Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [93]
We disembarked from our coach (a funny thought, somehow – a coachload of writers) and were taken into a carpeted ante-room leading to the dining room, where we were given drinks whilst the guests assembled. Mostly ladies, but a number of younger ones who didn’t look quite like the hangers and flog-gers we’d expected.
We started our communal Python speech with Graham doing ‘Thank you very much and now some readings from the “Bok”’ as a very prolonged mime. Then I got up and read some ‘Biggies’ in Swedish and then out of the book. Quite rude stuff, I suppose, but no-one seemed to worry unduly. Terry read the ‘Horace’ poem and John finished up by reading a rather disappointingly unfunny piece from the ‘Fairy Story’.
Then we sat outside in the ante-room and signed endless copies of the ‘Bok’. Jilly Cooper was sitting next to us and, as she wasn’t signing as many as we were, Terry passed one lady’s Python book to Jilly to sign. The woman grabbed the book back, saying ‘I don’t want her to sign … I don’t agree with her.’
Too rushed to keep a daily diary for the next month, I rounded up the salient events after Christmas.
Friday, December 28th
It’s a still, grey, anonymous afternoon.
At the beginning of December I had been working with Terry J down in Camberwell [on the script of what was to become Monty Python and the Holy Grail] and had a wearying week travelling as much as possible by public transport, owing to the ‘oil crisis’ – the 30% cut in Arab supplies to the West which has resulted in near-panic this week at the petrol stations. Many only open for two or three hours a day, and police have had to sort out traffic-jamming queues at many garages. London Transport, with a 30–35% undermanning problem, is no longer as efficient as it used to be, and it’s quite common to wait 10 or 15 minutes for an Underground train, on a dusty, dirty platform (Victoria Line excluded). However, I arrived only about 15 minutes late at Tony Stratton-Smith’s office. Tony, smiling and benignly jokey as ever, opened a bottle of sparkling wine and detailed his proposals for raising £75,000. £25,000 was to come from Led Zeppelin and £20,000 from Pink Floyd. Tony Stratton himself would make up the last £25,000, and small investors like Michael Wale1 wanted to put in £2,000. Tony asked one or two routine questions, but altogether his offer seemed a lot more attractive than White—Goldstone. All he wanted for supplying finance was 5% – but Mark, a steady negotiator to the end, got him down to 4½%.
Both Led Zeppelin and Floyd were prepared to write or play theme music for us – an additional bonus, which could boost our chances in the States.
In the second week of December the weather improved – we had long sunny spells and clear skies. The oil panic passed its worst stage, but it was clear that the Arabs, by the simple expedient of controlling the exploitation of their own oil, had at one stroke brought the era of unquestioned expansion to an end. The very suddenness of the effects of the oil cutbacks is amazing. Only a month ago Anthony Barber [Chancellor of the Exchequer] and Heath were telling us that Britain was at last heading for sustained economic growth, and if we all pulled together, an era of prosperity and boom would be on us by the end of ’74. On December 12th I was at Belsize Park Post Office collecting petrol rationing coupons – old-fashioned Suez coupons, still bearing the authority of the Minister of Power!
The government of expansion and progress has introduced an Emergency Powers Bill, which bans all display lighting, enveloping London in pre-Christmas