IN NORTHAMPTON WE DO THE BEST SHOW WE HAVE EVER DONE. IT MAY BE THE BEST SHOW I HAVE EVER DONE IN MY LIFE. THE COMBINATION OF A night off and a young crowd lifted us into somewhere really dynamic. We have up to now been playing to a theater crowd and this was our first real college experience and boy were we in the right playing field. The house was packed. They were on their feet doing “YMCA” before the “Spam Song.” I felt loose and free at the same time, kept the pace going, and yet was able to wander off text at will. Thank you, Eddie.
All religions seem to dislike breasts, but it ’ s just the opposite with me.
I’m dreadfully horny. Perhaps it’s the rocking of the bus. Perhaps it’s the prednisone kicking in. When my lovely lady wife heard I was taking prednisone she warned me severely to behave myself. When she took it, things became incredibly steamy. (Thanks, Doc, by the way.) I miss her terribly. I wonder if Palin has these pangs, jigging about on the back of a camel.
When my first marriage broke up I went off to Australia. It ’s where English people go to have emotions. It ’s summer in the winter and there are beautiful half-naked sheilas on the beaches. George said to me, “You’re going to Australia?” Yes. “So you’ll be flying over India?” Yes. “That ’s pretty heavy,” he said. “I ’m going to give you something.”
Twenty-seven years now and I’m still nuts about Tania. Can that be healthy? I met her in New York on January 28, 1977, and it was lust at first sight. I had been in Barbados for Christmas with Lorne Michaels and Paul Simon, and stayed on for several weeks, after I met Ricky Fataar on a beach. He invited me to move into Heron Bay, a magnificent Palladian villa built by Ronald Tree in the forties, in which a year later we would write the final draft of The Life of Brian. It was currently being rented by a Baron Bingham, who did mysterious things for a living—for which he would eventually spend some time as a guest of the U.S. government. Mustachioed ex-Vietnam helicopter pilots would arrive in the middle of the night for mysterious meetings. Ricky and I carefully ignored everything that was going on and concentrated instead on drinking endless rum punches brought by a very old Bajan butler called Mister Brown, a small dark man as wrinkly as an old nut, who had served Churchill in this very same house. Ricky and I played guitar all day in the beautiful formal gardens and swam in the Caribbean and watched sunsets, while I totally transformed my life. Baron, a very generous chap, served no meat at his table, so during the four weeks I was his houseguest I became a fishetarian. I haven’t eaten meat since. After my first marriage broke up, I am saddened to relate, I had not been an utterly chaste human being; indeed I had become in George Harrison’s immortal phrase “a bit of a shagnasty.”
I was happily unmarried for a while, helped in my irresponsible behavior by Carinthia, my beautiful, leggy landlady. She, very kindly, told all her friends that I was gay, and, one after another, they slipped downstairs to see if they could rescue me. No one seemed to notice just how easy it was. These naughty habits continued in Barbados, until one morning, I woke up on a beach with sandy knees beside a young Canadian of whose name I had not the slightest recollection and realized that this had to stop. It was obsessive behavior and not that much fun. I don’t discount the advice and support of my spiritual chum George, from whose influence I wore an Ohm sign around my neck.
So I ’m on my way to the airport and a beautiful package arrives with a peacock feather—and it says “Not to be opened until over India.” Wow!
So ten hours into the flight I look down and there’s this huge brown land mass and I think, right, it ’ s time. So I take down the package and I ’m thinking this is great: the meaning of life from the spiritual Beatle—and I open it up and pull out a little card and there in George’s handwriting it says, “Shag a sheila for me!”
For all these very good reasons I suddenly abandoned all sexual activity and began to live chastely for the first time since maturity. So come the freezing January day I stepped onto the tarmac in New York I was long-haired, chaste, healthy, and bronzed. It was ninety-four degrees when I left Barbados and sixteen in New York, and Lorne Michaels kindly sent a car and an overcoat to meet me. I went straight to NBC for Saturday Night Live, hosted that week by Fran Tarkington. Afterward there were a couple of parties, one a chic uptown party filled with fashion models, where I sat, smugly thankful I had given up all that, and a second, downtown at Dan Aykroyd’s loft. We arrived at Bond Street in the Bowery in Paul Simon’s big white limo and took the rattly old freight elevator up to the superheated loft that Dan shared with some others. (They kept the sauna on all night and day since they had hooked their electricity supply into the car rental company downstairs.) Eventually Lorne and Paul said they were moving on and they would send the limo back for me. I wasn’t tired, and I decided to hang for a while. I was standing by the sink when a tall, beautiful, dark-haired woman came up and introduced herself as one of the hosts. She asked me if I would like to dance. I had been on the dance floor all of twelve seconds when I became utterly overwhelmed. I am not exaggerating. I realized in a sudden, powerful, and utterly convincing moment that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I can’t explain it. It just came to me in a pheromonic flash that this was the woman for me, that I should on no account let her go until I had explained what had just happened and at least try and persuade her that I was serious. Love at first sight. Does it exist? All I can say is that I have never been as certain of anything in my life. Every gene in my body wanted this woman. I quickly hustled her out of her back door and well…we kissed. And kissed. And kissed. We were out there for about two hours. In fact we were out there so long some of her guests thought she’d left. I’m not sure that she really believed me, that this was completely crucial, but I did tell her that I was deadly serious and that there was no way I was ever going to leave her side. I must have convinced her, or perhaps she just fancied me, because I have never left her side since that night. Twenty-seven years ago. It still seems amazing to me. How could I know so overwhelmingly? She brought sense and balance into my life, and after a time she persuaded me that I could be a parent again and brought me a beautiful daughter and in a million ways changed my life, so that I am now the sixth nicest Python and not the nineteenth as I was then. And now where is she when I need her??? Grrr. I talk to my lovely daughter, Lily, on the phone, and she is happy she has won another basketball game. I have to hear her voice morning and night. I am a fortunate dad. My son, Carey, is a lovely chap, too, and he e-mails me sweetly from time to time. He is proud of me for being on the road, and though he lives in Australia he comes through at least twice a year.
George was always on at me to be more spiritual. He’d say things like “Leave your dick alone.”
I didn’t like to leave my dick alone. It got lonely.
Good evening, ladies and Bruces, my name is Bruce. This here is Bruce. And this here is Bruce. And we are all from the Philosophical Department of the University of Woolamoolloo, Australia, where we teach thinking and drinking. I teach Classical Philosophy, Bruce here teaches Hegelian Philosophy, and Bruce is in charge of the sheep dip.