Monty Python's Flying Circus celebrates 40 years

AFP | 10/05/2009

[Phlap]

Monty Python's Flying Circus, the group responsible for the launching the Ministry of Silly Walks and the Parrot Sketch on an unsuspecting world, was on Monday celebrating 40 years since the comedy sketch show was first broadcast.

The show, which was written and acted by John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman, first aired on October 5, 1969 and ran for a total of 45 episodes.

It was the Pythons' surreal and satirical humour which shot them to global fame in the 1970s, as they broke new ground in what was acceptable in terms of both style and content.

[Phlap]

A little off topic but it was funny stuff.

[2banana]

Imagine what they could do with obama material...

[a fool in paradise]

SPAM Ping

[NY.SS-Bar9]

(feeling a bit older)

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

I came to thread for something completely different.

[ssaftler]

I didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!

[ChrisInAR]

Monty Python’s song “Sit On My Face” cracks me up every time I hear it. Too bad it’s only ~ 45 seconds long, LOL.

[equaviator]

Obama Administration = “Ministry of Silly Talks”? (cough)

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"ran for a total of 45 episodes"

Wow, that doesn't seem like a lot of episodes. Oh well.... "I like Chinese, they only come up to your knees..." Nothing was off limits to them.

[ssaftler]

My favorite Python ditty was always “Not the Noel Coward Song”, from “The Meaning of Life”

[Don Corleone]

The Dinsdales. Cruel but fair!

[hoe_cake]

I’m not dead yet.

[kinsman redeemer]

Argument Clinic

[Always Right]

[Delta 21]

STOP IT! Just cut that out.

[Colonel_Flagg]

“The Galaxy Song” is three minutes of wonderful commentary on the idiots that are currently in charge.

[MarkL]

I've never understood why, but for me, the funniest bit ever done by "The Pythons" was "The Fish Slapping Dance." It just kills me every time, no matter how many times I've seen it.

It's short, to the point, and amazingly silly.

Mark

[Yo-Yo]

My favorite was the Philosophers Song. “And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: “I drink, therefore I am””

[vladimir998]

Poor Graham Chapman. Dead before his time.

[Ignatz]

“There’s a penguin on the telly!”

Thanks, MP, for 40 years of starving me for air while I laughed out loud!

[Political Junkie Too]

It was the Pythons' surreal and satirical humour which shot them to global fame in the 1970s, as they broke new ground in what was acceptable in terms of both style and content.

No, it wasn't.

-PJ

[andy58-in-nh]

One of my favorites: the football game between the German and Greek philosophers. Absolute genius at work. That and the game show with Karl Marx and Mao Tse-Tung competing for home appliances.

[Clemenza]

My faves: The Architects Sketch, The Dirty Vicar Sketch, and the election sketch (with the lumberjack song).

[MarkL]

Poor Graham Chapman. Dead before his time.

Did you see the comedy awards show (I believe it was from Denver, CO) where the surviving "Pythons" brought along an urn with a "Graham Chapman" tag on it. During the show, it was knocked over, and they ran around with brooms and a dust-buster, trying to clean it up, and wound up sweeping a great amount of it under the carpet! I have no doubt that Graham would have approved.

BTW, it's not commonly known that Graham Chapman was an MD! How would you have liked to get a check-up from him?!?!?!

Mark

[real saxophonist]

Not Python, but one of my favourites from Eric Idle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU0QZQRTNr0

[andy58-in-nh]

Is this the five-minute argument or the full session?

[HossB86]

“The Dinsdales. Cruel but fair!”

“He nailed your head to floor!”

“Well, ‘e had to, didn’t ‘e?”

Classic.

Hoss

[E Rocc]

He’s not the Messiah! He’s a Very Naughty Boy!

[raccoonradio]

Interviewed him on a college radio station in Oct of 1982; he asked me if he could utter a loud squawk at the end, and he did (”I bet that messed your meters up”). I also saw him perform a Dangerous Sports Club comedy routine at the Channel nightclub in Boston and I have an album of him telling stories during a college tour in the 80s, Looks Like Another Brown Trouser Job

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

The Life of Brain. Especially the ending. ;-)

Oh, and ‘The Lumberjack Song’. LOL!

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/42973/monty_pythons_flying_circus_the_lumberjack_song/

[MarkL]

He’s not the Messiah! He’s a Very Naughty Boy!

My 2 favorite bits from the movie are the "Call me Loretta" bit and where the Centurion gives Brian the Latin grammar lesson.

Mark

[Dumpster Baby]

The Lumberjack Song

[B-Chan]

It’s

[WOBBLY BOB]

Obummer has a czar for that.

[SES1066]

The skit on camouflage, "How not to be Seen" (Click for Youtube) is one of my favorites - good advice too!

[ReneeLynn]

Not sure of the name, but the man eating house. I loved all those silly, cut out animations.

[ynotjjr]

Back then, no cable 50 miles from cleveland and 50 miles from Erie so only 4 channels. I was in HS in 71 and stumbled across PBS and saw something I would never forget. These characters dressed up like some south american politians, all in white, the set was a white, and they started shooting each other. Red blood started to flow out of the the gunshot holes in their outfits like from a raging hose as they made these silly faces. I could believe what I was seeing and still love them.

[RabidBartender]

I still stop and watch reruns when flipping through the channels - some of the funniest stuff ever.

Too bad Cleese turned into a potty-mouthed, Bush-hating tool.

[MotorCityBuck]

The IFC Independent Film Channel with be airing a six part documentary on the Pythons Oct. 18th-23rd @ 9:00 est. I found The Bishop sketch to be a riot to this day.Also, this channel does not censor, and the best part, no frekin’ commercials :)

The Larch.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

A couple of years ago a new bio came out about a superstar which revealed that he was a big Monty Python. It was Elvis.

[Mmogamer]

Well i like em as much as any,, but some of their stuff was.. well crap. And odd crap at that. hehe

[b4its2late]

I think that all right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people in this country are fed up with being sick and tired.....

hear, hear

And I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.....

[dfwgator]

I haven’t posted on this thread yet, because I’m trying not to be seen.

[Delta 21]

[xp38]

Ok but isn’t Graham Chapman pining for the fjords?

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I dropped a word forgetting to add the word fan. Should read “...big Monty Python fan.” Sorry all.

[equaviator]

Ah yes...Jolly good.

[Snickering Hound]

Monty Python RAF Banter sketch for military readers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKYL0tW-Ek

[Billthedrill]

But suppose I’m attacked by a man with a banana and I haven’t got a gun?

[Political Junkie Too]

That sounds like the skit where they are on the picnic in their turn-of-the-century dapper clothing, and then it becomes a Sam Peckinpah-type scene of mayhem.

-PJ