least funny python to make shit documentary not worth watching

[Smeraldina Rima]

Here are some political entries from Palin's diary written around that period. If I've counted right I think this post might come out at the top of a new page away from relevant conversation and I'm not sure whether I should have folded it into a spoiler for happier scrolling.

1970

Tuesday, April 21st

An interesting and hard-worked morning giving my voluntary performing services for the Labour Party. Easily the most decisive political act of my life, and almost the only one – though previously I had once voted Labour in the GLC elections. I suppose voting for and supporting Labour is just another painless way of appeasing my social conscience. But it's not much, I cannot see how anyone with a social conscience could vote Conservative. The film which I was doing today had been written by John Cleese, who is now what you might call a committed Labour celebrity – and I mean that in a good sense – somebody who is prepared to do something to keep the Conservatives out. At present Labour is increasingly successful in the polls. Two opinion polls out this week actually gave Labour a lead over the Tories for the first time for three years and, in the GLC elections last week, Labour won thirteen seats, their biggest electoral success since they came to power.

Thursday, June 18th

General election day. Ideal polling weather, dry with warm sunshine. Every public opinion poll in the last two months had put Labour clearly ahead – the only possible shadow on the horizon was a 1½% swing to the Tories published in the latest opinion poll – taken after the publication of the worst trade figures for over a year, and Britain's exit from the World Cup last Sunday. Nevertheless, everything looked rosy for Labour when I left Julia St at 10.00 to go down to Camberwell.

The morning's work interrupted by the delivery of a large amount of dung. We were sitting writing at Terry's marble-topped table under a tree sheltering us from the sun. All rather Mediterranean. Suddenly the dung-carriers appeared. Fat, ruddy-faced, highly conversational and relentlessly cheerful, they carried their steaming goodies and deposited them at the far end of Terry's garden. As they passed I gleaned that they had come from Reading, that they had started loading at 5 p.m., that one of them was about to go on holiday to Selsey Bill – his first holiday for seven years. After about twenty-five tubfuls they were gone, but at least they left a sketch behind.

When I turned on the election I heard that in two results there was already a confirmed swing to the Conservatives. I watched until about 2.30, when it was obvious that the opinion polls were wildly wrong – the country had swung markedly to the right. Edward Heath, perhaps more consistently written-off than any Opposition leader since the war, consistently way behind Wilson in popularity, was the new Prime Minister.

My feelings are mixed. What I fear is a shift to the right in the national psyche; there are many good and honest and progressive Conservatives, but there are many, many more who will feel that this election has confirmed their Tightness in opposing change, student demonstrations, radicalism of any kind. There are also those who will take the Tory victory as an encouragement to ban immigration (Enoch Powell doubled his majority), bring back hanging, arm the police force, etc, etc.

The Labour government was courageous and humane in abolishing hanging, legalising abortion, reforming the laws against homosexuals, making the legal process of divorce less unpleasant, and banning the sale of arms to South Africa. I am very sad that they are out of power, especially as I fear that it is on this record of progressive reform that they have been ousted.

To bed at 3.00. A long, hot day.

Sunday, June 28th

In the morning I pushed Thomas across the Heath to Kenwood House. He loves being taken through the woods and now points excitedly at the trees, and gives bread to the squirrels, who will come right up to the push-chair.

After lunch I went down to the St Pancras Town Hall to rehearse our short Monty Python contribution to a show called 'Oh Hampstead'. The title is, to say the least, equivocal – as it is a charity show, directed by John Neville in order to raise funds for Ben Whitaker, the Labour MP for Hampstead up till ten days ago.

John and I rehearsed 'Pet Shop/Parrot', and Graham and Terry were to do the Minister whose legs fall off. Struck by how very friendly people are when there is the feeling of a cause about. The stage manager and the lady who offered us cups of tea were so matey that it made up for John Neville's slightly detached theatricality.

As we waited to go and perform, we were all taken with unaccustomed nerves. It was live theatre now – no microphones, no retakes, and it brought us up with a jolt. But the audience knew we were giving our services free for the Labour Party – and they'd paid from £2 10s to £10 to watch, so they must have been pretty strong Labourites. Anyway, it went well.

Decided to take up our invitation to Ben Whitaker's after the show party. He lives in a sensibly, modestly furnished Victorian house backing on to Primrose Hill.

I think the party may have been rather foisted on him – he seemed to be opening bottles of white wine with the somewhat pained expression of a man who cannot reconcile the joviality around him, or, indeed, the money he'd spent on the wine, with the fact that he had ten days earlier lost his seat in Parliament, his job as a junior minister, and his chance of political advancement for at least ten years. It would be fairly appalling to be told one could do no more shows for four years and yet for a man of any ambition that's what it must be like. How ungrateful Hampstead has been to Ben Whitaker, I thought, as I shook his limp hand and left his limp party at about 1.00.

1973

Sunday, March 4th

My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.

Sitting writing my diary up in the afternoon when there is a noise outside. A parade with banners passes up Lamble Street towards the new blocks at Lismore Circus – a loudspeaker van follows up. It urges non-payment of the extra 85p a week rent, made necessary by the government's Fair Rent Act. Camden was one of the last boroughs in the country to give in to this act. It's good to see someone still fighting – but like a protective hen, I became all at once aware of feeling alarmed at this civil commotion – a momentary fear that these are the voices of the have-nots, and they somehow threaten us, the haves.

Rung up this evening by a girl who is organising a pageant of Labour. A re-affirmation of socialist ideals – largely sponsored by actors such as Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave and others. Heartening to know so many of one's favourite actors are anti-establishment, but I react against her rather vague left-wing patter, and her presumption that so long as anything was anti-Tory it was good. I go along with her most of the way on this – but in the end, rather than argue, or ask her to explain any more, I agree to send £25. All she seemed to want was money. Money to bring coachloads of workers down from the north.

1974

Friday, February 8th

An election has been announced for February 28th – depressing news, for the Tories will probably win and they don't deserve to. Heath has been stubborn to the extreme with the miners, who are now to start on a full strike. He was elected on a pledge to create 'one nation' – and he's now whipping up Tory middle-class anti-worker feeling as hard as he can. One of the points of the Tory manifesto is that the government should not pay security benefit's to strikers' families. It is as near as Heath has yet gone to outlawing strikes, and is indicative of an across-the-board tightening of controls on personal freedom, which is becoming very sinister. We may not have a 1984 like George Orwell's, but if the Tories have their way we will be a very carefully controlled society indeed. All very sad, especially as Labour and the left are muddle-headed and ideologically dogmatic.

For me it's just head down and keep working. The three-day week does not so far seem to have damaged the country too much. The only real shortage is toilet rolls! But the foreign press make out we are almost in the state we were in in 1940, on the verge of collapse. Heath's propaganda seems to be every bit as effective as Hitler's was.

Sunday, March 3rd

We have now completed seven shows at Drury Lane – ending last week with a grand flourish of two shows on Friday and two shows on Saturday. I am chewing pastilles and gargling with honey and lemon three times a day as a result.

The gilded, glittering Drury Lane must have been amazed by the scruffiness of the audience on the first night. Kean and other great British actors of the past would have turned in their graves if they could have seen the front row full of Gumby-knotted handkerchiefs on the opening night on Tuesday.

The reviews have been surprisingly extensive – it takes a second-hand collection of old TV material for critics to start taking Python really seriously. Harold Hobson was greatly impressed and called us true Popular Theatre – and Milton Shulman, perhaps our first critical friend on the TV series, was equally enthusiastic. Despite the fact that it's an old show, already toured in the provinces and Canada, London critics have devoted enormous space to analysing it, even in the grudging Observer review (which described Terry and myself as 'virtually indistinguishable' and tending'to screech a lot').

We're in the fortunate position of not having to rely on reviews to sell our seats. Despite the fact that Drury Lane holds 2,200 people, we are booked solid for two weeks, we have extended our run to three weeks, and at every performance there are apparently touts out the front selling tickets for £5–£10.

Whilst we were Gumbying at Drury Lane, there was an election – one of the most exciting for years, in which Heath failed to frighten the country into massive anti-union protest and came out with fewer seats than Labour. Heath has not yet resigned and, as I write, is busy haggling with the Liberals and others to try and form a coalition. Suddenly British politics have become alive, volatile and exciting.

[BJBMK2]

For me it's just head down and keep working. The three-day week does not so far seem to have damaged the country too much. The only real shortage is toilet rolls! But the foreign press make out we are almost in the state we were in in 1940, on the verge of collapse. Heath's propaganda seems to be every bit as effective as Hitler's was.

Eerie.

[Menu]

Here are some political entries from Palin's diary written around that period. If I've counted right I think this post might come out at the top of a new page away from relevant conversation and I'm not sure whether I should have folded it into a spoiler for happier scrolling.

Cheers for that. Not sure what I was remembering. Bit weird actually.

[Menu]

Bang on the money.

I really have nothing else to add, except that Cleese doing the "school cormorant is out of bounds!" slayed me because i saw it at the time while attending a school that aspired to that type of nonsense. It was brilliant and angry and silly and skewering. MPython was one of those things that is largely responsible for my sense of humour and who I am today. Still is.

To have him be such a tedious walloper now is sad, but having boomers disappoint me is very much in line with my life experience so whatever.

Interesting. And I don't want to labour the point either but I took that cormorant thing as affectionate rather than angry. That whole sketch, to me, didn't seem to be angry at all. But that's just my opinion, obviously. I'm clearly in a minority.

Would people also think Ripping Yarns is 'angry' because for me it's again always felt an annoyingly affectionate look at the Raj etc. That is, I was disappointed that it WASN'T angry.

[Ferris]

Well annoyingly, I found Ripping Yarns to be very affectionate satire. I'm not being contrary on purpose!

[Menu]

Well annoyingly, I found Ripping Yarns to be very affectionate satire. I'm not being contrary on purpose!

Not at all! If anything it helps to make your point about Python.

Anyway I'm probably wrong - I need to watch them again.

[Autopsy Turvey]

Cheers for that. Not sure what I was remembering. Bit weird actually.

It might be the bit where Palin is contemplating becoming a tax exile? Ripping Yarns is pretty easy, it's an affectionate satire of Empire-era boys' literature, which itself was obviously very affectionate towards imperial adventure, but even though there is an aura of affection for the jolly-good-show clichés, they're still making those axioms and narratives look very silly.

Palin himself, in the 1989 Life Of Python documentary, admits that "All the Pythons came from very comfortable middle-class existences, and so the rebellion, such as it was, was not like a curse against society, 'we're gonna get you all'... Our reaction was against a rather stifling world. It wasn't necessarily oppressive, it didn't hurt us, it wasn't unpleasant or unkind, it just was very, very conventional."

It's hard to generalise with the Pythons though, because although Terry Jones was always the red beating heart of Pythonic leftism, Cleese was always the closest they had to a more conservative establishment voice, e.g. siding with the BBC higher-ups on the subject of the 'wee wee' sketch, arguing from his "repressed and logical" English perspective with the "passionate and Welsh" Jonesey. So the anger is there if you look for it, and the affection is there if you look for it.

There's a great photo of Python in the early days where the rest of the lads are done up like they're off to see Tomorrow play the Middle Earth club and Cleese looks like a stock control clerk:

[gilbertharding]

But it's not much, I cannot see how anyone with a social conscience could vote Conservative. The film which I was doing today had been written by John Cleese, who is now what you might call a committed Labour celebrity – and I mean that in a good sense – somebody who is prepared to do something to keep the Conservatives out.

A short decade-and-a-half before he was doing the opposite by boosting the SDP. Wonder who he'd vote for now.

[Menu]

It might be the bit where Palin is contemplating becoming a tax exile? Ripping Yarns is pretty easy, it's an affectionate satire of Empire-era boys' literature, which itself was obviously very affectionate towards imperial adventure, but even though there is an aura of affection for the jolly-good-show clichés, they're still making those axioms and narratives look very silly.

Palin himself, in the 1989 Life Of Python documentary, admits that "All the Pythons came from very comfortable middle-class existences, and so the rebellion, such as it was, was not like a curse against society, 'we're gonna get you all'... Our reaction was against a rather stifling world. It wasn't necessarily oppressive, it didn't hurt us, it wasn't unpleasant or unkind, it just was very, very conventional."

It's hard to generalise with the Pythons though, because although Terry Jones was always the red beating heart of Pythonic leftism, Cleese was always the closest they had to a more conservative establishment voice, e.g. siding with the BBC higher-ups on the subject of the 'wee wee' sketch, arguing from his "repressed and logical" English perspective with the "passionate and Welsh" Jonesey. So the anger is there if you look for it, and the affection is there if you look for it.

There's a great photo of Python in the early days where the rest of the lads are done up like they're off to see Tomorrow play the Middle Earth club and Cleese looks like a stock control clerk:

Great stuff, AT. You're more articulate than me but that was pretty much my assessment of MP and RY. They make authority and the usual narratives look silly but I rarely sensed any real anger. But, yes, I'm sure TJ would have liked it to have been different.

Hilarious photo too.

[Menu]

......

[Menu]

A short decade-and-a-half before he was doing the opposite by boosting the SDP. Wonder who he'd vote for now.

I think polling shows that most SDP voters' second choice would actually have been the Tories. Labour weren't exactly targeting swing voters in that election.

[waste of chops]

Cancel culture strikes again!

https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2024/04/19/55456/john_cleeses_cancel_culture_show..._is_cancelled

John Cleese's Channel 4 show about cancel culture has apparently ceased to be.

Industry website Deadline has reported that the show, first announced in 2021 has been dropped.

Nothing has yet been filmed and the website cited unnamed sources saying that either Channel 4 could not come to a deal with the Fawlty Towers co-creator, or that his diary was so busy it could not accommodate filming.

When the Monty Python star first announced the project in 2021, he said he planned to investigate how the 'impeccable idea of "Let's all be kind to people" has been developed in some cases ad absurdum'.

He  added: 'I'm delighted to have a chance to find out, on camera, about all the aspects of so-called political correctness... I want to bring the various reasonings right out in the open so that people can be clearer in their minds what they agree with, what they don't agree with, and what they still can't make their mind up about.'

Cleese fronted a show for GB News last year, titled The Dinosaur Hour, in which he discussed issues including cancel culture and 'wokery'.

Channel 4 has not yet responded to Chortle's request for comment on the fate of the show, provisionally titled John Cleese: Cancel Me.

Originally, the  broadcaster said Cleese would 'set forth into the minefield of cancel culture to explore why a new "woke" generation is trying to rewrite the rules on what can and can't be said'.

[Ferris]

...his diary was so busy it could not accommodate filming

chinny fuckin reckon

[idunnosomename]

too busy with Fawlty Towers but it's in the Caribbean. Fair enough

[Cold Meat Platter]

Sick of all the absurd kindness I read about in the news every day.
These wokes are living in cloud cuckooland
Strong men make easy times make hard times make bombs make easy times make weak men make bombs make strong times make hard men.