Enclosed is a typed-up version of a piece Palin & Jones wrote for the

English humour magazine Punch in 1972. They'd been asked to write some kind

of diary as they slogged around Canada, and this is what they came up with

(probably over the course of one rather silly night, by the look of it).

I've never seen this reproduced anywhere, ever. It was only reprinted once,

in the magazine's 1972 annual, and after that: nada. So for completism's

sake, I'm sending it to Pythonet, so that more people get to see it.

Courtesy of A Cheffie

MONTY PYTHON’S TOUR OF CANADA

June 2nd: THE TRIUMPHANT ARRIVAL IN TORONTO

An on-the-spot eye-witness account of events as they happened by BERTRAND RUSSELL

Hello! I expect you thought I was dead. Well let’s get one thing clear from the start: I’m not Bertrand Russell the philosopher, and quite frankly I’m getting pretty fed up with people coming up to me at parties and saying: "Oh, I thought you were dead." It’s the sort of joke that wears pretty thin, you know. I can’t even go down to the Labour Exchange without some half-wit yelling out, "Here comes the famous dead philosopher!" Not that I need to go down to the Labour Exchange anyway… well… not a lot, but times are a bit… how shall I say… a bit… er… thin for us philosophers… Not that I’m a philosopher! That’s the other one. He’s the famous philosopher. I’m just a journalist trying to scrape a meagre pittance out of the filthy, degrading commerce of the gutter press and its ilk. Urgh! Oh yes! My thoughts on the meaning of life and the Development of Thought in the Western World didn’t even make the About Town section of the Toronto Herald. 72,000 close-typed foolscap pages – with practically no margin – on the Cultural Achievements Of The Modern World, and all I get is a rejection slip! All right – perhaps it wasn’t good… perhaps I had got one or two little things – piddling little unimportant, pointless little things – wrong, but does that give someone else the right to pour scorn on two whole weekends of toil and labour? They could just have pointed out that there were a few inaccuracies in the text… like Bertrand Russell (yes – the other one) not being a dwarf… and asked me to change them. Heavens above, I can take a hint! Anyway, now that we’ve cleared that up, and I do assure you that I haven’t taken it quite philosophically, I can get on to…

June 4th: THE GLAMOROUS FIRST NIGHT AT THE ST. LAWRENCE CENTRE, TORONTO

A report from WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL

Hello! Let’s get one thing clear from the start: I’m not that Winston Spencer Churchill. Nor am I his son. I’m not going to go on about it like Bertrand Russell (not the famous philosopher) does about his name, because thank goodness, I’ve come to terms with it. It doesn’t worry me. Mind you it does become a bit of a bloody bore when people come up to you at parties and say: "What was Stalin really like at Yalta?" And I’m not saying I don’t sometimes wish I had a perfectly ordinary name like Len Nol or Merlin Brando or Ben Rosewall. At least then I wouldn’t have to waste my entire column explai

June 7th: MONTY PYTHON ARRIVES IN MONTREAL

A report from our showbiz correspondent from the packed Place des Arts:

Hello! It’s me, Henry! It’s difficult to believe that in between negotiating new policy agreements with Red China, co-ordinating business interests in the new Soviet-U.S. Trade Agreements, consulting daily with President Nixon on a wide-ranging series of topics, constant liaison with the press and White House officials, keeping myself informed on the latest internal and external developments in the Far East, as well as doing all the shopping and helping with the housework, I still have time, as Showbiz correspondent, to see those wacky Python boys at the Place des Arts. I’d seen the show already in Cardiff, Glasgow (where I managed to see both performances), Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton, Southampton, Edinburgh, Norwich and Toronto, but then my mind was far too preoccupied with the truly awesome problems of East-West reconciliation for me to be able to spare more than a cursory glance at the stage. So this time, with the Chinese Commodity Controls Agreement virtually signed and sealed, and the Central Clearing Banks Agreement ratified, I was determined to give the show my undivided attention. As the curtain went up on this zany sextet, I couldn’t help thinking how pleasant international diplomacy can be in such a convivial and relaxed atmosphere. One of the funniest items in the Python repertoire set me to thinking how I had slipped a vital clause into the 1967 Cambodian Trade agreement, whilst watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk. My Cambodian friend was laughing so much that he readily agreed to an advantageous purchase of 127 Phantom fighters in addition to the ground control system I had clinched during the opening scenes. Yes! I thought to myself, as the Marty Robbins Circus drew to an end, World Diplomacy is a wonderful thing.

MONTY PYTHON IN BOTSWANA

Our correspondent writes:

Hello! Still no sign of Monty Python here in Botswana.

June 13th: WINNIPEG. FRESH FROM HEADY TRIUMPHS IN EASTERN CANADA, THE MONTY PYTHON TEAM ARRIVE IN THE PRAIRIES.

A report from the Centennial Theatre, Winnipeg, by YEHUDI MENUHIN

Hi! Wow! Zapee! Am I having the good time out here in Winnipeg! Zow! Bam! It’s grrreat! These Python boys certainly can grab an audience! I haven’t seen an audience so zonked since I played the Bartok unaccompanied violin sonata last month. I played as I’ve never played before. My fingers seemed possessed, dancing across the strings, as if each one had a life of its own! How the audience roared their approval! It was fantastic! They wouldn’t let me leave! I took bow after bow and still they asked for more! Of course, these Python boys didn’t get anything like that sort of reception, but the audience were pretty enthusiastic. If you can call a bit of applause enthusiastic. Personally when you’re used to the sort of response I usually get from an audience it seems pretty thin. In fact I felt if only I could have leapt on the stage and given them a few bars of the unaccompanied violin sonata I could have raised them to a pitch of excitement little short of frenzy, then I could have led them across Canada towards the West Coast, and taken over Vancouver and so on to World Domination. But what was the reaction of a Canadian audience to this essentially British show? Well they certainly laughed. But what is laughter compared to the rapture of an audience maddened with the wild rhythms of the unaccompanied violin sonata, lifting them higher and higher, driving them to the very rim of self-control, when the pent-up passions of the human soul crave for expression, crave for a leader, a leader who will stand at their head and point the way to the future – the way to a better world, where the destinies of ordinary men and women are controlled by a musical genius with a distinctive name! I will succeed! All human life will be at my command!

June 11th: CALGARY. WITHIN SIGHT OF THE CANADIAN ROCKIES AND THE MID-POINT OF PYTHON’S TRIUMPHAL TOUR.

A report from the logging correspondent: LISA MINELLI (No relation)

It was 197 below, when the coach left Frozen Creek on the 4,000 mile journey to the Southern Alberta Centre for the Arts. Even the milk was frozen in our milk chocolates, and a pack of wolves attacked us as our tickets were being given out by the Drama Group Organiser, Red Larsen. Red, the strongest, most fearless juvenile lead north of Goose Bay, was lucky to escape with a torn ear and two broken legs – no-one knew who they belonged to. Blizzards whipped the icy snow into 74-foot high drifts, as we drove south along the frozen Mackenzie River. Old-timers at the back of the coach said it was worse than the terrible journey of 1957, when only four members of the party survived to see Blithe Spirit at the Little Theatre, Saskatoon. On the 4th day out of Frozen Creek, I was finishing a Douglas Fir sandwich, when suddenly the glacier fell away, and our coach plunged a thousand feet into the raging waters of McMurdo’s Gorge. I felt myself grabbed by Big Frank Kelly, who made such a fabulous Natasha at the Yellowknife Festival of Arts & Lumber in 1971, and together we opened the emergency exit of the bus, grabbed the nearest stalls tickets, and struggled out into the icy tide. I felt Frank’s grip weaken, as the raging torrent hurled us past rocks and through vicious whirlpools. With our last breath we agreed to meet in the Foyer at 7.15. There was a sickening thud and all was black. Three days later I regained consciousness to find myself stranded in the weird subterranean darkness of the Athabaska Caverns, only 400 miles from the stalls entrance, I–K. Nineteen days after leaving Frozen Creek, I reached the theatre. I couldn’t believe it. There, in the bar, were Frank and Red Larsen, Moosejaw Morgan, and the one-eyed trapper Fenson. Red was hurt so bad he could hardly hold his programme, and Moosejaw died of his wounds halfway through the first act, but I was just glad to be alive, even though I was sitting behind a pillar.

June 20th: VANCOUVER. THE END OF THE TOUR.

A summary by our medical correspondent: CHRISTIAAN BARNARD (A relation, but not of that Christiaan Barnard)

Hello! Medically the tour was a great success. Heartbeats remained fairly constant, and blood pressures were generally average. Minor skin irritations were an ever-present, but none developed into full-scale fungal infections. In fact it was bloody boring, medically. I just read most of the time. Once I was on a tour when the leading lady caught scurvy. Othello came off one night and said he thought Desdemona had badly swollen gums. I gave her an examination after the bed chamber scene, and she claimed that Othello had a severe neck rash. And, believe it or not, it turned out that she had scurvy, and he had pellagra! Iago refused to go on until they were both on a vitamin diet, but one night an anonymous note was slipped under my door to the effect that Iago had worms. I later diagnosed belharzia not only in Iago, but also in Roderigo, his friend from Venice. Two nights later, anthrax decimated the chorus, Cassio’s fight scene had to be adapted because of his colostomy bag, and Brabantio couldn’t go on without an enema. Shakespearean productions are by far the most interesting medically, but I have seen cases of yellow fever in The Seagull, some very unpleasant boils in an otherwise perfectly hygienic revival of Private Lives, and a severe foot and mouth outbreak in Babes In the Wood at Leicester, during which the chorus had to go on through a dip.

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Written, produced, researched and spelling looked up by TERRY JONES and MIKE PALIN