Category Archives: Pop Culture

Outside Center Center, April 13, 1976. Graham Chapman appears to have wandered off for a drink, and has been replaced here by Neil Innes

A year passes from the Holy Grail triumph…

Then the Pythons hit Broadway! After mulling it over, the Pythons accepted producer Arthur Cantor’s long-standing offer to perform in New York, and their stage show crossed the pond to the 2,257-seat New York City Center on West 55th Street.

Rehearsing the Mountie Chorus on “The Lumberjack Song”

They slightly revised their line-up of live material. The sub-standard “Cocktail Bar” and “Secret Service” were blessedly dumped, and the much funnier “Dead Bishop” and “Crunchy Frog” were added. “Blackmail” replaced “Spot the Brain Cell” as the game show parody. “Election Special” was swapped for “Courtroom” (which didn’t make the album, nor did the physical comedy tour-de-forces “Custard Pies” and “Ministry of Silly Walks” — but for some reason the super-physical “One-Man Wrestling” made the cut here and on Drury Lane). Beyond these small tweaks, the show was made up of familiar stuff. Neil Innes contributed two new songs, and Carol Cleveland was back in the fold, having missed the run of shows at Drury Lane.

The Pythons performed their show to sold-out houses from April 16 through May 2, 1976.

Monty Python Live at City Center 

Released: May 3, 1976 (U.S. only)

Produced by Nancy Lewis

Track Listing:

Side One

1. Llama

2. Gumby Flower Arranging

3. Short Blues (Neil Innes)

4. One-Man Wrestling

5. World Forum (Communist Quiz)

6. Albatross/The Colonel

7. Nudge Nudge

8. Crunchy Frog

9. Bruces/The Philosophers Song

10. Travel Agent

Side Two

1. Camp Judges

2. Blackmail

3. Protest Song (Neil Innes)

4. Pet Shop (Dead Parrot)

5. Four Yorkshiremen

6. Argument Clinic

7. Death of Mary Queen of Scots

8. Dead Bishop

9. The Lumberjack Song

Arista wanted the live album out as soon as the show closed — literally. Monty Python Live at City Center was in record stores hours after the last curtain dropped. That meant the recordings had to be made early in the show’s run. Andre Jacquemin did not make the trans-Atlantic trip to capture the shows for posterity, so Nancy Lewis hastily arranged recording equipment and the personnel to operate it, and is credited as the album’s producer.

For the first time, the Pythons had to deal with a full-on, fanatical reaction by their audience — they were now American celebrities. When Americans go big, it can be scary. Fans screamed at them as if they were rock stars. The nightly sold-out crowd dressed up like Gumbys and lumberjacks. The Pythons were fawned over by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Leonard Bernstein. (At an after-show gathering, Bernstein asked Eric Idle to recite a few lines of “Nudge Nudge.” Idle responded by asking Bernstein to hum a few bars of Beethoven.) Their time offstage was a blur of photo sessions, interviews, autographs, limo rides, and boozy, late-night dinners at fancy steakhouses. “We didn’t take drugs but we drank a hell of a lot,” remembers Terry Jones. “In fact I can’t remember how much we drank precisely because of the amount we drank.”

As usual during a long stage run, Michael Palin lost his voice towards the end. Backstage, he was offered a stiff malt whiskey by Neil Innes. “Will it help my voice come back?” “No, but you won’t care anymore.” On the last night, Palin hoarsely croaked out his longest speech of the show, as the man who is applying for a grant to develop his silly walk. He heroically and painfully completed it, and there was a long pause, after which his sketch partner Cleese punked him by simply saying “I’m sorry…what was that again?” 

One night, a short-haired and clean-shaven George Harrison fulfilled what he called a lifetime’s ambition by donning a Mountie jacket and hat, and joining the chorus of “The Lumberjack Song,” completely unrecognized by the audience. (He is known to have checked into hotels under the name Jack Lumber.) On another memorable occasion, someone chucked a two-foot long rubber dildo onto the stage during “Bruces.” “Oh, look, Bruce,” quipped Eric Idle. “One of those little American penises.”

Look carefully and you’ll spot a Mountie that looks an awful lot like a Beatle

Some say City Center doesn’t really merit inclusion the canon of “official” Monty Python albums, due to its very close similarity to Live at Drury Lane, and the fact that the sound quality was below their usual standard — hastily recorded, plagued with microphone issues, and without the loving supervision of Jacquemin. But Drury Lane never received a U.S. release until the 1990s CD box set, so City Center became the only audio representation of their live show for American consumers for almost twenty years. I certainly owned it years before I ever heard Drury Lane, and I consider it superior to the British release — sketchy audio aside — due to the substitution of stronger material. 

The party atmosphere of the City Center shows was remembered fondly by all, even though several of them had the authentic New York experiences of being burgled or pickpocketed. And they did get some work done during a few bleary, hungover daylight meetings — they all committed to doing another movie in the near future, and agreed that it should be set in Biblical times. Some story and character ideas were thought up. A leisurely-paced development period was decided on, and they worked out a lengthy research and writing schedule that would accommodate their burgeoning solo careers.

A few years pass…

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Just as Matching Tie and Handkerchief was hitting British record stores at the end of ’73, the second draft of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail script had been completed, and producers and investors were being rounded up. The script still needed more work…and Python Productions needed an influx of cash. The prestigious 2,200-seat Theatre Royal in Drury Lane in London’s West End offered the Pythons good terms for performing their live show over a two-week residency in February. 

Shaggy ’74 Python, captured with a fish-eye lens no less. Is that four or is it five buttons undone on Chapman’s shirt?

As soon as their Drury Lane run was announced, overwhelming demand caused the length of the residency to be doubled.

They fine-tuned the set list from their British/Canadian tour the previous year. The official title of their Drury Lane run was Monty Python’s First Farewell Tour (Repeat) (with “NOT CANCELLED” stencilled over the posters). The experience was less like a night at the theater, and more like a rock concert by a veteran band. The audience wasn’t necessarily there to see something original, they wanted the hits…

From February 26 through March 23, 1974, the Pythons trod the theatrical boards, night after night, as audiences lapped up (and often recited along with) “Nudge Nudge,” “Bruces,” “Travel Agent,” “Argument Clinic,” “Dead Parrot,” “The Lumberjack Song,” and plenty of other stuff. Neil Innes was on hand to provide some musical interludes, but regular Python supporting player Carol Cleveland was unavailable. Her parts were covered by Australian actress Lyn Ashley, who had done a few bits on the TV show, and at the time was married to Eric Idle. (Her credit at the end of the Flying Circus episodes in which she appeared simply read “Mrs. Idle.”) The audience was often dotted with celebrities, including members of the Beatles, the Who, and the Rolling Stones, but despite the theater having a designated “royal box,” no members of the royal family showed up. The royal box was occupied nightly by a pantomime dummy of Princess Margaret.

“It was the nearest any of us got to a proper job,” says Terry Jones. “We would kiss our wives good-bye, work the night shift in the theater, get roaring drunk afterwards, roll home and do it all over again the following night.” At least a few mornings were spent tightening the Holy Grail script into its third (and final) draft, which was completed on March 15.

On the final night, Jacquemin set up his recording equipment, and the result was Python’s first real live album (their 1970 debut album made for the BBC, although performed in front of a small audience, doesn’t really count). The atmosphere is audibly electric, with over-the-top enthusiasm from the crowd, and superbly-performed comedy classics from the cast. Neil Innes, caught up in the final-night excitement, improvised by singing several lines of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from The Sound of Music right in the middle of the “Election Special” sketch. The Pythons found the moment funny enough to leave on the record, and paid the necessary Rodgers & Hammerstein royalties. 

Monty Python Live at Drury Lane 

Released: June 28, 1974 (U.K. only)

Produced by Andre Jacquemin, David Howman, and Alan Bailey

Track Listing:

Side One

1. Introduction

2. Llamas

3. Gumby Flower Arranging

4. Secret Service

5. One-Man Wrestling

6. World Forum (Communist Quiz)

7. Idiot Song (Neil Innes)

8. Albatross

9. The Colonel

10. Nudge Nudge

11. Cocktail Bar

12. Travel Agent

Side Two

1. Spot the Brain Cell

2. Bruces/Philosophers Song

3. Argument Clinic

4. I’ve Got Two Legs (Terry Gilliam’s Song on a Wire)

5. Four Yorkshireman

6. Election Special

7. The Lumberjack Song

8. Dead Parrot

A small amount of studio work was required later to put in some narration and links. These sorts of extra little clean-up tasks were usually taken on by good sport and all-around team player Michael Palin.

The Pythons were quite aware that the audiences that flocked to the Theatre Royal were there to see their favorite sketches, but they wouldn’t be Python if they didn’t include some surprises. The whole show opened with “Llamas,” an obscure, 90-second deep-cut sketch from the first series of Flying Circus, in which a group of flamenco guitarists and dancers provide a partly-sung public service announcement in Spanish about the dangers of the deadly aquatic llama, with much stomping, guitar strumming, castanet-clicking, and exaggerated rolling of rs. “Tiene dos orejas, un corazón, una frente y un pico para comer miel. Pero está provisto de aletas para nadar. Las llamas son más grandes que las ranas.” (“It has two ears, a heart, a forehead, and a beak for eating honey. But it is provided with fins for swimming. Llamas are larger than frogs.”) When the Pythons staged their massive reunion show at London’s O2 Arena in 2014, they chose to open with “Llamas.”

From the vault of really old material came “Four Yorkshiremen,” which would remain in every iteration of the Python stage show from that point forward. First written by Cleese and Chapman for 1967’s At Last the 1948 Show, the four Yorkshiremen of the title relax in comfort, sipping wine and wearing white dinner jackets as they compare, in thick Yorkshire accents, how deprived their childhoods were. (“There were a ‘undred and fifty of us living in a shoebox in t’ middle of t’ road.” “Cardboard box?” “Aye.” “You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank.”) “Secret Service” was also lifted from the 1948 Show, but it didn’t have the staying power of “Yorkshiremen.” Another old sketch that became a beloved part of the Python Live repertoire, “Custard Pies,” was left off the album because it was just too visual. (A relic from Jones & Palin’s old Oxford Revue days, “Custard Pies” was so popular it was borrowed by the Cambridge guys for their revue),

Due to the fact the Michael Palin — the original performer of “The Lumberjack Song” — had often lost his voice by the end of a show, Eric Idle ended up taking over that closing number from him. “The plaid shirt and suspenders suited both of us,” Palin says. (He reclaimed the part for the O2 shows.)

The big misfire, in my opinion, is “Cocktail Bar,” a rejected (for good reason) third series sketch that re-writes “Crunchy Frog” into a collection of disgusting cocktails such as the “The Special” (with a “twist of lemming”), “Mallard Fizz,” “Dog Turd & Tonic,” and the “Harlem Stinger,” which if the audio is to be believed — no photos or videos of the sketch exist — features Terry Gilliam in blackface (or at least doing a cringe-inducing minstrel show voice). There’s also a few dated Nixon jokes. (The Pythons usually avoided using topical references.) It’s good to remind ourselves that not everything Python did is worthy of uncritical praise. Someone in the group liked this clunker enough to want it in the show, and it wasn’t voted down.

By the time Drury Lane was released in June of 1974, the Pythons had returned from rainy, windswept location filming in Scotland with the independently-produced Monty Python and the Holy Grail, co-directed by Gilliam and Jones, in the can. Months of editing work and previewing were needed to whip it into shape, and after summer holidays, the Pythons would be getting down to work on their fourth and final series for the BBC (without the participation of their most visible member, John Cleese, who was already formulating his plans for Fawlty Towers).

And big things were afoot in the United States…

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Prologue — The Holy Bee Discovers Monty Python

It must have been the spring of 1988…our family home was way out in the middle of nowhere, a rented farmhouse surrounded by thirteen acres of walnut trees. I was enduring a lengthy bus ride to and from the psychological threshing machine known as middle school. Due to our house’s isolated location, I spent the ages of 11 to 14 without cable. Just antenna-based stuff including the three big networks, a couple of regional UHF channels…and PBS. So I watched a little more public television than the average middle-schooler. In between all the nature shows and war documentaries would be an occasional short promo for something called Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I remember the promo being just a silly voice over a faux-Gilliam bit of cut-out, high-contrast photography where Jim Lehrer‘s head was replaced with Big Bird’s. I was a little intrigued, but didn’t yet go out of my way to try and catch the show. (The connection between Python and PBS will be explored in next month’s entry.) An older classmate would occasionally sing “I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay/I sleep all night and I work all day,” but I never recall him saying where it came from, or singing any of the rest of it.

I had a little rabbit-eared TV in my bedroom. I used to stay up late to catch Saturday Night Live at 11:30 from under my covers. (After a big mid-80s cast shake-up, this was the second season featuring the classic late 80s-early 90s cast of Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Jon Lovitz, etc.) One night before the show started, I got up and wandered out to fix my favorite late-night snack (a plus-sized bowl of pre-sweetened cereal), and I passed my Dad in the living room, in front of the big console TV in his favorite TV-watching position (laying on the carpeted floor on his side, head propped up on his elbow). On the screen was one of the weirdest things I’d ever seen. An English-accented narrator was breathlessly hyping footage of what appeared to be a film trailer — someone was on a random beach in a fur coat, having a life-or-death struggle with a stuffed lion. Yes, the first bit of Python that ever passed before my eyes was their series 2, episode 10 sketch “Scott of the Sahara.” (I wouldn’t say Dad was a real Python fan, but he had a sophisticated sense of humor and was a great devourer of all things PBS. Also, TV options were limited.) I went back in my room, and after awhile, decided to switch over to PBS, just in time for “Fish Licence.” I was hooked from that moment on.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus went into my regular viewing rotation at that point. It was on Saturdays at 11, just after a Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who* and just before SNL. Right after Python, PBS would usually show the minutes-long astronomy show Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler, informing viewers of any observable events going on in the cosmos that week. Its spacey, cheesy closing theme was always my signal to switch over to NBC just in time for the SNL cold open. When our family splurged on a new VCR, I took the old one and hooked it up to my little TV. I wish I could say I captured all 45 original episodes, but my local PBS station was pretty inconsistent, often repeating an episode within weeks of the first time I saw it (and never once dipping into the first series). But by the time we moved away from that farmhouse and back to cable-ready civilization, I had amassed most of series four, some of series three, and a few episodes of series two on a collection of slightly fuzzy VHS tapes that I watched over and over.

As far as Python audio went, my birthday in 1989 yielded me the double-CD compilation The Final Rip-Off, and under the Christmas tree that year were vinyl copies of Live At City Center and Contractual Obligation Album. More on all of those in Part 4. Pretty soon I was in high school in a bigger town, where Python was very much a known thing, and I was finally among my tribe (and I made a few converts with all the zeal of a missionary — thanks entirely to my painstakingly compiled mixtapes of Python audio, as PBS had stopped showing them by the early 1990s.)

And now on with our main discussion…

The group’s first film, And Now For Something Completely Different — a re-filmed collection of their best TV sketches intended to introduce the group to American audiences via “college cinemas” (again, those existed?) — came out in September of 1971 after languishing on the shelf for almost a year. Producer Victor Lownes had managed to shop it to Columbia Pictures…who put it out in Britain only! This flew in the face of the original intent and the Pythons were horrified that re-hashed material was being shown on their home turf. However, it actually did moderately well at the box office in a country where they already had a built-in market (despite some people, as predicted, carping about a bunch of material already seen on TV being presented as “something completely different”). The initial concept of being released exclusively to American college cinemas was dropped somewhere along the line. Columbia seemed to have no interest in releasing it in the U.S. 

In the summer of 1972, Nancy Lewis was the head publicist for Buddah Records, a New York label specializing in bubblegum pop and light R&B. Just a few years before, she had been living in London, and had been captivated by Monty Python’s Flying Circus on TV. When Tony Stratton-Smith came over to New York to meet with the head of Buddah Records, Neil Bogart, to secure a U.S. deal for Charisma artists, the eagle-eyed Lewis spotted Another Monty Python Record in the stack of albums he was carrying. She energetically advocated for the group, and Buddah Records agreed to put out the album (and at least one future album) in the States. (Eagle-eyed, but maybe not elephant-memoried — she always recalls seeing both Another and Monty Python’s Previous Record in the Stratton-Smith’s stack, but Previous hadn’t even been recorded yet.)

It was Neil Bogart who convinced Columbia Pictures to finally release And Now For Something Completely Different in the U.S that August, with Buddah Records helping to cover the cost of promotion as they released Another Monty Python Record at the same time. Prints of the film were shipped across the country…to radio stations, who were then responsible for arranging screenings. At times, tickets were literally given away.

The group as they appeared in And Now For Something Completely Different‘s “Dirty Fork” sketch (with the non-performing Gilliam photo-bombing on the right)

Not all that surprisingly, the film bombed, despite Buddah’s enthusiastic-if-misguided cross-promotion efforts. “Some idiot designed a poster with a happy snake with a funny hat on,” griped John Cleese. It’s not clear if the idiot in question worked for Columbia or Buddah, but the team made sure going forward that all graphics and visuals associated with the Pythons would come from the mind of Terry Gilliam, at least for the foreseeable future. (In all my research, I have not been able to find the image of the be-hatted snake that Cleese found so irritating.)

And Now For Something Completely Different was written off (for now), but the album…it was starting to get some attention from FM radio stations. “The albums never sold in enormous numbers, but they provided a wonderful base,” says Lewis. Large chunks of first-rate Python material began hitting the American airwaves, usually in the overnight hours in the big city markets. “That FM stoner crowd was quite important,” says Michael Palin. “U.S. television was very commercial and safe but with a lot of rock DJs, Python was exactly the sort of stuff they were looking for…WNEW in New York would play Python clips all the time.”

By this time, the Pythons had long finished producing their third series of Flying Circus, but it remained unaired (due to a crowded BBC schedule, and head office concern over some of the edgier content). They were gearing up to do an original 45-minute episode for German TV (their second), and decided it was time for another album.

On Monty Python’s Previous Record, original material had roughly equal time with material drawn from the TV show, this time from the third series which had finally started being broadcast at the time of the album’s recording. (One sketch, “Fish License,” they pulled from all the way back in the second series.) Once again, the Jones/Palin team were in the producer’s seat, but just as Terry Jones shepherded the the second album (much to his distress), Michael Palin stepped up and took point on this one, bringing in Andre Jacquemin.

Andre Jacquemin was a teenage apprentice working at a London studio under the supervision of an old-school recording engineer, Alan Bailey (whose claim to fame was engineering several Cliff Richard sessions and working for Radio Luxembourg). One day in 1971, on his way out to lunch, he fortuitously bumped into Michael Palin, who was shopping around for a studio to record some voiceovers. With Bailey being all booked up, Jacquemin took on the session himself — and deeply impressed Palin. “What Andre was doing with music and sound effects was incredible,” remembers Palin. The debacle of recording Another was probably pretty fresh in his mind. “I asked him if he wanted to help me make [the next] album. Thankfully, he says ‘Yes.’” 

“Mike explained what he needed and pointed to a three-foot high pile of scripts,” says Jacquemin. “He said ‘Just take those home and have a look at them, then you can tell us when you want us and what you want us to do.’ The only thing that kept going through my head was, ‘Oh God! These are all Cambridge and Oxford graduates…all I had was a swimming certificate and a bicycle proficiency test in terms of qualifications, so I thought ‘oh, crumbs! I’m in big trouble here…’ Anyway, I embraced it and told them I’d put together a budget and let them know.”

The album cover was a typical Gilliam flight of fancy, and the original inner sleeve advertised completely fictional albums supposedly also available from Charisma Records, such as Friday Night is Bath Night by J.P. Gumby, and Party Time! by Princess “Piano” Margaret. (Sadly, later pressings had an inner sleeve featuring actual Charisma products, and another good joke was ruined by the men in suits.) 

Included with the initial pressing was a small flexi-disc called “Teach Yourself Heath,” providing the record buyer with lessons on how to imitate the speech and mannerisms of Britain’s current Prime Minister. “Eric and I spent a day listening to Heath’s speeches,” says Palin. “At a certain point I went to sleep…I feel the record hasn’t done justice to the boredom and inanity of those party political speeches. If it is funny, thank Mr. Heath for that. It’s all him.”

Monty Python’s Previous Record 

Released: December 8, 1972 (U.K.); ? 1973 (U.S.)

Produced by Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Andre Jacquemin, and Alan Bailey

Track Listing:

Side One

1. Introduction

2. Are You Embarrassed Easily?

3. A Book at Bedtime

4. Dennis Moore (Part 1)

5. The Money Programme

6. The Money Song

7. Dennis Moore (Part 2)

8. Dennis Moore Theme Song (Part 1)

9. Australian Table Wines

10. Dennis Moore Theme Song (Part 2)

11. Argument Clinic

12. How To Do It

13. Dennis Moore Theme Song (Part 3)

14. Pepperpots (How To Put Your Budgie Down)

15. Personal Freedoms (Jean-Paul Sartre)

16. Dennis Moore Theme Song (Part 4)

17. Fish Licence

18. Eric the Half-a-Bee

19. Radio Quiz Game

20. Travel Agent

Side Two

1. A Massage from the Swedish Prime Minister (I)

2. Silly Noises

3. Anne Elk

4. The Yangtse Sketch

5. We Love the Yangtse

6. A Massage from the Swedish Prime Minister (II)

7. A Minute Passed

8. Eclipse of the Sun

9. Alistair Cooke

10. Wonderful World of Sound

11. Funerals at Prestatyn

12. A Massage from the Swedish Prime Minister (III)

13. A Fairy Tale (Happy Valley)

Beware starting this one with the volume too high. The listener is immediately jolted by the introduction on side one, which features Terry Jones screaming at the absolute top of his lungs “Not this record! Not this record! Not this record!” until the needle is pulled and we are lulled into a gentle attempt to get uptight British listeners over their innate embarrassment at certain words (“megaphone”) and sounds (which have to be heard to be appreciated, but they’re…rude.)

The well-known classics here are “Travel Agent” and “Argument Clinic,” but long-time fans will appreciate series three sketches such as “Anne Elk” (and her controversial theory about the brontosaurus), the Blue Peter parody “How To Do It” (“How to play the flute: blow here and move your fingers up and down there”), and the reappearance of Mr. Praline, who we last encountered trying to return a dead parrot to the pet shop. This time he’s applying for a license for his pet fish, Eric (a halibut). “Fish Licence” concludes with the only Python song to feature the deeply non-musical John Cleese singing a solo vocal part, “Eric the Half-a-Bee,” an album-only treat not included in the TV version of the sketch. It was never performed live, but you can always tell who’s a hardcore Python fan based on their deep love for this song. The running gag through side one is the adventures of Dennis Moore, a Robin Hood-style, 18th-century highwayman who can’t quite get the hang of redistributing wealth. More precisely, it’s Dennis Moore’s theme song that gets constantly revised. (The running gag through side two is a “massage from the Swedish prime minister” — but it doesn’t vary. Each time it appears, it says the exact same thing. There’s an explanation for that, see below.)

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“We were convinced Python wouldn’t go in America.”  — Eric Idle

Variations on this statement have been uttered by all members of the Monty Python comedy team at one time or another, and it’s a statement to which I take patriotic exception. If that were true, if us stateside folks really were a bunch of provincial, close-minded xenophobic rubes who only wanted domestically-produced comedy on the level of The Three Stooges and Gilligan’s Island, then Python would have failed. (And by the way, Britain has their fair share of provincial, close-minded xenophobic rubes too.)

But they did not fail. They were — eventually — a resounding success. The Pythons are immortal because their material did work in the U.S. Unfair as it may seem, you don’t get multi-generation global approbation without breaking in America. No one outside the borders of the U.K. gives a tenth of a shit about British “superstars” like Cliff Richard (old) or Robbie Williams (relatively recent). Who? Exactly. 

I’ve written about Monty Python several times in these virtual pages, and I’ve always felt the need to start off with a little potted history on them. This time will be no different.

The Monty Python troupe consisted of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. All were products of either Cambridge or Oxford University, where — while pursuing professional degrees in things like law (Cleese) and medicine (Chapman) — they honed their peformance chops in traditional live theater, sketch revue shows, and after-hours cabaret. (The lone exception was the Minnesota-born Terry Gilliam, who was a typical overachiever — in his senior year of high school he was simultaneously class president, head cheerleader, and editor of the school paper. His subsequent years at Occidental College made him “honorary Oxford” in the group’s eyes.) But all of them abandoned traditional career paths as the lure of show business proved too strong to resist.

BBC-TV was going through an unusually experimental and indulgent phase in the mid to late 1960s. One of their flagship shows was the satirical Frost Report, considered a landmark of topical, cutting-edge humor. John Cleese was doubling as a writer and as part of its ensemble cast. The BBC took a shine to the tall, angular comedian, and almost casually offered him a show of his own which, after a couple of years and many twists and turns, became Monty Python’s Flying Circus (with Cleese declining headliner status — he wanted to be regarded solely as part of the team.) The hastily-assembled Python group came into the BBC’s headquarters in the spring of 1969 with the most hilariously uninformative pitch imaginable — they admitted they had no idea what the format of the show would be, or if there would be musical numbers, or guest stars, or…anything, really. They just offered a shrug and a collective sheepish grin. The result was they were offered “only” thirteen episodes at first, and told to get on with it. 

As Idle put it, “We didn’t know what we were doing, but we insisted on doing it.”

Early BBC photo session, 1969, missing Gilliam, whose role within the group hadn’t quite been decided by the BBC publicity department

The BBC were not as far out on a limb as it may have appeared. Although the Pythons were still all quite young at this point (the oldest, Cleese, turned 30 a few weeks after the show’s premiere), this was not their first rodeo. Except for Gilliam, their American animator and illustrator, they were all veterans of the Frost Report writers’ room. Moreover, they had all been writer-performers on their own TV shows already. Cleese and Chapman put together 1967’s sketch comedy show At Last the 1948 Show (for ITV, not the BBC) and Idle, Jones, and Palin created a surreally anarchic children’s show, Do Not Adjust Your Set (ITV, 1967-69) that had just as many adult fans as kids (distinguished solicitors and merchant bankers were said to have left work early to catch it each Thursday afternoon.) The fresh-off-the-boat Gilliam joined DNAYS as animator in its second series in 1968.

Did I say second “series”? Yes. As we all know, the Brits and the Yanks are two people separated by a common language. When they say “public school,” they mean “private school.” When we say “series,” we are referring to a TV show in its entirety. When they say “series,” they are referring to what we call a “season.” So Monty Python’s Flying Circus is divided into “Series 1” (13 episodes, 1969-70), “Series 2” (13 episodes, 1970), “Series 3” (13 episodes, 1972-73), and a truncated “Series 4” (6 episodes, 1974 — without Cleese, and with the title shortened to just Monty Python).

After a slow start, Monty Python’s Flying Circus gradually gained viewing numbers and was a critical hit in the U.K. by the end of its first series, and a popular hit by the end of its second. Could the brand be exported? The team themselves were skeptical, but knew they wanted to stretch their wings beyond the BBC.

The Pythons’ first shot at the American market was not their television show at all. It was a film (see below). It failed, confirming their suspicions.

Their second shot consisted of comedy albums. Those started getting people’s attention…

Yes, Python’s initial handful of American fans in the wild and woolly early 1970s thought of them as primarily purveyors of comedy albums, akin to the Firesign Theater and Cheech & Chong. It was actually vinyl LPs that got Monty Python’s trademark foot in the door of America — circulating through university dorm rooms and being played in the wee hours on progressive FM radio stations. Over the course of their lifespan as a full group (1969-83), Monty Python released ten albums, several of which are considered absolute masterpieces of original audio comedy, true companion pieces to their groundbreaking work in the television medium.

So with this series of essays, the Holy Bee hopes to put the development of those albums in the context of the group’s overall timeline and creative output…and explain how they helped in their American breakthrough.

Let’s start by asking why the Python team was so convinced their material would never fly in the United States.

It comes down to the supposed difference between “British humo[u]r” and “American humor.” What sets British humor apart from its trans-Atlantic counterpart that speaks the same language? The more I researched this question, searching through Quora, Reddit, and simply asking people, the less clear the distinction became. It’s often stated that British humor is distinguishable because it’s dryer, “smarter,” irony-based, darker, and so on. American humor is broader, more obvious, maybe a little gentler and more sentimental. But examples abound that none of these traits solely belong to one side, nor does breaking formula result in a smaller audience. And that’s not just a recent development. In America, the dry-as-a-bone Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart won a Grammy as far back as 1960 and sold by the truckload. The cerebral comedy team of Nichols and May had lines around the block when they hit Broadway the same year. A little later, American films like MASH and Harold and Maude were wickedly smart and incredibly dark, and had great success at the box office. On the other side of the spectrum, sappy, generic sitcoms, unimaginative “comedic” variety shows, and — God help us — the hideous sucking chest wound of British humor known as Benny Hill were all over British television for decades and watched by millions. The deeply moronic Carry On film series was a beloved British institution. American rednecks at the sports bar and British punters down the pub are a remarkably similar breed, and no one has a monopoly on a style of comedy.

Some say most British humor comes off as “smarter.”

But Python’s intellectualism is surface-only. Take, for example, the Monty Python sketch known as “The All-England Summarize Proust Competition,” a game show-style televised contest to see which contestant could verbally condense French modernist Marcel Proust’s seven-volume philosophical novel A La Recherche du Temps Perdu in just fifteen seconds. Heady stuff…but, by their own admission, none of the Pythons had actually read Proust. They just knew him as a cool name to drop to sound smart. And lest we forget that the Pythons also excelled at lowbrow humor, the actual winner of the “All-England Summarize Proust Competition” was…“the girl with the biggest tits.” You don’t have to have graduated Oxford to laugh at the premise and the naughty punchline.

On the other hand, what happens when you eschew any level of smartness and go for pure silliness? Well, you get the Goodies — another British comedy team (Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden) with identical backgrounds to the Pythons (Oxbridge educations followed by a comedy-writing apprenticeship at the BBC), and whose lifespan as a team was almost identical as well — but they dropped all pretensions of engaging their audience on an intellectual level…and their comedy suffered. Frankly, the Goodies often crossed the line from silly to flat-out stupid. And it was fake stupid (as opposed to Benny Hill, who at least came by his stupidity honestly). These were guys as smart as the Pythons, but deliberately dumbed themselves down. It backfired, and they ended up with no shelf life. (The Pythons have always been good friends with the Goodies, who were all incredibly talented individuals, and their creative paths have crossed several times on other projects. Also, RIP Tim Brooke-Taylor, co-creator of At Last the 1948 Show with Cleese and Chapman, and an early casualty of Covid-19 in April of 2020.)

So it seems that British humor is simultaneously smarter and sillier, referencing Proust, Sartre, and Bergson one moment, then making boob jokes the next. But this hybrid intellectual/silly/surreal blend — or at least its acknowledgement as the modern definition of “British humor” by Americans — may actually originate solely with Monty Python. It’s the reason the term “Pythonesque” is now in the Oxford English Dictionary. They were true originals, or at least the ones who put the pre-existing parts together for the first time.

The Pythons’ uniqueness led to their success, and ultimately proves that the gap between “British humor” and “American humor” is really no gap at all — Americans can do smart references, cutting irony, and dry sarcasm. And the Brits can do the broad, the formulaic, and the sentimental. In fact, both sides do all of those things an awful lot.

In the end, I think the perceived “gap” is explained by three very simple things. 

1) The British — now and forever, upper class to working class — love cross-dressing and believe it’s inherently hilarious. Some Like It Hot aside, Americans have always been a little conservative about playing with gender. (And speaking of class, Americans really don’t get Britain’s all-consuming obsession with class levels.)

2) The use of terminology, slang, and cultural references that would only be recognizable to someone living in the British Isles.

3) Most importantly — stubborn American resistance to the English accent. I personally know people who claim even the clearest, most precise “received pronunciation” English accent makes them throw up their hands and insist everything being said is incomprehensible. And any English accent of any region sounds off-puttingly stuffy and pretentiously “smart” to many American ears. We still seem to have an inferiority complex when comparing ourselves to our supposedly more sophisticated English cousins — and the accent triggers it. Many will shut their ears and not even try, thinking it’s somehow above them. (In comedy, at least. Historical costume dramas seem to get a free pass. The accent suddenly makes sense in that context. And notice I’m specifically referring to English accents here. Irish, Welsh, and Scottish accents provide their own special array of befuddlement for us.)

So…the first series of Flying Circus had concluded in January 1970, to critical plaudits and increasing ratings. The group was deep into writing and assembling material for the second series when the BBC decided there was a market for an audio recording of the highlights of the show so far. The easiest thing would have been to just make a vinyl release of edited audio from the actual episodes, perhaps with a little helpful narration (which was common practice for BBC Records), but the Pythons insisted on re-recording the material. The BBC, somewhat surprisingly, agreed.

Not long before the recording date, the Pythons were dismayed to discover that the recording was not to be made in the controlled confines of a proper recording studio with state-of-the-art stereophonic equipment, but to be made in a theater in front of a live audience — old radio show-style. 

Monty Python’s Flying Circus 

Released: November 6, 1970 (U.K. only)

Produced by Ian MacNaughton

Track Listing:

Side One

1. Flying Sheep

2. A Man with Three Buttocks

3. Crunchy Frog

4. Nudge Nudge

5. The Mouse Problem

6. Buying a Bed

7. Interesting People

8. Barber Shop

9. The Lumberjack Song

10. “It’s the Arts” Interview: Sir Edward Ross

Side Two

1. “It’s the Arts” Interview: Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson

2. Children’s Stories

3. The Visitors

4. Albatross

5. Mr. Hilter

6. The North Minehead By-Election

7. Me, Doctor

8. Pet Shop (Dead Parrot)

9. Self-Defence

“Classic” sketches — the ones every Python fan can recite by heart — include the gross-out perennial “Crunchy Frog,” everyone’s favorite innuendo-fest “Nudge Nudge,” “The Lumberjack Song,” “Self-Defence” (or, “How to defend yourself against someone carrying different kinds of fresh fruit”), and the mighty “Pet Shop (Dead Parrot).” 

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