Neil Gaiman
Novelist
Favourite sketch: Albatross (A theatre vendor, Cleese, attempts to sell albatrosses instead of ice-cream).
If you really want to punish someone who’s been evil – and I would recommend this to any demons-in-training who are reading this who need to figure out how to punish people in hell – I strongly recommend making them choose their favourite Monty Python sketch. I’ve got it down to some. The big obvious ones for me were Every Sperm Is Sacred [from The Meaning of Life], the Spanish Inquisition, and although it’s not technically a sketch, “he’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy” [a line from Life of Brian], which obviously are all wonderful and huge and magical But I will eventually plump, very peculiarly, even for me, for something that is not a famous Python sketch. It would be in nobody’s list of the great classics, but I have an awful lot of fondness in my head for Albatross. You’re in a cinema, or I suppose in this case you’re in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and somebody instead of having ice-cream for sale has an albatross and is standing there shouting “albatross, albatross”. Someone comes over and says: “Do you have any ice-cream?” and he says: “No I haven’t got any ice-cream, just this albatross.” “What flavour is it?” “It’s an albatross.” “It must have some flavour.” “All I have is fucking albatross flavour. Albatross!” And eventually he winds up taking away an albatross.
I don’t think I could have articulated this when I was 13 or 14, with my copy of Monty Python’s Big Red Book, but what I loved most was where they would take a form and change the content. So you would have a vessel that you knew always contained tea, only when you poured it out it no longer contained tea, it contained wine or blood or oil or something. And that was for me part of the genius of Python, which was, you’d see this thing and the shape of it would be one thing, but it would have been replaced by something else that would make you see everything in a slightly different light, and in this case it’s pure absurdism. Probably the albatross sketch is one of the places where the Python team got closest to pure surreality. There was nothing strange for me about encountering the surrealist poets, because you go, “Yeah, I know this, obviously this is how it all works.”
I feel they’ve aged incredibly well. The combination of sensibilities was fantastic, and the fact that you had an out gay member of Python incredibly early I think was hugely important. But the only place that I look at it and wish it was better was in the handling of women: they do tend to be either decorative or Terry Jones screeching. And neither of these I think does justice to half of the human race in the way that you feel that it could have done and it would have done had there been a female member of Python. On the other hand, that’s like complaining there wasn’t a girl in the Beatles. It was exactly what it was, it broke open our brains at a time when we needed them broken open. And I’m really glad that it did. Other British comedies at the time weren’t somehow breaking down barriers, they weren’t changing the way that people saw the world.
I remember as a very young journalist, I would have been 23 years old, interviewing Terry Jones, and he got me really drunk. I arrived at his house for an interview and he said, “would you like anything to drink?”, and I said “coffee would be fine”. He said: “Chablis, I think”. A large bottle of chablis appeared, followed by another, followed by another, and at the point where I left the interview – fortunately it was taped, because I think I couldn’t remember the second half – I just remember lying in the men’s toilets at a small London restaurant while the ceiling went round and round and round and round, thinking “Of course. I’ve just entered Python world.” And in the years to come I became friends with Terry Gilliam, who I enjoy spending time with whenever I can. He’s unique, he’s brilliant, he is wonderful. And sometimes I have to remind myself that in addition to being Terry Gilliam the great director, Terry Gilliam the visionary, this is also Cardinal Fang, the one who gibbered about the Spanish Inquisition.
What fascinates me, having met all of these guys, pretty much – I’ve never met Michael Palin, would love to – you definitely get a sense of how they are individuals and how that strange combination of individuals gave us Python. John Cleese is John Cleese – he is that thing that you see in all of the versions of Cleese, the uptightness, the awkwardness, the Englishness, the sheer embarrassment of being alive, is Cleese. And the glorious Welsh bonhomie that is Terry Jones, that is the opposite of embarrassment: the propensity to get naked and play the organ or be a squeaky pepperpot lady whenever possible. And Terry Gilliam, just this amazing sensibility of a cartoonist, a visual surrealist. And you needed those people, just in the same way that with the Beatles you had four talented people, but together you had the Beatles. And I think that’s so incredibly true when it comes to Python.
Marcel Theroux
Writer and broadcaster
Favourite sketch: Argument Clinic (Michael Palin and John Cleese argue over the difference between an argument and a contradiction).
In the 1970s, Monty Python existed for me and my brother solely on a single vinyl copy of Monty Python’s Previous Record, which we listened to over and over again. Most of it went completely over our heads: the weird Eadweard Muybridge photos of naked wrestlers on its sleeve, the mystifying allusions: “Cyril Connolly?” “No, semi-carnally.” But the argument sketch was comprehensible and hilarious even to seven- and nine-year-olds.
The whole bit develops logically from one absurd premise: that someone might be willing to pay to have an argument with someone else. At least, that premise seemed absurd until, in my 20s, I started having psychoanalysis. One hot summer day, I was on the couch and a bee flew through the window. Rather than doing something to stop it stinging us, my shrink and I had a long and ridiculous argument about whether I should kill the bee, and how we’d both feel about that. And yes, before you ask, it was a whole bee, not half a bee.
Joan Bakewell
Journalist and broadcaster
Favourite sketch: The Spanish Inquisition (Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam as three red-robed cardinals with the catchphrase: “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”).
In the 60s, Terry Jones and Michael Palin began to practise their sketch-writing skills on a show I did that was called Late Night Line-Up, so I was always very fond of them. When they went on to do Monty Python later, their sketches were obviously the ones I loved the most. There were several that involved the Inquisition, so it’s that which I remember in particular with the most affection, because it often involved them dressing up, and they all loved dressing up. And also it cocked a snook at received religious respectability. I like its outrage, I like that it was funny, I like it because it was very over the top. So that was my favourite.
I’ve always loved Monty Python. They’ve inspired a huge following, none of whom have surpassed them – with the exception of perhaps Blackadder. My favourite thing about them is the chaos. Everything they did was over the top: the whole anarchic thing of it at the time was so special. It was a new format and it was seamlessly put together. It was pure television too – very important in those days.
Shazia Mirza
Comedian
Favourite sketch: Seduced Milkmen (Michael Palin plays a milkman lured inside a suburban house by a seductive woman, played by Donna Reading in the TV version and Carol Cleveland – above – in the film).
It’s hard to pick one Monty Python sketch, but I really like Seduced Milkmen – it’s very short, but it’s just so unexpected. It’s a typical cliche of that era – a milkman turns up on a doorstep, and a woman answers the door in her underwear – so because of the Carry On films you think you know what’s going to happen. You think the man is in control, but actually she is. I think I was about 12 when I first saw it, and I didn’t really understand the meaning of it then, but I just thought it was funny she had 10 milkmen locked up in this room with their uniforms on.
I just couldn’t stop laughing. When I look back now I realise their comedy was so different from the other comedy I was watching at the time: often there wasn’t a massive punchline, it was just off-the-wall craziness done with a straight face. They made me realise that you have to do what you think is funny and hope other people will appreciate that.
Michael Rosen
Writer and poet
Favourite sketch: The Larch (after a series of slides of trees, three schoolboys are quizzed about which ones they can recognise).
I switched on the TV and, every now and then, what looked like a slide from a family photo projector plonked on to the screen, and a BBC-announcer-type voice said, “The larch … the larch”. The first time I thought it was a mistake. TV at the time was full of mistakes like that anyway. Then when it came back again, I got it. I’ve been repeating, “The larch … the larch” ever since. If I see a slide, a TV mistake or a larch, I say, “The larch … the larch”. Thank you, Pythons.
Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow
Favourite sketch: The giant foot (Terry Gilliam’s animated cut out).
First and foremost I identify Monty Python with my dad: even now, talking about it, I can hear my dad’s giggle. It was sitting, giggling furiously with my dad, my brother and my mother that I came to love it. It was the sort of thing you could watch as a family, because you could all get something out of it. Sometimes now comedy is almost too self-knowingly silly, and then it’s not authentic – but Monty Python were genuinely being silly, and you couldn’t help but be caught up in the infectiousness of that.
In life, the phrase I overuse the most is the Monty Python foot. It’s not really a sketch, it’s just that point where everything seems to be going along and then suddenly the foot comes from nowhere and goes “thump”. That seems to be quite a good metaphor for what being a politician is like: the things that suddenly come out of nowhere and squash all your best-laid plans. My staff will tell you I always go on about the Monty Python foot; it’s the same principle as when Harold Macmillan said: “Events, dear boy, events.”
Ha-Joon Chang
Economist, University of Cambridge
Favourite sketch: Four Yorkshiremen (four men discuss their humble beginnings, trying to outdo each other).
Four Yorkshiremen is an interesting social commentary about people often exaggerating the hardships they’ve had in life, that ever-escalating exaggeration, to the point that they say they were living in rolled-up newspapers in a septic tank, working 26 hours a day, and paying to work. That was such a classic Monty Python type of absurdity that it really affected me. When I first saw it, it reminded me of the national military service we have [in South Korea]; very often the guys who talked about their hardship in the military service were the guys who had it relatively easy.
I began watching Monty Python as a student in the late 1980s in South Korea and the ones I found funny were more about political commentary, which actually tends to be quite similar in different countries. Like that classic in Life of Brian, the fight between the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front and the Popular Front of Judea. That reminded me of the leftwing political factions among students in south Korea, when they were leading the struggle against the military. That kind of thing immediately appealed to me, but other pieces that were commenting on the British class system initially flew over my head. Now I’ve lived in this country for 27 years, so my appreciation of those has grown.
Joyce Carol Oates
Writer
Favourite sketch: The Lumberjack Song (Michael Palin sings an increasingly bizarre song with the chorus “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK”).
Monty Python’s Flying Circus unites the wild anarchy of such surreal comic geniuses as Groucho Marx (in his films) and the more cerebral, though hardly less surreal and flamboyant, wit of Beyond the Fringe. After Monty Python, it has been observed that people do indeed walk sillily, as they do other things in a similar fashion. In the wilder reaches of comedy, it is a dictum that life soon imitates art and authority exists for the purpose of being toppled. Choosing a single favourite Monty Python sketch would be like choosing a favourite Mad magazine cover… but since I lived in Canada for 10 years, I am naturally partial to The Lumberjack Song.
Fiona Allen
Comedian
Favourite sketch: Fish Licence (Cleese visits the post office to buy a licence for his pet halibut but has trouble explaining to the clerk why all pets should be licensed).
There are so many sketches to pull out as favourites but I’ll try. Upper-class twits is a firm favourite: seven minutes of carefully crafted observations of fopping idiots with equally pointless giddy women. The funniest thing is that in 2014, nothing much has changed has it? But one of my absolute favourites has to be fish licence. The man who has a dog, cat, fruitbat and a halibut as pets. All named Eric. Cleese goes on to mention other people who have pet prawns, clams, pike and haddock.
These sketches are called surreal, but they’re just normal to me. Some of my most enjoyable times have been performing in sketches that have the same anarchic and surreal spirit of Monty Python. In an episode of Smack the Pony I spent a day dressed as a matador having a romantic session with a prize bull. Best of all I got paid to do it. But he never writes … he never phones. Heigh-ho.
Sadiq Khan
MP for Tooting, shadow justice secretary, shadow lord chancellor
Favourite sketch: What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us? (The scene from Life of Brian in which Cleese, as Reg, tries unsuccessfully to convince his audience that the Roman occupation has had no benefits).
So many hilarious Monty Python sketches have seeped into the national consciousness, but this one always sticks in my mind. We’ve all been there – a lively discussion with a friend or colleague, but your argument slowly unravels as counter-examples are thrown at you, one by one. I shamelessly cribbed the sketch for a piece I wrote entitled “What have human rights ever done for us?” Apart from the right to life, to protest, not to be tortured, fair trials, to be free from slavery, press freedoms, victims’ rights, freedom of belief and religion, equality for homosexuals, John Cleese’s character’s response would be “Not very much”!
Seb Cardinal
Comedian, one half of Cardinal Burns
Favourite sketch: Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days (a parody of the 1950s musical in the ultraviolent style of the US film director).
Salad Days is just purely silly, which is what the Pythons always do best. It’s a bunch of upper-class twits on a summer lawn, they’re all dressed in tennis gear and straw hats, and it turns into a gore fest. In the stupidest way, by ripping their limbs off and all that, the whole facade is stripped down in the basest way possible.
It’s just ridiculous and ridiculously violent. It’s the little things that the group do: one of them is this herd-like mentality where they answer in unison, like in Life of Brian. The thing I love most about Monty Python is that you can tell they’re having so much fun. They’re like clever schoolboys poking their tongue out at the teacher, and they don’t take themselves too seriously.
Laura Dockrill
Poet and writer
Favourite sketch: Ministry of Silly Walks (Cleese as a bowler-hatted civil servant responsible for developing silly walks).
John Cleese’s walk is perfected silliness: a combination of staggered leaps and lunges, occasionally spiralling out of control. I love the bizarre surrealism of the nonsense the Monty Python boys are nattering on about, yet they act with the most straight faces, as if speaking about politics. It’s sophisticated nonsense play. I used to watch it with my dad when I was younger: I remember him doing the silly walks all the time, like when he was making breakfast. In my brain my dad was in Monty Python – he’s like a real-life John Cleese. And I used to have a real crush on Eric Idle, although I was too shy to ever say so at the time. Monty Python’s surrealism has definitely influenced my work: whether I’m writing for adults or for children, I love writing about the impossible, and the Pythons were groundbreaking in that field.
Sophie Scott
Professor, institute of cognitive neuroscience, University College London
Favourite sketch: The fish-slapping dance (John Cleese and Michael Palin striking each other with fish).
In the 1970s my brother and I had a couple of tapes of Monty Python LPs. You could only just about make out what was being said, but we got really obsessed. I’m immensely fond of those, but the fish-slapping dance still makes me laugh today. There’s a beautiful formality to it: it’s so structured, but then there’s the escalation. It looks like a proper folk dance: slapping someone around the face with one fish, then another fish, then two fishes. And then the seriousness with which another much larger fish is produced and formally held up, and used to smack someone a considerable distance into the water. They’re not just mucking about, it’s really carefully done.
Sometimes I find myself analysing the science behind the laughter in Monty Python. Laughter is a social behaviour: you’re more likely to do it if you’re with someone else than if you’re on your own, and a bit more if you like them. In comedy, this can creep in: the more you like a comedian the more you will say you find their jokes funny. People find Monty Python funny, but they also feel affectionate towards them so they’re well disposed to them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1-NpyaOWV0
Limmy
Comedian, aka Brian Limond
Favourite sketch: Confuse-a-Cat (a couple - played by Michael Palin and Terry Jones - worried about their motionless cat call upon the Confuse-a-Cat service to make it “like the old days”).
I never watched Monty Python much when I was younger, but a few years ago I decided to watch it to see what the big deal was, and I just watched one episode after another. I’ve always heard about the dead parrot, people went on and on about that sketch but I like Confuse-a-Cat. I just like how daft it is and all the wee things they do to confuse a cat. I had a cat when I went to primary school, and during the summer holidays when I got bored I would try to confuse it.
