Episode 16. Perth
“And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space

‘Cos there’s bugger all down here in Perth.”

The line comes to me at the sound check and I can’t resist risking it in the show. Mercifully they roar with laughter. It shows they know the real line and appreciate the local change. The audiences in Perth are very smart and very quick. We have another lot in tonight and then we turn our backs on the Indian Ocean and fly East once more to our two final cities of Sydney and Melbourne and then just like that, for us Australia will be over. I have grown very fond of it over the forty years I have been coming and it is amazing to see how enormously the cities have changed even in the eight years since I was last here. There is a multi-cultural confidence now, gone are the knee-jerk inferiority complexes of the sixties and seventies. This is a big world, growing fast, that is a far cry from the old Okker world of RSL’s and old men in clubs settling things privately.

I wake up at 6 with a big cloud hanging over the horizon and a fringe of distant rain patterning the pale peach of dawn. I am faintly depressed. Maybe anxious is more close to it. The show could not have gone better last night. A crowd of 2,400 gave us standing ovations, and laughed throughout the show, but one of the things I have been doing recently is reading through the audience questions and I find them vaguely depressing. Hard to explain why. Then an unkind tweet gets to me, when somebody says that John Cleese is much funnier than I am. Well duh, I’ve known that for 53 years. It’s not a competition it’s a doubles match. What makes the show fun for both of us is that having a partner on stage removes the anxiety and stress of being alone. We cover for each other, pick up cues, interject new thoughts… It’s a surprisingly easy partnership and we get along very well. We also observe each other on stage and almost never disagree. Last night we did the Bookshop stretch better than we have ever done it. We were tight and spot on. And we both noticed.

For a start we were both very relaxed, having had two days off. In my case I had acupuncture for my torn tendon and spent hours in the pool working out my dodgy ankle, so that by the start of the show I am feeling much better. Then we had two great dinners together, one at Kailis Bros in Leederville, and the other at the beautiful Matilda Bay Restaurant, which overlooks the water, during which Jupiter rose huge and golden as we dined. I always find the Universe comforting when humanity seems frustrating. The world does seem to be at least choosing which handbag it wants to go to hell in, and here in Perth the brash Kardashian Trump world of brazen bullshit all seems so very far away. Australians, too, seem grateful for being miles away from the horrible headlines and safer from the crisis of Isis and the insane threats of the mad Korean with the silly haircut, and as we have observed before Australians are very funny and have a great sense of irony. So why am I feeling anxious?

Well Michael White died yesterday, and even though I haven’t seen much of him for many years that is the breaking of a thread which leads all the way back to the Sixties when he picked up the Cambridge Footlights revue and took it to London, which meant that I received an urgent telegram in Berlin, where I was hitch hiking round Germany to return urgently to Cambridge for rehearsals to fill in for John Cleese and co at The Edinburgh Festival in August 1963. A big break for me, singing and performing in a wonderful show, and a great chance to experience audiences, and even appear on TV for the first time. Michael White also helped put together Monty Python and The Holy Grail, though he balked when I took him The Life of Brian. He did however put on my play Pass The Butler, at the Globe Theatre in the West End, directed by Johnny Lynn, and kindly ran it for several months, despite critical abuse, until the Falklands War put an end to all of that enjoying yourself nonsense, and the country could grow grim with war.

So what do I do about the tweet I felt bad about? Do I simply rise above it all, send the Twatter a rude tweet or just ignore it? It’s difficult for me to turn the other cheek. Usually I turn the other cheeky and hand out abuse. The most sensible thing to do is to take Peter Cook’s advice from Beyond The Fringe: “Put on the kettle and have a nice hot cup of tea.”

One cup of Lapsang Chousong later.

That’s better. If I don’t look on the bright side who the hell should? I always say I’m an optimist in the morning and a pessimist at night. So:  Reasons to be cheerful Part Deux. 

Firstly it is my son’s birthday and maddeningly even though he lives in Australia I’m on the wrong side of the Continent for it. However he is going to come and visit me in May. So Happy Birthday son, you brought light and love into my life and I’m grateful to your Aussie mum for giving you an Australian heritage and the chance to live in Queensland, where she was born.

  Secondly my wife is arriving in Sydney on Saturday and she is always very sweet on the road, supportive, thoughtful and very lovely. It does seem amazing we have been together for 39 years and though John snorts contemptuously that it reeks of lack of ambition to be still with the same woman, I am grateful to be with the gal I fell in love with at first sight in January 1977, a startled young Chicagoan whom I told I would never leave, and then stuck to like glue. Thanks Tania for all those years. It would be an understatement to say I can be a difficult bastard, but the great thing about having a wife is you only get to disappoint one woman. And women on the whole are nicer and far more forgiving.

So finally I went back and re read the tweet that had upset me last night and guess what, there are three other tweets from the same guy saying how much he loved the show, how singing along to the Bright Side was a highlight of his life and how grateful he was for the show. So there. It was my mood. It’s odd what we look for. Insecurity is never very far from the performer. Show me a man on stage without some self doubt and I’ll show you an asshole. And I do mean Donald Trump.

So now if this rain cloud will also pass I can get in the pool and have my acupuncture and not forget to laugh and smile and dance and sing.

There was a big response to the thank you letter I wrote to the wonderful David Bowie for lending me his house on Mustique. Here is another Doreen letter. A fax this time, thanking him for a Mediterranean cruise which he took us on with Iman, where we had a lot of laughs.

A Fax: To David

From: Eric, Tania and Doreen.

July 1991

      The chip pan hasn’t stopped frying once since we got back, Doreen has been that keen to take away the taste of all that mucky foreign food she’s sure we ate while we were abroad. “In foreign parts” Doreen calls it, with more than a trace of single-entendre. Mike was a Gourmet chef we told her but Doreen only snorted contemptuously and said Eydie Gorme was a singer and couldn’t cook to save a lobsters life. So its been beans, beans, beans,fry ups, bacon butties and chips with everything since notre retour.

      The snaps of the cruise came back from the Chemists and Doreen thinks Captain Jeff is a dish. What a hunk! He reminds her of an old boyfriend from Redditch, a motorcycle mechanic who was the fastest thing on a saddle, before being sadly crushed at a Slade Concert, in a sudden rush for the doors. Simon, she thought, an absolute treasure.

“If lips could talk I bet there’d be a volume in those.”

But the two girls worried her.

 “Girls at sea are so susceptible to sailors” said Doreen.
  “I know I was. And that was just in Birmingham, without all that rolling around on water.”    

Natasha, the English one, looked “a bit too nice”, and Doreen knows how fast nice girls can turn when in port, (or in sherry). As for the other girl, Eva, “Well” as Doreen put it delicately, “She’s not only foreign she’s a Dane, and look what Danish girls did to Hamlet. One went bonkers and the other was his mother!”

She’s had a soft spot for Hamlet ever since little Mel Gibson played the big Scandinavian schizophrenic with the heart of gold for that nice Italian gentleman, Signor Whatsirelli, as Doreen calls him. 

      She also liked the hunk below stairs, the blond boy from the Navy. She likes engineers, “they’re very good with their hands, and I bet he’s seen a porthole or two. So who’s the cuddly balding little feller?”

  “That’s Richard” I said,

“Uhm looks like Dick to me” she remarked obliquely.

And when I told her he was the mate, she said she wouldn’t mind mating with him any day; or the little dishy one, who looked like a young Gary Lineker. Such a nice boy, with a great pair of thighs.

“I bet he has natural ball sense.”

“Neil,” I said.

“I’d kneel any day” she said pouring another glass of Vino Huddersfield, on special offer from Tescos, with a label design by Prince Charles in aid of Save the Soviet Whales from Aids Trust. She wondered if the crew would like a nice pin-up of her for their quarters – she knows how sailors get.

“I was for a while Miss Redditch” she said.

And who, after all would miss Redditch?

    Doreen knows a thing or two when it comes to sailors. “I’ve had them up to here,” she said mystifyingly touching her armpits. In fact lets face it, she’s cruised Birmingham from top to bottom in her better days as one of the most popular Hotel Receptionists in the Midlands and also claims that when she was a Nurse she took part in one of the greatest ever Naval Operations of all time, at the Selly Oak Hospital, when Lt. Commander Ronson became Mrs Janet Twigge. Doreen claims to have held the scissors, and swears there is a video of the whole operation. But you can only get it if you sleep with Richard Branson, so that’s out.

      David she thinks looks far too thin, and as for that Somalian girl, well stand her sideways and you won’t know she’s there. Thin as a Polish couture rail. So she has offered to turn that pastry cook off the boat and come over for a couple of weeks of good old honest to God English puddings, spotted dick, jam roly-poly, semolina and toad in the hole, which Doreen swears she does as a “an after” with pineapple chunks to give it that Hawaiian flavour. She found the recipe in a copy of Yes Mum, her favourite magazine which is mainly pictures of the Queen Mum, knitting patterns and recipes for Gin pudding.

      She thinks she could do something with the boat, but honestly it’s going to take a lot of work. The decor is a disgrace in her view. There’s not a bit of dayglo on the ship and “you can’t have a cruise without raffia.” She would like to do the whole thing over again from stem to stern (and that Captain too given half a chance). She’d like to choose a motif for each floor, one layer orange, the next floor pink, the next Thames mud etc and use some really exciting vibrant materials to cheer up the place – she wonders if you like plaid, because they have some exciting new tartans coming out of Milton Keynes designed by the Duchess of York for Lyn Wyatt’s nouvelle Texan Palace and they look really great on a wall with antelope heads or zebra skin rugs. She also has her eye on some linoleum flooring which would replace that boring white carpeting that she says is so passé. Looks like a toilet paper commercial in her view.

“All that’s missing is the fluffy dog and the Andrex.”

Well you know our Doreen, how she gets after a couple of Babycham. She turned up her nose at the French champagne we bought at the airport at only seven times the normal price. Really they are bandits at the airport. I was compelled to pay ten pounds to use the toilet by a fat sweaty woman of middle-eastern origin, who was growing enough hair under her armpits to fill a duvet – I had nothing smaller and I was bursting. When I asked for some change she pretended not to speak a word of English. I ask you, and running a foreign toilet.

      Well David dear I must close, there has been a major pile up at Spaghetti junction – so must dash. Doreen wants some pictures. She’s doing a talk for the WI on Horrible Deaths, part of her work with the abled to help them cope with life.

      Next year Doreen suggests you take a nice English holiday for a change instead of always dabbling in foreign parts. “What’s wrong with Skegness for a couple of weeks? Or even Rhyll if you must go abroad?”

      She sends her love and suggests that your album cover would look great if only you’d put a nice pair of Y-fronts on that Greek boy. Some things are better left to the imagination she says…

           Love to all as ever,

Eric, Tania & of course Doreen.

India!
Well not quite. The Indian Ocean anyway. The sun is rising golden across the Western desert shining all the way across Australia. We chased it all evening to the edges of the Indian Ocean emerging into a warm dark moonless night in Perth, with an unfamiliar bright star, which the driver assured me was Venus. I’m so upside down here I have to take his word for it. Anyway it’s very bright. And of course I know Venus is not a star, and I will check it out tonight with my little travel binos and my Starwalk app. Do you think I was born yesterday? No I didn’t think you did.   

Now the sun is glinting off the lights of the WACA, which as anyone sensible knows is the Western Australian Cricket Ground. It’s only six a.m.and it looks like it’s going to be a hot one. The flags are flapping on their poles so I’m wondering if the legendary Doctor is in town. This is the Fremantle Doctor, or Freo, a local summer wind off the Ocean which brings some relief in the afternoons.

It’s a public holiday here and Simon, the God of Travel, with a fresh haircut, announces he and the crew ( Simon and Anthony) are going to go to Rockness Island for a day off.

“What’s there?” asks John.

“The Rock Ness Monster” I suggest, and even the driver laughs.

A pleasant four hour flight from Canberra, though these planes are not built for John. He can hardly get out of his seat he is so tall, and an upright posture in the loo is out of the question. He performs a series of stretches in the Galley to the secret delight of the Business Passengers.

Qantas treat us nicely of course, and the lovely stewardess up the sharp end unfortunately manages somehow to spill hot water on her breasts. I ask if she has put ice on them, and she says yes, and I say that while I am not a doctor, if she needs any cream rubbed on them I am happy to help.

Turns out laughter is not the best medicine, but she cracks a rye smile and goes off to feel better.

John and I often observe that you don’t have to go very far in Australia without humour breaking out. We think it’s because it’s such a wonderful life here, and the people are happy and exercise and take weekends off. Unlike our dear cousins in America, who work all the time, have poor wages, almost no holidays and ugly billionaires yell at them for wanting health care. As I say on the show “the trouble with political jokes is occasionally they get elected.” A joke I shamelessly stole from a tea towel in Caloundra market. I have a good one of my own which is on a hotel wall in, I think, San Jose.

 “A lot has been said about politics, some of it complimentary but most of it accurate.”

As I said the other night, if Trump gets elected, the rest of the world may want to build a wall to keep him in.

It’s Labour Day here. A public holiday but only in Western Australia, the other States have other days. It’s a relief for us as it gives us a chance to catch up and deal with the accumulating laundry. A comedy army marches on its undies, (says The Napoleon of Mirth) and we have been moving so fast we are grateful for a couple of days to sort ourselves out.

I’m limping like a one legged lemur, so I have acupuncture scheduled for tomorrow. This tendonitis is a big p in the a as it means I can’t wander about and explore which is what I like to do in a new city. And Perth is virtually a new city. I haven’t been here since December 20th 2007 when John Du Prez conducted the Western Australia Orchestra and the Cantillation Massed Choir in Not The Messiah our comic oratorio, based on the Life of Brian and Handel (with care). It went over big and as it was late December I remember John and I did an encore with a small electric keyboard and sang Fuck Christmas, which totally collapsed the orchestra, choir and audience equally.

 I’m writing in bed lit by the sun. It’s only 7 a.m. but I have to draw the curtains it’s already so hot. I shall shortly explore the executive lounge for my executive breakfast. Executive is becoming a word with almost no meaning. I use the Executive Toilets, and dial the Executive telephone and do my Executive laundry. It simply seems to mean you have paid more.

I’m pondering a trip to the Margaret Valley but I have so much catching up to do. A diarists job is never done, as I tell Michael Palin and I got a cheap laugh at his expense in Canberra, saying I have a very rare unsigned copy of a Michael Palin Book…. Well he does go everywhere and sign the damn things. John and I discuss the new Gilliam book, which I say is surprisingly well written, and John wonders who wrote it and gets my laugh. I suspect his girls had a hand in it but it is a very nicely designed book and I am being encouraged to sign more copies of it surreptitiously as I did in Eumundi. Someone even sends me a picture of a shelf load of his and Michael’s books in Sydney and suggests I sign them when I’m there. I reply that I assume they have already sold out of all my books…. And of course you can’t sign my latest as it’s only available electronically on Kindle etc. It’s called The Writer’s Cut and if you haven’t downloaded it yet, shame on you. Are you expecting me to write for you forever for free…?

We had great audiences in Adelaide, one with the Pope and one with Cardinal Pell. (Sorry local joke.) More than two and a half thousand on Saturday and almost that number again on our second show who were very raucous for a Sunday night and who experienced our first heckler. A Brit of course, who yells out unintelligibly, so I ask him if he has had enough to drink? Of course no one can hear a word he says so I run off a few one liners about the rude Poms which goes over well, and since he still won’t stop I remember something Robin Williams did to a persistent heckler the night I first met him in London in 1980. I got the entire audience to pray for the death of this unfortunate man. Thank you Robin. And it makes a nice change me taking your jokes… Oh alright bitter posthumous kidding and I never minded him using my material at all because he always took me on great holidays, and I had no other outlet for gags anyway back then.

I remember saying to David Bowie once after a Robin show that I found it hilarious. “You should ” said David “you said most of it at dinner…”

Well I was happy to be Whistler to Robin’s Oscar. I just wish the fucker was still here. In fact both of the fuckers. Dammit.

The heckler was ejected at half time, claiming that he had been going to Python shows since the 90’s and part of Python shows is you heckle the act. He is clearly deluded since the last live Python show was in 1980 and we never had hecklers. They would have had to be insane to have six Pythons mad at them…

Perhaps because of his unwanted contribution the show killed and I have never heard so much volume of laughs on John’s solo gags. I felt rather timid about following him with my little rude songs.

 On the plane from Canberra I wrote a joke for Wednesday…

Yesterday was the marriage of Australian Billionaire Rupert Murdoch to Jerry Hall. “I am the luckiest man in the world” said Mick Jagger.

I don’t think I’ll use it.
 

Our single show in Canberra pulled in 2,600 people to The Convention Centre and we showed pictures of our smashing stay at the Jamala Wildlife Resort, ending up with a photo of us both in the Python enclosure being fed a tin of Spam, which I am happy to say is being retweeted by Conservation groups, because the Cheetah, and indeed far too many species are in danger of being extinct in 15 years. Only 3,000 left in the wild. The white rhino has gone although we tickled three young ones at the Canberra zoo.

I had an early gag for the tour I wanted to try:

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen, the white rhino has just become extinct, and I’m not feeling too good myself…”

But I can’t decide whether it’s funny or too sad.

Answers on a plain postcard to Perth. We’re here Wednesday and Thursday if you’re in the area.

Happy Labour Day. 

Jamala Wild Life LodgeSaturday 5th March.

I’m woken to a golden sunrise by the screeching a of a dozen white cockatoos, standing in the tree outside my room, head feathers held high. In the distance lions roar. In the lobby, some closer ancestors, two large colobus monkeys with long white feathered tails try and pretend it isn’t morning.

Thursday afternoon we came bouncing into Canberra via Melbourne through some heavy thunderclouds and dramatic flashes of lightning, and were left sitting on the Tarmac for a while, as it was deemed too dangerous for the ground crew to approach our Qantas flight. Even when they let us off it would be another two or three hours before anyone was permitted on to the apron to unload our bags. Fortunately for us St. Simon whisks us into a People Carrier and sends us barrelling off down the road beyond Canberra to our extraordinary destination, a wild life safari lodge perched beside the dam of a beautiful reservoir. For the public it’s the National Zoo and Aquarium of Canberra, but for we lucky few who get to stay here two whole nights it’s the Jamala Wild Life Lodge, where for the even more fortunate you can get to share your quarters with a Bengal tiger, brown lions, a brown bear, a sun bear or a cheetah. Richard Tindale the owner has built special bungalows with glass walls abutting their dens where your animal sleeps right beside you. We sit in one with an extraordinarily beautiful Bengal tiger who doesn’t bat an eye as he lies napping on his straw. After all this is his place. We are the visitors. You can take a bath beside him if you book this bungalow. In fact the place is so popular you can only stay three nights. John brilliantly found it in the Qantas Magazine and being, let us say, less than enamoured of the charms of Canberra suggested we stay here. Mercifully we got the last two rooms, John in the Lemur suite and me the Hyena. I haven’t yet even seen Canberra, though according to our personalised tour guides we play there tonight at a sold out Royal Theatre.

Our day off begins with breakfast on the terrace. Two very beautiful spotted hyenas idly watch us. Shortly we will get to feed these beautiful and friendly animals, who are not the only ones to have received a vile reputation from Hollywood. Meanwhile beneath us we watch four white lions released roaring from their pens each with huge chunks of meat in their mouths, which they take off into separate patches of shade in their pleasant grassy wooded enclosure. Next it’s another pair of white lions, a brother and sister, who romp into their own world. I watch the huge white male patiently ripping apart his fresh meat breakfast, his extraordinary jaws crushing and tearing the food, licking and probing, crunching and chewing, until nothing remains and they sit contentedly licking their chops. Both John and I have a picture taken with Jake, while Misha, the most beautiful female sits placidly by. You’ll be able to see the pictures we took of our trip on their website jamalawildlifelodge.com.au or more likely their face book jamalawildlifelodge.  It might take me a while to get mine over to them but they’ll probably post the Python Feeding Time picture soon.

All the staff led by Maurits de Graeff are charming and helpful but today our guides are Russell Jackson and Renee Osterloh, and they show us through the huge sea water tanks of sharks and the indoor aquarium, and then help us feed two most endearing spotted hyenas. Soon they whisk us away from the public where John is politely denying he is a zoo animal to tourists  wishing to photograph him and we head off on a golf cart to see the new areas under construction. As well as Emus and Elands, and capuchins and giraffes, and lemurs, and Tree Kangaroos from New Guinea, and a wonderfully odd Tasmanian devil, we get up close and personal with two adorable young dingos, we wander amongst the patient wallabies, and then get to meet a cheetah. That’s right. We get to meet a cheetah. Kyle and Amanda give us safety instructions and then we’re in through the gates, patting this most beautiful creature as he chews on a large leg. Luckily not one of ours. Sadly there are only 3,000 of these amazing animals left in the wild, and in fifteen years they may well become extinct. Kyle McDonald and Amanda Hadley explain that this petting programme is part of an outreach programme to teach people about these creatures, who are being killed off by farmers in Namibia and South Africa to protect their goats and sheep from predation. Perfectly understandable he says, and the only way we can save them is from a new programme of providing the farmers with a large breed of heavy dog, which protects the herds and which will see off any cheetah and predator. These dogs are provided free, and food and all vet costs are also supplied by the programme, and so far it appears to be working. No cheetah will risk an attack on a herd which is protected by a large dog, and will go elsewhere. You can contribute to this programme. John and I are considering a suitable name for a dog.

After many moving moments with the cheetah we pose inside the pen for pictures as Pythons, awaiting feeding time. Someone has thoughtfully provided a can of spam. We mug away, and the cheetah comes and sits behind us, perhaps puzzled by the antics of these antique comics. He makes a wonderful purring noise. We do what we can to spread the word. After all surely we cannot let all these wonderful animals just fade into extinction. This place is not only a tourist resort and a zoo, but also part of an integrated conservation programme, so please if you can, support them in the amazing work they are doing. Or imagine a world with no animals.

As a reward for being fed Spam for the cameras we are led to the bear enclosure where we spoon feed sweet food to a gentle and affectionate brown bear, who has, like many of these creatures, been rescued from a Circus. There is very little chance of John and I being rescued from our particular flying circus, but our hosts treat us so kindly and spoil us so much that we spend all day either being fed or feeding animals. Our final exploit of the day is in the Aquarium where an enormous tawny nurse shark is basking on the sand at the bottom of his tank, but is soon wakened by a kick on the side of the glass by Renee and comes racing up for a bucket of crayfish, which he eats with a loud plosive plop, the noise he makes as he sucks in the squid with extremely powerful suction from the reefs where he lives. John gets down and pats this very friendly but enormous tawny shark.

I don’t have time to tell you of all our adventures here, or all about the kind and friendly people who work here, or the great food served up by Sarah, and the amazing Chef, but thank you Teneal and everyone I haven’t mentioned for making us so at home. I can only encourage you all to come and visit this extraordinary place. I wish I was a bit more competent technologically to transfer our many great pictures to this blog, but I can’t dammit. We are going to try and show a few tonight in our stage show, and I’ll tweet a few but I have to rush right now, as it is feeding time with John Cleese and then sadly we have to pack up and run off back to join the Flying Circus…..