Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [81]
A lunchtime meeting in Nancy’s room with a man from the Los Angeles Free Press, a sort of West Coast Village Voice with a fair smattering of extraordinary small ads – ‘Your Penis Longer in 30 Days or Money Back’. ‘Men -learn to wrestle with two nude ladies at the Institute of Sexual Intercourse.’We ordered up hors-d’oeuvres and Graham, Terry G, Terry J and I talked about ourselves to a tape recorder once again. Terry J’s heart was clearly not in it, and he ended up back in my room watching the Watergate hearings – which he has been following avidly.
At 2.30 we once again drove out on the Hollywood Freeway to the NBC Studios. Whereas the Midnight Special has an audience more likely to appreciate Python, the Tonight Show is an all-American institution. At one go, Python will be seen by the few aficionados in New York and San Francisco, and also by the Mormons in Salt Lake City, the tobacco farmers of Louisiana and the potato growers of Idaho, the blacks in Harlem and Watts, and possibly even John Dean, President Nixon and Senator Fulbright.
To make things more nerve-wracking, it was to be recorded as a live show, with no stops or retakes, for the tape had to be ready an hour or so after recording to be flown to the various parts of the States for transmission the next evening.
A great air of unreality. Here was Python going out to its greatest single audience ever, and to us it was no more than a hastily organised cabaret. We were totally unknown to the audience, and felt like new boys at school. At 6.00 the recording started. This week Joey Bishop, one of F Sinatra’s and D Martin’s buddies, was hosting the show as regular host Johnny Carson was on holiday. Bishop was on good form, fluent and funny. When it came to our spot he produced our two latest LPs and tried, quite amusingly, to explain the crossed-out Beethoven cover. All good publicity. The sketches went smoothly – tho’ our starter, the two Pepperpots1 talking about soiled budgies, was totally lost.
Friday, June 29th
Arrived home about 10.30. Thomas had stayed away from school to meet me, and we spent the morning unpacking and discovering things like the fact that my two Indian canoes from Banff wouldn’t float, or even rest for a moment on the surface of the water. As Thomas pointed out – the Indians weren’t really very good at making canoes.
We spent much of July on holiday near Castiglione della Pescaia in Italy with our friends Ian and Anthea Davidson, their daughter Clemency and a lot of very tiny, very vicious sandflies called serafini.
Friday, August 10th
It’s now about two and a half weeks since we flew back from Italy and, during that time, although I’ve succeeded in avoiding any major work commitments, we seem to have been busier than ever, renewing friendships that have lapsed since April and enjoying, with a sort of revived energy, living in London.
Like yesterday, walking through Bloomsbury, south of the Museum, a neat, compact village of Victorian terraced houses with bookshops and magic shops and an atmosphere of small-time human activity, a well-worn, lived-in feeling. The sun had come out and was shining from a clear sky, suffusing the buildings with a golden glow. Of course, I need hardly say that there are plans to knock this down.
Two weeks ago today, I drove up to Southwold and took the old man to Cambridge for a reunion dinner. I looked after him as carefully as I could, carrying his bag into the college lodge, as if he were a freshman. It was quite a curious reversal of the roles – for his reunion was for all those who had left Cambridge in 1921/22, so around the lodge of Clare’s new buildings had gathered a group comprised entirely of 73-year-old men, all a little rusty and unfamiliar with the proceedings, exactly reliving their first days at the college over fifty years ago.
I showed the old man to his room, which was in a far corner of the quad. He was in a room opposite his slightly fitter friend Clive Bemrose, who had undertaken to ‘keep an eye on