Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [84]
In mid-afternoon Mark Shivas rang. He sounded briskly efficient as he expressed his satisfaction with the way the play had been received. People he had come into contact with all seemed to like it. He said that Peter Black and James Thomas had both arrived ten minutes late for the press showing, and that all the good reviews were from people who had not seen it at the press showing – The Times and the Evening News and the Evening Standard (both of whom liked the play a great deal). Shivas was highly pleased, and to reaffirm his confidence in us, he fixed up a lunch date next week, to talk about our writing another play.
John Junkin1 rang in the evening, just to thank us for making him fall off his chair.
Wednesday, August 22nd
To Sound Developments Studios in Gloucester Avenue. John and I are doing commercials for Corona lemonade (they must have been some of the first commercials to be made for Capital Radio, the new London commercial radio station, which doesn’t start broadcasting for another few weeks). Quite a jolly hour – tried different voices – two very modest and unaggressive ad people.
We drank coffee and stood outside in the sun. John is clearly determined to remain uninvolved in any major Python TV project. He says he is writing with Connie, which is something he always wanted to do, and which gives him the afternoons free! In addition he is doing voice-overs like this one to make quick money. I presume, tho’ he doesn’t talk about it, that he must be working on his films for industry as well. He was keen on doing another record and on being involved in the next Python film.
When I mentioned rewrites of the film, John hesitated for a moment, then cryptically hinted that he would try and make himself available for this. As the film was written by all of us for all of us, I was a little concerned at his attitude, but it turns out that he is hoping to spend three months in Africa from January to March. This made me inwardly very angry, because he knew the film was around, and he must have realised that there would be more work to do on the script. But that is John all over, he can be incredibly self-centred, and, if he wasn’t so charming with it, I would have told him so.
Later in the morning I took a bus down to Whitehall and visited the Inigo Jones exhibition at the Banqueting House. The Banqueting House is one of my favourite London buildings – stylish, elegant and civilised, totally unlike the heavy, neo-classical façades of the Home and Foreign Office across the road. I suppose the key is that Inigo Jones was a Sean Kenny1 figure – a theatrical designer who spent more time designing fantasy buildings than real ones, and this is perhaps why the Banqueting House has a lightness of style, with ornamentation that looks as tho’ it’s meant to create exuberance. The Foreign Office and the Home Office were built and designed by Victorian engineers. They are solemn and full of a sense of their own importance.
Graham rang, still very worried about the future. It’s all a bit of a bore, but I eventually said I would ring Bill Cotton, and find out whether the series was on or off. Bill, who was quite pleasant, couldn’t see why we were all so scornful of a pilot. His diagnosis was that there was pride on both sides, and why didn’t we stop being so stiff-necked? Bill said he would talk to Duncan and ring back tomorrow.
Thursday, August 23rd
A shopping trip with Helen. Based in the King’s Road area. A very good lunch at the Casserole. Robert used to take me there when we were doing Hang Down Your Head and Die2 in 1964. It was one of the first London restaurants I went to – one of my first encounters with Sophistication. So it was appropriate that one of the first people I saw on entering was William Donaldson, Esq.,3 blacklisted theatrical agent and the man who paid me my first ever wages after I left Oxford (£50 for working