Eric Idle

Eric Idle Sings Monty Python

Eric Idle Sings Monty Python is a live recording by original Monty Python member Eric Idle performed at the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles in 1999. The concert runs for under an hour and is packed with songs, poems, and arcana from the 30-plus years of Monty Python, with amusing Idle banter between songs. Idle is accompanied by some background singers, and the audience.

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Graham Chapman

Graham Arthur Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was a British comedian, actor, writer, physician and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe. He was also the lead actor in their two narrative films, playing King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the title character in Monty Python's Life of Brian. He co-authored and starred in the film Yellowbeard.

Chapman was educated at Melton Mowbray Grammar School and studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he began writing comedy sketches with fellow-student John Cleese. Chapman qualified as a medical doctor at the Barts Hospital Medical College, but never practised medicine professionally.

While at Cambridge, Chapman joined Footlights. His fellow members included Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Tony Hendra, David Hatch, Jonathan Lynn, Humphrey Barclay, and Jo Kendall. Their revue A Clump of Plinths was so successful at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that they renamed it Cambridge Circus, and took the revue to the West End in London and later New Zealand and Broadway in September 1964. The revue appeared in October 1964 on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Cleese and Chapman wrote professionally for the BBC during the 1960s, primarily for David Frost, but also for Marty Feldman. Chapman also contributed sketches to the BBC radio series I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and television programmes such as The Illustrated Weekly Hudd (starring Roy Hudd), Cilla Black, This is Petula Clark, and This is Tom Jones. Chapman, Cleese, and Tim Brooke-Taylor then joined Feldman in the television comedy series At Last the 1948 Show. Chapman, and on occasion Cleese, also wrote for the long-running television comedy series Doctor in the House. Chapman also co-wrote several episodes with Bernard McKenna and David Sherlock.

In 1969 Chapman and Cleese joined Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and American artist Terry Gilliam for the BBC television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus. He most often played characters closer to his own personality: outwardly calm, authoritative figures barely concealing a manic unpredictability.

In David Morgan's 1999 book Monty Python Speaks, Cleese asserted that Chapman - although officially his co-writer for many of their sketches - contributed comparatively little in the way of direct writing. Rather, the Pythons have said that his biggest contribution in the writing room was an intuition as to what was funny. In the "Dead Parrot Sketch", written mostly by Cleese, the frustrated customer was initially trying to return a faulty toaster to a shop. Chapman would ask "How can we make this madder?", and then came up with the idea that returning a dead parrot to a pet shop might make a more interesting subject than a toaster.

In the late 1970s, Chapman moved to Los Angeles, where he guest-starred on many US television shows, including The Hollywood Squares, Still Crazy Like a Fox, and the NBC sketch series The Big Show. Upon returning to England he became involved with the Dangerous Sports Club (an extreme sports club which introduced bungee jumping to a wide audience). He began a lengthy series of US college tours in the 1980s, where he would tell the audience anecdotes on Monty Python, the Dangerous Sports Club, Keith Moon, and other subjects. His memoir, A Liar's Autobiography, was published in 1980 and, unusually for an autobiography, had five authors: Chapman, his partner David Sherlock, Alex Martin, David Yallop and Douglas Adams, who in 1977 was virtually unknown as a recent graduate fresh from Cambridge. Together they wrote a pilot for a TV series, Out of the Trees; it was aired in 1975, but never became a series. They also wrote a show for Ringo Starr, which was never made. Chapman mentored Adams, but they later had a falling out and did not speak for several years. It took years of planning and rewriting before he secured the funds to create Yellowbeard; The movie was finally released in 1983.

Chapman's last project was to have been a TV series called Jake's Journey. Although the pilot episode was made, there were difficulties selling the project. Following Chapman's death, there was no interest. Chapman was also to have played a guest role as a television presenter in the Red Dwarf episode "Timeslides", but died before filming was to have started.

In the years since Chapman's death, despite the existence of the "Graham Chapman Archive", only a few of his projects have actually been released. One of these projects is a play entitled O Happy Day, brought to life in 2000 by Dad's Garage Theatre Company in Atlanta, Georgia. Cleese and Palin assisted the theatre company in adapting the play. He also appeared in the Iron Maiden video, "Can I Play with Madness".

Chapman was an alcoholic from his time in medical school. His drinking affected his performance on the TV recording set as well as on the set of Holy Grail, where he suffered from withdrawal symptoms including delirium tremens. He finally stopped drinking on Boxing Day 1977, having just irritated the other Pythons with an outspoken (and drunken) interview with the New Musical Express.

Chapman was a vocal spokesman for gay rights, and in 1972 he lent his support to the fledgling newspaper Gay News, which publicly acknowledged his financial and editorial support by listing him as one of its "special friends".

Among Chapman's closest friends were Keith Moon of The Who, singer Harry Nilsson, and Beatle Ringo Starr.

Before going sober, Chapman jokingly referred to himself as the British actress Betty Marsden, possibly because of Marsden's oft-quoted desire to die with a glass of gin in her hand.

In 1971, Chapman and Sherlock adopted John Tomiczek as their son. Chapman met Tomiczek when the teenager was a runaway from Liverpool. After discussions with Tomiczek's father, it was agreed that Chapman would become Tomiczek's legal guardian. John later became Chapman's business manager. He died in 1992.

Graham Chapman, co-author of the "Parrot Sketch", is no more.

He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He's kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky. And I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun.

Well, I feel that I should say: nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries.

But bolder and less inhibited spirits than me follow today. Jones and Idle, Gilliam and Palin. Heaven knows what the next hour will bring in Graham's name. Trousers dropping, blasphemers on pogo sticks, spectacular displays of high-speed farting, synchronized incest. One of the four is planning to stuff a dead ocelot and a 1922 Remington typewriter up his own arse to the sound of the second movement of Elgar's cello concerto. And that's in the first half.

Because you see, Gray would have wanted it this way. Really. Anything for him but mindless good taste. And that's what I'll always remember about him — apart, of course, from his Olympian extravagance. He was the prince of bad taste. He loved to shock. In fact, Gray, more than anyone I knew, embodied and symbolized all that was most offensive and juvenile in Monty Python. And his delight in shocking people led him on to greater and greater feats. I like to think of him as the pioneering beacon that beat the path along which fainter spirits could follow.

Some memories. I remember writing the undertaker speech with him, and him suggesting the punch line, 'All right, we'll eat her, but if you feel bad about it afterwards, we'll dig a grave and you can throw up into it.' I remember discovering in 1969, when we wrote every day at the flat where Connie Booth and I lived, that he'd recently discovered the game of printing four-letter words on neat little squares of paper, and then quietly placing them at strategic points around our flat, forcing Connie and me into frantic last minute paper chases whenever we were expecting important guests.

I remember him at BBC parties crawling around on all fours, rubbing himself affectionately against the legs of gray-suited executives, and delicately nibbling the more appetizing female calves. Mrs. Eric Morecambe remembers that too.

I remember his being invited to speak at the Oxford union, and entering the chamber dressed as a carrot — a full length orange tapering costume with a large, bright green sprig as a hat — and then, when his turn came to speak, refusing to do so. He just stood there, literally speechless, for twenty minutes, smiling beatifically. The only time in world history that a totally silent man has succeeded in inciting a riot.

I remember Graham receiving a Sun newspaper TV award from Reggie Maudling. Who else! And taking the trophy falling to the ground and crawling all the way back to his table, screaming loudly, as loudly as he could. And if you remember Gray, that was very loud indeed.

It is magnificent, isn't it? You see, the thing about shock... is not that it upsets some people, I think; I think that it gives others a momentary joy of liberation, as we realized in that instant that the social rules that constrict our lives so terribly are not actually very important.

Well, Gray can't do that for us anymore. He's gone. He is an ex-Chapman. All we have of him now is our memories. But it will be some time before they fade.

Michael Palin also spoke and said that he liked to think that Chapman was there with them all that day — "or rather, he will be in about twenty-five minutes," a joke in reference to Chapman's habitual lateness when they were all working together.

On 31 December 1999 Chapman's ashes were rumoured to have been "blasted into the skies in a rocket". In reality, however, Sherlock scattered Chapman's ashes in Snowdon, North Wales on 18 June 2005.

After his death, speculation of a Python revival inevitably faded, with Idle saying, "we would only do a reunion if Chapman came back from the dead. So we're negotiating with his agent". Subsequent gatherings of the Pythons have actually been accompanied by an urn, said to contain Chapman's ashes. At the 1998 Aspen Comedy Arts festival, the urn was 'accidentally' knocked over by Terry Gilliam, spilling the 'ashes' on-stage. The cremains were then removed with a dust-buster.

Asteroid 9617 Grahamchapman, named in Chapman's honour, is the first in a series of six asteroids carrying the names of members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.

In 1997, David Sherlock allowed Jim Yoakum to start the Graham Chapman Archives. Later that year, the novel Graham Crackers: Fuzzy Memories, Silly Bits, and Outright Lies was released. It is a semi-sequel to A Liar's Autobiography, with Chapman works compiled by Yoakum. A collection of unpublished material has been released in 1999, Ojril: The Completely Incomplete Graham Chapman, containing scripts Graham wrote with Douglas Adams and others, such as "Our show for Ringo Starr, a.k.a. Goodnight Vienna". And in 2005 Calcium Made Interesting: Sketches, Letters, Essays & Gondolas was published. At one time, the script for "Out of the trees", written by Chapman and Adams in 1975 (and later extensively rewritten by Chapman with Bernard McKenna), was online, but Jim Yoakum had it removed, to the disappointment of the fans of Monty Python and also of co-writer Douglas Adams, who had made no objections to it being there. The debate that followed did nothing to promote the legacy of Graham Chapman, and cast some doubt about the erratic way in which Jim Yoakum, who had only known Graham Chapman superficially, was handling his literary estate. Jim did however start his own website, called the Graham Chapman Archives, demanding people to turn in any rare recordings featuring Graham Chapman they might have, but the site never offered any real biographical information or other materials, and it has since disappeared from the web.

Graham Chapman's college tours in the 1980s had been recorded and these were released over the years by Yoakum. The CD A Liar Live was delayed several times, but was released as A Six Pack of Lies in 1997. Other, almost identical, college tours also came out on CD, such as Spot the Loony in 2001. A DVD of the tours (Looks Like a Brown Trouser Job) was released in 2005. The single episodes for "Out of the trees", which was wiped but later recovered on an early home video system, and "Jake's Journey" still remain to be released.

In 2004 there was talk of a movie about the life of Graham Chapman, to be called "Gin and Tonic", by Hippofilms in cooperation with Jim Yoakum. Auditions were held in march 2004 in California, but since then the project died silently, it isn't clear when exactly it has been officially abandoned. Its website is no longer online and the IMDB page has been deleted; The Graham Chapman Archive's website has disappeared as well.

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Neil Innes

Neil James Innes (born 9 December 1944, in Danbury, Essex) is an English writer and performer of comic songs, best known for his collaborative work with Monty Python, and for playing in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later The Rutles. Innes spent a good part of his childhood with his parents and two-year-older brother Iain in post-war Germany during his Scottish father's military assignment as a Warrant Officer. He took piano lessons as a child. Neil's parents were supportive of their sons' interests. His father showed some artistic ability as he frequently drew and painted.

He later attended Thorpe Grammar School and the Norwich School of Art. While he attended Goldsmith's School of Art, he met Yvonne Catherine Hilton, majoring in drama, and they married on March 3, 1966. They have three sons, Miles (b. 1967), Luke (b. 1971), and Barney (b. 1977). They have two grandchildren.

Innes graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Goldsmith's School of Art in 1966.

During the period of 1962 to 1965, Innes and several other art school students started a band which was originally named The Bonzo Dog Dada Band after their interest in the art movement Dada, but which was soon renamed the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (later shortened to The Bonzo Dog Band). Innes, with Vivian Stanshall, wrote most of the band's songs, including "I'm the Urban Spaceman", their sole hit, (produced by Paul McCartney and Gus Dudgeon under the collective pseudonym Apollo C. Vermouth) and "Death Cab for Cutie" (which inspired an American musical group of the same name), which was featured in the Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour. Innes won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Novel(ty) Song in 1968 for "I'm the Urban Spaceman".

In the late 1960s, Innes appeared with the Bonzo Dog Band on both seasons of the UK children's television series Do Not Adjust Your Set which also featured future members of the Monty Python comedy team.

After the breakup of Bonzo Dog Band, Innes joined with former Dog Band bassist Dennis Cowan, drummer Ian Wallace and guitarist Roger McKew to form The World, a band hoping for "more commercial" success with music ranging from rock to pure pop, yet still retaining some Doo-Dah flavor and even a bit of the humor. Unfortunately for them, by the time their sole album Lucky Planet was released in 1970, the members had already disbanded and were moving on to other projects.

In 1973 Neil worked with Andy Roberts, Adrian Henri, Mike McGear, Brian Patten, John Gorman, David Richards, John Megginson, Ollie Halsall, and Gerry Conway in the band GRIMMS, who released their self titled album and Rocking Duck in 1973 followed by their last album Sleepers in 1976.

In the mid-1970s, Innes became closely associated with the TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus. He played a major role in performing and writing songs and sketches for the final series in 1974 (after John Cleese left). He wrote a squib of a song called "George III" (sung by a pastiche black American girl group) which appears in "The Golden Age Of Ballooning". He also wrote the song "Where Does A Dream Begin?" (included in "Anything Goes: The Light Entertainment War") and he co-wrote the "Most Awful Family In Britain" sketch in the last episode, "Party Political Broadcast". He is one of only two non-Pythons to ever be credited writers for the TV series, the other being Douglas Adams (who co-wrote another sketch in "Party Political Broadcast").

He appeared on stage with the Pythons in New York City in 1975, performing the Bob Dylanesque "Protest Song" (complete with harmonica) on the album Monty Python Live at City Center. He was introduced as Raymond Scum. After his introduction he told the audience "I've suffered for my music. Now it's your turn." In 1982 he traveled to the States with the Pythons again, appearing in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. He performed the songs "How Sweet to Be an Idiot" and "I'm the Urban Spaceman." He also appeared as one of the singing "Bruces" in the Philosopher Sketch.

Innes wrote the songs for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He appeared in the film as a head-bashing monk, the serf crushed by the giant wooden rabbit, and the leader of Sir Robin's minstrels. He also had a small role in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky. He performed with the Pythons on stage, including their legendary Hollywood Bowl concert. Because of these long-standing connections, Innes is often referred to as "the Seventh Python".

After Python finished its original run on UK television, Innes joined with Python's Eric Idle on the series Rutland Weekend Television. This was a Python-esque sketch show based in a fictional low-budget regional television station. It ran for two series in 1975-76. Songs and sketches from the series appeared on a 1976 BBC LP, the Rutland Weekend Songbook. This show spawned The Rutles (the "prefab four"), a Beatles parody band, in which Innes played the character of Ron Nasty, who was loosely based on John Lennon. Innes played Nasty in an American-made spin-off TV movie, All You Need Is Cash, with Idle. The film also had a spin-off LP on Warner Brothers.

After Rutland Weekend Television, Idle relocated to the USA, and Innes went on to make a solo series in 1979 on BBC television, The Innes Book of Records, which ran for three seasons and contained at least 4 of Innes' previous music compositions along with new ones written for the show.

During the 1980s, Innes delved into children's entertainment. He played the role of the Wizard in the live-action children's television series Puddle Lane, made by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network.

He voiced the 1980s children's cartoon adventures of The Raggy Dolls, a motley collection of "rejects" from a toy factory. The 65 episodes for Yorkshire Television included the characters Sad Sack, Hi-Fi, Lucy, Dotty, Back-to-Front and Princess.

In addition, he brought Monty Python's Terry Jones' faerie-tale book "East of the Moon" to television. He contributed all the stories and music on this production. He was involved with the enormously popular children's show Tiswas. With its own website, the shows's popularity is still demonstrated.

At the time of The Beatles Anthology CDs, there was a revival of interest in The Rutles and a new album was released in 1996 entitled Archaeology.

In 1998, Innes hosted a 13-episode UK (Anglia) television show called "Away with Words" on which he travelled to different areas of Britain to explore the origins of well-known words and phrases.

Innes took part, along with the remaining Monty Python members, in the 2002 Concert for George, in memory of George Harrison.

Innes was occasionally heard (often as the butt of jokes) standing in as the pianist for the BBC Radio 4 panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

Innes toured the UK in 2006 and produced a new Bonzo CD as part of the Bonzo Dog Band's 40th Anniversary tour.

In 2008 he undertook the Neil Innes and Fatso 30th Anniversary tour, playing predominantly Rutles numbers with a few Bonzos and Python items.

A film about Neil Innes called The Seventh Python premiered at the Mods & Rockers Film Festival on June 26, 2008.

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Spamalot

Monty Python's Spamalot is a musical comedy "lovingly ripped off from" the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Like the film, it is a highly irreverent parody of the Arthurian Legend, but it differs from the film in many ways, especially in its parodies of Broadway theatre. Eric Idle, a member of the Monty Python team, wrote the musical's book and lyrics and collaborated with John Du Prez on the music. The original 2005 Broadway production, directed by Mike Nichols, won three Tony Awards, including the Tony Award for Best Musical of the 2004–2005 season and received 14 Tony Award nominations.

A historian gives a brief overview of mediaeval England. An idyllic Scandinavian village appears, with gaily dressed Finnish villagers singing and dancing to the "Fisch Schlapping Song." The Historian returns, irritated, and tells the frolicking Finns that he was talking about England, not Finland. The villagers disperse and the pastoral forest is immediately replaced by a dreary, dark village with penitent monks in hooded robes chanting Latin prayers and hitting themselves in the face with large bibles. King Arthur travels the land with his servant Patsy, who follows him around banging two coconuts shells together to make the sound of horses hooves as Arthur "rides" before him, trying to recruit Knights of the Round Table to join him in Camelot ("King Arthur's Song"). He encounters a pair of sentries who are more interested in debating whether two swallows could successfully carry a coconut than in listening to the king.

Robin, a collector of plague victims, and Lance, a large, handsome and incredibly violent man, meet as Lance attempts to dispose of the sickly Not Dead Fred ("He Is Not Dead Yet"). They agree to become Knights of the Round Table together, Lance for the fighting, and Robin for the singing and the dancing.

Arthur attempts to convince a peasant named Dennis Galahad that he, Arthur, is king of England because the Lady of the Lake gave him Excalibur, the sword given only to the man fit to rule England. However, Dennis and his mother, Mrs Galahad, are political radicals and deny that any king who has not been elected by the people has any legitimate right to rule over them. To settle the issue, Arthur has the Lady of the Lake and her Laker Girls appear to turn Dennis into a knight ("Come With Me"). Cheered on by the girls ("Laker Girls Cheer"), the Lady of the Lake turns Dennis into Sir Galahad and together, they sing a generic Broadway love song ("The Song That Goes Like This"), complete with chandelier. They are joined by Sir Robin and Sir Lancelot, and together with Sir Bedevere and Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Show (a knight resembling Don Quixote, who promptly apologizes and leaves), they make up the Knights of the Round Table ("All for One").

The five knights gather in Camelot, a deliberately anachronistic place resembling Las Vegas's Camelot-inspired Excalibur resort, complete with showgirls, oversized dice and the Lady of the Lake headlining the Castle in full Cher get-up ("Knights of the Round Table"/"The Song That Goes Like This (Reprise)"). In the midst of their revelry, they are contacted by God (a recording voiced by comedian John Cleese) who tells them to locate the Holy Grail. Urged on by the Lady of the Lake ("Find Your Grail"), the Knights set off. They travel throughout the land until they reach a castle inhabited by the deadliest of foes: French People. They are viciously taunted by lewd French soldiers at a castle they come to, and attempt to retaliate by sending them a large wooden rabbit in the style of the Trojan Horse; however, they realize after the fact that it was not as simple as leaving the rabbit and walking away—they should have hidden inside it. Defeated, they leave in a hurry when the French begin taunting them again, sending cancan dancers after them and throwing barnyard animals including cows at them ("Run Away!").

Sir Robin and his minstrels follow King Arthur and Patsy into a "dark and very expensive forest", where they are separated. King Arthur meets the terrifying but silly Knights who say Ni, who demand a shrubbery. King Arthur despairs of finding one, but Patsy cheers him up ("Always Look on the Bright Side of Life") and they find a shrubbery shortly after.

Sir Robin, after wandering the forest for some time with his minstrels ("Brave Sir Robin"), encounters The Black Knight, who scares him off, but King Arthur, who happens on the scene, more or less defeats him by cutting off both his arms and legs, impaling his still-alive torso on a door, and leaving to give the Knights their shrubbery. The Knights accept it, but next demand that King Arthur put on a musical and bring it to Broadway (in the United Kingdom, this became a West End musical; on the tour, they must put on a "Broadway musical", implying that it need only be Broadway-style, "but not an Andrew Lloyd Webber". The mere mention of his name causes everyone to cover their ears and scream in pain.). Sir Robin, who has found Arthur by this point, insists that it would be impossible for them to accomplish this next task, since you need Jews for a successful Broadway (or West End) musical ("You Won't Succeed on Broadway"), and proves his point in a wild production number filled with Fiddler on the Roof parodies, including a bottle dance like the one in Fiddler on the Roof, with Grails instead of bottles. King Arthur and Patsy promptly set off in search of Jews.

While the Lady of the Lake laments her lack of stage time ("Diva's Lament - Whatever Happened to My Part?"), Sir Lancelot receives a letter from what he assumes is a young damsel in distress. He is very surprised to find that the "damsel" is actually an emberassingly unnattractive, effeminate young man named Prince Herbert ("Where Are You?"/"Here Are You") whose overbearing, music-hating father, the King of Swamp Castle, is forcing him into an arranged marriage. As Herbert is asking Lancelot to help him escape, the King of Swamp Castle cuts the rope that he is using to climb out of the window, and Herbert falls to his death. Lancelot is a bit puzzled at the king's actions, but it is revealed that Herbert was saved at the last minute by Lancelot's sidekick, Concord. The King asks his son how he was saved, exactly, to which Herbert replies happily with a song. But the king charges at his son with a spear, preparing to kill him. Lancelot steps in to save him, then gives a tearful, heartfelt speech about sensitivity to the king on Herbert's behalf, and Lancelot is outed as a homosexual in the process, an announcement celebrated in a wild disco number ("His Name is Lancelot").

King Arthur begins to give up hope of ever putting on the Broadway musical and laments that he is alone, even though Patsy has been with him the entire time ("I'm All Alone"). The Lady of the Lake appears and tells Arthur that he and the Knights have been in a Broadway musical all along. Patsy also reveals he is half Jewish, but didn't want to say anything to Arthur because "that's not really the sort of thing you say to a heavily-armed Christian." All that's left is for King Arthur to find the Grail and marry someone. After picking up on some not-too-subtle hints, Arthur decides to marry the Lady of the Lake after he finds the Grail ("Twice In Every Show").

Reunited with his Knights, Arthur meets Tim the Enchanter who warns them of the danger of an evil rabbit. When the rabbit bites a knight's head off, Arthur uses the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch against it, knocking down a nearby hill and revealing that the "evil rabbit" was actually a puppet controlled by a surprised puppeteer. A large stone block showing a combination of letters and numbers is also revealed. (The letters vary from show to show, but in the Broadway production and on the tour it is either A101, B101, C101 or D101. In the West End Production a word is revealed - DONE, CONE or BONE, referring to D1, C1 and B1 respectively.) After pondering the final clue, Arthur admits that they're "a bit stumped with the clue thing" and asks God to "give them a hand". A large hand points to the audience and Arthur realizes that the letters and numbers refer to a seat number in the audience. The grail is "found" (with some sleight of hand) under the seat and the person sitting in the seat is rewarded with a small trophy and a polaroid photo. ("The Holy Grail"). Arthur marries the Lady of the Lake, who reveals that her name is Guinevere; Lancelot marries Herbert (who finally has a chance to sing); and Sir Robin decides to pursue a career in musical theatre ("Act 2 Finale/Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Company Bow)").

Several sections in the script call for improvisation by the actors, including references to current events or local culture. These have been added during the French Taunter scene in Act I, during the Knights of Ni scene, and when the Holy Grail is found at the end of the show.

Sara Ramirez was intended to double as a witch but this part was cut from the final script. Several pairs of characters originally played by the same Monty Python member were reduced to one: the Dead Collector and Sir Robin (Idle), the Large Man with a Dead Body and Sir Lancelot (Cleese), and Dennis the Politically-Active Peasant and Sir Galahad (Michael Palin).

Previews of the show began in Chicago's Shubert Theatre (now the Bank of America Theatre) on December 21, 2004; the show officially opened there on January 9, 2005 and was practically sold-out.

Two musical numbers were dropped from Act One while the production was still in Chicago. During the scene set in the "Witch Village", the torch song "Burn Her!" was originally performed by Sir Bedevere, The Witch, Sir Robin, Lance and Villagers. At the French Castle, "The Cow Song", in a parody of a stereotypical film noir/cabaret style, was performed by The Cow and French Citizens. Before the two songs were cut in Chicago, the lead vocals in both songs were sung by Sara Ramirez. This gave her six songs in Act One, but no further appearances until scene five in Act Two, for "The Diva's Lament".

The musical previewed on Broadway, at New York's Shubert Theatre, beginning February 14, 2005, and, after some changes, officially opened on March 17, 2005. Mike Nichols directed, and Casey Nicholaw choreographed. The Broadway previews were practically sold out, leaving only obstructed view tickets for sale. The production won the Tony Award for Best Musical and was nominated for 14 Tony Awards. The show played its final performance on January 11, 2009 after 35 previews and 1,574 performances.

The original Broadway cast included Tim Curry as King Arthur, Michael McGrath as Patsy, David Hyde Pierce as Sir Robin, Hank Azaria as Sir Lancelot and other roles (e.g., the French Taunter, Knight of Ni, and Tim the Enchanter), Christopher Sieber as Sir Galahad and other roles (e.g., the Black Knight and Prince Herbert's Father), and Sara Ramirez as the Lady of the Lake. It also included Christian Borle as Prince Herbert and other roles (e.g., the Historian and Not Dead Fred), Steve Rosen as Sir Bedevere and other roles (e.g., Concorde and Dennis's Mother) and John Cleese as the (recorded) Voice of God.

A North American tour commenced in spring 2006, and the cast included Michael Siberry as King Arthur, Jeff Dumas as Patsy/Mayor/Guard, David Turner as Robin/Guard/Brother Maynard, Rick Holmes as Lancelot/French Taunter/Knight of Ni/Tim The Enchanter, Bradley Dean as Galahad/Black Knight/Herbert's Father, Tom Deckman as The Historian/Not Dead Fred/French Guard/Minstrel/Prince Herbert, Christopher Gurr as Sir Bedevere/Dennis's Mother/Concorde, and Pia Glenn (who remains slated for productions as late as June 2008) as the Lady of the Lake. Deckman moved to the Broadway production in November 2006 and was replaced by Christopher Sutton.

The tour won three 2007 Touring Broadway Awards, including Best New Musical.

Another tour began in Chicago on January 20, 2009 at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, with Richard Chamberlin as King Arthur. A separate engagement will run at the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, California, from July 7, 2009 to September 6, 2009.

Among the cuts required to bring the Las Vegas version down to about 90 minutes include the song "All For One," most of the song "Run Away," the Knights of Ni receiving their shrubbery, and the "Make sure he doesn't leave" scene with Prince Herbert's guards.

John O'Hurley, best known as J. Peterman on Seinfeld and the current Family Feud host, starred as King Arthur. Due to the Las Vegas production, the North American touring company will not perform in California, Arizona, or Nevada. In addition, the cast includes Nikki Crawford as Lady of the Lake, Edward Staudenmayer as Galahad, J Anthony Crane as Lancelot, Justin Brill as Patsy, and Harry Bouvy as Robin, with Reva Rice as the standby Lady of the Lake.

The Las Vegas production closed to make way for Danny Gans' move from The Mirage casino hotel; the theater was renamed the Encore Theater and integrated into the newer Encore Las Vegas resort.

A new Australian production started in Melbourne in November 2007 at Her Majesty's Theatre, with the official premiere on December 1. The cast featured Bille Brown as King Arthur and Lucinda Shaw as the Lady of the Lake, Ben Lewis as Sir Galahad, Stephen Hall as Sir Lancelot, Derek Metzger as Patsy, Jason Langley as Sir Robin and Mark Conaghan as Prince Herbert, with Christina O'Neill as the standby Lady of the Lake..

The Australian production closed on April 5, 2008, due to lack of ticket sales. Little promotion was done outside Melbourne, with the expectation the show would tour after a successful Melbourne season. Tour plans are now in doubt due both to its premature Melbourne closure and the lack of suitable venues available during 2008 in other Australian cities.

Phoenix Ensemble Inc will present the Queensland Premiere, and Australasian non-professional premiere at the Pavilion Theatre in Beenleigh from the 20th March 2009 for a 5 week run, and at the Logan Entertainment Centre for 3 shows from Friday the 24th April 2009.

The Gold Coast Premiere season of Spamalot opens at the Spotlight Theatre, Benowa July 24 2009 for a four week run.

The first translated production, in Spanish, opened at Teatre Victoria, Barcelona on September 9, 2008, directed by Catalan Comedy Group Tricicle. The cast features Jordi Bosch as King Arthur, Marta Ribera as the Lady of the Lake, Sergi Albert as Sir Galahad, Fernando Gil as Sir Lancelot, Julián Fontalvo as Patsy, Xavi Duch as Sir Robin, Josep M. Gimeno as Sir Bedevere and Jesús García as Prince Herbert, with Sara Pérez as the standby Lady of the Lake. The Original Barcelona Cast Recording was released on December 2008.

A German production will start on January 2009 at the Musical Dome in Cologne.

The original production has been both a financial and critical success. Variety reported advance ticket sales of $18 million, with ticket prices ranging from $36 to $179. The advance made Broadway box office history.

The show proved to be an early success when moving to London's West End. After high advance ticket sales the show's run was extended by four weeks, four months before the run commenced. The play makes many references to the film and other material in the Python canon, including a line from "The Lumberjack Song", nods to "Ministry of Silly Walks," the "Election Night Special" and "Dead Parrot Sketch" routines, a bar from "Spam" worked into "Knights of the Round Table", a rendition of the song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from the film Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), and the "Fisch Schlapping Song" which is a reference to both "The Fish-Slapping Dance" and the song "Finland". Another reference is actually part of the Playbill of the show; there are several gag pages about a musical entitled "Dik Od Triaanenen Fol (Finns Ain't What They Used To Be)". This gag programme was written by Palin, and echoes the faux-Swedish subtitles in the credits of the original Grail Python film.

Broadway musical fans appreciate its visual and auditory references to other musicals and musical theatre in general, such as: "The Song That Goes Like This" (a spoof of Andrew Lloyd Webber productions and many other Broadway power ballads); the knights doing a dance reminiscent of Fiddler on the Roof, and another reminiscent of West Side Story (including the music); Sir Lancelot's mimicking of Peter Allen in "His Name Is Lancelot"; the character of Sir Not Appearing in This Show being Man of La Mancha's Don Quixote; a member of the French "army" dressed as Eponine from Les Misérables; and a line pulled from "Another Hundred People" from Stephen Sondheim's Company by the "damsel" Herbert. The song "You Won't Succeed (On Broadway)" also parodies The Producers and Yentl.

The Las Vegas production met with glowing reactions. It was awarded the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Number 1 show of 2007, the year it opened.

On March 22, 2006, to mark the first anniversary of the official Broadway opening, the "World's Largest Coconut Orchestra", 1,789 people clapping together half coconut shells, performed in Shubert Alley, outside the theatre. The claim was officially recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records. This record was broken by 5,567 people in Trafalgar Square at 7pm on 23 April 2007, led by the cast from the London production, along with Jones and Gilliam, with the coconuts used in place of the whistles in "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". This formed part of London's St George's Day celebrations that year and was followed by a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

In 2006, the London cast of Spamalot performed excerpts at the Royal Variety Performance.

On March 10, 2007, Spamalot partnered with HP Sauce (the classic British brown sauce, now made in Holland due to a contentious decision to close its factory in Britain) to produce 1,075 limited edition bottles featuring a unique Spamalot take on the classic HP design. The bottles were available exclusively via Selfridges, London and came in a presentation box with a numbered certificate. 1,075 was chosen to celebrate, absurdly, "1,075 years of the show running in London".

In July 2007 it was announced that the London production would solve the problem of replacing Hannah Waddingham as the Lady of the Lake through a TV talent show in Sweden. The programme, called West End Star, which began airing on TV3 on December 8, 2007, announced Nina Söderquist as the winner on February 2, 2008.

Nina took up the role of The Lady of the Lake, with a standing ovation, on Monday 11 February 2008.

Portions of the Spamalot original cast recording were featured (with accompanying Flash animation) as a special feature in the 2006 "Extraordinarily Deluxe Two-Disc Edition" DVD re-release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The touring production has garnered Boston's Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Visiting Production.

A special edition of The South Bank Show was a television documentary on the history of Spamalot. It features numerous segments with Eric Idle and John Du Prez explaining the process of writing the songs, plus interviews with US and UK cast members. It included scenes from the rehearsal of the West End show, and first aired on 15 October 2006.

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Rutland Weekend Television

Rutland Weekend Television (RWT) was a television sketch show on BBC2, written by Eric Idle with music by Neil Innes. Two series, the first consisting of six episodes, the second of seven, were broadcast, in 1975 and 1976. A Christmas special also aired on Boxing Day 1975.

It was Idle's first television project after Monty Python's Flying Circus ended the previous year. The show is perhaps best known as the catalyst for The Rutles. Despite many calls, none of the episodes have been released on DVD - the show has complicated rights issues, belonging in principle both to the BBC and Idle, but with issues concerning appearances by former-Beatle George Harrison and the songs of Neil Innes. Innes has claimed that Idle has no interest in seeing the series released as it reminds him of an unhappy time in his life, but recent litigation and bitterness concerning The Rutles spin-off may also be a consideration.

Rutland Weekend Television or RWT centred on "Britain's smallest television network", situated in England's smallest (and mainly rural) county, Rutland.

The show's title alludes to the real television broadcaster London Weekend Television. (London at the time was covered by two ITV franchises, Thames Television broadcasting Monday to Friday, and LWT at weekends).

A Rutland TV station would be pretty small, so a Rutland Weekend Television would have to be ridiculously tiny. The joke was doubly meaningful, as instead of a light entertainment budget, Idle had accidentally been granted a presentation budget 1 — not sketch comedy — so the weekly patter about their inability to buy props and sets was quite real. Indeed the last show of the first series featured Idle and Innes, stripped and shivering in blankets under a bare bulb, singing about how the power's about to be shut off. Idle speaks bitterly about these conditions now but his attempts to overcome them formed the basis of a lot of the show's jokes.

The episode begins with the announcer, usually with something going wrong or with something out of the ordinary. From announcements catching fire to open auditions for the announcer itself. Occasionally the announcement would be sung, or performed by more than one person. In one episode, the announcements are performed by 'The Ricochet Brothers' (spelled Ricochet, but pronounced Rick-ot-chet) who begin the episode as a pair, and expand to a full cast, each speaking the announcement in harmony.

The role of the announcer would to announce the 'programmes' (typically sketches) - many programmes would lead into, or announce one of many songs and accompanying strange vignettes by Neil Innes.

Ham sandwich, bucket and water plastic Duralex rubber McFisheries underwear. Plugged rabbit emulsion, zinc custard without sustenance in kipling-duff geriatric scenery, maximises press insulating government grunting sapphire-clubs incidentally. But tonight, sam pan Bombay Bermuda in diphtheria rustic McAlpine splendor, rabbit and foot-foot-phooey jugs rapidly big biro ruveliners musk-green gauges micturate with nipples and tiptoe rusting machinery, rustically inclined. Good evening and welcome.

A former member of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, longtime songwriter for and performer with Monty Python, and later to be part of musical acts The Grimms, The World, and The Rutles, Innes wrote and performed most of the songs in the show, often in the guise of another character, such as Stoop Solo. A few non-Innes songs (mostly penned by Idle) were also performed by him and members of his band, Fatso, during the tenure of the show.

Aside from the musical items, Innes was also a regular cast member, performing in many of the sketches.

In the show, he was often the straight man, and second only to Idle in the number of his performances throughout the series. He was the George Harrison character in the original (RWT) Rutles sketch, but he was replaced by Rikki Fataar for the TV special All You Need Is Cash (1978). Battley also appears in the final episode as David Frost, whom he had also portrayed in a stage production.

Woolf plays often as a co-conspirator to Battley, appearing at his side in many sketches, though occasionally complains about being cast as 'the short one', or 'The Jewish One'. He would later star as the Surrey mystic, Arthur Sultan, in All You Need Is Cash. In the fourth episode of series two, Woolf bitterly complains that "I'm a writer - I've had plays on!". Both claims are true.

As the main female character, Gwen would appear in a lot of sketches, but is still much more noticeably absent than Idle or Battley. Credibly, she frequently plays genuine female characters, instead of the more 'decorative' roles from the other female contributors. She too would go on to star in All You Need Is Cash, as the mother of Leggy Mountbatten and Ron Nasty's wife, Chastity; as well as appearing in several roles in Monty Python's Life of Brian(1979), including Mrs Bignose ("Don't pick your nose!"), the elderly woman bent double under the weight of a dummy donkey and the ineffectual heckler during Pilate's passover address ("and a pickpocket!").

Appearing in from the last episode of series one onward, Bayler played a variety of characters, including a shy and apparently forgetful announcer, the greasy presenter of 'Rutland Showtime', and the Pink Panzer (a pink-uniformed SS officer who greets the camera with an effete Nazi salute and a breathless "seig heil"). He would later appear as the manager of the Rutles in, All You Need Is Cash, and as Gregory ("I'm Brian and so's my wife!") in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979).

Three performers who were given the more 'token' roles, often playing attractive, silent characters, in sharp contrast to the well rounded performances of Gwen Taylor.

Bunny May was not in fact an actress but an actor who occasionally appeared in drag. Lyn Ashley was Eric Idle's wife at the time. Carinthia West, romantically associated with Mick Jagger & Bryan Ferry at various points in her life, increasingly provided the glamour over the two series.

In addition to this, the band Fatso featured regularly, both as a group and as individuals.

As well as Innes himself.

Roger Rettig now resides in Florida, USA, and is regarded as one of the finest pedal steel players in the business.

Brian Hodgson, regularly tours with legendary guitarist Albert Lee in a band called Hogan's Heroes.

The Christmas special features George Harrison as "Pirate Bob", dressed in appropriate attire and frequently interrupting the action throughout the show, before being given the chance to sing at the end in normal clothing (singing a lively song about pirates). Neil Innes was friendly with Harrison and the Beatles from his days in the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (the Bonzos were featured in the "Magical Mystery Tour" film, and Paul McCartney produced the Bonzo single "I'm the Urban Spaceman"). Incidentally, Innes acted in Terry Gilliam's first non-Python film, Jabberwocky, and Harrison's company Handmade Films financed Gilliam's second non-Python film Time Bandits as well as performing Put On Your Ta Ta Little Girly in the Handmade film "The Missionary".

One show introduced The Rutles, a four-piece band fronted by Innes as a man 'suffering from love songs' spoofing The Beatles, singing "I Must Be In Love", a masterly pastiche of some of the early Lennon-McCartney tunes. This was followed by the beginnings of a documentary feature about the band, cut short when the camera, mounted on a car, speeds off. This scene was later remade in the spinoff film, All You Need Is Cash, featuring Idle, Innes, Rikki Fataar and John Halsey (who also appeared in many of the musical items in the series) as the "Pre-Fab Four". Innes wrote the music for the film, most of which was parody of well-known Beatles songs. On RWT (including the clip featured later on Saturday Night Live, which vaulted the Pre-Fab Four to stardom) the Rikki Fataar part was played by cast regular David Battley.

Aside from the legendary first appearance of the Rutles, the show features some brilliantly surreal humour in the Python tradition. One sketch features the Lone Ranger (Idle) transformed into the Lone Accountant, with Innes as Tonto accidentally murdering holdup victims while trying to rescue them ("too many gin-and-tonic at lunch... You think it easy to be Indian and accountant?"). Another scene features Gwen Taylor visiting the doctor to complain of her constantly changing costume and surroundings and being diagnosed with "bad continuity." The prescribed treatment is editing out two weeks of her life, after which she says she feels well, and a bit hungry... though her soundtrack is still off. She then becomes a victim of recurring film flashbacks, eventually disappearing back into her childhood.

Innes next went on to create and star in The Innes Book of Records, a pre-MTV show that wove together strange guests and music videos in a bewildering array of musical styles and visual styles.

As well as providing the basis for The Rutles, Rutland Weekend Television also spawned its own LP and book.

A dense and lavishly illustrated parody of the Television, films and print media of the mid-1970s.

The book is notable for the issue of "Rutland Stone" bound inside. The back page of this issue carries a full-page advertisement for The Rutles' latest album ("Finchley Road"), a single ("Ticket To Rut"), and an assortment of Rutles merchandise. The book also contains the "Vatican Sex Manual" featuring pictures of Eric Idle in various positions in which it is impossible to have sex.

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Monty Python

Monty Python (sometimes known as The Pythons) is a group of six comedians who created Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on October 5, 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series. The Python phenomenon developed from the television series into something larger in scope and impact, spawning touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books and a stage musical, and launching the members to individual stardom. The group's influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles' influence on music.

The television series, broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974, was conceived, written and performed by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Loosely structured as a sketch show but with an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach (aided by Gilliam's animations), it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content.

A self-contained comedy team responsible for both writing and performing their work, they changed the way performers entertained audiences. The Pythons' creative control allowed them to experiment with form and content, discarding rules of television comedy. Their influence on British comedy has been apparent for years, while in America it has coloured the work of cult performers from the early editions of Saturday Night Live through to more recent absurdist trends in television comedy. "Pythonesque" has entered the English lexicon as a result.

There are differing accounts of the origins of the Python name although the members agree that its only "significance" was that they thought it sounded funny. In the 1998 documentary Live At Aspen the group implied that "Monty" was selected as a gently-mocking tribute to Field Marshal Lord Montgomery, a legendary British general of World War II; requiring a "slippery-sounding" surname, they settled on "Python". On other occasions Idle has claimed that the name "Monty" was that of a popular and rotund fellow who drank in his local pub; people would often walk in and ask the barman, "Has Monty been in yet?", forcing the name to become stuck in his mind. The name Monty Python was envisaged as being the perfect name for a sleazy entertainment agent.

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, three of the six members were voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders to be among the top 50 greatest comedians ever - Palin was at number 30, Idle at 21 and Cleese at 2.

In mid-November 2008, the Pythons created a YouTube channel to stop their content from being released illegally on the Internet. On this channel, they host a selection of their favorite clips as well as other clips about The Pythons and the channel.

Palin and Jones met at Oxford University, where they performed together with the Oxford Revue. Cleese and Chapman met at Cambridge. Idle was also at Cambridge, but started a year after Cleese and Chapman. Cleese met Gilliam in New York while on tour with the Cambridge University Footlights revue Cambridge Circus (originally entitled A Clump of Plinths).

Chapman, Cleese and Idle were members of the Footlights, which at that time also included the future Goodies (Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden), and Jonathan Lynn (co-writer of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister). During Idle's presidency of the Club, feminist writer Germaine Greer and broadcaster Clive James were members. Recordings of Footlights revues (called "Smokers") at Pembroke College include sketches and performances by Idle and Cleese. They are kept in the archives of the Pembroke Players, along with tapes of Idle's performances in some of the college drama society's theatrical productions.

Several featured other important British comedy writers or performers of the future, including Marty Feldman, Jonathan Lynn, David Jason and David Frost, as well as members of upcoming comedy teams, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker (the Two Ronnies), and Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie (the Goodies).

Following the success of Do Not Adjust Your Set, originally intended to be a children's programme, with adults, ITV offered Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam their own series together. At the same time Cleese and Chapman were offered a show by the BBC, having been impressed by their work on The Frost Report and At Last The 1948 Show. Cleese was reluctant to do a two-man show for various reasons, including Chapman's supposedly difficult personality. Cleese had fond memories of working with Palin and invited him to join the team. With the ITV series still in pre-production Palin agreed and suggested the involvement of his writing partner Jones and colleague Idle—who in turn suggested that Gilliam could provide animations for the projected series. Much has been made of the fact that the Monty Python troupe is the result of Cleese's desire to work with Palin and the chance circumstances that brought the other four members into the fold.

The Pythons had a definite idea about what they wanted to do with the series. They were admirers of the work of Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore on Beyond the Fringe, and had worked on Frost, which was similar in style. They enjoyed Cook and Moore's sketch show Not Only... But Also. One problem the Pythons perceived with these programmes was that though the body of the sketch would be strong, the writers would often struggle to then find a punchline funny enough to end on, and this would detract from the overall sketch quality. They decided that they would simply not bother to "cap" their sketches in the traditional manner, and early episodes of the Flying Circus series make great play of this abandonment of the punchline (one scene has Cleese turn to Idle, as the sketch descends into chaos, and remark that "This is the silliest sketch I've ever been in" - they all resolve not to carry on and simply walk off the set). However, as they began assembling material for the show, the Pythons watched one of their collective heroes, Spike Milligan, recording his new series Q5 (1969). Not only was the programme more irreverent and anarchic than any previous television comedy, Milligan would often "give up" on sketches halfway through and wander off set (often muttering "Did I write this?"). It was clear that their new series would now seem less original, and Jones in particular became determined the Pythons should innovate.

After much debate, Jones remembered an animation Gilliam had created for Do Not Adjust Your Set called Beware of the Elephants, which had intrigued him with its stream-of-consciousness style. Jones felt it would be a good concept to apply to the series: allowing sketches to blend into one another. Palin had been equally fascinated by another of Gilliam's efforts, entitled Christmas Cards, and agreed that it represented "a way of doing things differently." Since Cleese, Chapman and Idle were less concerned with the overall flow of the programme, it was Jones, Palin and Gilliam who became largely responsible for the presentation style of the Flying Circus series, in which disparate sketches are linked to give each episode the appearance of a single stream-of-consciousness (often using a Gilliam animation to move from the closing image of one sketch to the opening scene of another).

Writing started at 9am and finished at 5pm. Typically, Cleese and Chapman worked as one pair isolated from the others, as did Jones and Palin, while Idle wrote alone. After a few days, they would join together with Gilliam, critique their scripts, and exchange ideas. Their approach to writing was democratic. If the majority found an idea humorous, it was included in the show. The casting of roles for the sketches was a similarly unselfish process, since each member viewed himself primarily as a 'writer', rather than an actor desperate for screen time. When the themes for sketches were chosen, Gilliam had carte blanche to decide how to bridge them with animations, using a camera, scissors, and airbrush.

While the show was a collaborative process, different factions within Python were responsible for elements of the team's humour. In general, the work of the Oxford-educated members was more visual, and more fanciful conceptually (e.g. the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition in a suburban front room), while the Cambridge graduates' sketches tended to be more verbal and more aggressive (for example, Cleese and Chapman's many "confrontation" sketches, where one character intimidates or hurling abuse, or Idle's characters with bizarre verbal quirks, such as The Man Who Speaks In Anagrams). Cleese confirmed that "most of the sketches with heavy abuse were Graham's and mine, anything that started with a slow pan across countryside and impressive music was Mike and Terry's, and anything that got utterly involved with words and disappeared up any personal orifice was Eric's." Gilliam's animations, meanwhile, ranged from the whimsical to the savage (the cartoon format allowing him to create some astonishingly violent scenes without fear of censorship).

Several names for the show were considered before Monty Python's Flying Circus was settled upon. Some were Owl Stretching Time, The Toad Elevating Moment, Vaseline Review and Bun, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot. Flying Circus stuck when the BBC explained it had printed that name in its schedules and was not prepared to amend it. Many variations on the name in front of this title then came and went. "Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus" was named after a woman Palin had read about in the newspaper, thinking it would be amusing if she were to discover she had her own TV show. "Baron Von Took's Flying Circus" was considered as an affectionate tribute to the man who had brought them together. Arthur Megapode's Flying Circus was suggested, then discarded. Cleese added "Python", liking the image of a slippery, sly individual that it conjured up. The specific origin of "Monty" is somewhat confused (see above).

Flying Circus popularized innovative formal techniques, such as the cold open, in which an episode began without the traditional opening titles or announcements. An example of this is the "It's" man: Palin in Robinson Crusoe garb, making a tortuous journey across various terrains, before finally approaching the camera to state, "It's...", only to be then cut off by the title sequence and the Liberty Bell theme song. On several occasions the cold open lasted until mid show, after which the regular opening titles ran. Occasionally the Pythons tricked viewers by rolling the closing credits halfway through the show, usually continuing the joke by fading to the familiar globe logo used for BBC continuity, over which Cleese would parody the clipped tones of a BBC announcer. On one occasion the credits ran directly after the opening titles. They also experimented with ending segments by cutting abruptly to another scene or animation, walking offstage, addressing the camera (breaking the fourth wall), or introducing a totally unrelated event or character. A classic example of this approach was the use of Chapman's "Colonel" character, who walked into several sketches and ordered them to be stopped because things were becoming "far too silly." Another favourite way of ending sketches was to drop a cartoonish "16-ton weight" prop on one of the characters when the sketch seemed to be losing momentum, or a knight in full armour (played by Terry Gilliam) would wander on-set and hit characters over the head with a rubber chicken, before cutting to the next scene. Another innovative way of changing scenes was when John Cleese would come in as a radio commentator and say "And now for something completely different". This is one of the troupe's catchphrases.

The Python theme music is The Liberty Bell, a march by John Philip Sousa, which was chosen among other reasons because the recording was in the public domain.

The use of Gilliam's surreal, collage stop motion animations was another innovative intertextual element of the Python style. Many of the images Gilliam used were lifted from famous works of art, and from Victorian illustrations and engravings. The giant foot which crushes the show's title at the end of the opening credits is in fact the foot of Cupid, cut from a reproduction of the Renaissance masterpiece Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time by Bronzino. This foot, and Gilliam's style in general, are visual trademarks of the series.

The Pythons built on and extended the great British tradition of cross-dressing comedy. Rather than dressing a man as a woman purely for comic effect, the (entirely male) Python team would write humorous parts for women, then don frocks and makeup and play the roles themselves. Thus a scene requiring a housewife would feature one of the male Pythons wearing a housecoat and apron, speaking in falsetto. These women were referred to as pepperpots. Generally speaking, female roles were played by a woman (usually Carol Cleveland) when the scene specifically required that the character be sexually attractive (although sometimes they used Idle for this). In some episodes and later Monty Python's Life of Brian they took the idea one step further by playing women who impersonated men (in the stoning scene).

Many sketches are well-known and widely quoted. "Dead Parrot", "The Lumberjack Song", "Spam", "Nudge Nudge", "The Spanish Inquisition", "Upper Class Twit of the Year", "Cheese Shop" and "The Ministry of Silly Walks" are just a few examples.

The rest of the group carried on for one more "half" series before calling a halt to the programme in 1974. The name Monty Python's Flying Circus appears in the opening animation for series 4, but in the end credits the show is listed as simply "Monty Python". Despite his official departure from the group, Cleese supposedly made a (non-speaking) cameo appearance in the fourth series, but never appeared in the credits as a performer. Several episodes credit him as a co-writer since some sketches were recycled from scenes cut from the Holy Grail script. While the first three series contained 13 episodes each, the fourth ended after six.

In 1975 the series was first broadcast in the United States. Ron Deveiller, an executive from PBS television station KERA-TV in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, television market found episodes on a shelf when searching for programming for his station. He watched some, then acquired the entire series to put on the air. The series was eventually aired on PBS stations across the country. A couple of sketches ("Bicycle Repairman" and "The Dull Life of a Stockbroker") aired in 1974 on the NBC series ComedyWorld, a summer replacement series for The Dean Martin Show. With the popularity of Python throughout the rest of the 1970s and through most of the 1980s, PBS stations looked at other British comedies, leading to UK shows such as Are You Being Served? gaining a US audience, and leading, over time, for many PBS stations to have a "British Comedy Night" which airs many popular UK comedies.

The Pythons' first feature film (directed by Ian MacNaughton, reprising his role from the television series). It was comprised of sketches from the first two series of the Flying Circus, reshot on a low budget (and often slightly edited) for cinema release. Material selected for the film includes: "Dead Parrot", "The Lumberjack Song", "Upper Class Twit of the Year", "Hell's Grannies", "Self-Defence Class", "How Not To Be Seen" and "Nudge Nudge". Financed by Playboy's UK executive Victor Lowndes, it was intended as a way of breaking Monty Python into America, and although it was ultimately unsuccessful in this, the film did good business in the UK (this still being in the era before home video would make it much more accessible to view the material again). The group did not consider the film a success.

In 1974, between production on the third and fourth series, the group decided to embark on their first 'proper' feature film, containing entirely new material. Monty Python and the Holy Grail was based on Arthurian Legend and was directed by Jones and Gilliam. Again, the latter also contributed linking animations (and put together the opening credits). Along with the rest of the Pythons, Jones and Gilliam performed several roles in the film, but it was Chapman, considered by far the best straight actor of the bunch, who took the lead as King Arthur. Holy Grail was filmed on location, in picturesque rural areas of Scotland, with a budget of only £229,000; the money was raised in part with investments from rock groups such as Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin - and UK music industry entrepreneur Tony Stratton-Smith (founder/owner of the Charisma Records label, for which the Pythons recorded their song albums).

Following the success of Holy Grail, reporters asked for the title of the next Python film, despite the fact that the team had not even begun to consider a second one. Eventually, Idle once flippantly replied "Jesus Christ - Lust for Glory", which became the group's stock answer once they realised that it shut reporters up. However, they soon began to seriously consider a film lampooning the New Testament era in the same way Holy Grail had lampooned Arthurian legend. Despite being non-believers, they agreed that Jesus was "definitely a good guy" and found nothing to mock in his actual teachings; on the other hand, they shared a distrust of organised religion, and decided to write a satire on credulity and hypocrisy among the followers of someone mistaken for the "Messiah", but who had no desire to be followed as such. Chapman was cast in the lead role of Brian.

The focus therefore shifted to a separate individual born at the same time, in a neighbouring stable. When Jesus does appear in the film (first, as a baby in the stable, and then later on the Mount, speaking the Beatitudes), he is played straight (by actor Kenneth Colley) and portrayed with respect. The comedy begins when members of the crowd mishear his statements of peace, love and tolerance ("I think he said, 'blessed are the cheesemakers'").

Directing duties were handled solely by Jones, having amicably agreed with Gilliam that Jones' approach to film-making was better suited for Python's general performing style. Holy Grail's production had often been stilted by their differences behind the camera. Gilliam again contributed two animated sequences (one being the opening credits) and took charge of set design. The film was shot on location in Tunisia, the finances being provided this time by former Beatle George Harrison, who formed the production company Handmade Films for the movie. He had a cameo role as the 'owner of the Mount'.

Despite its subject matter attracting controversy, particularly upon its initial release, it has (together with its predecessor) been ranked amongst the greatest comedy films. A Channel 4 poll in 2005 ranked Holy Grail in sixth place, with Life of Brian at the top.

Filmed at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles during preparations for The Meaning of Life, this was a concert film (directed by Terry Hughes) in which the Pythons performed sketches from the television series in front of an audience. The released film also incorporated footage from the German television specials (the inclusion of which gives Ian MacNaughton his first on-screen credit for Python since the end of Flying Circus) and live performances of several songs from the troupe's then-current Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album.

Python's final film returned to something structurally closer to the style of Flying Circus. A series of sketches loosely follows the ages of man from birth to death. Directed again by Jones solo, The Meaning of Life is embellished with some of Python's most bizarre and disturbing moments, as well as various elaborate musical numbers. The film is by far their darkest work, containing a great deal of black humour, garnished by some spectacular violence (including an operation to remove a liver without anaesthetic and the morbidly obese Mr. Creosote exploding over several restaurant patrons). At the time of its release, the Pythons confessed their aim was to offend "absolutely everyone".

Besides the opening credits and the fish sequence, Gilliam, by now an established live action director, no longer wanted to produce any linking cartoons, offering instead to direct one sketch - The Crimson Permanent Assurance. Under his helm though, the segment grew so ambitious and tangential that it was cut from the movie and used as a supporting feature in its own right (television screenings also use it as a prologue). Crucially, this was the last project that all six Pythons would collaborate on, except for the 1989 compilation Parrot Sketch Not Included where they are all seen sitting in a closet for four seconds. This would be the last time Chapman was filmed on screen with the Pythons.

Members of Python contributed their services to charitable endeavours and causes - sometimes as an ensemble, at other times as individuals. The cause that has been the most frequent and consistent beneficiary has been the human rights work of Amnesty International. Between 1976 and 1981, the troupe or its members appeared in four major fund-raisers for Amnesty - known collectively as the Secret Policeman's Ball shows - which were turned into multiple films, TV shows, videos, record albums and books. These benefit shows and their many spin-offs raised considerable sums of money for Amnesty, raised public and media awareness of the human rights cause and influenced many other members of the entertainment community (especially rock musicians) to become involved in political and social issues. Among the many musicians who have publicly attributed their activism - and the organisation of their own benefit events - to the inspiration of the work in this field of Monty Python are U2, Bob Geldof, Pete Townshend and Sting. The shows are credited by Amnesty with helping the organisation develop public awareness in the USA where one of the spin-off films was a major success.

Each member has pursued various film, television and stage projects since the break-up of the group, but often continued to work with one another. Many of these collaborations were very successful, most notably A Fish Called Wanda (1988) (written by Cleese, in which he starred along with Palin). The pair also appeared in Time Bandits (1981), a film directed by Gilliam, who wrote it together with Palin. Gilliam also directed and co-wrote Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), which featured Palin and Idle respectively. The success of these films, all of which contain many unusual visual elements, earmarked Gilliam as one of cinema's most popular independent film-makers.

Elsewhere, Palin and Jones wrote the comedic film series Ripping Yarns, starring Palin with an assortment of British actors. Jones also appeared in the pilot episode and Cleese appeared in a non-speaking part in the episode 'Golden Gordon'. Palin subsequently joined the establishment of British documentarians with his popular travel series for the BBC. Jones embarked on a similar career path with historical documentaries, also putting his love of the subject to use when writing, directing and acting in Erik the Viking, which also has Cleese playing a small part.

In terms of numbers of productions, Cleese has the most prolific solo career, having appeared in 59 theatrical films, 22 TV shows or series (including Cheers, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and Will & Grace), 23 direct-to-video productions, six video games, and a number of commercials. Most notably, his BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers (written by and starring Cleese together with his then-wife Connie Booth), is considered the greatest solo work by a Python since the sketch show finished. It is the only comedy series to rank higher than the Flying Circus on the BFI's list of the greatest British TV shows, topping the whole poll. The first series of it was made while the rest of the troupe were concerning themselves with the last series of Flying Circus.

Idle enjoyed critical success with Rutland Weekend Television in the mid-70s, out of which came the Beatles parody The Rutles (responsible for the cult mockumentary All You Need Is Cash), and as an actor in Nuns on the Run (1990) with Robbie Coltrane. Idle has had success with Python songs: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, to no. 3 in the UK singles chart in 1991. The song had been revived by Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 1, and was consequently released as a single that year. The theatrical phenomenon of the Python musical Spamalot has made Idle the most financially successful of the troupe post-Python. Spamalot "lovingly ripped off" from the Holy Grail film. Written by Idle, it has proved an enormous hit on Broadway, London's West End and also Las Vegas. This was followed by Not the Messiah, which repurposes The Life of Brian as an oratorio. For the work's 2007 premiere at the Luminato festival in Toronto (which commissioned the work), Idle himself sang the "baritone-ish" part.

Since The Meaning of Life, their last project as a team, the Pythons have often been the subject of reunion rumours. The final reunion of all six members occurred during the Parrot Sketch Not Included - 20 Years of Monty Python special. The death of Chapman in 1989 (on the eve of their 20th anniversary) seemed to put an end to the speculation of any further reunions. However there have been several occasions since 1989 when the surviving five members have gathered together for appearances - albeit not formal reunions.

In 1998 the five remaining members, along with what was purported to be Chapman's ashes, were reunited on stage for the first time in 18 years. The occasion was in the form of an interview (hosted by Robert Klein, with an appearance by Eddie Izzard) in which the team looked back at some of their work and performed a few new sketches. One of the show's more memorable moments occurred when the ashes were "accidentally" spilled. The person responsible for upsetting the urn was Gilliam – who then hurriedly cleaned up with a mini-vacuum cleaner and a broom and dustpan (with Cleese even dipping his finger into the substance and tasting it). A significant amount of the ashes were brushed under the rug.

On 9 October 1999, to commemorate 30 years since the first Flying Circus television broadcast, BBC2 devoted an evening to Python programmes, including a documentary charting the history of the team, interspersed with new sketches by the Monty Python team filmed especially for the event. The program appears, though omitting a few things, on the DVD The Life of Python. Though Idle's involvement in the special is limited, the final sketch marks the only time since 1989 that all surviving members of the troupe appear in one sketch, albeit not actually in the same room.

In 2002, four of the surviving members, bar Cleese, performed The Lumberjack Song and Sit On My Face for George Harrison's memorial concert. The reunion also included regular supporting contributors Neil Innes and Carol Cleveland, with a special appearance from Tom Hanks.

In an interview to publicise the DVD release of The Meaning of Life, Cleese said a further reunion was unlikely. "It is absolutely impossible to get even a majority of us together in a room, and I'm not joking," Cleese said. He said that the problem was one of business rather than one of bad feelings.. A sketch appears on the same DVD spoofing the impossibility of a full reunion, bringing the members “together” in a deliberately unconvincing fashion with modern bluescreen/greenscreen techniques.

2003's The Pythons Autobiography By The Pythons, compiled from interviews with the surviving members, reveals that a series of disputes in 1990, over a possible sequel to Holy Grail that had been conceived by Idle, may have resulted in the group's permanent fission. Cleese's feeling was that The Meaning of Life had been personally difficult and ultimately mediocre, and did not wish to be involved in another Python project for a variety of reasons. (Not least amongst them was the absence of Chapman, whose straight man-like central roles in the original Grail and Brian films had been considered to be essential performance anchorage.) Apparently Idle was angry with Cleese for refusing to do the film, which most of the remaining Pythons thought reasonably promising (the basic plot would have taken on a self-referential tone, featuring them in their main 'knight' guises from Holy Grail, mulling over the possibilities of reforming their posse). The book also reveals that a secondary option around this point was the possibility of revitalising the Python brand with a new stage tour, perhaps with the promise of new material. This idea had also hit the buffers at Cleese's refusal, this time with the backing of other members.

The members have continued to appear in each other's films. Gilliam has directed all four other surviving members in various non-Python pictures, Chapman worked with Cleese and Idle in Yellowbeard and Palin and Cleese worked together in the acclaimed A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. Jones' 1996 adaptation of The Wind in the Willows featured all the surviving Python members except for Gilliam, who was going to play The River but could not find space in his schedule. More recently, DreamWorks' popular animated film Shrek the Third features both Cleese and Idle in voice-over roles, although they do not share any scenes: Cleese reprises his starring role as Princess Fiona's father from the previous film, and Idle had a guest star part as Merlin the magician.

March 2005 saw a full, if non-performing, reunion of the surviving cast members at the premiere of Idle's musical Spamalot, based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It opened in Chicago and has since played in New York on Broadway, and is currently entertaining audiences in Toronto. In 2004, it was nominated for 14 Tony Awards and won three: Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical for Mike Nichols and Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for Sara Ramirez, who played the Lady of the Lake, a character specially added for the musical. Cleese played the voice of God, played in the film by Chapman.

Owing in part to the success of Spamalot, PBS announced on 13 July 2005, that it would begin to re-air the entire run of Monty Python's Flying Circus and new one-hour specials focusing on each member of the group, called Monty Python's Personal Best. Each episode was written and produced by the individual being honoured, with the five remaining Pythons collaborating on Chapman's programme, the only one of the editions to take on a serious tone with its new material.

Graham Chapman was born in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, England on 8 January 1941. He was originally a medical student, but changed to theatre when he joined Footlights at Cambridge. He completed his medical training and was legally entitled to practise as a doctor. Chapman is best remembered for the lead roles in The Holy Grail, as King Arthur, and Life of Brian, as Brian Cohen. Chapman appeared in films such as The Odd Job (which he also produced) and Yellowbeard (which he co-wrote), also making an appearances on Saturday Night Live in 1982. He died of spinal and throat cancer on 4 October 1989. He is now lovingly referred to by the surviving Pythons as "the dead one." At Chapman's memorial service, Cleese delivered the irreverent speech he felt his co-writer would have wanted: after declaring "Good riddance to the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries!", he announced that, having been the first person to say “shit” on British television, Chapman would never have forgiven him had he missed the opportunity to become “the first person ever at a British memorial service to say 'fuck'.” In an XM radio interview, Cleese later explained that he was originally planning on doing a serious speech but he could imagine his friend being disgusted at what he was writing. He also claimed that the final decision was made after the fellow Pythons, and Graham's family, got into the spirit in which it was intended. Cleese recited all the synonyms for being deceased from the legendary Dead Parrot sketch, which they had written. Cleese remarked in an interview with Michael Parkinson that, in a heartfelt reference to Chapman's tendency towards lateness, Palin had remarked at the funeral, "Graham Chapman is with us today...or at least he will be in 25 minutes". Chapman was survived by his partner of 24 years, David Sherlock, and adopted son, John Tomiczek, who died in 1992 of heart trouble.

John Cleese was born on 27 October 1939 in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset, England, making him the oldest Python. Cleese’s surname was originally Cheese, but his father changed it to Cleese when he joined the army during World War I. Cleese attended Clifton College, Bristol where he developed a taste for performing by appearing in house plays, then moved on to Cambridge, where he met his future Python writing partner, Graham Chapman. In addition to Python, he co-created and starred in, with then-wife Connie Booth, one of the most acclaimed sitcoms in British TV history, Fawlty Towers. Cleese recently played Q's assistant ("R") and then the new Q himself in the James Bond films. He has also done work for the Shrek and Harry Potter film franchises, Time Bandits, A Fish Called Wanda, Clockwise, and an appearance on a Saturday Night Live episode.

Terry Gilliam was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on 22 November 1940. He is the only member of the troupe of non-British origin, though he married a British citizen, makeup and costume designer Maggie Weston, and held dual American-British citizenship for 38 years before renouncing the former. He started off as an animator and strip cartoonist for Harvey Kurtzman's Help! magazine, one issue of which featured Cleese. Moving from the USA to England, he animated features for Do Not Adjust Your Set and was then asked by its makers to join them on their next project - Monty Python's Flying Circus. He co-directed Monty Python and The Holy Grail and directed short segments of other Python films (for instance "The Crimson Permanent Assurance", the short film that appears before The Meaning of Life). Gilliam has gone on to become a celebrated and imaginative film director of such notable titles as Time Bandits, Brazil, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Eric Idle was born on 29 March 1943 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear, England. When Monty Python was first formed, two writing partnerships were already in place: Cleese and Chapman, Jones and Palin. That left two in their own corners: Gilliam, operating solo due to the nature of his work, and Idle. Regular themes in his contributions were elaborate wordplay and musical numbers. After Flying Circus, he hosted Saturday Night Live four times in the first five seasons. Idle's initially successful solo career faltered in the 1990s with the failures of his 1993 film Splitting Heirs (written, produced by and starring him) and 1998's Burn Hollywood Burn (in which he starred), which was awarded five Razzies, including 'Worst Picture of the Year'. He revived his career by returning to the source of his worldwide fame, adapting Monty Python material for other media. He is the writer of the Tony award-winning Broadway musical Spamalot, based on the Holy Grail movie. He collaborated with John Du Prez on the music for the show. He also wrote Not the Messiah, an oratorio derived from the Life of Brian. He had earlier strengthened his credentials as a comedic composer with the theme tune to the acclaimed BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave.

Terry Jones was born on 1 February 1942 in Colwyn Bay, Conwy, Wales. He has rarely received the same attention as his colleagues, but has been described by other members of the team as the “heart” of the operation. Recent Python literature has highlighted his lead role in maintaining the group's unity and creative independence. Python biographer George Perry has commented that should you "speak to him on subjects as diverse as fossil fuels, or Rupert Bear, or mercenaries in the Middle Ages or Modern China... in a moment you will find yourself hopelessly out of your depth, floored by his knowledge." Many others agree that Jones is characterised by his irrepressible, good-natured enthusiasm, which is perhaps the reason for his unflagging loyalty to the preservation of the group. However, Jones' passion often led to prolonged arguments with other group members — in particular Cleese — with Jones often unwilling to back down. Since his major contributions were largely behind the scenes (direction, writing), and he often deferred to the other members of the group as an actor, Jones' importance to Python was often underrated. However, he does have the legacy of delivering possibly the most famous line in all of Python, as Brian's mother Mandy in Life of Brian, "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!", a line voted the funniest in film history on two occasions. Since Python, he has continued as a film director and as a TV documentarian (normally on historical subjects). He was diagnosed with bowel cancer in October 2006, undergoing a successful operation to remove it weeks later.

Michael Palin was born on 5 May 1943 in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The youngest Python by a matter of weeks, Palin is often referred to as "the nice one". He attended Oxford, where he met his Python writing partner Jones. The two also wrote the series Ripping Yarns together. Palin and Jones originally wrote face-to-face, but soon found it was more productive to write apart and then come together to review what the other had written. Therefore, Jones and Palin's sketches tended to be more focused than that of the others, taking one bizarre, hilarious situation, sticking to it, and building on it. After Flying Circus, he hosted Saturday Night Live four times in the first ten seasons. His comedy output began to decrease in amount following the increasing success of his travel documentaries for the BBC, beginning with one edition in the first series of Great Railway Journeys of the World. He eventually announced his retirement from his first profession in the late 1990s. His most recent travel doc was 2007's Michael Palin's New Europe.

Several people have been accorded unofficial "Associate Python" status over the years. Occasionally such people have been referred to as the 7th Python, in a style reminiscent of associates of the Beatles being dubbed "The 5th Beatle." The two collaborators with the most meaningful and plentiful contributions have been Neil Innes and Carol Cleveland. Both were present and presented as Associate Pythons at the official Monty Python 25th anniversary celebrations held in Los Angeles in July 1994.

Neil Innes, born on 9 December 1944, in Danbury, Essex, England, is the only non-Python besides Douglas Adams to be credited with writing material for the Flying Circus. He appeared in sketches and the Python films, as well as performing some of his songs in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. He was also a regular stand-in for absent team members on the rare occasions when they re-created sketches outside of Python. For example, he took the place of Cleese when he was unable to appear at the memorial concert for George Harrison. Gilliam once noted that if anyone qualified for the title of the "Seventh Python," it would certainly be Innes. He was one of the creative talents in the off-beat Bonzo Dog Band, appreciated for such nutty compositions as "The Intro and the Outro" and "I'm The Urban Spaceman." He would later portray Ron Nasty of the Rutles and write all of the Rutles' compositions for All You Need is Cash. By 2005, an unfortunate falling out had occurred between Eric Idle and Innes over additional Rutles projects, the results being Innes' critically acclaimed Rutles "reunion" album The Rutles: Archaeology and Idle's undistinguished, straight-to-DVD Rutles sequel The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch, each undertaken without participation from the other. According to an interview with Idle carried by the Chicago Tribune in May 2005, his attitude as a result of the dispute is that he and Innes go back "too far. And no further." Innes has maintained a diplomatic silence on the dispute.

Carol Cleveland, born 13 January 1942, in London, England, was the most important female performer in the Monty Python ensemble, commonly referred to as the "Python Girl." Originally hired by producer/director John Howard Davies for just the first five episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, she went on to appear in approximately two-thirds of the episodes as well as in all of the Python films, and in most of their stage shows as well. Her common portrayal as the stereotypical "blonde bimbo" eventually earned her the sobriquet "Carol Cleavage" from the other Pythons, but she felt that the variety of her roles should not be described in such a pejorative way.

Cleese's ex-wife Connie Booth, who alongside him, co-wrote and co-starred in Fawlty Towers, was probably the only other significant female performer. She appeared in, amongst others "The Lumberjack Song" and as the "witch" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Douglas Adams was "discovered" by Chapman when a version of the Footlights Revue (a 1974 BBC2 television show featuring some of Adams' early work) was performed live in London's West End. In Cleese's absence from the final TV series, the two formed a brief writing partnership, with Adams earning a writing credit in one episode for a sketch called "Patient Abuse". In the sketch, a man who had been stabbed by a nurse arrives at his doctor's office bleeding profusely from the stomach, when the doctor makes him fill out numerous senseless forms before he can administer treatment (a joke Adams later incorporated into the Vogon race's obsession with paperwork in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). He also had two cameo appearances in this season. Firstly, in the episode The Light Entertainment War, Adams shows up in a surgeon's mask (as Dr. Emile Koning, according to the on-screen captions), pulling on gloves, while Palin narrates a sketch that introduces one person after another, and never actually gets started. Secondly, at the beginning of Mr. Neutron, Adams is dressed in a "pepperpot" outfit and loads a missile onto a cart being driven by Terry Jones, who is calling out for scrap metal ("Any old iron..."). Adams and Chapman also subsequently attempted a few non-Python projects, including Out of the Trees. He also contributed to a sketch on the soundtrack album for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard, a devoted fan of the group, has occasionally stood in for absent members. When the BBC held a "Python Night" in 1999 to celebrate 30 years of the first broadcast of Flying Circus, the Pythons recorded some new material with Izzard standing in for Idle, who had declined to partake in person (he taped a solo contribution from the US). Izzard hosted a history of the group entitled The Life of Python (1999) that was part of the Python Night and appeared with them at a festival/tribute in Aspen, Colorado, in 1998 (released on DVD as Live at Aspen).

As such, the term 'pythonesque' has become a byword in surreal humour. This is perhaps somewhat misleading, since the humour of Monty Python, whilst certainly nonsensical and surreal, is still strongly characterised by a preoccupation with sociological concepts such as the British social class system. These themes cannot be said to be essential to surrealist comedy as a whole.

The term has been applied to animations similar to those constructed by Gilliam (e.g. the cut-out style of South Park, whose creators have often acknowledged a debt to Python, including contributing material to the aforementioned 30th anniversary theme night ).

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Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life is a 1983 musical comedy film by the Monty Python comedy team. Unlike the two previous films they had made, which had more or less each told single, coherent stories, The Meaning of Life returns to the sketch comedy format of the troupe's original television series, loosely structured as a series of comic skits about the various stages of life. It is known for being the darkest, and most disturbing of the 'Python' films. Quentin Tarantino himself has admited to being "revolted" by some of the films repulsive, and extremely vulgar scenes, particulary the Mr. Creosote sequence which contains a spectacular level of violence that involves human entrails and vomit being showered over guests in a French resturant. That scene has been called "some of the most repulsive footage in twentieth century cinema".

When beginning to formulate ideas, sometime in the early 1980s, the Pythons decided that they couldn't return to the "silly" style of their first feature film, Holy Grail. After the satire of Life of Brian, they had to tackle another big subject. Terry Jones (who again returned to his role as the Python film director) was the one credited with the idea of a sketch film that followed the progressing ages of a human life, from birth to death. This necessitated a return to something structurally closer to the style of Flying Circus, their initial TV show. The decision on the structure had been made before writing began, but the theme was not agreed upon until after several chunks of possible material had already been written (including one of Cleese's personal favourites, a scene where the Ayatollah captures some Western explorers). So, the movie went through several different forms before it was even known what the point of it all was. As a result, many critics have commented that this film seems disjointed in comparison to previous Python efforts. The suggestion of one final possible rewrite was discarded just before shooting. If it had gone ahead, the film would have gained a protagonist; an everyman figure. Most likely, he would have been played by Graham Chapman again, as were the leads in Grail and Brian. Cleese later admitted that it was he who had refused the idea, despite subsequently being the film's biggest critic from within Python.

The film is embellished with some of Python's most bizarre and disturbing moments, as well as various elaborate musical numbers. The film is by far their darkest work, containing a great deal of black humour, garnished by some spectacular violence. At the time of its release, the Pythons confessed their aim was to offend "absolutely everyone".

Besides the opening credits and the fish sequence, Gilliam, by now an established live action director with the success of Time Bandits under his wing, no longer wanted to produce any linking cartoons, offering instead to direct one sketch - The Crimson Permanent Assurance. Under his helm though, the segment grew so ambitious and tangential that it was cut from the movie and used as a supporting feature in its own right (television screenings also use it as a prologue).

Crucially, this was the last project that all six Pythons would collaborate on, except for the 1989 compilation Parrot Sketch Not Included where they are all seen sitting in a cupboard for four seconds. This would be the last time Chapman was filmed on screen with the rest of the gang.

The film is divided into chapters, though the chapters themselves often contain several more-or-less unconnected sketches.

She finishes by promising gratuitous pictures of penises "to annoy the censors and to hopefully spark some sort of controversy".

In order to persuade Universal Studios to make the film, the Pythons wrote a poem about the script, budget and content of the film. The poem being recited by Eric Idle is featured as the introduction to the film in the Special Edition DVD.

During the title sequence, the title of the movie is first written on a stone tablet as 'THE MEANING OF LIFF', and is corrected by a lightning strike. Oddly enough, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd—the former of whom had worked on a few episodes the Monty Python television programme—released a book the same year as this film was released, entitled the The Meaning of Liff--with absolutely no knowledge of the film at the time.

In the 1999 TV documentary, From Spam to Sperm: Monty Python's Greatest Hits, choreographer Arlene Phillips recalls working on the film, and in particular the Every Sperm is Sacred sequence, as "the very best time" of her professional career.

As the people at the final dinner party follow Death out of the house, Michael Palin's character says "Hey, I didn't eat the mousse" (referring to the salmon mousse that ostensibly killed them all). This moment is one of the very few junctures in the Monty Python series in which a line of dialogue was actually improvised.

A section of the sketch "The Man Who Chose His Own Death" is accompanied by a piece of stock 'library music' that also appears in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Brazil.

The film opened in North America on 31 March 1983. At 257 theaters, it grossed US $1,987,853 ($7,734 per screen) in its opening weekend. It played at 554 theaters at its widest point, and its total North American gross was US$14,929,552.

In 2003, a Special Edition DVD was released, with director's audio commentary, deleted scenes, and behind-the-scenes documentaries (both real and spoofed). The DVD also featured a soundtrack for the lonely, which is basically an audio commentary of rather disgusting slutty man (played by Mel Smith) who is sitting watching the film in his flat, throughout the commentary he usually picks up the phone and talks to friends (played by Terry Jones and Eric Idle), farts and talks under his voice.

The original tagline read "It took God six days to create the Earth, and Monty Python just 90 minutes to screw it up", but the length of the film is 107 minutes (the film only has a length of 90 minutes if The Crimson Permanent Assurance is counted separately). In the 2005 DVD release of the film, the tagline is corrected to read "It took God six days to create the Earth, and Monty Python just 1 hour and 48 minutes to screw it up".

The Meaning of Life was unexpectedly awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 1983 Cannes International Film Festival.

Ireland banned the film on its original release, as it had previously done with Monty Python's Life of Brian, but later rated it 15 when it was released on video. Terry Jones states on a commentary track found on the 2004 "2 Disc Special Edition" DVD that to his knowledge the Irish Film Censor's Office have banned a total of four films, three of which were directed by him: this one, Monty Python's Life of Brian and Personal Services.

In the United Kingdom, the film was rated 18 when released in the cinema and on its first release on video, but was re-rated 15 in 2000.

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