A DESERT DAWN OVER AN ARIZONA SKY AS THE SUN RISES OVER PHOENIX. CANDY STRIPES OF CLOUD LIE LIKE THE AMERICAN FLAG BEHIND BIG GLASS OFFICE BLOCKS. WE SEEM TO BE IN A CRATER, AS DIRECTLY AHEAD OF ME ARE RED, bare, sharp-toothed hills with jagged peaks covered in scrub. The hills are treeless, though our hotel is surrounded by bushy olive trees. To my right an odd-shaped pair of mountains piled up like camel poop give the name to this region: Camelpoop. Sorry—Camelback. Now as I sit and write at my desk in the window of the Ritz-Carlton the sky turns fierce orange and fiery red and baby blue behind the neon signs of the AMC cinema. The low-angled sun lights up the Macy’s sign with gold. I contemplate the meaning of life and decide to go shopping. Perhaps that’s it? Maybe I should write Zen and the Art of Shopping. All those malls I have trolled; all those hotels; all those audiences; all coming to an end. Soon we, too, dear reader, must part. I think of you as my imaginary friend. It has been fun talking to myself publicly. I always loved that Roger Miller line “I may be schizophrenic but at least I’ve got each other.”
You Yanks naturally assume that we Brits are all homosexual—which is very nice of you—but we are in fact like all boys, just sexuals. If there had been a goat farm next door to my school—my wife would be wearing fur.
Often forgotten at a show like this are all the backstage people who get paid so little and are so rarely thanked: and so tonight will be no exception.
There is a funny story about Michael in the press.
No matter where you look, even in some of the remotest parts of the planet, you can’t avoid Monty Python. Just ask Michael Palin. The Monty Python member was recently in the Himalayas making the latest in his series of travel programs. As he climbed a peak in the Annapurna group, making a steep ascent of one of the highest mountains in the world, he stopped to catch his breath. At that moment a pair of mountain climbers came by. They saw Palin. “And one of them turned to me,” recalls Palin, “and said, ‘Oh my God! Eric Idle!’”
Oddly appropriate that our penultimate gig is in a tin shed near a flyover somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It won’t be hard to give this up. After the show we pile into the buses for pizza and our final ride home.