Rewatching Monty Python's Flying Circus

[neveragain]

In this case, those are the least of my worries. There's a lowering black cloud overhead and wasps buzzing around with their arse-daggers primed. How dare I not enjoy something as much as I used to when I was fifteen. How fucking dare I.

Oh fuck off. Would you rather nobody replied? Except to agree like the acolytes you criticise Cleese for having. Because, as Revelator mentioned, you do not discuss any points raised after your first spew of vitriol.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

^^^ The conversation has moved beyond that now.

[Revelator]

Looks like my Pythons in Punch post didn't survive the board hack. It'll take a while to re-transcribe the articles from the original post, but luckily I have another article ready for you. The following was written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones and appeared in the March 19, 1975 issue of Punch:

A Writer's Guide to Springtime

April Showers
A popular item for Spring writers, but in these days of neo-Realism it's a meteorological non-starter. (See Weather Records 1910-1969—H.M. Stationery Office.) Strictly for tunesmiths and plumbing catalogues. Not to be handled by Novelists, Playwrights or contributors to the Spectator.

Sunshine
Artistically one of the most treacherous subjects around, for the modern author who really wants to be taken seriously. Probably the best thing is never to mention Sunshine at all, but if it is absolutely inescapable, confine your references to how weak it is through the heavy steel bars of the makeshift tenement room which serves as her prison, or simply remark on its absence on this day which seems like any other day to the tough cop from 42nd Street as he picked his way through the human detritus that littered the sidewalk outside Fabrizzi's All-Night Hot Pie & Cocaine Parlour on the corner of 96th and 7th Avenue.

Blossom
Hopeless. Never touch it. It can do your novel/poem/Reith Lecture absolutely NO GOOD WHATSOEVER. It is the instant switch-off for all thinking people. The word "blossom" in any work (particularly a Reith Lecture) inevitably indicates that the Writer's mind was not on his job. Probably he was wondering why two of his fingernails were longer than the others when he when wrote it, or else he was wondering why the military take-over in Chile had become such an accepted fait accompli in the Western press.

The Little Birds upon the Woodland Spray, Giving Voice to the New Season of Hope and the Renewal of Life
You might as well give up now. If this is the sort of thing you want to write about, forget it. There are vacancies for catering staff at the Brize Norton Service Station. NO ONE wants to read about little birds, hope or the renewal of life nowadays! Man's needs arc more than fulfilled by the wonderful range of products available from Lever Bros. or Beechams, and it's no good trying to turn the clock back to the year dot with wishy-washy ideas about Nature and the Simple Life. If God hadn't meant Man to live in a modern consumer society, he wouldn't have allowed Lever Bros. or Beechams to achieve their current growth rate despite adverse trading conditions and continued dividend restraint.

Pretty Flowers
An interesting one for the socio/politico/economo writer who can draw attention to the great advantages of modem medical progress especially in the new rational approach to pretty flowers. No longer need they be left to clutter-up orchards, flower-beds or greenhouses. Pretty Flowers have now become an essential requirement for medical inspection by non-medical persons (N.M.P). In the old days (O.D.) relatives (R.) or even friends (F.) laboured under the misapprehension (M.) that a visit to a sick person was actually assisting in some way with the treatment. But now that, mercifully, the awful burden of medical knowledge is safely in the hands of the medical profession (D.R., B.M.A., A.M.A., F.R.S., F.R.C.P.S.), Non-Medical Persons (N.M.Ps) who still insist on turning up at the hospital should be given some suitable care substitute (C.S.) and this means Pretty Flowers. They are harmless, do no good, and provide work for florists, while at the same time distracting the attention of the patient from the fact that the hospital has taken his left leg off by mistake.

Simonizing the Car
A really good subject for the modern author. T here's no need to feel embarrassed by the large amounts of money offered to you by a certain car-wax firm for introducing this delightful seasonal topic. There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with money. It is a perfectly natural aspect of diurnal change and is acceptable in either cheques or (preferably) ready cash. I myself would not be at all intimidated by a certain car-wax firm offering ME money...no matter how small an amount, as a little "thank you" for bringing up this topic to which our thoughts so often stray as Spring works its old magic, and which really ensures a lasting shine and all-year-round protection for the car. Cheques or cash should be sent to
Terry Jones & Michael Palin
The William Davis Home For Gentlemen Writers,
Mannheim-on-Trent.

Lil-lets
I'm afraid I can't recommend this product quite as highly. I have tried to get used to them but, quite honestly, they make my nose tickle, and have made np appreciable difference to the amount I smoke. Personally I prefer Greenham-Whitley's "Oral Cement". After one dose it's impossible to get a cigarette in the mouth. It can lead to premature termination of the organic functions (D.E.A.T.H.) if you get it up the nose as well, but since medical treatment is free under the National Health, it's worth the very small risk, which is anyway minimal to say the least. Still any publicity is better than no publicity, as they say, so if either of these firms wishes to send any little "thank you" the above address goes for them too. Anyway back to Spring.

The Rising Sap
For the completely un-commercial author, who has no interest whatsoever in making money, this kind of topic may be worth including if you have to, but it's not really what Spring is all about, is it? especially when Tesco are offering 5% off all brand products for their APRIL BONUS OFFER, and just down the road at Waitrose orange juice and novelty tights are 16% off! If you buy some of their old haddock as well. Yes! This is truly the time of year when the heart leaps. The genuine Writer can realise extra gratis payments which need not be recorded for tax purposes, and which do much good in bringing to the public's notice truly money-saving offers in a charming and seasonal way.

Daisies
No difficult moral decisions here for the Writer. Carter's Seeds are definitely the best. And while you're at it, why not try mentioning the new Atco Electric Lawnmowers. These, together with the "Elax" Adjustable Garden Seat by Woolman's of Grantham provide ideal surroundings for you to drink your Pimms from the elegant "Waterfall" range of glasses by Duralex—available at any branch of Smith's. And why not use your Barclaycard, which can be so easily stored in the new, slim, "Neptune" Leatherette Cardo-Wallet which keeps that ever-pressed look which only a Dunn's suit gives the Timex-wearing Esso European in today's British Home Stores World. Oh, and by the way, cheques should be crossed, please.

THE EDITOR OF PUNCH (PRICE 25P. AVAILABLE FROM YOUR LOCAL NEWSAGENT NOW—WHY NOT PLACE AN ORDER TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT?) WISHES TO MAKE IT QUITE CLEAR THAT THIS ARTICLE WAS COMMISSIONED IN THE NORMAL WAY. THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO SUGGESTION OF THE AUTHORS "MAKING WHAT THEY COULD ON THE SIDE", OR OF THEIR BEING SUBSIDIZED BY ANY COMMERCIAL INTERESTS WHO ARE NOT ALREADY ADVERTISING IN THIS MAGAZINE. THE EDITOR WISHES TO STRESS THE FACT THAT THIS IS A HUMOUR MAGAZINE (AS YOU CAN SEE) AND NOT AN ADVERTISING MEDIUM. (ALTHOUGH OUR SPECIAL SPRING RATES DO OFFER THE ADVERTISER THE MOST ADVANTAGEOUS TERMS AVAILABLE. WHY NOT GIVE US A RING ON 01-583 9199.)

[Jake Thingray]

I'm going to continue with Monty Python, because I already know the second series contains some hilarious moments (even if there are a fair few sketches that fall flatter than a witch's tit, and the whole Scott of the Sahara episode is pretty arid from start to finish) and the third series just bubbles with supreme confidence, but I think a few things need to be put into some perspective before I continue, lest this thread seems like I'm just gainsaying popular opinion or hacking great lumps out of a sacred cow for shits and giggles.

A well-meaning friend of the family bought me a ticket for one of the big Python reunion shows at the O2 a few years ago. Yes, I went along, and to be absolutely fair, I had a smashing seat - quite near the front - but I think I laughed about twice. Pretty poor going for a comedy show. I was far from alone in my sense-of-humour shutdown - indeed, when Palin appeared onstage in the auburn wig and leopard print jacket of his Blackmail host, surrounded by what looked like half a dozen lingerie models, the man next to me sighed 'This is fifty shades of bollocks, isn't it?' to his (female) companion who'd spent the entire evening muttering 'Oh, for God's sake'. John Cleese was far from match-fit, and knowing that Terry Jones was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease explains why his performance that night was all over the place. What really hurt, though, was how... Idle-ised the whole evening felt. Taking all those sketches and routines and putting them through the same glitzy bullshit treatment that made Spamalot a huge hit with idiots. How very dare he.

In fact, the scale and success alone of these reunion shows seems to sum up a key problem with the Python legacy nowadays. It's become so monolothic that it's almost impossible to criticise, and it's been praised, examined, dissected, venerated and hero-worshipped to the extent that anyone who watches it for the first time and simply doesn't find it funny is bound to think they're either missing something, or - rather like the hardier souls who found themselves unable to shed a tear or display the correct symptoms of national mourning in the aftermath of Diana's death - convince themselves that there's something wrong with them. Elsewhere on this forum, there are threads from other users complaining that they found Eraserhead disappointing or that they didn't laugh much during This is Spinal Tap. In short, excessive admiration is as capable of destroying art as closed-minded indifference.

Then, of course, there's the knotty problem of the very specific set of circumstances that brought the Python team into existence in the first place, to wit; comfortable white men, too steeped in the class system, bums-and-tits sexual innuendo, and casual racism and sexism to be truly satirical about a medium they didn't grow up with (i.e. television) but only ever experienced as a career choice after university. John Cleese in particular is a BBC man to his toenails, with his severe manner, his sensible haircut and the imposing presence of a testy schoolmaster. Terry Gilliam was the only true breath of fresh air - a contemporary of future underground legend R. Crumb and alumnus of the Harvey Kurtzman school of American satire (Mad / Help! / Humbug) is patronisingly regarded as 'the animator', whilst Graham Chapman getting pissed, dressing as a Viking and saying 'ocelot' in a plummy accent is apparently the height of comic genius. 

Michael Palin and Terry Jones were clearly just waiting for films to come along, hence the strong visual element to most of their sketches and their oft-repeated stage direction which called for 'a slow pan across impressive countryside accompanied by stirring music'. Eric Idle was just a chancer who was very seldom funny - even in his own series, Rutland Weekend Television, he was frequently upstaged and outperformed by jobbing character actors like David Battley and Henry Woolf (very tellingly, some of Frankie Howerd's projects floundered as a result of him being surrounded by powerhouse performers who made him look rather ordinary). 

Back to Cleese, and his anally retentive, ultra-precise, graph-and-pie-chart academic approach to comedy writing was already looking pretty creaky by 1972 (Fawlty Towers, glorious as it is, appears to be a pretty dusty and angular piece of writing in places - all those lines for the old ladies and the Major that even the contemporary audience failed to notice or laugh at, the sudden plot deviations, the reliance on funny foreigners and stereotypes). It came as no surprise to me to find out that Cleese was an arrogant varsity bully (ask Miriam Margolyes) who got away for it for far too long - always entertaining groups of salivating acolytes, most of whom were young and impressionable. Sadly, this came to be equally true of the rest of the team, right down to the careerist schmoozing with Victor Lownes, stray members of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles and prime movers and shakers in the world of American media.

They became sacred cows, effectively, in a way that neither their contemporaries or influences ever managed to be - although the Goodies were an enormous popular success almost from the beginning, their reputation suffered as a result of a pig-headed insistence on the part of the BBC to repeat so much as a single frame of their best programmes for decades at a time, meaning they were eventually reduced to a LOL SEVENTIES! footnote alongside the Bay City Rollers and spacehoppers. Nobody ever thought to tell the Pythons to stop until Graham Chapman died, by which time they'd already started to fall off the artistic radar to varying degrees (A Fish Called Wanda, Palin's licence payer-funded globetrotting and Nuns on the bloody Run notwithstanding), and by that time they'd effectively become as unassailable and imperishable as the Beatles. Who were also shite[nb]Calm your tits, for fuck's sake. I'm joking.[/nb].

Apart from the inevitable reference to the bloody Goodies, TC ripped off the above from this post, made all of eleven years ago, by the long gone poster Paranormalhandy.

[Autopsy Turvey]

Tsk. I knew it was a load of old balls, I just didn't realise how old.

[Revelator]

Continuing with Pythons in Punch, here's an article from Sept. 19, 1973, "written, produced, researched and spelling looked up by Terry Jones and Michael Palin."

MONTY PYTHON'S TOUR OF CANADA: REPORTS FROM A GALAXY OF FAMOUS WRITERS AND JOURNALISTS

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 very 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 have just 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 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 explain

June 7th: MONTY PYTHON ARRIVES IN MONTREAL.
A report from our showbiz correspondent from the packed Place des Arts: HENRY KISSINGER

Hello! It's me, Henry! Yes! It's difficult to believe that in between negotiating new policy agreements with Red China, coordinating 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 these whacky 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 "'as 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 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 great! 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 triumph! I will succeed! All human life will be at my command!

June 1lth: CALGARY. WITHIN SIGIIT 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 4 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 Yellow Knife 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 threat, 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 this 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.

[Revelator]

Since some of my Python in Punch posts were lost in the board revamp, here's a re-posting of some shorter items. The first collects three responses from a survey:

Coming Out in the Open: Writers confess to their favourite outdoor pastime (June 16, 1971)

MICHAEL PALIN
Watching television does not come easily to the complete novice, but with perseverance and application the enthusiast is rewarded with one of the most attractive and worthwhile outdoor activities known to man. That man is: Mr. Edward Birds of 14b, U Thant Buildings, Huddersfield. It was in the Spring of 1968 (or '69 as it was later to become) that Ted, as he is known to the trade, first introduced me to the techniques of television-watching as an outdoors sport. The contestants sit, or "slump" as they call it, in front of a cathode ray tube, or "cathode ray tube". The tube is then turned on, and the contestants are bombarded with streams of electrons made up into random and apparently pointless images. The first to lose his mind completely is known as "The Controller of Programmes" and has to retire.

There is little that can stir the heart of an Englishman more than the sight of that cool expanse of greensward, the buzz of the occasional bee, the linnet in the hazel tree, the click of the switch on the set, and the soft blue glow of the cathode ray tubes on the faces of the contestants as they vie with each other to test their strength of mind against the massive onslaught of meaningless electronic particles.

But, you will say, isn't it dangerous? Why do these fit young men—the flower of their country's youth—and not only fit young men, also decrepit old men and even moderately unfit middle-aged men, and also women of no particular physical condition whatsoever...why, you will repeat, why do they risk their health and mental stability watching television out of doors, when they could be killing small animals or falling off mountains? Ah, in the words of that famous old Himalayan television watcher: I have to watch it...because it's there.

TERRY JONES
Of all outdoor activities known to man, possibly the healthiest, most exciting, and at the same time most socially beneficial is that of "lynching." The limbs are wonderfully exercised in running about and generally holding down a struggling victim, in climbing trees, pulling on ropes and that sort of thing. While the lungs are given great ventilation in the practice of shouting obscenities and screaming with hatred. Certainly nothing can compare with the excitement of a really top-flight "lynch mob" first setting eyes on its victim: the air is filled with sound, the blood rushes to the head, and the everyday cares of family life are forgotten in a spontaneous feeling of comradeship and a fulfilling sense of purpose. And then again, a single "lynch mob" can accomplish in a few moments what an entire population has been wishing to do for years.

It is all the more of a tragedy, then, that there exist so few facilities for lynching in this country today. Try as they might, even some of our best-loved politicians have been able to do little more than create a climate of opinion in which the "lynching party" may yet become an acceptable part of our everyday life.

In the meantime, enthusiasts like myself must content ourselves with reading the Daily Telegraph, and dreaming of the day when our favourite outdoor activity shall once again be lifted out of the living room, away from the television sets, and brought out into the open...on to the streets where it so truly belongs.

JOHN CLEESE
My favourite outdoor activity is tarring and feathering myself. My father taught me how to do this. He lived in Bombay between 1921 and 1923 and he used to tar and feather himself as a way of attracting attention at Garden parties. People at the Bombay Yacht Club had normally ignored him as he was an uninteresting conversationalist and also because he hid learnt "Pilgrims Progress" by heart and would always manage to work the conversation round to Bunyan and then start quoting. Anyway, all you have to do is to coal yourself with tar and then take a bus somewhere where there are lots of loosely supervised chickens. Then just pick up a few as though you were examining them for an official reason and surreptitiously wrap them firmly against your tacky hearts. You should soon be feathered enough for ordinary purposes. Now the world is your oyster.

And the second item, also from a survey:

Would You Fight for Queen and Country?
Six of those who were too young to join in the last war think about the next (May 07, 1975)

MICHAEL PALIN
VE-Day has always had a special significance for me, for in addition to everything else it meant the end of the war. My father, who had been interned in the outside lav for the duration, because he had a pair of Arthur Goering tennis shoes, came into the sitting room to join myself, my sister Angela, my Aunt Betty, Mrs. O'Reilly from next door and a rather sorry Ribbentrop to welcome my mother home. She came in the back door to surprise us, as she always did, peeled off  a sweat-stained bandana, threw her flak jacket down onto a pile of old Lady's, spat into the coal-bucket and flung four belts of unspent machine-gun bullets wearily into the fire.

"Well, we sure as hell zapped the Cong this time, Daddy," she said, tucking into a bowl of Shreddies untouched since 1939. My father wept...or laughed heartily, I can't really remember.

But then that's the vital importance of VE-Day—to help us remember. Not just to remember that we won, but to remember who we beat. Do you know that there is a generation growing up now, who, were it not for the BBC's plucky re-runs of Great World War Two Films on Sunday night, might go through life thinking we beat the Chileans or the Dutch!! It's our duty, in the interests of World peace, to REMEMBER WHO WE BEAT.

Every VE-Day children should be taught, as I was, to memorize the names of the entire Nazi war cabinet from 1939 to 1945. I used to have to stand on a table, whilst my mother flicked water at me, and go through the list, and if I got one name wrong, a huge ceremonial sword would swing down from the ceiling and slice one of my ears off. A bit hard you might think, but I'll never forget those names—Hilter...Gimbels...Nimmler...aaarrggghhhh!

Well, Van Gogh didn't know them either.

EDIT: here's the third and last item:

JUST GOOD FRIENDS
JOHN CLEESE throws an arm around the first of a new series and leads it gently to the typewriter for a friendly natter. (February 7, 1973)

I am glad to say that I have a lot of friends including Ian Fordyce (TV Producer) Michael and Helen Fipp's', Nicholas Walt, Mr. Bailey and many others.

I do not need to name them all in this "article" but I have great deal of them (almost too many in fact!) although I pride myself I do not make a fetish about it, like for instance some people make out huge lists of "Friends" and leave them lying around on the coffee table, pretending they had intended to put them in a drawer but had forgotten to do so in the rush, just to rattle you, but I usually find that half the names, if you press the point,  turn out to be people they've just asked information from at information bureaus and then copied their names down from the plastic things they have their names printed on which they have on the counters in front of them when you ask them for the information, or even floorwalkers in Selfridge's and people like that who must have badges pinned to them.

Those names get quite easy to spot after a while, for instance if any of your friends' lists have "E.W. Newell" on them, he's the man who gives information at King's Cross and "Miss B. Sagar" was the lady in charge of Soft Toys at Derry and Toms before they closed. I actually know someone who once saw the name of the Fortnum and Mason Pie Department Assistant Manager on the friend-list of a famous Station Master! And he doesn't even wear a badge so he must have looked him up in Who's Who or somewhere!

Incidentally, if any of you spot names on your friends' lists that look suspect I can easily check them for you. I could find out and then you could come round to dinner if you were free, any time really, I'm usually in, and I could give you the details. You could leave when you wanted to, I'm not one of those people who get nasty when you want to go a bit early because you have to be up in the morning. I mean, just for an example, suppose the conversation has finally died, or the veal-and-ham was a bit off, it's always better to accept the rebuff gracefully, I always say, and show your guest out with a smile, than get involved in a scuffle with him. Not that it's even been a problem with me but I've seen people lose more, well, potential friends by oversensitivity in the early stages than by anything except strong religious feelings. Anyway do think it over, there's always room for one more!

Anyway, as I was saying, I believe that one's friend-list should only include one's real friends and acquaintances, for example, I could easily have written down Malcolm Kerr but I haven't seen him for quite a bit and I don't think it's really fair to say someone's a friend if you haven't seen them for that long, although he is really, I don't think you should include anyone you haven't seen for, say, ten years, unless they've been away and only then really if they've written at least once, (Unless things have been absolutely hectic for them.) And also you shouldn't put down people either who were friends once but definitely aren't any more. Mr. Bailey does this, although he admittedly puts them under a special heading, but I say this is cheating although the Fipp's' think it's O.K. if you make it clear that they're not good friends. Well! That makes the whole point of the thing ridiculous, I mean I haven't put down Alan Hutchison, although he was my best friend until May 22nd last year, because you can't call somebody any variety of friend after you've had a scrap as prolonged as ours, particularly when it was his fault to start with. I mean we'd always got on very well, because he had the same number of friends on our lists. (Or very nearly, he always had one or two more than me but it's stupid harbouring a grudge about a small difference like that.)

But then when we agreed to pool all our friends, which was a brilliant idea because we both doubled our total, but which was his idea, I discovered, after the whole deal was finished and the agreement signed (and witnessed by Mr. Bailey), that over half of his list (3 out of 5) were actually dead! He's not even copied them out of the street directory, he'd just taken them off tombstones! So he'd gained six real ones from me (or five anyway because I admit Sir Alf Ramsey was debatable) while I'd only got two from him, so that from really being 5-2 down he was now 7 all. He'd tricked me all along so that he could do the deal and get level.

I mean if he'd taken them out of the street directory I'd have spotted it eventually because you get to know those names after you've been at it a few years, but off graves! I honestly never thought anyone could stoop to that, and I said so, quite straight and then he said that my friends might just as well be dead for all the use they were to anyone, and I asked him what he meant by that, and he said they were disturbed to a man, and that even Mr. Bailey, who was once a teacher, had written the wrong name down when we asked him to sign the agreement, and that the Fipp's' were after me for what they could get and that it was Nicholas Walt who had trodden on my hamster (to get even with me for my accident with his) and not the gas-man, and I said the Fipp's' were a charming couple, and he said what about the suggestions they had made to me, and I said that while I did not fully concur with all their views about the physical side of friendship, the essence of true companionship was the toleration of views abhorrent to oneself, and that Nicholas was not a spiteful man (though actually he is) (it had never occurred to me about Winston but it had the ring of truth) and, I said, what about Mr. Fordyce, my TV producer friend, who directed many dramas we had all watched together at my place, and Alan said that he had emigrated in 1967 and had asked him not to tell me where.

This was a lie actually, but I fell for it because we had been out touch, and so, to make a long story short, an awful fracas took place. Anyway I'll tell you all the details when you come round for a bite to eat, next week is good for me, most weeks are O.K. actually, just drop in any time really, except I usually go for a bit of a walk about 3 a.m.

So see you next week if you call make it, and you can go when you want, as I said. Incidentally if Malcolm Kerr reads this do give me a call, I'd love a cup of lea or even a game of squash. I've improved a lot since the last time we played.

[Autopsy Turvey]

These are smashing by the way, many thanks for sharing Rev.

[Revelator]

A nice long interview with Cleese in New York Magazine, touching on death, marriage, politics, political correctness, whether he was the most controlling Python, etc.:
http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/john-cleese-monty-python-in-conversation.html

[Revelator]

A good review/overview of the Python/Python-related film retrospective in New York:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/10/20/the-existential-beauty-and-terror-of-the-giant-foot-stomp-monty-python-on-film/

[Satchmo Distel]

The Undertakers' Sketch is still very dark, and I suspect would still cause a storm of protest if shown today. IIRC it was excluded from repeats until the late 80s. Whether it's "funny" or not seems to matter less than its shattering of a taboo. A similar case could be made for Mrs Niggerbaiter, which I personally find funny but also morally troubling; imagine laughing at the phrase while sitting among racially diverse group of friends.

Yet in Series 3 (IIRC) they were demoralized by a censorship row over masturbation, surely a far less taboo topic. Censorship was therefore rather randomly applied, or reflected odd priorities.

Although Cleese and Palin deservedly get a great deal of praise, it was actually Terry Jones who came up with the structure of seeming randomness. The fights between Cleese and Jones seem purely about ego, in retrospect, rather than one being more radical and unconventional than the other. Jones had a great and stable partner whereas Cleese had an incredibly talented partner who was often unable to make any contribution to a writing day due to being on a prolonged bender.

[DrGreggles]

Although Cleese and Palin deservedly get a great deal of praise, it was actually Terry Jones Spike Milligan who came up with the structure of seeming randomness.

[Autopsy Turvey]

A similar case could be made for Mrs Niggerbaiter, which I personally find funny but also morally troubling; imagine laughing at the phrase while sitting among racially diverse group of friends.

If we're imagining, we might as well imagine that those racially diverse friends have a robust sense of humour, a reasonably thick skin and an understanding that certain words weren't as shocking to Britain in 1972 as they are today. (I was tempted to say "I don't find anything funny unless it's morally troubling", but that's an exaggeration.)

Seldom mentioned in finger-wagging/point-missing discussions of political incorrectness in Python is Our Eamonn, presumably because it just confuses the hell out of everybody.

[Serge]

It's funny to see this thread bumped, because I was thinking of starting one to see if anyone would be interested in something that was suggested on here a while back - doing a complete rewatch of the Python TV show and commenting on it as it goes along? If anyone is, what I was thinking is to watch an episode once a week, to give people time to fit it in whenever they like and also make it feel more like the way we comment on current series of other TV shows*, with time to debate each episode before going on to the next one. If we started it soon, we could get all 45 episodes done within 2018. Anyone interested?

*Obviously, for most of us, we'd be aware of what's to come and would probably refer to later sketches/episodes for certain posts, so it wouldn't be exactly like commenting on current shows with no knowledge of future episodes, but you get what I mean.

[EOLAN]

You got me on that one Serge. One of those; even if I skip an episode will just half-recall what I can. But will happily commit to watching an episode each week.

[gilbertharding]

Although Cleese and Palin deservedly get a great deal of praise, it was actually Terry Jones Spike Milligan who came up with the structure of seeming randomness.

I found a few bits ('Snippets') of NF Simpson on Google Reads the other day. 'Most of what follows is a Complete Waste of Time'. Tempted to get a hard copy, but they're a bit spendy.

[Serge]

You got me on that one Serge. One of those; even if I skip an episode will just half-recall what I can. But will happily commit to watching an episode each week.

Well, that's what I thought, half an hour a week isn't much to give up, and if we leave it for 7 days each time, then it gives people time to catch up. And it's also not like anybody's going to be brutally policing it and coming down hard on anyone who might watch two episodes a week later.

[Delete Delete Delete]

Were already doing a weekly rewatch of Monty Python on (spam) as part of the Project line up, your welcome to join in, next week will be series 1 episode 5.

[Serge]

I don't have skype, so missed all of that, sorry! But I still think it's something that would work as a thread idea.

[Dr Rock]

whereas Cleese had an incredibly talented partner who was often unable to make any contribution to a writing day due to being on a prolonged bender.

He was often drunk too.

[Replies From View]

I don't have skype, so missed all of that, sorry! But I still think it's something that would work as a thread idea.

It's not a Skype thing - it's just a stream.  See here:  https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,64337.0.html

[Serge]

OK....still not for me. Sorry.

[Revelator]

Here's a review of The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words by Veronica Geng, which appeared in the April 23, 1990 issue of The New Republic. Geng herself was a satirist/humorist, and her review is one of the most perceptive discussions of the Flying Circus I've come across, though British readers might have to adjust to its very American perspective (which will also help them understand Python's American appeal).

***

It's...

By Veronica Geng (The New Republic, April 23, 1990)

The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words
(Pantheon, 2 volumes, 325 pp, and 349 pp., $12.95 each)

Luton. Is that a real place? It would be a mistake to find out. If you happen to know, it would be better to have some manipulative person convince you that there's been a misunderstanding. As Americans who have very little or no idea, we fulfill Luton's sublime destiny, which is to be possibly a city, town, hamlet, or other type of location somewhere in England, veiled in deliberate yet baffling innuendo. Unlike Levittown, Larchmont, Langley, Lompoc, or Leavenworth, Luton has connotations of...something. Or else it's a sphinx without a secret, a neutral carrier for the pure idea of reference to...something.

We know this much: Mr. Harry Bagot, the finalist in the All-England Summarize Proust Competition who only got as far as page one of Swann's Way because he used too much of his fifteen seconds on a general appraisal of the work, was from Luton; under the modern British criminal-justice system, according to Supt. Harry "Boot-In" Swalk, "garroting is confined almost entirely to Luton"; on February 22, 1966, Luton Airport got blown up by Dinsdale Piranha, the racketeer who nailed men's heads to the floor if they "transgressed the unwritten law," but you can get near Luton by hijacking a scheduled flight to Cuba and asking the pilot to throw you out onto a pile of hay at Basingstoke; and-in the 1970 elections the normally sensible Luton constituency gave Alan Jones (Sensible Party) 9,112 votes, Kevin Phillips-Bong (Slightly Silly) nought, and Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lin-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel (Silly) 12,441.

A man from England recently told a man here that if you know the "exact suburbs" mentioned on Monty Python's Flying Circus, the show is "even better." This idea of Monty Python as topical satire, fully enjoyable only by an audience intimate with parliamentary politics, BBC programming, Common Market groceries, and the psychosexual geography of a small, class-conscious country teeming with local mannerisms—this idea is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it sounds suspiciously like the Highland Spokesman interrupting the show to point out that a poet whose "name was quite clearly given as McTeagle...was throughout wearing the Cameron tartan."

Can the hyperknowledgeable imagine what poetry Monty Python makes in minds relatively knowledge-free?

Yes...no! No! No!
Yes in only three years. Er, I tell a lie, four, be fair, five...just the seven years.

That I don't know. I just don't know. I really just don't know. I'm afraid I really just don't know. I have to tell you that I'm afraid even I really just don't know.

It's a great-idea-but-possibly-not-and-I'm-not-being-indecisive.

No, I shall deny that to the last breath in my body. (superintendent nods)
Oh. Sorry, yes.

Of course not. That was why the BBC originally thought the show was "too British" to cross the Atlantic, and why, even after it crossed in 1974, the Pythons did a few live American concerts where they misguidedly tailored their familiar lines with American references. Well, forgiven is that awkward moment when the Pythons' transvestite Judges patronized us by talking about Melvin Belli instead of the Scottish Assizes. The show has been a success here for fifteen years, on public television and now cable reruns. The special-knowledge question would seem to be back moot. We like Python's own words; we like them in our own way.

Off-spin bowling, Cecily Courtneige, RAF Ola Pola, lavatorial, m'lud, my other lud, off-license, kosher car park, diocesan lovely, crumpet over sixteen, Fyffe-Chulmleigh Spoon for Latin Elegiacs, Cardinal Armand du Plessis de Richelieu, masonic tendencies, Prebendary "Chopper" Harrjs, Colin "Chopper" Mozart, Radio Four, Abu Simbel, typical bleeding Rhonda, git, Kemal Ataturk, great poovy po-nagger, Ron Vibbentrop, mid-field cognoscento, owl of Thebes, Vethpathian, Rrrhodesia, Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg, the larch—spectacularly wordy, the two-volume edition of The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words reopens "that old vexed question of what is going on....Where do we stand? Where do we sit? Where do we come? Where do we go? What do we do? What do we say? What do we eat? What do we drink? What do we think?"

Unlike the show in performance, the printed words make you confront your own mental processes. If you're overjoyed by two pages of cricket language without having the slightest comprehension of why, no actor's enchantment disguises this terrifying fact. Not that the words "Danish Fimboe" don't carry the imprint of John Cleese's lips tightening against his front teeth. (The book has fifty-six photos of such moments, and also brief summaries of Terry Gilliam's cartoon montages, such as "ANIMATION: one dozen communist revolutions.") But the scripts aren't comedy "material"; they don't depend on delivery to put them across. Even the indications of actors' business seem to have been initially crafted into the writing ("leans back as if having imparted a great secret"). As actors, Graham Chapman, Cleese, Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin embodied and elaborated their writing. But they didn't have to.

There are forty-five scripts, and each one is structured like a—"A murder?...No... no...not a murder...no what's like a murder only begins with B?" The first few episodes rely on some routine sketch-comedy devices: reversals like "Bicycle Repair Man" (everyone else in town dressed as Superman) and "Hell's Grannies" (a dumb idea redeemed when the writers impatiently change it to "vicious gangs of keep-left signs"), and takeoffs of TV forms, like the secret-vice documentary "The Mouse Problem," with testimony by a psychiatrist. ("Look at arson—I mean, how many of us can honestly say that at one time or another he hasn't set fire to some great public building. I know I have.")

But sketch comedy makes its point, rests its case, and moves on to the next sketch. It couldn't contain the Pythons, who had the alertness to pursue what really interested them (easier said than done): people's habit of arguing any point ad infinitum, bringing in all kinds of irrelevant information. Early on, sketches were followed or interrupted by viewers' letters ("Dear Sir, I object to being objected to by the last letter, before my drift has become apparent") and by "Vox Pops" man-in-the-street comments. ("I mean, er, blimey, blimey if they're not keen enough to stay here when they're 'ere, why should we allow them back at, er, the tax payers' expense? I mean, be fair, I mean, I don't eat squirrels, do I?") Nobody gives it a rest. That spirit soon evolved into a thoroughgoing comic procedure. The whole show became a volatile contest: all the information people are trying to use versus all the ways it doesn't apply:

ERIC IDLE: Is your wife a...goer...eh? Know what I mean? Nudge nudge. Know what I mean? Say no more...know what I mean?
TERRY JONES: I beg your pardon?
IDLE: Your wife...does she, er, does she "go"—eh? eh? eh? Know what I mean, know what I mean? Nudge nudge. Say no more.
[Jones still doesn't follow.]
IDLE: She's been around, eh? Been around?
JONES: She's traveled. She's from Purley.
IDLE: Oh...oh. Say no more, say no more. Say no more—Purley, say no more.

And the capper:

JONES: Look, are you insinuating something?

Idle's dervish indirection and Jones's literal plodding are mutually useless. There's a tiny outcome (hint of possibility that other party has something in mind), but it's a dust speck stirred up in the crosscurrents of false comprehension versus incomprehension. And here's an example of why it's better not to recognize "exact suburbs": if "Purley" is weightless, it stays aloft instead of hitting ground as a Purley joke.

The Pythons were resisting what is usually meant by "satire": some folly is exposed, and the light-giving satirist goes home with the upper hand (or, in a few cases, to jail with a sense of moral superiority). "Nudge Nudge" is a goof on all that. It's introduced by Idle as a naughty schoolboy: "I written a sketch," he says, as one of his mates, Jones, daringly blurts, "Bottom!" to shrieks of laughter. And it ends with a bogus punchline where Idle blows his savoir faire and asks what it's like to have "er...slept...with a lady"—a standard satirical expose of prurience as repression, disclaimed by "enormous artificial laugh on sound track."

Monty Python was more interested in a truth that satirists hate to think about: people don't want to change their minds, and rarely change them in response to the lessons of satire. It's hard to face this without getting cynical. Positively embracing it is the heart of the Python's style. Renouncing satire's ineffectual upper hand, they took all their considerable knowledge and redistributed it across the board, so you can never tell which character will know what. "One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle," says Chapman as a cap-in-hand millworker, and is asked what on earth that means. "I don't know. Mr. Wentworth just told me to come in here and say there was trouble at the mill, that's all. I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition."

Even the silliest characters are intellectually fired up about mollusk sexuality or the right way to put down your budgie. A housewife in a laundromat has Jean-Paul Sartre's home phone number, because she met him and Madam S. on holiday; the joke isn't that it's improbable, but that it's exactly the sort of thing people claim. And there's always a chance it's true. This is a surprising and accurate observation of life, and the Pythons go at it with such selfless zeal that they make conventional satire of hypocritical egos look like an ego trip.

Topicality can often be felt behind the show, but it's vestigial, as if the writers had used it just to generate situations to take off from. Maybe there was a coal strike when they wrote about miners arguing the date of the Treaty of Utrecht and the definition of a "metope." "Meanwhile, at Dagenham the unofficial strike committee at Ford's have increased their demands to thirteen reasons why Henry III was a bad king." Maybe there's a passing swipe at petty or arcane labor negotiations, but that's a familiar point easily scored. What's Pythonesque is that no matter how much you know, it still won't be relevant. Foreman: "Break it up, break it up....This isn't the senior common room at All Souls, it's the bloody coal face."

The characters on Monty Python's Flying Circus can't find the right contexts for what they know—like this crime boss with his gang of robbers:

Oh, you dumb cluck! We spent weeks organizing this job. Reg rented a room across the road and filmed the people going in and out every day. Vic spent three weeks looking at watch catalogs...until he knew the price of each one backwards, and now I'm not going to risk the whole raid just for the sake of breaking the law.

The show is by nature sympathetic to states of incomprehension and confusion. That's why its special references and high-culture allusions don't intimidate Americans or other ill-educated or out-of-it English-speaking people. It takes nothing for granted ("so-called Mao Zedong"), except that the audience will hear how ignorance and knowledge are being deployed. Expertise, for instance, can be a means of confirming one's own prejudices, wet-blanketing, or lying. Shopkeeper trying to sell dead parrot: "The Norwegian Blue prefers kipping on its back. Beautiful bird, lovely plumage." The same goes for inexpertise. Same actor, Cleese, as, merchant banker grappling with new concept of donating a pound to orphans: "I don't follow this at all, I mean, I don't want to seem stupid but it looks to me as though I'm a pound down on the whole deal."

As the show matured, these clashes got fine-tuned and densely orchestrated beyond description, though amazingly enough there were always just two instruments: "The cat sat on the mat. And now the Battle of Trafalgar." The final episode, titled "Party Political Broadcast," is an apocalyptic fantasia that takes liberal apprehensions to their desired conclusion, via the Third Most Awful Family in Britain (the Garibaldis, obsessed with Rhodesia and constipation), rich people who scream "Super," a cash crazed doctor who can't understand what a stethoscope is doing in his bag, a girl who has had twelve babies since lunch, and a racist media expedition to Africa, where the Warwickshire cricket team is defeated by the hostile black Batsmen of the Kalahari ("C. U. PRATT KILLED OUTRIGHT, BOWLED ODINGA—0").

One American viewer (who went to Harvard during the 1970s student strikes and so feels uneducated) says, "It's like a game you didn't know you could play." Python never outpaces the audience, because the playing field is level. If the "girls of Oakdene High School, Upper
Fifth Science" can perform the invasion of Normandy ("Engine room, stand by to feed the cat"), so can we. Anyway, you can't feel stupid while watching a circus of people who think the astrological signs are "Aquarius, Sagittarius, Derry and Toms, Basil"; insist on giving urine at a blood bank; have to look up "inner life" in the dictionary or ask "Not for sale, what does that mean?"; and translate the Hungarian phrase "Can you direct me to the station?" as "please fondle my bum." Two "pepperpots" (as the Pythons called their "middle-aged lower-middle-class
Women"), both named Mrs. Zambesi:

SECOND ZAMBESI: ...I caught swamp fever in the Tropics.
FIRST ZAMBESI: You've never even been to the Tropics. You've never been south of Sidcup.
SECOND ZAMBESI: You can catch it off lampposts.
FIRST ZAMBESI: Catch what?
SECOND ZAMBESI: I don't know, I'm all confused.

The early 1970s, the years just before Monty Python came to American television, were eerily foreseen by the Confuse-a-Cat sketch (recorded in 1969). The Chicago Seven, Kent State, Manson, Calley, Nixon in China, nolo contendere, Saturday Night Massacre, Patty Hearst, eighteen-minute gap: "Napoleon points to sedan chair and it changes into dustbin. Man in towel runs back on to stage and jumps in dustbin. He looks out and the penguin appears from the other dustbin and hits him on the head with a raw chicken. Shot of cat still unimpressed."
There was a sense that small amounts of banal information could be parlayed into extravagant power (Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Woodward and Bernstein), which would then be snatched away like a toy rodent or a ball of string. And there was a common syndrome of overstimulated paralysis: I might be right, they might be right, who knows?

In popular culture, this led to some provocative genre mixes and crossovers, but at the expense of straight-ahead forces like Motown. It seemed that the exclusiveness of 1950s hip had married the amorphous receptivity of the 1960s, and the move now was to redefine confusion as cool. Comedy was Woody Allen's neurotic surrealism, the final days of Laugh-In's non sequiturs, and the exemplary behavior of Don Rickles—rigidly fending off others with his impenetrable, unanswerable mix of insults and wheedling, a clinical case of narcissistic character disorder.

When the Pythons came on TV around the country in 1974-75, they represented health. They were confused, too, but far from paralyzed. And there was honest realism in their relentless struggle, against heavy odds, for reason and clarity:

Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise... our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency. Our three weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope...Our four...no...amongst our weapons... amongst our weaponry are such elements as fear, surprise... I'll come in again.

Although they had individual craziness (Palin's unsocialized glee, the self-hypnotized authority of Chapman, who died last year but lives as the definitive voice of tottering power), the group was an example of creative sanity, actively addressing our worst fears of meaninglessness.
Not since Sid Caesar have comedians seemed so manly, yet playing women they were as comfortable and plausible as real women; they were wholesome in every sense. Monty Python wasn't a kitsch artifact of another culture, like Benny Hill; it was alive in the moment. It still seems that way.

Why? I have to tell you that I'm afraid even I really just don't know. The uneducated Harvard graduate I mentioned says one of the important things Python did was "chart the areas of what people actually do know," and maybe that is ever refreshing:
"FOC" means Free of Charge, and egg, bacon, spam, and sausage doesn't have as much spam in it as spam, egg, sausage, and spam. Synonyms for "dead" range from "resting" to "joined the choir invisible." The legal definition of "Ratings conscious" is "Transmitting bland garbage, m'lud." The advantages of voting Norwegian in the next election are "An industrial re-investment rate of fourteen percent...and girls with massive knockers." People also know things they're reluctant to admit, like: When you live in a building that will fall down if you cease to believe in it, the place where you used to live—an eighteen-room villa overlooking Nice—sounds better. They know things they don't know they know: woman on quiz show correctly guesses "Henri Bergson?" and then says, "Ooh, that was lucky. I never even heard of him....I don't like darkies." And there's mass know-how about nothing: "So far today we've had five hours' batting from England and already they're nought for nought...and no shot at all. Extremely well not played there...Yes, beautifully not done anything about...A superb shot of no kind whatsoever. I well remember Plum Warner leaving a very similar ball alone in 1732."

I have a theory, and it is mine and not a theory by Anne Elk (Miss), whose own theory is "All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end." My theory is that Monty Python successfully crossed the Atlantic not in spite of being too British, or because the Beatles had made us more British than we knew, or the Britishisms just had a funny sound, but because the show is too British. An American woman who didn't know what lupins were says, "People talk about what you're missing, but they don't talk about what you're getting by missing."

One thing we get is relief from life's constant pressure to get everything. Sometimes it's appropriate not to understand, as Python admits in a belated apology for the puzzling North Malden boosterism propaganda that keeps cropping up during their Icelandic Saga. It's not our fault if we can't answer scholarly questions like "The Magna Carta—was it a document signed at Runnymede in 1213 by King John pledging independence to the English barons, or was it a piece of chewing gum on a bedspread in Dorset?" And accepting certain mysteries is quite different from courting confusion. Americans are an ideal Python audience (and maybe the Pythons. Without knowing it, aspired to find us), because when we hear "Reginald Maulding" or "third test against the West Indies" or "Webb's Wonder" without registering precise or any meanings, what we're getting is a giddy sense of the void that Monty Python always has its eye on.

Mrs. Neves of 24 Parker Street (Jones) takes her shopping basket, goes out the door, and finds herself clutching her little scarf on the ("rain-lashed, heaving, wind-tossed") deck of the Newhaven Lifeboat. That's the kind of ecstatic moment that the Pythons took all the way in the last movie they made as a group, The Meaning of Life, where the sets now and then open onto a starry cosmos. Call it Luton or Purley, the senior common room at All Souls or the bloody coal face—it's the same all over.

[neveragain]

It's all coming to Netflix soon.

[shh]

One thing we get is relief from life's constant pressure to get everything. Sometimes it's appropriate not to understand, as Python admits in a belated apology for the puzzling North Malden boosterism propaganda that keeps cropping up during their Icelandic Saga. It's not our fault if we can't answer scholarly questions like "The Magna Carta—was it a document signed at Runnymede in 1213 by King John pledging independence to the English barons, or was it a piece of chewing gum on a bedspread in Dorset?" And accepting certain mysteries is quite different from courting confusion. Americans are an ideal Python audience (and maybe the Pythons. Without knowing it, aspired to find us), because when we hear "Reginald Maulding" or "third test against the West Indies" or "Webb's Wonder" without registering precise or any meanings, what we're getting is a giddy sense of the void that Monty Python always has its eye on.

Thanks for posting that. I recently read Adam Phillips's 'Missing Out' and this paragraph chimed with certain parts of that.

...As though to get some things, to be able to give a fluent account of them, is to misrecognise their nature; to pre-empt the experience by willing the meaning, or by supposedly articulating the meaning. Meaning is imposed wherever experience is disturbing; which is why the psychoanalyst - another 'modernist' artist - wants to talk about what the patient says, not what he means.
...
If getting it gives us some kind of pleasure, what are the pleasures of not getting it, of being, as we say, left out or in the dark, or clueless? It can be humiliating not to get it - indeed, I want to suggest the humiliation is always a form of not getting it, and that humiliation sheds a unique and horrifying light on what not getting it might be about. But I also want to suggest that we are under considerable pressure to get it; that, in the language of psychoanalysis, it is a super-ego command - one of the most intimidating in what is a horrible repertoire - that dominates our live: 'You must get it' (you must get it in order to qualify as a member of our group). We need to imagine what a life would be like in which there was nothing to get because what went on between people, what people wanted from each other, couldn't possibly be phrased in that way. Our lives would not be about getting the joke or the point. Or, to put it slightly differently, there would be other pleasures than the pleasures of humiliation.

[Revelator]

You're very welcome, and thank you for the incisive paragraphs from Phillips, which definitely chime in the idea of pleasure in non-knowing. I have On Balance on my to-read shelf and need to open it up.

[Autopsy Turvey]

Fantastic review, really excellent choice of quotes! I think any of us who came to Python very young can identify with this, my whole subsequent life has involved piecing together their complex web of references. As a child there was that frisson of excitement that comes with hearing new names and words and working out for yourself what they might mean, if anything, but there are Python gags that are still slotting into place decades later. Did anyone else get Darl Larsen's 'An Utterly Complete, Thoroughly Unillustrated, Absolutely Unauthorized Guide to Possibly All the References from Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson to Zambesi'? When I got the first volume I barely looked up from it for two days.

[choie]

Did anyone else get Darl Larsen's 'An Utterly Complete, Thoroughly Unillustrated, Absolutely Unauthorized Guide to Possibly All the References from Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson to Zambesi'? When I got the first volume I barely looked up from it for two days.

Yes, and my reaction was similar--I was enthralled by it, especially since I came to Python very young--7 or so, whenever it first ran on our PBS--and am American (so, two strikes against me).

I'll copy my review of the book from, holy merde, five years ago:

Yes, I've got that book.  I've always been reluctant to mention it here as I feel it was written for Americans and woudl reflect badly on our obsessive nature for triva, as well as our ignorance of history. 

It is indeed very comprehensive, and I enjoyed reading it and getting some answers to a few niggling questions I had over the years about certain references.  One thing that sours me a bit on the book--as impressive a work as it is--is that in some cases it misses the point of a joke entirely.  Either that or perhaps I'm the one who's missed the point of a joke for the past 40 years.  Sadly I didn't mark the book where I found these points, because now I have no good examples to give and thus, the more I'm writing the  more I'm realizing this is an utterly pointless comment.  Sorry.

Damn, I really wish I remembered what annoyed me about these (admittedly rare) instances where the author seems to have lost the plot.  It's something basic, such as... purely hypothetical example here... claiming that Mr. Wensleydale actually has some cheese but is for some reason hiding it from Cleese's customer.  (As if he's telling the truth that the cat is currently eating the excrementally runny Brie.)   Again, that was a fake sample; I'm not saying the author actually makes this claim.  But it's stuff like that.

I'll go skim through the book to see if by some miracle I can find the parts that annoyed me. But bear in mind this book has roughly 384,165, 066 entries, so it's not likely I'll be successful. 

All this not-very-edifying whining aside, it's worth a read.  Is it worth $35, which is what I paid for it?  Not sure.  I'm not convinced it's worth a buy for UK folks, except perhaps the very young who don't know who Reginald Maudling was or about decimalization of the currency, etc.   Although, on the other hand, it does contain some details about taping/filming dates and locations, which I'm sure are of interest to the competists among us.  I can type up some example entries if anyone is interested.

So.  A mixed review, then. 

EDITED TO ADD:  Holy crap, I literally just opened the book at the entry that bugged me!  I don't know if I purposely bent the spine to that page when I originally read it or what, but... wow.

Okay, it's under "Episode 12," under "L."  (Each episode is given extensive references, listed from A to Z.)  Here we go:

"lampshade time"--("Mr. Hilter") --  Probably a euphemism for death, meaning to cover or diffuse the light (life).  Sounds like a borrowing from a pulp fiction novel, perhaps. For Tex Avery, a lampshade on the head (and a bulb in the mouth) of the temporarily stunned Wolf is used as a blackout gag, a payoff before the next set-up (see Read Hot Riding Hood, 1942).  Noting the Pythons' awareness and use of cartoon elements (and Hitler's admitted fondness for Mickey Mouse cartoons, as well), this is a possible, glancing referent.

I mean... seriously, what the everlovin' fuck?  How does a professor, even in a Mormon school I'll grant you, not understand what a reference to "lampshades" would mean uttered by a Nazi?  (I know the LDS have their own, um, curious sense of historic events, but surely even they have heard of the Holocaust that provided them with such rich fodder for post-death conversions of Jews!*) 

Sure, he does get it right that it's a reference to death, though it sure as hell ain't no "euphemism," and the idea that it's somehow related to a Tex Avery cartoon is completely barking mad.  This would be an excellent satirical entry in a book that was intentionally mocking pretentious, anal-retentive research, but otherwise the book is played perfectly straight, and I think author Larsen was just that clueless.

So.... yeah, that's the sort of thing. I'll grant that out of all the thousands of references the number of such wrongheaded entries is a miniscule percentage, but I just wanted to show you that when the book is wrong, it's staggeringly wrong.  And sadly it made me start questioning some of the other guide entries where I wasn't so certain of the answers.

* Is this something you folks are aware of across the pond? Might be too local a story.

[Revelator]

Fantastic review, really excellent choice of quotes! I think any of us who came to Python very young can identify with this, my whole subsequent life has involved piecing together their complex web of references. As a child there was that frisson of excitement that comes with hearing new names and words and working out for yourself what they might mean, if anything, but there are Python gags that are still slotting into place decades later. Did anyone else get Darl Larsen's 'An Utterly Complete, Thoroughly Unillustrated, Absolutely Unauthorized Guide to Possibly All the References from Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson to Zambesi'? When I got the first volume I barely looked up from it for two days.

I'm very glad you liked the review. I know there are cases, not just in Python, where I've laughed at a reference to--or parody of--a mysterious object or person, and suspected my laughter was increased by not knowing exactly what was being referred to. There's an entrancing sort of randomness to the experience.
I have Larsen's book but made the mistake of beginning it shortly after finishing Monty Python's Flying Circus: Complete and Annotated...All the Bits, by Luke Dempsey, which covers equivalent terrain and has the advantage of lots of graphics. Dempsey also deals with the references in chronological sequence, unlike Larsen. However, Dempsey is also very eager to call out material he finds misogynistic or racist, and his efforts are terribly patronizing (as a very good review of the book points out: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-beatles-of-comedy/309185/).
Anyway, the end result was I never finished Larsen's book and really should, especially since he's now written books on Holy Grail and Life of Brian as well!

[Autopsy Turvey]

Coogan nailed this in Almost The Truth when he talks about the Gavin Millarrrrrrrr monologue, having no idea what 'La Fontaine' could mean, but being totally beguiled by the sound of it.

I remember as a kid thinking that the lingerie shop robber said "Dr Dachshund improve" was the motto of the Round Table. Only when the scripts came out did I discover it was "adopt adapt and improve", but it took until the Larsen book for me to realise that the lingerie shop robber wasn't claiming to quote King Arthur, it was the motto of the Round Table club, an association to promote "high ethical standards in commercial life". So I got a laugh that was like an unexploded bomb, lying dormant until the full incongruity became apparent, and a whole character history revealed.