Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (10 page)

Blue skies and high summer again – the fine weather is persisting despite all forecasts. So a fresh buoyancy to my step as I come back from Mansfield Road with the papers – abruptly slowed down by the news that Peter Sellers died last night. Though not as sudden and unexpected as the news seen in a French paper on holiday in 1977 that ‘Elvis est Mort!’, it affected me in the same way. Sellers and Milligan were to the humour of my pre- and teenage days as Elvis was to the music.

Duly arrive at J Cleese’s at ten – bringing Eric. It’s a hot day. John is upstairs recovering from taking Cynthia for an early-morning swim. We meet out in John’s garden – this prospect of unbroken sunshine is so rare this last month that the sun-worshippers in the group (everyone except TJ) feel unable to ignore it.

JC proposes a moratorium on the film – period unspecified. This rather deflating proposal is perhaps made more acceptable by a general welcoming of the Hollywood Bowl show. This, after brief discussion, is received most constructively. It makes the film postponement seem less like a positive break, more of a long interruption of work in progress. We shall be together for two or three weeks in LA in late September, we will do four nights at the Bowl and it is agreed that it shall be videotaped for sale to US TV.

Our ‘break-through’ writing of yesterday and the days before is not even read out. John seems happy to let things drift. There’s a listless feeling. EI says July is a rotten month to write anything.

No-one has yet really decided how long this ‘interruption’ should be. Six months is the minimum and any attempt to compromise on this meets very strong objections from John. But six months merely means an almost impossibly short period for the resolution of any alternative plans, so a year is proposed. And reluctantly accepted, as if acknowledging a measure of defeat.

We shall meet again to write the movie in September 1981.

Catch the 8.55 Euston-Manchester train to see the first assembly of my ‘Great Railway Journey’.

At the BBC we watch the 62-minute first cut on a Steenbeck. My impression is of endless pretty railway trains disappearing behind trees – clichés of this sort of documentary. There is little evidence of my own impact on the journey … but more disappointingly a very ordinary, flat feeling to the camerawork and strangely the editing as well.

It was a depressing viewing – depressing because I value Ken’s friendship and the working relationship between us, depressing because I had hoped that his unconventional choice of presenter indicated his intention of trying some exciting and experimental approach to the programme. Depressing because I had to fight Denis O’B so hard to come up with something so dull. I think Ken is well aware of my feelings, and there is a conspicuous lack of over-enthusiasm.

So when I dash off to catch the Manchester Pullman back to town, I know I have a job of work on – much more than I expected to do at this stage of the programme, but there is hope and I have always in the back of my mind the memory of my first reaction to the initial cut of ‘Roger of the Raj’.
¹⁹
I

To the foot man at 9.30. He’s running very late. I sit in his little surgery in Mornington Road, with a nun and a sad, rather dim, shuffling old Irishman, and write my Python album notes.

Then to EuroAtlantic for what is supposed to be a couple of hours of business and a couple of hours of thought on the content of the stage show. It turns out to be four hours of business and hardly a thought for the content.

Once again Denis pushes us towards the Telepictures video deal and the distribution company. All of us weaken on Telepictures, apart from Eric, who maintains that we should not give video rights for seven years to a company we know nothing about. At one point Eric suggests directly to Denis that he is in some way an interested party on Telepictures’ side. Denis denies this. Eric will not be moved, though, and vetoes the agreement until he’s thought about it more.

Meet Ken Stephinson for lunch and we have a very productive chat about the documentary. He feels as I do that it’s bland and rather dull at the moment, but we hatch plans to revive, restore and enliven it. The only thing that worries me is that I calculate I have a maximum of 12 clear writing days before Hollywood.

Caught British Airways’ 9.25 flight to Copenhagen [for
Life of Brian
publicity] with Terry J and Anne Bennett (of CIC, our distributors) from a marvellously uncrowded Heathrow.

We lost an hour in the air and landed at Copenhagen at 12.05. A Cadillac limousine (looking very out of place) swept us and our Danish hosts through the neat, clean streets of suburban Copenhagen, with row upon row of apartment blocks, but mainly of brick, with pitched roofs and in small units, usually angled to avoid a wilderness of long concrete vistas.

From this neat, clean, modest little capital we took a neat, clean hydrofoil across to Malmö in Sweden.

I hear from TJ (confirmed by Anne Bennett) that Python has not begun too well in Germany. Strong religious anti-reaction in Stuttgart –
elsewhere sluggish. So Brianity is perhaps not to be the new world religion after all.

As we leave Malmö for the University of Lund the wind has freshened. Not much impression of Sweden on the way. An extension of Lincolnshire perhaps.

About a quarter past eight we are introduced and go into a question and answer session. Most of the questions seem to come from Englishmen or Americans. Round about nine TJ is getting rather restless and asks the audience (numbering 300 or so) if he can ask
them
a question. Much eager nodding. ‘How many of you want to go to the lavatory?’ Our hosts take the hint and wind up the session. For some reason we sing them the ‘Lumberjack Song’ and that’s it. Both of us quite tired by now.

We’re driven to the Students’ Union and eventually find ourselves in a small, circular room where a table is laid. We each have a glass of rather weak beer – they are not allowed to serve full-strength beer to students – and nothing is happening. Outside the wind is strong and gusting and rain is lashing the panes.

Finally a large plate of Swedish crayfish arrives. They’ve been marinaded in beer and dill (very popular in Sweden) and are quite tasty. Then bottles of aquavit, which are drunk to the accompaniment of rather hard drinking songs. A lady called Lotta Love, said to be Sweden’s foremost groupie, also comes in from somewhere.

Terry J is strongly resisting Anne’s and my attempts to get us all onto the last hydrofoil to Copenhagen. I know that we must get back. We have to start early tomorrow and the drinking – already producing a noisy and rather belligerent atmosphere – will only accelerate.

With great difficulty we get TJ up and mutter our apologies. We just managed to get downstairs and into our waiting limousine, which then drives like hell into Malmö. The wind buffets the car on the motorway, causing it to veer dangerously at high speed, but we
do
reach the quay in time and to my intense relief the hydrofoil is still running, despite the storm. We are in Denmark again by one.

Terry is terribly thankful that we didn’t let him stay in Malmö, and he goes off for a walk whilst I bathe, do my morning exercise and gently test my body and brain for any damage caused by Sweden yesterday.

Outside the life of Copenhagen goes on, very unhurried, like model
life in a model village. Even the workmen are clean and I don’t believe that they really have the work to do anyway. They must be Play People. Eventually decide that the men engaged in raising and replacing paving stones opposite the hotel are in fact now reduced to cleaning the underneath of the Copenhagen streets.

At about ten o’clock we start interviews in our room, followed by a press conference downstairs, after which we are to give a TV interview. A Danish actor is portraying a Norwegian. The Danes and Swedes both find the Norwegians a Scandinavian joke – slow-witted, thick-headed, humourless fishing folk – and they send them up unmercifully. The fact that Python’s
Life of Brian
has been banned in Norway causes our hosts great glee and the Swedes have a poster tagging the film ‘So Funny it was Banned in Norway’.

We are then taken to the Tivoli Gardens for lunch and more filming. By now my head is clear, but my stomach is distinctly off-balance. I drink mineral water, eat more ham and eggs, but find to my horror after lunch that we are to be interviewed on the Big Wheel. I’m now feeling very queasy and not at all far from the point of uncontainable nausea.

Here I am, quite likely to be sick even if I just stand still, being loaded onto a big wheel compartment opposite a grinning interviewer, a cameraman and a sound man. The wheel moves up, we hang over Copenhagen then swing down, round, up again, going faster. Only desperate laughter at my plight and Terry’s touching concern and huge gulps of cool air as we swing up keep my stomach contents from being vividly reproduced on Danish television.

At last the living hell comes to an end and I’m quite proud to have survived. But the interviewer hasn’t finished, he wants more. High over the city we go – I really can’t answer any more. Even TJ is going groggy. ‘Alright,’ is all I can shout. ‘I give up! I give up!’ At the end of the torture I’m white and wobbling, something’s churning away inside. At last I can pause … No I can’t … We’re led away to be photographed doing funny things with the Danish comedian.

Then into the limousine, to be driven, with the dubious aid of stomach-lurching power-assisted brakes, to Danish radio. At last our Danish hosts seem to have got the message that I’m unwell, so I’m escorted carefully from the limousine and the first request is a ‘toiletten’ for Mr Palin.

Work on the ‘Railway’ programme – looking through the video cassette and running and re-running. I’m very much encouraged, and there is enough in there to give a high-quality look to the programme – now all we need is a cohesive element of typical Palin stuff. I need to inject into the documentary what I can do best – which is not, clearly, being a straight documentary presenter.

Go out for a pizza in Hampstead, full of Bank Holiday revellers. We talk over ‘
TB
’. Terry is as positive about it as I’ve heard him since May. Highly excited by the battle scenes at the end.

I feel much encouraged by today – both on ‘
GRJ
’ and ‘
TB
’. At one time I was feeling that I have fallen between so many stools this year that I can only have done myself harm, but now it looks as though all the hard work and hassle may just have been worth it.

School starts again – Rachel and Willy to Gospel Oak today, Tom to William Ellis tomorrow. Tom has tried on his blazer, matching shirt, dark trousers, dark shoes and hates them. I must say it’s a little sad to see him suddenly restricted by a uniform. Some loss of innocence somewhere.

Before I start work I have to go through the unnerving and slightly distasteful business of giving myself an enema – to clear out my bowels in preparation for a visit to the botty doctor this afternoon.

After squeezing the phosphate mixture in, I realise I’m unsure what an enema is quite supposed to do. Should I retain the fluid for a certain time? I’m downstairs looking up ‘enema’ in the
Shorter Oxford Dictionary
when events overtake me and I just reach the lavatory for ten or fifteen minutes’ worth of quite uncomfortable straining, with nothing to read but an article on the state of the economy.

Then to the Medical Centre. Talk with Alan Bailey, then meet Mr Baker, the botty doctor. He takes various particulars, then I’m led to a room next door with various contraptions lying about. My eye flicks over them, wanting – and at the same time, not wanting – to see the sort of thing which will be going up my bum.

The doctor enters, formally, from another doorway. I’m laid down, naked and with my legs up in my chest, and the ordeal begins. His first probings are, after penetration, not too bad, quite bearable, but the higher
he gets (and I can feel this tubing peering and turning and twisting and thrusting up into my stomach) the more severe the pain.

I’m told to take deep breaths and I grasp the nurse’s hand tightly as he squeezes air and water into my bowels to enlarge them so he can see better. For some moments the pain is acute. I can feel sweat dripping off me. The worst thing is not knowing how long it will last.

Finally the pain eases and he begins to withdraw his instrument. Never have I been so glad to have an examination over. It turns out he’s been using a sigmoidoscope and 50 centimetres of thick, black tube. ‘Wonderful view,’ he says, disarmingly … ‘Maybe you ought to do a postcard series,’ I suggest, but he doesn’t laugh.

Complete a rough draft of the new ‘Railway’ commentary by lunchtime. Then run on the Heath – it’s almost a year to the day that I began regular running.

I’ve kept at it, apart from two or three weeks on the ‘Railway’ documentary and a week in Cyprus. I’ve run in Central Park and across Fisher’s Island and pounded the lanes of Suffolk and the long hills between Abbotsley
²⁰
and Waresley and I’ve run in rain and snow and 80° sunshine. In darkness and on Christmas Day.

I do always feel better after a run. It’s as simple as that. And the physical well-being is very rapidly transformed into a feeling of mental well-being. Running makes me feel relaxed and gives me all the complex satisfaction of a test successfully completed, a feeling of achievement. I hope I shall still be at it in a year’s time.

Then I write some extra lines for David Warner in ‘
TB
’. Manage to get the word ‘sigmoidoscope’ into the script.