Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [94]
The film script was completed on Friday 14th – but still without enough group work on the links and plot scenes. But some very funny writing from all sources, Graham and John in particular were back on form.
On Christmas Eve collected Grandfather and took him to an afternoon carol service at Westminster Abbey. On the way he talks some complete nonsense. Strange non sequiturs, as his mind gropes from subject to subject, forgetting where he began and what he was trying to say. But it clearly is a great source of pleasure to him to sit in the Abbey for an hour. I left him there and drove around Westminster.
London was quiet and empty. The lack of public display lighting (except for the Norwegian Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, which has been given a dispensation for today and Christmas Day), the feeling of impending industrial crisis, only temporarily stemmed by Christmas, the various IRA bomb explosions in the last two weeks, all couldn’t help but create a melancholy atmosphere.
I rather liked it actually. I drove into Soho, and drank a coffee and bought the last croissants before Christmas at a little French bakery, and it seemed that people were more ready to smile – were a little more aware of each other, rather than the headlong rush to buy, sell, display, offer, wrap, fill. But I could just be over-romanticising.
Python has been directly hit by the new emergency fuel-saving powers. TV has been ordered to close down at 10.30 and our repeats, scheduled at 11.25, are now presumed cancelled.
1973 is the year which saw the break-up of the Python group. I was unable to accept that it was happening – indeed there were possibly more combined projects in 1973 than in 1972. The Brand New Bok, the First Farewell Tour from April to June, the Matching Tie and Handkerchief LP, the film script. But all these projects were, to a certain extent, Python cashing in on a comfortably receptive market, rather than breaking new ground. The only project of ’73 requiring new creative effort was the film – and although much good new material came up, there was nothing like the unified enthusiasm of the first two series. A freshness has gone, and 1974 will see just how we pick up the threads again.
1 Graham Chapman’s close friend. They’d both studied medicine at Bart’s, but Alan went on to practise.
1 Not to be confused with Tony Stratton-Smith, whose Charisma label put out our albums.
1 Mr Gumby wore knotted handkerchiefs on his head and shouted very loudly. Spiny Norman was the giant hedgehog which the gangster Dinsdale Pirhana was convinced was watching him.
1 Produced Chariots of Fire, The Killing Fields and Local Hero, but his only major credit at this time was That’ll Be the Day with David Essex.
1 In the end, Dusty Springfield made an on-air introduction to Python’s first appearance on New York’s Channel 13.
2 Due to Boundary Commission recommendations, Huntingdon ceased to be a county and was absorbed into Cambridgeshire.
1 Maggie Weston, ace make-up artist who became Mrs Gilliam.
2 Birkdale Primary School, Sheffield, which I attended from 1948 to 1957.
1 Mary Whitehouse, concerned at the decline in public morals, started the Clean-Up Television Campaign, which became the National Viewers’ and Listeners’Association. She never directly attacked Python, but saw the BBC as a den of impropriety.
1 At that time Glasgow was a dry city on Sundays.
1 The Magic Fingers Bed Relaxation System was a way of vibrating your bed to lull you comfortably to sleep. A quarter of a dollar would wobble you gently for about five minutes. It always worked for me, until it stopped, whereupon I woke abruptly.
1 Pepperpots was the generic name for the screechy ladies in Monty Python. John and Graham coined the name because of their shape.
1 Daddy, Dad, Pa, Father, ‘the old man’ has, as Thomas and William grow older, morphed into ‘Grandfather’.
1 And