Smarter Than The Average!

The next Amnesty show after The Secret Policeman’s Ball, tentatively titled by Billy Connolly Another Policeman’s Ball, was proposed to go ahead in December 1980, but was postponed for nine months because of the performers’ other work conflicts. It was not due to a lack of enthusiasm by any means – according to Martin Lewis, as quoted in the 13th November 1980 edition of the Times, the performers enjoyed doing the shows as they were able to meet other performers they otherwise wouldn’t have: “Peter Cook had not met Billy Connolly before [The Secret Policeman’s Ball]; they are now kicking around ideas for a show together”. This show was never realised, but Stephen Pile did have some fun taunting Dudley Moore with the proposed partnership in his interview printed in the Sunday the 21st of December 1980 edition of the Sunday Times. At some point during the interview Moore, wrote Pile, “started out talking about the challenges of serious roles, and the great relief of not having to play everything for laughs. But then I remembered Peter Cook saying that this was ‘Dudley’s standard interview’ so I tried to provoke him with news that Cook had found a new comedy partner. ‘Who?’ I told him about plans for a new show with Billy Connolly. ‘Oh great,’ he said and that was that. He poured his tea and drew attention to his sun tan”.

When Amnesty’s newest show finally went ahead as The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball on the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th of September 1981 at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, John Cleese was again asked to direct it. He agreed but assigned most of the directing duties to Ronald Eyre – the stage direction credit for this show reads “Stage Show Directed by Ronald Eyre Slightly Assisted by John Cleese”. Julian Temple directed the filming of the show, the first show designed to go to cinemas first then television second, and Cleese was notoriously unhappy with working with the famously difficult filmmaker. Having been spoilt by Roger Graef’s hands-off style of filmmaking, Cleese became very disgruntled by Temple’s lighting and coverage of the live show, and became very stubborn towards the film’s crew. At one point he refused to have any cameras on the stage, claiming that they would hamper the live audience’s enjoyment. Cleese believed purely in making a stage show and had no interest in how the film version would look – a belief which came back and haunted him when he later entered the film’s cutting rooms and asked the editors to edit some of the sketches as if they had been recorded for television. “Can we have a close-up of my reaction here?” he’d ask, only to hear editor Geoff Hogg’s reply: “No, you can’t, John, we haven’t got one”.

To be fair, Cleese was not entirely to blame for the lack of shots the editors had. Each night of the show was recorded with four 16mm cameras all supposed to be taking different shots of the performers from different angles. However, one night the cameramen’s radio mics failed so that when, backstage, Other Ball film director Julian Temple issued a command for one of the cameras to pan across or zoom in, the other three cameras would also hear this and do the same, so that what you ended up with in the editing room were four incredibly similar shots. And as there were no audience reaction shots recorded as coverage, the editor often had to cut jokes and/or leap from different night’s performances in the middle of a routine, and start and end all sets with not-ideal fade ins and outs. The one major casualty was Chekhov & The Gorilla, a sketch about two men and a gorilla discussing their production of The Cherry Orchard and starring John Bird, John Fortune and Chris Langham as the ape. On the night of the sketch’s first performance the cameraman thought that the lighting of this sketch was a bit dark so for the second night he rearranged them. After the second performance the same cameraman decided it didn’t still look right and so rearranged the lights again. By the last night, he still wasn’t totally happy with the lights but as it was the sketch’s final performance there was nothing he could do. The editors did as good a job as they could matching up the performances, making the scene a bit odd-looking but quite watchable, and said to still translate the live sketch’s hilarity to the screen. However, the cameraman, unhappy with his work and fearing that the sequence would make him look amateurish, demanded that they cut “that Gorilla sketch” as it was “so unfunny”, and so the sketch was removed and has never been seen since (though stills and a transcript appeared in The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball tie-in book of the time, and the audio was finally issued on The Complete Secret Policeman’s Other Ball CD in 1991).

Another source of Cleese’s discomfort at this show was that most of the old Amnesty stalwarts are missing – the show only features two Pythons, one Goodie and only one of Beyond The Fringe. In particular the show felt the absence of Peter Cook, who was away in Hollywood appearing as the butler in the CBS sitcom The Two Of Us (though he later narrated trailers and radio ads for the film of the show, of which his voice also appears for an introductory line at the start), and Michael Palin. An article to promote Palin’s guest appearance on The Innes Book Of Records printed in the 26th of September to 1st of October 1981 edition of the RadioTimes actually features a one-sided transcript of his phone conversation with one of the show’s organisers trying to pressure Palin into appearing at Other Ball. Palin turns down the show when asked by the show’s organiser what new material he has, to which he replies “I haven’t got anything there at the moment, and I know what it’s like. I don’t want to get up and do something not-so-hot, thinking it’s only one night, then have to cringe through the next eighteen months with the record-of-the-book-of-the-video-cassette. Plus, I have a movie which may go, it’s all set with money and things, and I need a month more at least to get into shape. Honestly, I really would get myself into a terrible mess”. (The movie was The Missionary which, though at the time of the article’s publication was not guaranteed production, began shooting in Spring the following year.) It’s not known if the voice on the other end of the line was John Cleese’s but Cleese later talked about Palin’s refusal to appear at Amnesty shows in David Morgan’s book Monty Python Speaks! (published by Avon Books in 1999): “Michael’s great aim in life is to be affable. And this makes him enormously pleasant and enormously good company, but infuriating if he doesn’t want to do something, or if he disagrees with something, because it’s almost impossible for him to say so at the time. And you find out about it slowly. I used to, for example, try and put the Amnesty shows together, and I’d ring up Mike and I’d say, ‘Do you think you’d be able to do it?’ And he would say without any apparent hesitation in his voice, ‘Oh yes, yes, yes.’ And I’d ring up again and say, ‘Are you still on?’ He’d say ‘Yes.’ And when I’d start to get specific, then suddenly I’d get a call saying, ‘You know, I’ve got to do this there and that there…’ and it would be much easier with Michael if he would say, ‘I don’t like that,’ or ‘I disagree with that’ straight off. But when he does that he risks his affability. So that’s the main problem with Michael”.

The absence of old-school comedians cleared the way for a new wave of alterative comedians to take the stage, some of whom Cleese was quite vocal in his dislike of. Cleese tells a tale in Kim ‘Howard’ Johnston’s Life Before And After Monty Python: The Solo Flights Of The Flying Circus (published by Plexus in 1993) about the childish unprofessionalism of Alexei Sayle. Sayle’s manager, not so coincidentally, was Martin Lewis, who had been grooming him for stardom for a year now – he had seen what The Secret Policeman’s Ball had done for Rowan Atkinson and was hoping for a similar result here. Up until now the only charity benefits Sayle had performed at were smaller scale, ‘agit-prop’ charity benefits, such as one for the Chile Solidarity Campaign held Sunday the 5th of April 1981 at the Theatre Royal, Stratford. His manic routine at The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball did indeed turn Sayle into a star, but infuriated Cleese in the process; Cleese is quoted as saying (and a possible slight exaggeration with regard to time) in the Wednesday the 30th of August 1989 edition of the Independent that Sayle, “like all the others, was asked to take three minutes out of his act and, instead, quite cold-bloodedly did six minutes longer”. This was some very odd behaviour from Sayle, who would be later quoted in the Saturday the 2^nd of January 1982 edition of the Sun as saying: “About the only other comedians I really admire are the Monty Python team. I think John Cleese is fantastic”. However, in 2008 Sayle, interviewed by Robin Ince for the Secret Policeman’s Ball podcast, recalled that behind the scenes of The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball “Cleese hated me. Well, Cleese kind of hated me, and his wife – one of his nineteen psychotherapist blonde American wives – absolutely [hated me]. I mean, I think she thought I was one of her patients. I mean, she couldn’t, you know, she couldn’t stand me”. (Sayle also revealed during this interview that at that show he was really only excited about meeting Alan Bennett, who he frightened so much as to cause him to sneak out of a conversation the pair were having.) Following this conflagration of personalities Alexei Sayle was not invited to perform at another Amnesty event for a decade, when Cleese was long out of organising them (though Sayle did send Amnesty a “Self Portrait With Stubble” to print in the theatre programme and tie-in book for the 1987 benefit).

The gap left by the old guard was, in addition to alternative comics, filled by more music acts than had ever performed at an Amnesty benefit before. Martin Lewis, fuelled by the success of Pete Townshend at the last show, more than tripled the amount of rock stars on the bill this time around, managing to secure performances from Sting, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Donovan, and, making his debut into the world of charity galas, Bob Geldof. Cleese explained what he felt about this aspect of The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball over a decade later in Life Before And After Monty Python: “That one wasn’t so much fun, just from a personal point of view. The first shows consisted of old friends and acquaintances getting together and doing bits. It was a very cooperative and friendly feeling. That show, pop people started arriving in large numbers, all of them travelling with entourages, like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton used to do. So, instead of being surrounded backstage by people whom you knew, and whom you could josh, there were hundreds of strangers standing around, and you didn’t know who they were or who they were with”. He had previously been printed as saying much the same in the Wednesday the 30th of August 1989 edition of the Independent, where he noted that “when I did the one in ’81, there was an atmosphere around that I didn’t care for. Some of these pop people are incapable of appearing without these strange emaciated entourages, and you will find the wings are packed with total strangers. And there was this feeling that it was a chance for people to advance their careers”. In the same article Jennifer Saunders shared similar reservations: “You get called in at nine-fifteen, and at six you’re still waiting because U2 haven’t finished their soundcheck”.

The feature film version of The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball was released in the UK at the end of March 1982 and was an instant hit – Amnesty projected profits of £200,000 by the end of its UK theatrical run; Martin Lewis projected as high as £500,000. It was heavily promoted by Lewis – not only did he insist that the film end with a specially-shot monologue by Michael Palin, reprising his role as a janitor from A Poke In The Eye (With A Sharp Stick) and urging the audience to buy various items, both real and fictitious, of Secret Policeman merchandise, but he also organised a spoof award ceremony, The Other Awards, at a cinema on Regent Street following a screening of the film. It was due to be held at BAFTA’s own 200-seater theatre around the corner on Piccadilly, but the British Academy got wind of the show’s satirical intent four days before it was due to take place and cancelled the £2,500 booking, causing a minor scandal in the Monday the 15th of March 1982 newspapers. Peter Cook was the host, announcing the award-winners from the increasingly expanding envelopes. There were supposed to be sixteen awards of Martin Lewis’ creation given out, with all the winners being prearranged – “Tonight,” Cook promised at the event’s start, “there will be absolutely no suspense” – but this number was reduced when not every winner could show up; absentees included Eric Clapton and Donovan, the latter set to accept ‘The Award For Reminding Us How Silly We Were All In ’60s’ – though Cook replaced Martin Lewis’ word “Silly” with “Sensible”. Those that did turn up to accept their awards were: Bob Geldof; Rowan Atkinson, who won for ‘Best Use Of Silly Noises In A Sketch About Bee-keeping’ and whose speech consisted of only two words: “I’m speechless”; Billy Connolly, who won for ‘Best Portrayal Of A Glaswegian Called Billy Connolly’ and thanked most of the world for making him so popular; Sting, who won ‘Best Solo Performance By A Rock Star Whose Name Sounds Like String’; and John Bird, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke- Taylor, who together won ‘Best Performance By Three Grown Men In Gymslips And Pigtails’. John Cleese and Pamela Stephenson won the ‘Best Striptease By A Male And Female Comedy Team’ award, and accepted their award by having a bearded Cleese passionately kiss Peter Cook before stating “I’m sorry I can’t be here tonight, but I’d like to thank myself for receiving this award in my place”. Later that night, he went on to describe Amnesty as “a bunch of pinkoe, tennis-shoe-wearing, untrustworthy, slant-eyed little gits”. Many of the award categories and a picture of the award itself – a little silver statue of Colin Wheeler’s cross-dressing Policeman of the show’s publicity materials – appeared on film posters for The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball, and footage of the event aired on BBC1 during the 6:25pm to 6:55pm segment of Nationwide on Thursday the 18th of March 1982, mere hours before David Frost hosted the genuine BAFTA Awards at 9.30pm on ITV. “Next year,” promised Martin Lewis of The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball in the Thursday the 18th of March 1982 edition of the Evening Standard, “this film will sweep BAFTA’s own awards”.

UK press ad for The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball incorporating an Other Award and several winners.

Not long after all this promotion it leaked out that Martin Lewis, producer of all the previous films of Amnesty stage shows, had a three-year contract in which he received ten percent of the profits raised by all products with the Secret Policeman name on them – books, films, records, the lot. This rather explains why he continued to push Island Records into making commercials for books and LPs starring the likes of Michael Palin and Peter Cook – they cost him nothing and made him a fortune. The week that The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball opened in Los Angeles, with a projected US profit of £500,000, Stephen Pile revealed Lewis’ money-making in the Sunday the 21st of March 1982 issue of the Sunday Times as part of an article titled “The row… after the ball is over”. According to the piece the shows’ performers and filmmakers quizzed Peter Walker as to whether the rumour was true. “I told them about Martin’s ten per cent,” Walker told Pile, “I thought a commission would concentrate his mind wonderfully”. There were other secrets Walker didn’t explain, however, such as why Martin Lewis’ company invoiced Amnesty for £6,024 profits from the first Ball on Wednesday the 31st of March 1982, exactly three months before his Other Ball contract was signed, or why Walker wrote in a letter to appease the Musicians’ Union that “all profits” from the LPs would be going to Amnesty (with an identical promise being printed on the back of the LPs themselves) when he knew about Lewis’ contract.

The same article also quotes an annoyed John Wells – “I find it absolutely amazing. We did it all for nothing” – and John Cleese, who told Pile: “It really is rather odd. I think that, since the public gives this money, all the figures should be out in the open. After the show I never hear anything from Amnesty. I mean, I don’t even know how much we made last time”. He added, referring to Lewis’ cut of the film’s projected profits, “I really think that £50,000 is rather a lot. The co-producer [Peter Walker] made nothing”. Martin Lewis was also interviewed for the piece, and defended his actions by pointing out that, wrote Stephen Pile, he “worked like a beaver on the project since September, losing two stone in the process” and that “a charity broker would have charged between 10 and 15 per cent before expenses were deducted”. Lewis summed up his achievements with the statement: “I don’t mean to boast, but without my endeavours there probably wouldn’t have been a show”. Amnesty International agreed.

Lewis’ percentage left the papers for a while, but returned after less than four months when it was reported on the second page of the Guardian on Thursday the 1st of July 1982. It was now in the news again because, though Amnesty hoped to hold another benefit, several of the performers and crew associated with the previous Balls were “likely to boycott another charity show” because of Lewis’ percentage. (An article on page 5 of the next day’s edition of the Times reported much the same.) According to the Guardian Julian Temple refused to direct any further shows, Billy Connolly “sent Amnesty a short and frank letter”, while John Cleese claimed that “I didn’t realise that Martin Lewis or anyone else was on a percentage”, adding that though he would continue to help Amnesty International “but I don’t think that I’d want to do another show in the knowledge that Martin Lewis was getting ten per cent”. Lewis, about whom the article was most uncomplimentary – it referred to him as having “no experience of the film industry apart from the Amnesty ventures” – is quoted as defending himself by saying that previous sales agents for Amnesty had failed to sell the films of the earlier shows. “Since last August,” he said, “I have spent ninety per cent of my time on the project. I have had two roles – as paid producer and as commercial agent. The minimum Amnesty would have had to pay someone else would be 15 per cent of the gross, not of the profits. That’s my naiveté. I’ll know better next time”.

On Saturday the 3rd of July 1982 the Guardian printed on page 6 two letters in defence of Martin Lewis’ actions. The first was from Terry Jones, who pointed out the entirely valid argument that “since the Amnesty shows were first started several years ago, Martin Lewis has given free many months of his time, rather than just turning up for the four nights of the performance as I did. I would imagine his involvement in the current film consumed the whole of this last year, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to work for a whole year for nothing. So, as I understand it, there is no question but that he should have been paid for his efforts on this particular film”. He added that, whether or not you thought the ten percent figure was too much, Lewis should be congratulated on making the events so successful as they are, Other Ball having made over £100,000 in its five months on release.

The other letter was from Martin Lewis himself, unsurprisingly agreeing with Terry Jones’ thoughts (and taking great offence at the writer saying that he had “no experience of the film industry”). “Unfortunately for those seeking a juicy scandal,” he wrote, “the simple facts, instead, tell a wonderful success story of which Amnesty and I are rightly proud”. He pointed out that sales agents and distributors had always been taking percentages on Amnesty shows, and that whereas theirs had always been between fifteen and fifty percent, Lewis reiterated that he “only accepted 10 per cent. Furthermore, all the previous agents took percentages of the gross proceeds – before Amnesty had paid its costs. My percentage is only of its net profit – after all costs have been deducted”. He also stated that “John Cleese, God bless him, is being a little naive not to realise that anyone was ‘on a percentage’”.

Soon after this Martin Lewis moved permanently to Los Angeles where he successfully continued his career as producer and writer, and later branched out into performing. Although Amnesty now had their reservations about using the Secret Policeman name, Lewis, who owned a selection of rights and rushes to the Amnesty shows, went on to release several Secret Policeman-named compilations and documentaries, including The Secret Policeman’s Private Parts (a 1983 TV compilation for HBO which was released on video internationally (but not in the UK) by Miramax in 1984), The Secret Policeman’s Rock Concert (1984), The Secret Policeman’s Concert (a compilation of Amnesty music performances made for MTV in 1992), and The Secret Policeman’s Retro Ball! (a documentary on music at Amnesty galas made for VH1 in 1992). In addition to these he produced the CDs The Complete A Poke In The Eye (With A Sharp Stick) and The Complete Secret Policeman’s Other Ball in 1991, and Dead Parrot Society in 1993 – all these CDs, like The Secret Policeman’s Private Parts, included previously unreleased live performances from the various benefit galas. Also among his prolific work for Amnesty he co-produced the pre-Other Ball rock concert Sky At Westminster Abbey (shown on BBC2 on Thursday the 12th of March 1981), worked on the six Conspiracy of Hope concerts which took place from Tuesday the 4th to Saturday the 15th of June 1986, the last of which aired live from noon to 11pm on MTV, and conceived and developed with Amnesty USA Executive Director Jack Healey the Human Rights Now! World Tour, twenty concerts in nineteen nations over six weeks in 1988.

Martin Lewis’ last public comment on John Cleese was made in January 1993 in his sleevenotes for Dead Parrot Society: “These days, I live in America and still find that the first thing most Americans ask me about is British comedy. ‘Do you know any of the Pythons?’ ‘What is John Cleese really like?’ The answers are ‘Yes’ and ‘I plead the Fifth!’”.

To take a slight diversion off-topic, it shall be pointed out that John Cleese wasn’t the only comedian to fall out with Martin Lewis during the eighties – it appears that the character of Mr Saunders, Alexei Sayle’s fictional ex-manager in Alexei Sayle and Oscar Zarate’s graphic novel Geoffrey The Tube Train And The Fat Comedian (published by Methuen in 1987), is a vicious caricature of Alexei Sayle’s real-life ex-manager Martin Lewis. The story, narrated first-person by a fictional version of Sayle, is presumably based on true events: “Just as a new-wave comedy spawned new-wave venues, it also spawned new-wave sharks and the one I signed with was the alternative equivalent of a giant killer white. His name was Mr Saunders. He approached me at some benefit. Said I needed a manager. Make me a star. At the time he seemed a nice guy – surely he wouldn’t rip me off. After all, the guy was left-wing – then, so was Pol Pot. The contract I signed was the same ten-year-one the P.O.W.s on the Changi railroad signed. After three years of exploitation I told Mr Saunders to piss off… Seven minutes later the injunction arrived. Mr Saunders’s accountant had told me to put all my assets in the name of my rubber plant. It turned out my rubber plant was in league with Mr Saunders. I had no money. No apartment. Still…”. Later in the book, Alexei stalks the elusive Mr Saunders as part of a revenge plot – note the reference to producing “charity comedy galas”: “It took me all afternoon to find him, crossing off all the places in the listings magazines as I went. He was at a ‘Season of Unfunny Old Films’ at the National Film Theatre. There he sat in the puzzled dark. Mr Saunders. All his working life Mr Saunders had been into comedy. He produced comedy records, managed comedians, produced charity comedy galas and yet was totally without a sense of humour. So why was he so obsessed with comedy? After a couple of years I figured out that for the normally humorous, humour is a kind of code; a single word or gesture can crack-up a group of friends, but to the humourless, laughter seems to break out at random all around them and that is why they become involved in comedy – to try and crack the code”. The character eventually (warning: spoiler coming up) meets a gruesome decapitation, with Alexei Sayle using the tube train of the title as the murder weapon.

“This movie must be banned before it turns us all into weirdos!”: Graham Chapman in the Martin Lewis-directed US television advert for The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball. Note the birdcage in the background – it contains a parrot nailed upside-down to its perch, naturally.

Martin Lewis’ percentage wasn’t the only Other Ball ‘cut’ that offended John Cleese, as later in the year it was discovered by the Pythons that for the film’s distribution in the US (released theatrically there on Friday the 21st of May 1982) the newly-created production company Miramax had edited The Secret Policeman’s Ball and The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball into one film, yet still called it The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball. The main cause of offense was that the clips selected were the most ‘American-friendly’ ones (the video sleeve sums it up best, stating as it does that the film featured “Peter Cook of television’s The Two Of Us”) and was heavily promoted as being the latest Monty Python film – indeed, Graham Chapman was called in to appear in some TV and theatrical ads, written and directed by Martin Lewis, in which he plays an angry member of the “Oral Majority”, even making an appearance as this character on the Saturday the 22nd May 1982 edition of Saturday Night Live. (Saturday Night Live, ironically, aired on NBC, the station that had refused to run the Oral Majority ads.)

A Python-heavy American press ad for The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball, as printed in the Friday the 18th of June 1982 edition of the New York Times.

The reason this salesmanship offended the Pythons so much was because when they learnt of how the film was being sold they were at that moment putting the finishing touches to what was a genuine Monty Python film, Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life. “It’s a very tricky situation,” a Python spokesman was quoted as saying in the Thursday the 14th of October 1982 issue of the Daily Express, “because Python don’t want to sue Amnesty – they respect the cause. But they’re very, very angry about this film”. The US film was then further re-edited for video release, adding some new material and removing others. In the UK too the original Other Ball was similarly re-edited for its video release from VideoSpace, including some unseen material – namely Sting singing Roxanne, a Jasper Carrott’s monologue about Australian motor insurance claims and Dame Edna Everage talking about the Royal Australian Prostate Foundation – but omitting Billy Connolly’s routine about drinking and John Cleese and Pamela Stephenson’s legendary stripping sketch, Clothes Off!. The original film’s editor Geoff Hogg was at the time unaware that this re-editing was taking place, and was more than a little angry when he viewed this version for the first time recently after picking it up on video at a car boot sale.

So now we find ourselves back in the year 1983, and in the six years since he created the comedy charity benefit, John Cleese has seen the once-pure concept ruined by what he perceives to be superstar egos, dishonest commercialism and immoral corruption. Surely no-one can begrudge him that, when asked if An Evening At Court could be recorded, he very flatly refused, stating that he’d “been ripped off with The Secret Policeman’s Ball”. And that is why, in a world where obscurities like Mermaid Frolics or even Hysteria 3 can easily be purchased on DVD, An Evening At Court will forever remain lost.

So now you know. Be sure to return for our final instalment in which we bring the story right up to date, exploring what Amnesty did next both with and without the involvement of John Cleese.

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