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Life imitates art. How our "stimulus package" was sold to the American People.

Right before they started, and right after he signed the bill. The music was the pieces that Monty Python's Flying Circus used for their theme. I was waiting for the giant animated foot to smash down on the stage.

IT'S enough to make anyone's stiff upper lip quiver. Famously reserved "Monty Python" star John Cleese has had a messy breakup with a blabbermouth blonde who he claims lied to him about her age and revealed embarrassing details about his hair plugs, "nice package" and intensive anti-aging regimen. The startling revelations have blindsided Cleese, 69, who's kept a low profile ever since "A Fish Called Wanda" (1988).

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands. We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube. No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you...

Michael Palin's New Europe has been rapped by the BBC Trust's editorial standards committee over its portrayal of the role of Serbia in the Balkan conflict in the 1990s. Palin's most recent travelogue was "political commentary rather than a travel series" and gave an inaccurate account of the war in the 1990s Balkan conflict, according to one complainant. Comments made by Palin about the destruction of a bridge at Mostar, Bosnia in 1993 came in for criticism from the complainant. Palin's comments were made in 'War and Peace', the first episode of the series, which was broadcast on BBC1 in...

The President Song Senator Obama: Day after day here in the U.S. Senate People just don't understand the stress Now that we're in control ... sure the cafeteria is the best, but ... But I never really wanted to do this job in the first place! Share the stage with 113 other preening bumbling nere-do-wells! I... I wanted to be... THE PRESIDENT! (piano vamp) Leaping from issue to issue! As they come down the mighty rivers of Public Opinion! With my best girl by my side! The War on Poverty! The Economy! The Global Warming Crisis! Disarmament! And Saving the...

Dr David Waterhouse, assistant curator of Natural History at Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, could not resist the Monty Python associations after the discovery of a fossil which he says is the oldest parrot ever found. The dead parrot in the classic sketch was a Norwegian Blue, but the one which Dr Waterhouse has been studying was found on the isle of Morse in the northwest of Denmark... Officially named Mopsitta tanta, the bird has already been nicknamed the Danish Blue, and like John Cleese in the sketch, his first task was to establish it actually was a parrot. He...

The BBC will today screen remarkable footage of penguins flying as part of its new natural history series, Miracles of Evolution. Camera crews discovered a colony of Adélie penguins while filming on King George Island, some 750 miles south of the Falkland Islands. The programme is being presented by ex-Monty Python star Terry Jones, who said: "We'd been watching the penguins and filming them for days, without a hint of what was to come.

A MEMBER of the royal family has been targeted in an alleged “sex and drugs” blackmail plot being investigated by Scotland Yard. The royal - who cannot be named for legal reasons - called in the police after being approached by two alleged blackmailers in August. The men demanded £50,000 not to publicise a video, which they suggested showed the royal engaged in a sex act. The case is understood to be the first time in more than 100 years that a member of the royal family has been the victim of blackmail. During telephone calls to the royal’s office,...

London, England (AHN) - Monty Python's 1979 comedy, "Life of Brian," has been named the best British movie of all time in a recent poll conducted by radiotimes.com. The movie revolved around the comic events surrounding Brian Cohen, played by Graham Chapman, a young man born on the same night and the same street as Jesus Christ. The silver position was grabbed by the Academy Award-winning comedy "The Full Monty," followed by "Four Weddings and A Funeral" at third place. Cult classic "Trainspotting" was ranked the fourth best movie, while "Lawrence of Arabia" came in fifth. Sixth and seventh positions...

The Mideast seems complicated to most Americans. But those of us who are in the know have a sacred text to which we turn whenever events there seem incomprehensible. That's right, I'm talking about the screenplay from "The Life of Brian." That classic Monty Python movie offers perhaps the most succinct summation possible of the forces that make the Mideast eternally ungovernable. The movie is set in the time of Christ, and the title character, Brian, is a poor shlub who is mistaken for the messiah. Though it's all played for comic effect, the script for the 1979 movie offered...

Has anyone here seen this theatre act? If you have please post your comments about it. This act is going to perform here in Houston and I have never been to the theatre yet I am a Monty Python fan. Having never been to the theatre, could someone advise me as to the best seats in the house! I was surprised as to the cost of tickets.

CHRISTIANS in Wales have reacted angrily to plans to turn controversial comedy Life of Brian into a musical. It is nearly 30 years since the Monty Python film, satirising the life of a man mistaken for Jesus, provoked condemnation from church and chapel congregations around the world who claimed it was blasphemous. A ban on screening it in Swansea cinemas stood for 17 years and was only lifted in 1997. But yesterday campaigners vowed to hold fresh protests should the proposed new musical ever be staged in Wales or the UK. Their ire came as it emerged founding Monty Python...

Drunken Swedish moose drowns after fermented apple binge STOCKHOLM (AFP) — A moose that became inebriated after binging on fermented fallen apples in northern Sweden drowned when it fell through the ice of a frozen inlet, Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet reported on Thursday. "The moose appears to have eaten too many fermented apples and become confused out on the ice," Luleaa police spokesman Erik Kummu told local media. Emergency services were scrambled but they were unable to save the four-legged apple thief. For several days prior to the moose's demise, local residents had contacted police after seeing the animal munch its...

Monty Python star Jones celebrates 'miracle recovery' from cancer RICHARD SIMPSON, Showbusiness Reporter Last updated at 23:08pm on 6th November 2006 Monty Python star Terry Jones has toasted his 'miracle recovery' from cancer. The 64-year-old actor and director has spent the week being nursed back to heath by his 23-year-old Swedish girlfriend after an operation to remove a growth from his bowel. Just nine days after surgery, he has been pictured walking near his north London home, hand-in-hand with Anna Soderstrom, an Oxford University languages student and Python fan he met at one of his book signings. He spent the...

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico said Friday it will try to persuade President Bush not to sign a bill that would extend a wall along the border in an effort to stop illegal immigrants. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez strongly criticized the legislation to build a 700-mile border fence, which the Senate approved Friday and sent to Bush to sign. Derbez said Mexico will send a letter to the U.S. government strongly condemning the measure. Asked by a reporter if the government would try to "dissuade" Bush from signing the bill into law, he replied, "Without a doubt." "We have...

Animal rights activists have targeted the parents of Britain's first known human victim of "rabbit flu", with telephone callers telling them his death was a "rabbit's revenge". John Freeman, 29, died after becoming infected with the bacteria pasteurella multocida after picking up a rabbit on his farm. He fell ill the next day with a fever and died three days later.

Sybil returns to 'Fawlty Towers' Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales is to star at the re-opening of the Torquay hotel which inspired the legendary series. Scales, who played the long-suffering Sybil, is set to arrive in a replica of the Austin 1100 famously thrashed with a branch by her screen husband Basil. The event on 18 September is to mark a refurbishment of the Hotel Gleneagles. It will be the first time Scales has visited the hotel - which is a local landmark because of Fawlty Towers. It is the spiritual home of Fawlty Towers Hotel co-owner Brian Shone Hotel...

Two men recently attempted to charge people a dollar to cross a bridge in a park near the intersection of Foothills Highway and Colorado Avenue and allegedly threatened to stab an off-duty sheriff's deputy with a broken golf club after he refused to pay.