Most of the people who stay in these places are businessmen, and that’s what I feel is the difference between my being 30 in Birmingham and 20 at Brasenose, and ten at Birkdale2 – now, for better or worse, I am a part of this standardisation – a money-earning, rate-paying, mortgage-owning man of business. For Python is business – it’s no longer an unpredictable, up one year, down the next kind of existence. Python has the magic ingredient, ‘market potential’, and our books and our records are only on the verge of making as much money as we could want. And yet some of the spontaneity and the excitement has gone as security has crept in and, although I am in a job which still allows me to wear knotted handkerchiefs over my head and have 2,500 people pay to see me do it, I still feel that I am a 30-year-old businessman.

The show went well, tho’ my lack of voice is becoming a slight and annoying restriction. At the end of’Pet Shop’ I did the usual 15-second approach to John and, feeling the end of the show only thankful seconds away, said ‘D’you want to come back to my place?’ Conscious of the laugh being less ecstatic than when my voice was working. But worse was to come. John turned to me and said ‘No’. It didn’t get much reaction and a combination of disappointment at this rather poor ad-lib and consuming fatigue made me just remain silent, look suitably disappointed and wait for the curtains to close. I really was in no mood for witty extemporisation. But I suddenly became aware that Eric, in a compere’s spangly jacket, had come forward to the front of the stage and was talking to the audience. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this evening is a very special evening for one of us here tonight …’ then it became clear … ‘for tonight Michael Palin is 30 years old.’The audience cheered, my mind started racing as I began to go through my options … Eric was going on … ‘And tonight we’ve brought along one of Michael’s very great friends …’ faces of John and Terry looking at me grinning … ‘one of his most favourite personalities in the world of showbiz … Mrs Mary Whitehouse!’ Neil plays a few chords, and on comes Eric’s mother – the spitting image of the good Mrs Whitehouse,1 bearing a cake with candles. Everyone is looking at me, grins have become grins of anticipation – what will I do? How will I react? Carol Cleveland brought me a bunch of chrysanthemums – and there was the get-out. I found myself saying ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say how pleased and proud I am to have received this cake from that great shit Mary Whitehouse (cheap, but desperate and it got a good laugh) and all I can say at this moving moment is … (relapse into Gumby voice) … ARRANGE THEM … IN THE CAKE!’And plunge the lovely chrysanthemums into the lovely cake.

I had got out of it, and the audience were clapping and laughing and singing ‘Happy Birthday’. I felt not only relief, but great pleasure and thanks that my birthday