It's nice...

Finished Halfway to Hollywood. Not as interesting as Palin's first batch of diaries. Too much focus on money, doing deals and hob-nobbing with producers this time around, in contrast to the wide-eyed excitement and naivety of The Python Years. Nice that Hull made the pages, mind, in a 1985 entry. MP's parents lived down Victoria Avenue, which is just around the corner from us. He also nips into ye olde gas-lit Nellies, in Beverley, where my mate Martin once crawled on the floor having dropped some money - he couldn't find it in the dim passage where the cig machine stands. All the book's done is put me off my joint-favourite Python (Gilliam being the other) a little bit - he gets a bit pretentious about his scriptwriting, dithers about and can't make decisions about pursuing his acting, is unproductive for a couple of years when he gets suckered into chairing a sustainable transport lobbying body and generally doesn't make the most of the opportunities that he's presented with. He leaves us as he's about to embark on his 80 Days... travels which changed his career for, in my opinion, the worst. He's still thoroughly, annoyingly, infuriatingly nice throughout. A director friend of ours worked with MP on Alan Bleasdale's GBH. "What's he like?" I asked. "He's nice. Really, really nice." I suppose the biggest surprise having read these two massive volumes is that there are no real surprises.