He wasn’t the Messiah, he was a very naughty….errggghh.
I refer of course to Monty Python, dead at 51 — a consequence of the death of Terry Jones, 77, from a form of rapid dementia.
Jones and the other Terry, Gilliam, were the group’s id. For Gilliam, this was through his cartoons. For Jones, it was his demeanour: compact, roundish, fleshy, Welsh, explosive in manner on and off screen. It contrasted with the Oxbridge bearing (even in comedy) of the four other players — John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle and Michael Palin.
Inevitably Jones played the women, or the not-young women, or the screeching Pepperpots (after one such incarnation was used as the mother of our saviour Brian, the term that has entered the general repertoire). Or he performed nude.
Seeing his gleeful nude organist, you just knew he was that one in university revues — the kid who keeps taking his clothes off on stage.
Or, finally, as Mr Creosote, desire and the era made flesh, an exploding wave of vomit triggered by a final after-dinner mint, say it with me, ouaifffer-thin, msieur.
Jones, as his obituaries revealed, would turn out to be the most polymathic of the Pythons, directing their movies, becoming a children’s author, making solid contributions to Chaucer studies, and playing a major role in “rehabilitating” the historical reputation of Richard II.
But of course we’re not mourning one writer/performer. We’re mourning Python, which, though in abeyance for some time, always had the possibility of one last reunion.
Graham Chapman died 30 years ago, but, as subsequent memoirs revealed, Chapman had become a hot Eton mess* from the early ’70s onwards, throwing the occasional gag into Cleese’s later sketches, sobering up to play Brian, and then dying on the eve of Monty Python’s 20th anniversary.
His absence didn’t stop the Pythons from mounting a last, vast season and tour in London, appearing at the O2 Arena in 2014. It was a revival tour in which the audience, Green Day-concert style, shouted out the sketches line-by-line.
These were lines that had, through the ’70s and ’80s been the preserve of nerds and obsessives, of the high-school awkward squad, and uni engineering students, the Masonic greetings of “spam”, “it’s not much of a cheese shop is it”, “it is an ex-parrot”, “my hovercraft is full of eels”, “it’s just a flesh wound” and on and on and on.
Python, like practically all British post-war humour, was a sort of reversing out of the war effort during those five years in which a damp ramshackle class-ridden island became a floating factory for total assault against radical evil.
For its teenage and young adult devotees of the ’70s and on — largely male at first, though that later changed — it was a subaltern’s love song, appealing to those on the B-list, and knowing it. No one on the football team learnt the “Lumberjack Song” by heart (I wonder how that plays now?).
Into Python went all a century-and-a-half of Britishness: a compendium of jabberwockery, Charley’s Aunt, Stephen Leacock** nonsense newspaper columns, the gang shows and Goons of BBC Radio comedy, and the sort of British analytic philosophy which spends a decade debating the difference between the phrases “nothing matters” and “nothing chatters”, and in which most of the Pythons had been schooled.
As the world became as absurd as high school always was, Python became its concordant bible, consulted when earthly explanation fails.
How did people understand something like, say, the career of Tony Abbott before Python invented the Black Knight (“it’s only a flesh wound!”)?
The dead parrot sketch has been about trying a failed global capitalism and its enthusiasts since 2008 (“nah nah, he’s resting. Global aggregate demand loves kippin’ on its back”).
And Brexit is simply the point at which the map became the territory and a Python sketch was enacted by the entire United Kingdom over a period of three years.
Will it survive, as anything more than memes by the dozen?
Once Python was soooooo good because it irritated your parents, who didn’t get why a cheese shop WOULDN’T HAVE ANY CHEESE! Now, possibly, it bewilders your teenage children.
Farewell Terry, farewell Python, the naughty boys’ messiah, farewell whatever it was, and appropriately I can’t end this obit GIANT PINK FOOT COMES DOWN CREDITS ROLL MARCHING MUSIC PLAYS.
* Chapman didn’t go to Eton. I just needed the English ref.
**said to be Canadian which is ridiculous. There are no Canadian humourists.
But the cream and meringue would melt.
Inevitable how many good things are coming to an end.
Nice to see Cleese didn’t temper his lifelong loathing: ‘Of his many achievements, for me the greatest gift he gave us all was his direction of Life of Brian. Perfection.” Bitch. Jones wrote some of the funniest, most exquisitely surreal, and rhythmically/verbally satisfying of all the Python stuff. Sanctifying Jones’s directorial achievements above his performing/content creativity is like Bjorg paying highest tribute to McEnroe’s middle-aged commentary skills.
The Python crew was fortunate to follow in the footsteps of the brilliant Peter Cook & Dudley Moore who, in turn, followed in the footsteps of The Goons. They all formed a glorious succession of pithy, edgy, deliciously manic humorists & satirists who enriched my life along with many other millions.
And we owe a debt of gratitude to Geo Harrison who realised ‘Life of Brian’ – & that superb one line zinger immortalised by Terry Jones.
Times two, Zut!
If memory serves, Guy, Python was by no means universally popular. From inception there was a rough correlation between short hair + working class and those who though ill of the genre. Python was generally popular with students and Repertory brigade. Those with fewer than three ‘0’ levels didn’t really care for it or the equivalent in Oz or NZ.
As to “parents” well it was JUST SILLY wasn’t it? I suppose we could have an argument that does not depend on simple negation of a set of ill-defined propositions that are not susceptible to verification but your assessment did not reflect upon a latter-day assessment of the relationship between Basil Fawlty and Spanish Manuel (except when the episodes were dubbed into Spanish for such audiences and Manuel was obliged to seek another nationality).
As an aside, Python did not do well in the USA.
“… Python did not do well in the USA.”
“Those with fewer than three ‘0’ levels didn’t really care for it…”
The second quote explaining the first.
Besides which the USofA was/is/and probably always will be steeped in reactionary puritanism – one which is carefully cultivated by those who seek political, commercial and social advantage.
Goodness kyle, ever the verbose wet blanket but in this case I can be sure you’re mostly wrong.
Many parents including mine quite liked Python. I remember a lot of kids at school who weren’t regular ABC watchers were fans too. There was a limit of course as the majority never watched the ABC.
I can’t comment on whether Python was popular first run fare on US tv but it was most definitely popular for decades from the late 70’s onwards spurred on by the success of the movies.
Thanks for a kind and thoughtful obit Guy.
I recall observing lower and middle class parents switching off the TV at anything related to Python well into the 70s. I did attempt a correlation as to social and educational background and popularity. As to the “argument” that I mentioned – I was appealing to my memory of a sketch.
I accept that some were won-over as it were after the Grail and Brian but I did appeal to the adverb ‘universally’ in my initial post. Appealing to memory again, I think one did better to endorse Benny Hill or Frankie Howard than the Python mob in some social settings. In other social settings it was a matter of form to be able to recite the sketches.
Its just as well, when reminiscing, that we tend to remember the better parts of life.