And now for something completely different...

Arthur: I am your king!
Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you.
Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well, how did you become King, then?
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake... her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king!
Dennis: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a hugely popular television comedy series, which was aired for four seasons on BBC. The Python lineup included John Cleese, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. Of these, the latter was the animations expert, while the rest were the main characters in their sketches.

The series itself had been named in a rather unusual way. The producers at BBC decided to name the series Circus in response to the way the six Pythons-to-be were scuttling around like a circus, and decided later to prefix Flying to make it sound like something from World War I. The name Monty Python was chosen by the Pythons themselves, referring to it, jokingly as the kind of name that a really bad theatrical agent who would have brought them together, might have had. So the phenomenon that was to be Python was born, in 1969. The rest, as they say has been a heady mixture of history, geography, economics and quantum chemistry.
Over the years, the Pythons have redefined comedy of the television kind with their unconventional style of narration and bizarre content, like vicious attacks from gangs of armed “Keep Left” signs and the friendly neighbourhood Bicycle Repair Man. They came across as a more-than-just-welcome breath of fresh air to the stale ‘two-men-across-a-desk’ comedy sketch that invariably ended with a corny punchline that was prevalent in British television then. Other notable variations, in their narrative were, the absence of punchlines, the nearly, but not quite seamless transition from one sketch to another using Terry Gilliam’s animations.

The animations actually became a hallmark of Python sketches. Starting from the famous left foot, inspired from Agnolo Bronzino's 'Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time', to other cardboard animations of the Pythons, and others they have remained an integral part of these sketches - as integral as 0.545 is not.

The Python Fan Club has among other names the likes of The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Douglas Adams. In fact the latter once famously remarked, “I wanted to be John Cleese, but it took a long while for me to realize that the job had already been taken.” He remains only one of the two non-Pythons to have written the scripts for their sketches. Pink Floyd were big fans of the television series and have been known to postpone recording sessions to catch the television episodes. They also funded the production of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Ex-Beatle George Harrison was of massive support to the Pythons in the late 70s. He funded and starred in Monty Python’s Life of Brain, and also appeared in Eric Idle’s series titled The Rutles, which parodied The Beatles which had rather imaginative titles like Can’t buy me lunch and All you need is cash. He once said in an interview, "Monty Python helped me get over the trauma of the breakup of the Beatles."

In fact, they were to television comedy, what The Beatles were to music, in the sense that they were essentially British, and were not afraid to experiment creatively on their content. Both were internationally popular, and broke away from stifling demand that their respective producers laid on them. And like The Beatles, the individual members have been extremely successful, with their solo projects after the collective broke up.
Graham Chapman, a vastly talented actor, writer and alcoholic, died of cancer in 1989. John Cleese’s tribute speech barely two months later left the audience in splits, notwithstanding the reference to the Dead Parrot Sketch and the use of that four letter word. “And the reason I think I should say this is, he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw away this opportunity to shock you all on his behalf”, he said. Later on, commenting on the possibilities of a reunion, Eric Idle said “We shall have a proper reunion, once Chapman comes back from the dead. We have sent a note to his agent!” Keeping with the loving eccentricities of the Pythons, Chapman is referred to, affectionately as ‘the dead one.’

The Pythons have enjoyed huge success, and have been honoured with a number of distinctions. The earliest being a request for producing Flying Circus episodes for the German audience, which they gladly complied with the Fliegender Zirkus. Recently, Monty Python’s Flying Circus has been inducted into the Rose d’Or Hall of Fame, an international television festival that is now in its 45th year. The programming language Python has been named in honour of the Pythons, with sample program codes containing pythonesque references, reaffirming their status as a nerd-staple, among other things. The word spam traces its etymological origins to an eponymous Python sketch. Not too surprisingly, there is a snake species in South America named after them. The Broadway adaptation of Holy Grail, titled SPAMaLOT opened recently.

Post Python, the Pythons have had comparable success with their individual projects. While reuniting for their movies, they have been working independently, collaborating as pairs at times for select projects.

John Cleese acted and produced Fawlty Towers, another hugely popular television comedy series, and later on appeared in a multitude of movie roles like Q in Die Another Day, replacing David Llewellyn, who had played the role in all previous Bond flicks, and as Nearly Headless Nick, in the first two movies of the Harry Potter series.

Eric Idle, famous as the King of one-liners, and the soul of sketches like ‘Nudge Nudge’, has been working on similar television series like The Rutles and lately has been busy with SPAMaLOT, the Broadway adaptation of Holy Grail.

Terry Jones likewise starred in some television series, and later switched over to writing. He wrote among other things Douglas Adam’s Starship Titanic, based on the computer video game, screenplays for Labyrinth, Wind in the willows, and is a regular columnist with The Guardian, where he has been voicing his anguish and complete discontent with the war in Iraq, with essays like George, God here…

Michael Palin has been doing several travelogues, and has given rise to what is called the Palin Effect in tourism. The number of tourists to a particular spot increases after a Michael Palin episode featuring the same, like for instance the Sahara desert!

Terry Gilliam, the undoubted silent spirit behind the not as silent animations, has been involved with a variety of directorial projects, like Don Quixote and Brothers Grimm.

That three of the Pythons - Cleese, Palin and Idle were in the top 50 of the list of Comedian’s Comedians stands testimonial to the respect and love that the Pythons enjoyed among their peers.

Perhaps their outlook is best summed by the closing lines of their last movie The Meaning of Life. Unfortunately, printing them here would mean that the PG-13 certification tag that this magazine, so proudly carries, would cease to be, expire, breathe it’s last, kick the bucket, go on to meet it’s maker and rest in peace. So, in the best interests of the certificate, the article ends here.


This article appeared in Alchemy 2005 the Chemical Engineering Department magazine