(note: I have tried to eliminate as many ums, you knows and sort ofs as possible while remaining accurate. Between these two men, there was a bit of rambling! I have left two words blank - as many times as I replayed my tape, I could not make out these two words!
Also, before MP’s segment, TS was saying that the CBS affiliate-owners were in town for their annual meeting, and that the following day, there was going to be a sale of publicity pictures from CBS shows that had been cancelled. It makes sense later...)
TS: Michael Palin will always be remembered for his great performances with Monty Python. He’s also made a splash on his own with films like "A Fish Called Wanda," and he is out now with his first novel which is called "Hemingway’s Chair." It’s a pleasure to welcome Michael Palin back to CBS. Thanks for coming on here on Friday night...
MP: Thank YOU.
TS: I want to get to "Hemingway’s Chair" here in a second, but I was reading here this afternoon that recently you received some sort of a TV award over in London presented to you by Margaret Thatcher!, and this must have been a great honor for you [MP shrugs in acknowledgement] to have the former Prime Minister, you know, give you the award!
MP: What can I say!? I mean, highlight of my life! Well, certainly highlight of that morning! Well, before 11:30... No, I’d just come...funnily enough I’d come back from Aspen where we’d been doing a Python reunion, and...
TS: Oh, as part of the comedy festival there in March, I recall...
MP: ...comedy festival in March, and that very morning I arrived they said, "You have to go to this award ceremony because we think you might have won an award!" And the awards were known as TRIC Awards [MP laughs] and I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to get some rubber thing that went "WOOOOOO" when you pick it up! But TRIC meant the Television and Radio Industries Consortium or something. So I went to this place and I was slightly jetlagged and there was, like...a thousand people squeezed in and...we won the award for Best Documentary...and they said...I didn’t know who was going to present it, and they suddenly said, "To present the award, Baroness Thatcher..."
TS: Oh, wow...
MP: ...so Baroness Thatcher gets up, and [sarcastically] we all tug our ? and fall to the floor!, and she said [MP mimics Thatcher’s voice as being MUCH deeper than his and scary] "The nominations are..." She read the nominations, and the third nomination was [in her voice again] "Full Circle with Michael Pol-len."
TS: Michael Pol-len?
MP: So, a lot of laughing from people who know my name is actually pronounced Pa-lin! Um, and then it was compounded by the fact that I actually won! So, [her voice] "...the winner is: Full Circle, with Michael Pol-len." [MP smiles] You know! So I...
TS: [pantomimes] Applause, applause...
MP: Applause, applause, so I wend my way through the tables, like you do at these things, and...I thought I would just tell...you’re supposed to give...tell a little story, so I thought I’d tell a story about how difficult it was filming in the Amazon Basin and all that sort of thing...and there was one particular story which involves going to a village, and the old ladies of the village make this very strong drink on a certain day, which they hand to their visitors. And they told me that in, uh...it’s fermented with the sugar that grows around the village. And in areas where there IS no sugar growing, it’s fermented by the saliva from the old ladies...
TS: Oh, really! [laughs]
MP: [pantomimes spitting into a cup] In there, stir it up!
TS: [pantomimes a bigger spit, laughs out loud]
MP: ...so, anyway, I’d just started, and as soon as I started saying "drink / old lady" Margaret Thatcher seemed to...she SEEMED to ASSUME that I was talking about HER, and that this was a bit of a dig at her! So she looked at me and said [her voice, very ominously] "STEADY!" She’s standing very close to me near the microphone, and I realize I’ve got a lot of this story to tell, and she thinks it’s about her, and I couldn’t...I can’t...NOT tell the story, without referring to "old ladies" continuously! So every time I kept saying, "and the old ladies stood there grinning at me..." she goes, [scary voice] "STEADY!" And the end of the story of course is that I say to my guide, uh, you know, "Is there a lot of sugar grown round here?" And he thought and said, "...No...no..."
[TS & MP laugh]
TS: Time to pass it on...
MP: So I made a joke about, you know, when you go have a cocktail in the Amazon, tell them to hold the spit! [TS and crew laugh] But by that time she was just staring at me, and she was staring for such a long time that I thought I have to acknowledge this to the audience...
TS: But eventually, did...did you have a reproachment with her? I mean...
MP: Yeah, yeah, oh no, I said...I said to the audience, I said, "I can see why she’s been in power for ten years!" That was a big laugh. I said [mimicing her facial expression], "It’s the eyes!" And afterwords she said Michael Pol-len was an extremely nice man [laughs] and, uh, very happy to meet him! And we had our photos taken and I put my arm around Margaret Thatcher, which I thought would annoy John Cleese if he’d ever see it...
TS: You know, I wonder if she ever played "Twenty Questions." [laughter from the camera crew] That’s an old joke.
MP: Oh, is it? [laughs]
TS: It’s a very old joke [more laughter from the crew] Now the reunion...the reunion in Aspen in March - was that fun for everybody? For the living members of Monty Python?
MP: The LIVING members? Yes! It was more fun for the dead member!
TS: Oh, really?
MP: Graham Chapman had a great time, ‘cause he was the star of the show! Because we thought that...we had to acknowledge the fact that Graham was still in our thoughts and minds...
TS: Well, sure.
MP: ...we loved Graham dearly...
TS: He passed on himself, right?
MP: Yeah. Much less...he’s much less trouble to work with now. [TS laughs] But, so when Robert Klein said, "...and Graham, of course, isn’t with you..." we said, "Oh, yes he is! We have him here!" And we got a butler to bring Graham’s ashes on an urn, on a cushion...
TS: You’ve gotta be kidding. They were his ashes?
MP: [long pause] No. No, I don’t...they were somebody’s, they weren’t Graham’s! [both laugh] But they were very good prop ashes. They looked just like the real thing (I suppose)! And it was put down. He had a little chair of his own, and we planned that some time during the evening Terry Gilliam would ensure that the urn got knocked over...
TS: Oh, geez!
MP: ...and Terry was wonderful - he let it go quite a long time. We’d all forgotten that we’d planned this. And suddenly John’s launching into some long, boring story, and Terry Gilliam suddenly crosses his legs, WOP, WHAM!...
TS: Oh, the urn goes...
MP: ...the urn goes over, and all falls out, it took US all by surprise, and the audience just...just roared with laughter, which was a relief! And so we had to try to get Graham back into the urn [MP acts this out as TS laughs out loud], using a dust bin, Eric put some of him under the carpet and all that...it was, you know, I think it was a sick joke that Graham would greatly have appreciated.
TS: I’m sure he would!
MP: So he was the star! We just...all we had to do was sit in chairs like little old men.
TS: How many people still recognize you, you know, when you make the documentaries, or when you’re on the...
MP: Four.
TS: ...street and...I’m sorry?
MP: Oh, sorry!
TS: That many?
MP: That many.
TS: See, I...I...I didn’t think it would be nearly that many!
MP: Four. And two of them are my family.
TS: I’m...I’m astounded by the multiplicity of it all! Yeah, no, you know, just from Monty Python, which hasn’t been in production now for some years, but I’m sure many people still know you from that...
MP: Yeah, Python gets played regularly. And it’s just gone on television for another year here on PBS. And, uh...the most remarkable places...we were starting the Full Circle journey on this tiny island in the Bering Strait. 180 Eskimos live on this bleak, treeless rock, and...
TS: In the Aleutians.
MP: No, it’s north of the Aleutians, it’s between Russia and America, you know, that 50 mile stretch of water...
TS: Russia and Alaska?
MP: Yeah, and...
TS: I always thought the Aleutians were...
MP: ...they’re further down. Yeah, that’s the bottom end of Alaska. I think! Anyway, we spent the day with them. They were very, very friendly to us - they let us film, and they were sort of cutting whale...gutting whales, and they said they’d take us off the island in whale skin boats...very very friendly. And as we were about to leave on the whale skin boat, a little party of Eskimos came down, and I thought there would be a sort of farewell deputation, and they looked at me a bit as I got in the boat, and one of them said, [cheesey American accent] "Hey! Aren’t you the guy from Monty Python & the Holy Grail?!" [TS laughs] They’d just seen it the night before on satellite! So, you know, even up there... I said, "NO, PLEASE! PLEASE don’t say that! Don’t say that, PLEASE! I’m supposed to be...supposed to be MILES from ANYWHERE!"
TS: Imagine, one of the four living way up there! It’s incredible! [MP laughs out loud] We will continue here with Michael Palin, whose new book is called "Hemingway’s Chair." We’ll explore that subject and get to you on the toll free right after this short time out.
[Return to the air with clip of the Fish Slapping Dance. TS cracks up.]
TS: You mentioned those are still running on PBS. They’re as good today as the day you made them. But does it bother you and the other cast members that...that it’s still on, or is it a compliment?
MP: Oh, I...I...FLATTERED, and...and it helps our retirement fund, and we get a little bit of royalties.
TS: Oh, good for you!
MP: Oh, absolutely! It’s nice to be remembered! Especially for things like that.
TS: Now, let me ask you here about "Hemingway’s Chair." And the inspiration for this book, as I read in the flap, as they say - the cover flap - the central character LOVES Ernest Hemingway.
MP: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is...this is his own private obsession. He himself is a man of little ambition - an assistant postmaster, whose big ambition in life is to be HEAD postmaster!, of a tiny village, that’s all! But he has this room at home, where his mother lives, upstairs room, which is dedicated entirely to Hemingway. He lives...lives through Hemingway, and talks to Hemingway, and so, there’s a very sort of slightly odd side to this guy that not many people know about. But by the end of the story, everyone knows.
TS: Having, through the years, heard stories and read stories about Mr. Hemingway, he, too, had several idiosyncracies, to put it mildly.
MP: Yeah. Yes. I mean, Hemingway was always sort of reinventing himself, and making up stories, which proved to be complete fibs later. I mean, he claimed to have slept with Mata Hari, the famous spy, in 1917 when he first went to Europe. And everyone thought, "Oh, well, you’re a real goer!" Then they find out Mata Hari died in 1915! [both laugh] So...
TS: Well, I wouldn’t guess that it was impossible!
MP: ...can’t be precluded. You have to be broad-minded! Yeah. Could be a ne...ne...anyway, whatever!
TS: Necrophiliac!
MP: Thank you! And, so, there was that, and he had sort of odd little habits. He loved cats. I think he had 56 cats, all of whose names he knew.
TS: And I’m told...I remember reading somewhere or hearing that he always stood up writing.
MP: Yeah.
TS: He had a tall desk, and he would write standing up.
MP: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. He did. Which is actually quite a good way to write. I’ve tried that myself. Actually, it’s much better. You don’t hunch over. And, uh, I think it came from the fact that he had a very bad back. He was accident-prone, Hemingway. Very ill most of the time. All sorts of strange things happened to him. There’s one wonderful picture of him in Paris in 1925, with a great bandage around his head, and he’s dressed in a ? Army uniform, and some women are sort of looking at him adoringly. It looks like he’s back from the war, this wounded hero. In fact a skylight fell on his head earlier that morning! That’s what the bandage is about! [TS laughs] And he had...he had car crashes on a fairly regular basis. And he’s the only man I know to have 2 air crashes in one flight! He was flying over Uganda and, uh [laughs] the plane crashed, and everyone sort of staggered out of the wreckage. He said, "Okay! We’ve got to get on!" And so they hired another plane, came in, and that crashed about 40 feet further on!
TS: Wasn’t his day, was it?
MP: No, wasn’t his day. But he got a refund, and the air miles are still secure...
TS: Now, when you and the other people who became members of Monty Python went to the BBC, to pitch this show before it ever went on the air, what was your pitch?
MP: Uh, well! We told them what we knew about the show. They said, "Can you tell us what this show is?" So we said, "Well, what do you want to know?" "Well, what’s the title?" Um, well, we didn’t have a title. We said, "UM, we’re not sure about that." "Well, does it have a musical element?" [long pause] "UH...we’re not sure...don’t think so..." "And will there be star guests, anything like that?" "Uh, star guests...[longer pause] don’t know about that..." [TS laughs] Anyway, it was the world’s worst job interview...
TS: I was gonna say!
MP: ...and this guy who was head of Light Entertainment at the BBC stood up and said, "Alright! I’ll give you 13 shows, but THAT’S ALL!" [TS laughs out loud] Ah, those were the good ol’ days at the BBC!
TS: Doesn’t work that way any more, I’ll tell ya!
MP: Wouldn’t, no, absolutely, we’d have been kicked out. Wouldn’t be allowed in!
TS: And how did the name "Monty Python" come to you? Where did that come from?
MP: Well, we wanted the program NOT to...the TITLE not to mean anything, not to give anything away. We were rather happy with a title like "IT’S." We just wanted it to be called "IT’S!" The BBC said, "That’s ridiculous! It’s got to be...have a proper title, and WE think the idea of ‘Flying Circus’ is a good...something ‘Flying Circus.’" And we thought "Why?" But they said, "No no, this is..." So we said, "Alright, we’ll keep the ‘Flying Circus’ if we can invent a name to go with it." And so we looked out for names...
[tells Gwen Dibley story, which gets big laugh from TS and crew]
...but quite rightly John said she could sue us for all we’ve got! So in the end, we sat around and had to beat out a name, and someone suggested Python, and someone came up with the name to go with it, Monty Python. It sounded like some terribly smooth, sharp, you know, agent somewhere...
TS: Hip. But very hip, you know?
MP: Is it?
TS: Yeah! Monty Python is hip!
MP: Well, anyway, we went to the BBC and they said. "‘Monty Python’s Flying’...what...what does that MEAN?! You can have it if you want, but everyone’s gonna know the show as ‘Flying Circus’ in the future!" And...how wrong they were, as we say.
TS: Yeah...one of the great titles of all time. I remember, as a young broadcaster, I did a show in Philadelphia called "The Wave Machine," that’s what the guy who...the producer wanted to call it, "The Wave Machine." And I said, "Why would you give it that name?" He said, "Because this show is gonna make waves!" [MP laughs] Well, after the first show, there was a slight gurgle in South Philadelphia, and it disappeared from the airwaves after one little performance!
MP: [laughing] It’s a "Wave Goodbye...the Wave Goodbye Show!"
TS: You used the word "IT" or "IT’S" - you were gonna call it "IT" ?
MP: "IT’S." Yeah.
TS: I remember a guy once pitched me a show - it was gonna be called "IT." And...and that was the title of the show! "IT" !
MP: That’s...even neater!
TS: Yeah! And I said, "I don’t think that’ll work." And he said, "Why?" And I said, "Because if it’s no good, the review is gonna be very short. ‘IT stinks!’" [MP laughs] Let me pause her for the...for the uh...for the uh...[rolls eyes] for the viewers?
voice from crew: The affiliates!
TS: The affiliates and the sponsors! The affiliates, by the way, WILL be at the CBS photo sale first thing tomorrow! [everyone laughs] Your chance to meet a CBS affiliate-owner! Michael Palin is the guest, "Hemingway’s Chair" is his first novel, which is doing smashingly well. We’ll be right back with you on the toll free, as I said the last time, but I MEAN it this time! After these messages...
TS: With Michael Palin who is the author of his first novel called "Hemingway’s Chair," here is Walt on the toll-free in Linden, New Jersey. Hi, Walt, and welcome to CBS. Hello!
Walt: Tom, how are ya!
TS: Walt, I’m just fine! How ‘bout yourself?
Walt: Oh, I’m hangin’ in there!
TS: Well, me too, kid!
Walt: Enjoying your color t.v.
TS: Thank...oh, very good, Sir, very good! [points finger at camera] Take it easy now, Walt, you know!
Walt: Okay! [everyone laughs] My question for Mike...
TS: Sure...
Walt: Mike...
MP: Yes Walt?
Walt: Ah! [loses track of thought because Michael Palin has just spoken to him!] Uh, when you did the live stage shows for Monty Python...
MP: Mm. [makes about 17 different facial expressions to show that he’s listening]
Walt: ..is there any one either, like, most embarrassing, or something, experience that ever happened that you can really recall and tell us about that, uh, really got you in trouble somehow [MP and TS look at each other funny because Walt won’t stop talking!], or got the troupe in trouble? That was all improv, I guess it was, wasn’t it?
TS: Walt! Walt! We got it, buddy, okay?! [TS and Walt laugh]
Walt: Okay!
TS: Okay, 555, Walt, here’s the answer!
MP: Yeah, uh, well, you’ve caught me on the hop, but I do remember on the last day of our...
TS: Wait. He caught you on?
MP: "The hop." It’s an English word. It’s...
TS: Meaning?
MP: Uh, well, one, on one leg.
TS: Oh, okay!
MP: I wasn’t prepared for that one. So, "On the hop. Do you not have that?
TS: We don’t do that here.
MP: AT the hop, you have that?
TS: You’ve caught me on the spot. Or, You’ve put me on the spot.
MP: Oh, okay! Walt, are you still there or have you gone to sleep?!
TS: Oh, Walt is still there! No, no! Walt’s the kind...
Walt: I’m still here!
MP: Yeah, that’s fine! I’m going to try to give you SOME sort of answer!
TS: Yeah, believe me, Michael, Walt doesn’t sleep this time of the night! Walt is just getting star...
Walt: ...only on Friday nights!
TS: ...Walt is just getting under way!
MP: Well, Walt, you will appreciate this, but on the last show, I woke up in the morning,sorry, the last DAY of our shows in New York, I woke up in the morning, two shows still to go, and I’d lost my voice. Actor’s total nightmare. Could barely speak. And so during that day, they got various doctors along to the theatre to come and have a look at my throat, and a lot of them wouldn’t look into my mouth until I’d PAID them $40 or whatever it was! And Graham Chapman, who is a doctor, wanted to help out. And in the first sketch of the show, Graham played a Mexican lady, so there was this man [gestures how tall Graham was] dressed in an enormous, pink Mexican outfit with a wig on, and scarlet lipstick, and, uh, a pipe, looking in my mouth. And the doctor sort of looked at Graham and said, Excuse me! Could you mind going away?! He said, I AM a doctor, you know! Anyway, the two doctors, Graham in his dress and the other doctor, finally abandoned all hope, and the only way I managed to actually get away with it was, a friend called Neil Innes gave me a quarter bottle of Scotch so I just drank that. He said, Whether you lose your voice or not, you won’t care! [TS laughs]
And I had to do one very long speech fairly early on, and I got through it, just CROAKED my way through, FINALLY got to the end, and John, to whom I was delivering it, stopped for a minute and said, Uh, sorry, didn’t quite catch that. [everyone laughs out loud] TALL BASTARD! That’s what happens when you’re 5"...smaller than people. Anyway, is that enough, Walt? [more laughter]
Walt: That sounds good to me!
MP: Good!
Walt: I enjoyed it!
MP: [laughing] THANK you! You can go back to...
TS: Walt, have a good time, buddy, but take it easy now!
Walt: Okay!
TS: Okay! Thanks for watching, thanks for calling, Sir!
Walt: Goodnight, everybody!
MP: Goodnight!
TS: Uh, not quite yet, Walt, just goodnight to you, Sir! Okay?
Walt: Okay!
TS: Okay! Goodnight, Walt!
Walt: Bye bye!
TS: [looks off camera] Phew! They start early out there, don’t they?! [laughs] What about, when you were in New York doing the shows, publicity photographs, that sort of thing? Did you have to do that sort of work?
MP: Um. Uh. [looks at ceiling perplexed]
TS: [pantomimes yelling through a bullhorn] With the horses near Central Park!
MP: Oh! [bursts out laughing] Funnily enough, we had to photos with the horses near Central Park! You’re kind of psychic!
TS: Well, I want to get you off the hop as fast as I can here! [MP laughs] I know how it is on the hop, believe me!
MP: Wasn’t publicity. We happened to be standing in Central Park, near where the, um...
TS: ...where the horses are...
MP: ...the horses and the cars came by...
TS: The handsome cabs.
MP: Yeah. And we were doing a shot. And Terry Jones had just bought a new coat. And it was the seventies, so people bought these very shaggy coats. And Terry’s coat was wonderful, sort of furry and it looked glorious! And about halfway through the photograph, this horse from behind him suddenly went [there is no way to transcribe the visual effect of MP imitating the horse. It’s hilarious.] GOINK! and took a chunk out of Terry’s shoulder! [everyone laughs] I don’t know if it was going to mate with it, it or thought it was a rival or something like that, but half Terry’s sleeve hung off. And Terry [starts to imitate Jones’ voice] suddenly got very indignant, high-pitched, said, "THAT’S MY NEW COAT! OY! OY!" He said to the man, you know, who drives the car, "THATS MY COAT! HE’S GOT HALF MY COAT IN HIS MOUTH!" And, of course, everyone around and about was sort of falling about with laughter! It was...
TS: That’s very, very funny, but...
MP: ...it was VERY funny, because Terry was very indignant...
TS: But tell us, how the horse went again, when he bit him.
MP: GOINK!! [everyone cracks up, MP feigns a look of great dignity] Not like llamas! Llamas go GWAK *spit* [laughter from everyone] Spit at you. Sorry! All over your suit!
TS: [laughing] No, that’s okay! Didn’t get any on me!
MP: I won’t do it again!
TS: No, didn’t get any on me. Don’t worry about it.
MP: Went right past!
TS: What about camels?
MP: Ha, ha, ha. They ride straight on into town, don’t they? Ha, ha! [everyone laughs]
TS: [to camera] That’s a little inside joke! We shared a story during the break that I can’t share with you tonight. God knows I’d LIKE to, but tonight is not the night! I don’t want my picture on sale out there tomorrow, okay?! Now, you live in London, or just outside?
MP: Well, I like to think it’s in London. About, sort of fifty minutes drive from the center on a good day, two hours in rush hour.
TS: And, like, do your fans, or do people know where you live?
MP: Yeah, I mean...
TS: ...like here, people have the stars’...
MP: I’ve lived in the same neighborhood for thirty years, so most people know. But young children who’ve recently moved into the neighborhood come by, and they’re told Michael Palin lives there. And they don’t know who I am! But they come by and ring the doorbell, I go down [rolling his eyes] and they say, "Is Michael Palin here?" and I say, "No, he’s away," and they say, "When’s he coming back?" I say, "Oh, maybe a year, two years." And off they go! They have no idea who I am!
TS: And that satisfies them.
MP: Yeah. But then, I am away an awful lot. In fact, my eldest son, Tom...my family’s so used to it now, that when I went...started on Full Circle, it was going to be ten months filming. Apparently, a week after I’d gone, my eldest son Tom appeared in the kitchen and said, "Where’s Dad?" And they said, "Oh, he’s gone around the Pacific."
"Oh. So, when’s he coming back?"
"Um, ooh, about eight months!"
TS: So when you go off to make these documentaries, you’re gone for a considerable amount of time! Like Full Circle, how many miles did you travel to complete that?
MP: Fifty-thousand miles.
TS: Alright!
MP: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And you enjoy that greatly, don’t you?
MP: I think I do, yeah. I enjoy coming home! I’m not a kind of escapist traveler I don’t always want to get away! But I’m curious. I do want to see what Siberia looks like, or what Burma looks like. And what parts of northern Los Angeles...
TS: Out of all the places you’ve been, what was the biggest surprise? What surprised you the most?
MP: Well, actually, it was Siberia. A place called Kamchatka. Just incredible place of such beauty, I mean, it makes Yellowstone look like a sort of small Disney exhibit. It’s about twenty...
TS: STEADY! STEADY!
MP: Sorry! Okay! It makes Yellowstone look as beautiful and as wonderful as it is! And it is great. But, no, the fact was, there was this area with twenty-five volcanoes, active volcanoes, some of them, amazing thermal hot springs and all that, and nobody there AT ALL. And it’s just...you wonder, where are all the visitors?
TS: Kamchatka?
MP: No one can get there! But it was just a stunning surprise.
TS: And the name is Kamchatka?
MP: Kamchatka, yeah. And you CAN get there now. Alaskan Airlines do a flight to Petropavlosk which is near by, and if you’re interested in salmon fishing, apparently no one’s fished those waters for hundreds of years and the salmon are just...they’re just desperate for someone to get them out!
TS: Catch the meat, smoke them.
MP: Yeah!
TS: It’s a joy to be in your company as always, Mr. Palin! I thank you for coming in tonight.
MP: Thank you!
TS: Be well and I hope that this is a smashing success. Mr. Palin’s newest book is called "Hemingway’s Chair." With my guest, Michael Palin.
