Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [74]
I had organised a birthday meal for everyone at Lorenzo’s, an Italian restaurant. Food passable, wine and champagne. Sat next to Robert [Hewison], who ten years ago almost single-handedly pushed me into revue performing.
Back at the hotel I remember Neil helping me to my room, where I stripped off and collapsed into bed. Neil, Terry, Eric, Carol and I can’t remember who else crowded into the room. We read poems from the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Neil insisted on spilling wine over my carpet. The last I remember is Neil offering me a joint, which I declined – for my system had had a big enough battering for one day. An enormous card had arrived from André and Dave, someone was eating my chocolates and, about 3.30, my thirtieth birthday ended, and I lay back, utterly exhausted and very, very happy. Thank you Birmingham.
Sunday, May 6th, Bristol
Left for Bristol at midday with our driver, Bill; Eric and John in the other limousine with Sid driving.
As we drove out of Birmingham, we ran into a violent cloudburst on the motorway out of the Midlands. Bill confided to us that he was staying behind Sid because Sid’s car wasn’t working too well and the brakes were in a very dangerous state. Nevertheless, we were having some trouble keeping up with him. I looked at the clock. We were touching 100. In front Sid was swaying his limousine around like a raft in a storm. I buried my head in Evelyn Waugh’s diaries in The Observer, or else tried to sleep. I felt doubly glad I was with Bill – but uncomfortably aware that the window was misting over, and yet Bill was blaming the poor visibility on the intensity of the rain. Terry J, behind, suggested he use the demister. Bill didn’t know where it was, and Terry and I had to show him.
When we reached Bristol we had to stop and ask some passers-by where the Dragonara Hotel was. Shortly, as we approached a roundabout, there was this brand new brick pile with a huge sign, ‘Dragonara’, crowning it. I could scarcely believe my eyes as Sid turned into the roundabout and, inches from the sign itself, sped away and off to the left, up a hill and out towards the docks. Bill, after turning on the dual carriageway, drove past both entrances of the hotel and off to the roundabout to follow Sid.
Thursday, May 17th, Edinburgh
One of the most vocal and enthusiastic audiences we’ve had. The usual knot of twenty or thirty autograph hunters outside, and one of them asked me to come and have a coffee and a drink with them. Foolishly I indicated our fat Daimler, and muttered something about the Queen Mother waiting; but then had to sit in the car for a full 15 minutes for John to finish signing. A couple of belligerent Scots looked resentfully at the car, and I thought we were going to have a repetition of Birmingham, where someone spat on the windscreen. Even when we eventually left, Sid took us steadfastly the wrong way. I have never been on a journey with him when he has gone directly from point A to point B. We drove out along the road to Peebles tonight – and we made the mistake of thinking that it was so clearly not the right road that Sid must be at any moment about to turn off. But it was not until I shouted to him ‘Is this the Glasgow road, Sid?’ that he took action and we veered off to the right. We were now in the middle of a housing estate, with our enormous limousine squeezing its way into a cul-de-sac, some ten miles from our hotel.
The consistency with which Sid goes wrong is such that, as Neil said, the law of averages ceases to apply.
Friday, May 18th, Edinburgh
Neil and Eric very pissed tonight on stage. The unusual spectacle of Eric not quite in control. The difference in his timing showed how crucial timing is. Both his long travel agent monologue and ‘Nudge-Nudge’, which usually provoke enormous reaction, went by almost unnoticed. Neil was falling about behind stage, in high spirits, and his ‘Idiot Song’ was wonderfully bad – full of wrong notes.