Monty Python: Almost the Truth - Lawyers Cut (2009) s01e01 Episode Script
The Not-So-Interesting Beginnings
And now, a short introduction from the producers' legal representative, Mr Abe Appenheimer.
Hello, and welcome to this documentary containing new and exclusive interviews with the five surviving members of Monty Python.
The producers wish to make it clear that any opinions expressed herein are those of the individuals speaking and hold no truth whatsoever.
Pursuant, therefore, to clause 46 of the Broadcasting, Video, Television Act, 1989, subsection 4, 3 and 2, clause .
.
subject to clause 4.
123, no viewer or watcher may copy, repeat, impersonate, mime, either contextually or noncontextually, any material whatsoever in any public place, such as a street, pub, club, hotel, oil rig, Baptist church Python The brand-new documentary of Python lt's a new documentary lt's about Monty Python Unlike other Monty Python documentaries This is brand-new lt's a new documentary lt's not complimentary But it's better than a hysterectomy lt's Monty Python Meanwhile, how glad and grateful is Britain that thousands have fought their way out and come home.
And are they glad to be back again? Well, they'll tell you that after what they've been seeing, England looks all right.
- You glad to be back, boys? - Sure! England was in black-and-white after the war, and until about 1959, l think, we had rationing.
l remember we didn't have enough.
We had butter rations, you can have a piece of butter a week, and bread rationing and meat rationing.
London was completely composed of holes and bomb sites, and it was a sort of grey duffel-coat-wearing, very respectable, everybody talked in received English ''Good evening, this is the BBC, and here is the news.
'' On the radio, the news announcers wore black tie to read the news.
So it was that kind of unnecessarily uptight place.
l think l had quite a happy childhood.
My poor old dad gets quite a bad press, cos l've mentioned him being a bit cantankerous.
Apart from his slight cantankerousness, he was a fond father, he quite liked jokes, he liked practical jokes a lot.
ln fact, l've still got a fake dog turd that he bought me.
l mean, how many people's fathers would buy their sons a dog turd? ''You've got into Oxford.
Here's a turd.
'' My mother, she was terrific, my mum.
She was absolutely great.
And she was more encouraging what l wanted to do.
My father was obsessed with money, or rather, the lack of it, and worried that l might follow my sister's progress into acting.
He just didn't want that, he just said he felt that was the way to rack and ruin, whereas my mother, l think, understood a little bit of my interest in performing.
My relationship with my father was lt wasalways at one remove, in a way, because l think he must have seen me when l was a few days old, but he was in the RAF, up in Scotland.
Then he was shipped off to lndia, and spent the war in lndia, so he never saw me again until l was four and a half.
And l can remember going down to Colwyn Bay railway station and walking up the steps with my mum and my brother and standing on the platform, and then my mother getting terribly anxious that he wasn't there.
Suddenly, as the crowds vanished, there was a man in a forage cap and a kit bag, a big kit bag, at the end of the platform.
And that was my dad.
And so he kisses my mum and my brother, and then he kisses me, and he's got a moustache! l'd never been kissed by anybody with a moustache before.
So l've always been l've always had horrors about being kissed by men in moustaches ever since! Graham, as a policeman's son, had had a very good, solid family background, but l think, because life was tough when he was growing up, and for a country copper during the war, it was a very busy time.
There was not a lot of time for the children while they were growing up.
And l think Graham actually missed a really warm and supportive atmosphere.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, Minnesota being the furthest north state in America, probably the most middle.
So we're in the middle and at the top.
We lived in a little summer cottage out in a place called Medicine Lake that my dad had put insulation in so we could get through these winters.
But it was some years before we got an indoor toilet.
So l think the memory of my childhood is one that is really odd, because l can remember it, but l can't feel it, was going out in the middle of winter for a dump in the biffy, as they were known.
And l don't know how we did that, there was no heating, nothing, you just sat there on a wooden plank with a hole, and did your business, then you came back in.
lt was a decent world there, and l was part of that decent world, with a decent family, and we would go to church on Sunday, and we would go to youth camps.
And, at least in school, and particularly in high school, the emphasis was on science and maths, you know, we were engineering for a new future in America.
l was in the Boy Scouts.
l did all the things that you were supposed to do.
My dad was born Reginald Francis Cheese, his dad was John Edwin Cheese.
He stayed a Cheese until 1915, when he joined the army and he changed the name to Cleese.
l don't know why, cos when l went to school, l was always called Old Cheese, it made no difference at all.
But anyway, he was the only Cleese.
l went to the Weston-super-Mare post office and in the phone books, there was no Cleese.
lt's not a proper name of any kind.
And as a result of that, when he married my mother, there were two Cleeses, when l came along, there were three.
l'm tempted to change it back to Cheese, cos l think it's a splendid name, and my American friends call me Jack, l could be Jack Cheese, which is a great name for a comedian.
l think that l had, from what l can figure out, rather than from what l can remember, a very difficult early relationship with my mother that was compensated for, more than compensated for, by a very warm, very affectionate, very loving relationship with my father.
But with both of them, there was a good comedic connection.
My mother l could connect with because she had a very black sense of humour, believe it or not.
And l could make her laugh with black humour.
And Dad was much more witty.
l remember watching a particularly inane dance routine with him on television once, and he said, ''l don't think this will ever replace entertainment, do you?'' l remember thinking, it's a beautiful phrase.
The interesting thing about the Pythons is we didn't have TV until we were teenagers, we were the last generation to grow up with radio.
l was an avid listener to radio shows like Take lt From Here.
Before that, Jewel and Warriss, Hancock, all sorts of radio shows, and then later, when l was about 13, 1 4, the Goon Show.
The Goons were very important as being, not just their comedy, but the fact that they were the first people to really use radio.
The whole point of radio is that you can conjure up anything you like.
lt was that week that Nugent Dirt was taken to court by his wife.
Silence in court! Silence! The court will now stand for Judge Schnorrer.
And if you'll stand for him, you'll stand for anything.
The Goons can take you anywhere.
So can any All form of radio is in the imagination and creates all that.
l think that was significant for us.
Here came a show which was not like any of the other shows.
lt didn't have the same kind of rules, or any rules.
lt didn't even like the medium that was putting it out.
lt didn't like the BBC.
Wonderful! There was something that l could relate to.
This is the BBC Home Service.
Thank you.
l was introduced to the Goons when l was about 1 1 , 12 years old.
And l just remember discovering this strange, odd, weird and wonderful show that was so different from anything you could see on a film, or on television.
And l became almost obsessed with them.
l used to listen to the show, and then, two nights later, l would listen to the repeat, because l wanted to catch everything, and there was so much laughter, you couldn't hear certain lines.
l used to lie on the bed with the radio there and a pillow on my ear, just to try and get the line that l'd missed two days before.
The Phantom Head Shaver of Brighton, Part Three.
By now, the position was serious.
All told, 300 men had been balded by the Phantom.
l mean, listening to the Goon Show on Sunday lunch time was a ritual in our family.
Come out, Phantom Head Shaver, you're surrounded! You hear? We're all heavily armed.
lf you don't come, we'll come to the door, and so help me, we'll knock! Yeah! That's telling him, yeah! lf you don't come out, we'll come and we'll knock! - Shut up! - Shut up! There was nothing like these people just being very ridiculous and silly and strange voices, and long pauses and, you know, playing around with this whole sort of form of radio show in a way that felt genuinely kind of subversive at the time.
- Bluebottle? - l heard you call, my Captain.
l heard my little ragged Captain call me.
Enter Bluebottle.
Pauses for audience applause.
As usual, not a sausage.
At the same time, my parents were listening to mainstream stuff, like Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, and Take lt From Here, which were the sort of shows which we all sat and listened to together, that was what bound the family together.
So l'd be listening to those, whilst at the same time, on whenever it was, Tuesday night or something, having my own fix of this new show, the Goons.
l don't know what my folks wanted me to be.
l can remember one day some man l'd met insisting on walking me home and telling my parents that l ought to become a dentist.
Well, thank God, l never did.
l thought, ''What a terrible idea.
'' Dad was very keen that l should join Grace, Derbyshire and Todd, a firm of chartered accountants on Whiteladies Road, and l remember he said to me, ''My boy, if you join them, ''by the time you're 21 , you will have the initials ACA after your name, ''and the world will be your oyster.
'' ln other words, he was, in a sense, very petit bourgeois.
My father wanted me to get a good job and make a lot of money, so l wouldn't be dependent on him.
l don't think he had any idea of what he wanted me to do.
He just had a lot of ideas of what he didn't want me to do, which was mainly, sort of, acting and performing, writing, all that sort of stuff.
And he sent me away to public school, Shrewsbury, which had a good reputation, l think he felt, ''They'll sort him out there.
'' One of Michael's great talents, which was perfectly easily arrived at, was, sort of, taking off the character of the masters.
Michael had a natural way of drawing their character out, their little mannerisms.
From quite early on, l could entertain people, in a small way.
And l remember, in 1953, when it was the time of the Coronation, l would do an improvised little show at milk break in the morning, at 1 1 o'clock, for anyone that wanted to come, in this tiny room, and l'd play all the different characters, and it was all very silly and low-level, but it was things like, you know, the Duke of Edinburgh being caught short, during the actual Coronation, looking round and having to fish out a toilet roll.
Oh, it was funny when l was ten! Growing up in Wolverhampton, that's not something anybody did - trying to escape is what you did.
lt was a miserable fucking place, but l was abandoned there about the age of seven, in a playground, and my mum left, thinking it would be nicer if she just slipped away, rather than say goodbye, so l hadn't got it that l was going to stay, l knew we'd taken the suitcase, it had all my names on it, on the underwear and six pairs of socks, but l hadn't got the concept, ''Wait, wait, no, l'm ready to leave now.
'' Too late.
So that was a bummer.
The Royal Wolverhampton School is based on the fact that you must have lost one or other of your parents.
ln Eric's case, his father, who was in the RAF and was air crew, went all through the war, and then, l think, within 12 months of taking a civilian job, died in a road crash on the way home from work.
There's hundreds of memories, mainly nightmares.
l was there from seven.
l didn't escape till l was 19.
You escape into, you know, various things.
l was in a little skiffle group.
First of all, l played harmonica.
We identified with the black slave movement in America, because we felt like we were oppressed.
And l was once in a drama.
l played Second Fieldmouse in Toad Of Toad Hall.
Which l was offered the part of First Fieldmouse, but l realised that Second Fieldmouse had more words, so l held out for that part.
His headmaster at that time was Owen Dickinson.
And Owen always said, ''ldle by name, idle by nature.
'' This idle bastard left that school with ten O levels, three A levels and two S levels, so and going to Cambridge on a scholarship, so not quite so fuckin' idle! High school, you know, l did all the right things there.
l didn't actually know l was doing the right things.
Most things come to me as surprises, because l ended up by the end of it, l was student body president, valedictorian, head cheerleader, it was crazy, l don't know how it happened, because l never applied myself for any of these things, they just kind of happened around me.
There was a thing in the '50s, you got inundated with all this right-wing material.
But anti-communism seemed to go hand-in-hand with racial discrimination, so you'd get all these pictures of black guys being lynched, because they'd been seen talking to a white girl.
This was the right thing, in America.
You had the Ku Klux Klan and the anti-communists inundating every student body leader at the time.
l was just shocked by it, l thought it was horrifying, awful stuff.
On one hand, you had drag racing, and cool things like in American Graffiti, on the other hand, you had this undercurrent of the Klan and the right-wingers.
We did feel in the early '60s that life was changing and that we'd never go back.
You felt that religion was becoming a bit of a dodo and that people were questioning religious authority as well as class authority, as well as any kind of authority.
The most significant moment in my life was when, 1962, l was down in London and we went to see Beyond The Fringe, and we couldn't get tickets, only standing tickets, which l was so grateful for, cos l just rolled around the wall, l wouldn't have stayed in a seat.
They made me laugh so hard, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore.
l didn't realise you could be that funny.
lsn't that fantastic? Children under ten, twelve-and-six.
That's very cheap, you know? l agree.
lt's very cheap.
l think they're probably imported.
- Probably frozen, l should think.
- Or foreign.
Foreign or frozen.
You wouldn't get local children at that price.
l wonder how they prepare them.
l shouldn't think they do.
l should think they spring it on them.
The influence of Peter could hardly, hardly be exaggerated, cos this was a guy who'd had, l think, two separate West End revues running, totally his material, while he was still at Cambridge.
l mean, they were so brilliant, and they attacked everything that l'd just spent 19 years being oppressed by.
Royalty, police, authorities, teachers, every single authority figure was completely pilloried and destroyed.
And that just My life just changed.
Peter Cook playing Harold Macmillan on the stage.
Macmillan came to the show one night, and Peter goes right off the script and starts talking, as Macmillan, to Macmillan.
People said, ''He's playing the Prime Minister!'' lt sounds quaint now, because everybody does.
The government had been in power 13 years, and the slogan was, ''You've never had it so good.
'' And so when Peter Cook did Harold Macmillan on stage, he completely made them a figure of fun and redundant, and not up-to-date, and it was no longer possible to take them seriously.
And l think that satire, occasionally, can do things like that.
We shall receive four minutes' warning of any impending nuclear attack.
Some people said, ''My goodness me, ''four minutes, that's not a very long time.
'' l would remind those doubters that some people in this great country of ours can run a mile in four minutes.
And the government was thrown out and then Harold Wilson came, smoking his pipe, and there were satire shows on telly, and the whole loosening of the way of being of England was changed.
We went from this almost 1950s deferential society to a society where, suddenly, people were making jokes about the Queen and the Prime Minister and this kind of thing, it was a completely different atmosphere, an enormous release of energy.
College was a wonderful time, it was Occidental College, very classy little college.
Kids tended to be rich there, or smart, like l was.
l was there on a scholarship, a Presbyterian scholarship, l went on a church scholarship because at one point, l was going to be a missionary, and then l got smart.
At that time, in America, there was a magazine called Help! Harvey Kurtzman, who was the guy that began Mad comics, was the idol of all of us, of my generation, the cartoonists, anyway.
l was doing this magazine and l started emulating Help! with Fang.
He wanted to take over the magazine and he had all these plans, it was going to be four issues instead of two and it was going to be this, that l don't know if he had a budget.
Fang magazine lost money all the time, and Terry said, ''We can make a change on that.
'' This is the very first edition.
That was one of his last-minute cartoons.
There wasn't time for him to do it in pen and ink, so this is pencil, so he was disappointed that it didn't come out better than it did.
Before Terry took it over, it was pretty boring.
lt was poetry, and a few cartoons, and essays and things like that.
Terry wanted to transform it into something exciting and really do something with it.
One thing we did, which l suppose is the beginning of what eventually became either animation or film for me, was we would do fumetti, which basically is ltalian for little puffs of smoke.
And Help! magazine was doing these and we started doing them in our magazine.
We'd go out and you'd find locations, you would cast the parts, you'd get costumes and you'd go and shoot these little photographs that tell a story, and then put bubbles.
We just generally used the magazine to cause mayhem wherever possible, because one thing about the university was it was quite a conservative place.
So our job was to dismantle all of that as quickly as possible.
On graduation, the dean, when handing me my diploma, said, ''Gilliam, you deserve a good spanking.
'' l don't know what he really meant, really.
l first met Graham when we came up as freshers to Emmanuel College in 1959.
Graham was doing an undergraduate course in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and pathology, prior to going to do three clinical years in a London medical college.
l think, because it seemed the simplest course for me at the time.
Writing essays and doing anything artistic in school for me, called for a little more effort.
Whereas anything to do with science meant l had to learn things, and l was reasonably good at learning things.
l didn't have to create anything.
So it seemed simpler to do that.
l was a little afraid of creating.
l think it's a good training ground for anything.
You meet all sorts of people, naturally, in very strange predicaments.
And you do strange things to them sometimes.
He was also eccentric and rather zany, and he liked to entertain.
We always had the feeling that he liked to entertain almost a bit He showed off, almost, a little bit.
But he was very amusing, he would lie down in the road, smoking his pipe, and refuse to get up when the cars couldn't get by.
Things like that.
l first met John in 1961 .
He'd come up as a freshman in 1960 from Clifton.
l supervised him in 1962, 1963.
Oh, John was an admirable, excellent lawyer.
And l'm bound to say it's a loss to the legal profession that he didn't qualify as a lawyer.
l can just see him at the bar, which he never joined, and then one could equally see him being elevated to judicial office, which he never aspired to.
l didn't really enjoy Oxford that much.
l found it a bit daunting, l think.
l sort of liked saying hello to people.
You'd say hello to somebody and they'd just brush past.
lt was also daunting cos you thought, ''Oxford! Everybody's going to be so bright.
''They're going to be so much cleverer than me.
'' And then you gradually realise it's all an illusion, nobody's cleverer than anybody else.
When Michael got up to Oxford l think he was very certain that he wanted to act and wanted to do revue.
And he teamed up with another Brasenose chap called Robert Hewison and they made a very good early team.
l first met Michael Palin in the autumn of 1962 when l went up to Brasenose College, Oxford.
And it just so happened that Michael Palin was at the same college, and he was reading the same subject, which was history.
l was really bluffing my way through university, telling my parents l was studying, and l was studying, but l used to study in the evening, and during the day, l waswe were writing, we were doing cabaret shows, putting together 30 minutes' worth of material.
Thanks to Robert.
l wouldn't have done this myself.
l didn't know what cabaret was, really.
l thought it was something rather naughty, involving ladies and suspenders and stockings and all that.
But he said, ''No, cabaret, it's just performing.
''lf we can put together half an hour's worth of jokes, we can make some money.
'' Robert drew me more into this theatrical world.
And Terry was in a different college, but he was doing theatre.
And l remember this dark, intense figure with a cigarette, then, l think, and a very old coat which he wore all the time.
Terry, in those days, wore this brown lumpy overcoat, and rode a Vespa, you know, kind of Lambretta type little motorcycle thing.
- Terry was very cool at the time.
- Really? Yeah, he was very cool.
He had that sort of dark, kind of Surrey-Welsh look of someone who clearly was not sure where he fitted in.
lt was kind of mysterious.
And it took me quite a long time to realise that actually, A, he was a very good actor, very talented actor, and B, he was actually a very, very funny man.
Robert was very pushy at getting us to do anything.
- Yeah.
- lt was great.
Without him pushing along, l don't think l'd probably be doing what l'm doing now.
l suppose, from then on, we were sort of aware that all three of us liked writing and performing, but particularly writing as well as the performing.
And l think that some of the first work l did with Terry was not acting with him so much as writing with him.
There's a difference between Oxford and Cambridge in creating comedy.
And that is that Cambridge, typically, because it's, l think, a slightly more scientific university, had a pretty scientific way of producing comedians, this thing called the Footlights Club which goes back to 1882.
Well, it was an exclusive little club, really, at the time.
lt only had about 25 student, or undergraduate members, as they're called in Cambridge.
And you had to be asked by a member of the club, a current member, to do an audition.
And then you did an audition at what they called a smoking concert.
And on the basis of that, if you got enough laughs, you were asked to join.
l auditioned for Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor.
And they had the good wit and grace and talent to discover me, and put me in a Pembroke smoking concert.
And the first piece of material l did was written by John Cleese.
And Cleese couldn't be in the show, cos he was in Fitzwilliam, or one of those little gay universities, l don't know what they're called.
So he couldn't be in it, so the first time l met him, l'd just performed a piece of his material, which was a piece called BBC BC, it was the BBC giving the news, the Old Testament news, and l did the weather.
There'll be a plague of locusts coming in from the northeast, followed by frogs and death of all the first-born.
Sorry about that, Egypt.
The great thing about the Footlights was that we had a club room.
The Oxford guys didn't.
lf they wanted to put a show on, they had to hire a hall and hire a stage and make curtains work, and find lights.
We had all that.
We had our own bar.
lt was fantastic.
When everybody else had to go to bed cos the pubs were closing at 10:30, we went down the Footlights.
''What'll you have, sir?'' Two or three in the morning, we could drink as long as we wanted to, there was lunches catered for.
You could live entirely through the Footlights.
Producing Oxford comedians was a much more accidental, casual, organic way of doing things.
There was a kind of loose organisation, not nearly as organised as the Footlights, but basicallyfor the same end, which was to produce a revue for the Edinburgh Festival.
l'd met Eric ldle in Edinburgh, when he was doing l think they did a revue called My Girl Herbert, and l knew that John Cleese was around, because l'd written a monologue which l did in revue in 1964, which wasturned out to be almost identical to something that John had written.
And we'd never collaborated.
Graham and l met auditioning for the Footlights revue that would have been 1961 .
And we went out afterwards together and sat down and had a coffee.
And the extraordinary thing is, l thought, ''l don't like this guy.
'' And then shortly after, we started writing together on a regular basis.
l must have completely forgotten this intuition that l didn't like him.
lsn't that strange? The first time l ever saw John and Graham was actually in their revue at Wyndham's Theatre.
l went along to a matinee.
Graham didn't seem like a performer at all.
lt was like he'd wandered on, and was just sort of on stage and was wondering why he was there.
''Well, l suppose l must be acting, l suppose.
'' And then he'd wander off again.
We went to see our rivals, the Oxford Revue, and Terry Jones was in that.
And that was nice, and then we met them and hooked up, and, you know, the Oxford-Cambridge And a year later, l met Michael Palin, also in Edinburgh, in Cambridge '64.
And he was really something to watch on stage, and clearly really special.
Was it love at first sight? Or did we just fancy each other secretly, and across a crowded room, wait for another 1 4 or 1 7 years to pass? lt You know lt was There's a recognition when you see somebody doing something good.
Watching Terry Jones on stage, it was clear that he was good.
And it was clear he was good in the revue, and it was clear Michael was good.
Cleese, of course, was outstanding.
l mean, to see Cleese on stage in 1963, everybody else was being funny.
Cleese was being serious, and that was so funny.
l mean, he was the only one who never broke character, never indicated to you he was being funny, and he was head and shoulders, and that's not just height, above the rest.
lt was when we were in Edinburgh, doing that show, in the hall that we'd hired from the Parks and Burials Department of Edinburgh Council, that l suddenly realised, ''This is something l would really quite like to do, after l leave university, ''there's a slim, slim possibility l might do this as a career.
''l'm making people laugh, we've got full houses every night, ''we've written the stuff, we've performed it.
'' But the problem was my parents, my father particularly, l couldn't go back and say, ''l've decided to go on the stage and entertain.
'' He would have just had a fit.
Well, when l left Cambridge in '63 and was going to be a solicitor, with Freshfields, solicitors to the Bank of England, l told them that l was going into show business l didn't say that, l said, ''l'm joining the BBC.
'' And that was OK, because the BBC was the same as the Civil Service.
lt was respectable, you got a pension, you had financial security, and that was fine.
Terry actually had a salaried job at the Beeb, didn't you? ln '66? - Yeah.
Yeah.
l don't know - Script editor? l don't know what l was doing.
lt's one of those mysteries in life.
l'd just accepted a job, l'd been down for about a year.
Suddenly, Frank Muir's office rang up.
So l went along to Frank Muir's office in the BBC, and he said, ''We'll give you a job, for £20 a week,'' which was a huge amount of money, it seemed like.
And so l had this job, but l didn't know what it was.
He said, ''Well, you can just have a look around, see what's happening.
'' And l had two tables, two typewriters, four telephones, and no idea what l was meant to be doing.
- So you were doing that.
- Then you l was doing a pop show.
l was hosting a pop show on TWW, in Bristol, actually, where we're going.
l have to thank that programme, now, for keeping me going, and for me, being able to tell my parents, my father particularly, that l was working in Bristol.
''Oh, who's that for?'' ''Television.
'' ''Ah, BBC.
Jolly good.
'' ''Well, no, not the BBC.
''lt's one of the many local independent companies.
'' lf he'd actually seen what was going on, he might have been a bit upset.
But it gave me the chance, the cover, as it were, to develop a lot of other interests and ideas.
So l was able, during that time, thanks to the money from this one show called Now, to start writing with Terry Jones at the BBC.
Graham telephoned me one evening, and said he wanted a chat.
The reason he wanted to see me was because he had qualified in medicine, but he had to make a choice.
The choice was whether or not to do a houseman's year, an intern year in hospital, and become registered with the General Medical Council, or whether Graham would go to lbiza and write sketches with John Cleese.
He chose to go to lbiza, and l'm sure, for him, that was the right choice.
Terry decided that, after he graduated, that he wanted us to keep doing what we were doing, we could make some money selling stuff to Harvey Kurtzman's magazine.
So he decided he was going to go to New York and find Harvey Kurtzman, who was our idol.
So l came to New York and managed to have a meeting with him, l walked in, it was the Algonquin Hotel.
He wasn't there, but it was full of all my favourite cartoonists, all the people that had worked for Mad and were now working for Harvey.
These were my gods, and they were all in the room, and Harvey turns up a little bit later, and Chuck Alverson, who was the assistant editor at that time, was quitting, and they needed somebody to take his job and that was me.
l just walked into the job out of nowhere.
And that was when he came back, at the beginning of my senior year, and sat down in the dorm and told us that he had gotten a job, working for Harvey Kurtzman.
You know, which to me was just like, you know, ascending Mount Olympus and getting a job working for Zeus, or something like that! lt was, like, unthinkable that people like us could be doing things like that, but Terry just saw, ''Yeah, we can do that.
'' Help! magazine, in that sense, was the beginning of my connection with what would become Python, because we had written a story about a man who falls in love with his daughter's Barbie doll.
About that time, Terry and l went to Greenwich Village to see this show that had opened called Cambridge Circus.
lt was playing in Greenwich Village, it was comedy from England, and it was supposed to be really funny, so we went, and it was hilarious.
And there was this guy in the show named John Cleese.
Terry met me and he said, basically, ''l like the faces you pull.
'' Which is very, very complimentary.
People used to say it to Laurence Olivier.
''You know, Sir Larry, love the faces you pull.
'' John, of course, stood out in every possible way from the crowd, and l got him to appear in this, and that was the beginning of a friendship.
And so when Terry, later on, wound up in England, many years later, he hooked up with John again, and the rest is history.
l think that the show that really focused us all on television was That Was The Week That Was, because it was an extraordinary event, people now can't realise how epoch-shattering it was in that very deferential culture that still existed in England.
One you may have missed this week in the Radio Times, in Woman's Hour, What l've Been Doing, by Cecilia Bevan, mother of 13 children.
David Frost has always been extremely good to me, l have to tell you, and l suppose l had enough talent, but he saved me so much time.
And he used to phone me every couple of months.
We'd stayed not exactly friends but acquaintances, professional friends.
And he'd set up the satire boom, in That Was The Week That Was, and he's doing this smart Cambridge satire.
l'd written two or three things for That Was The Week That Was, which was great excitement.
And he used to ring me up, always from the airport, and l remember him calling and, ''Oh, hello, David,'' l said.
He said, ''Hello, how are you?'' l said, ''Fine, how are you?'' He said, ''Super, super, super, super.
'' ''Oh,'' he said, ''would you like to be in a television series?'' And l said, ''What?'' He said, ''Well, l'm doing a new television series, ''it's going to be super, with Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.
''You won't know them yet, but it will be great fun.
''We're going to start in the spring.
Would you like to be in it?'' And l said, ''Yes, please!'' And he said, ''Super! Super! Oh, l have to go now, they've called my flight.
'' And l said, ''l think you Did that happen?'' Whilst the pop show in Bristol was keeping me in funds, it was actually The Frost Report which gave me, really, the important breakthrough as a writer.
So we all wrote for that.
He came to us as a pool of talent.
And the next thing l knew, l was rehearsing with the Ronnies.
The entire Python team were writing The Frost Report.
And that's really where l knew them all and what made Ron and l feel part of their outfit.
Does it hurt you if l do this? - Of course it does, l mean - You see, it hurts.
- Still - Quite.
But it's not No, it isn't, is it? What was so good about David is, if he trusted you, he trusted you.
He just let you get on with it.
And you would be writing a show that was going out live that night.
l know what adrenaline looks like.
l remember being in the pub, the Sun ln Splendour, on Portobello Road, writing a joke, putting it in the taxi, going back and there it is on television.
And l thought, ''Whoa! That was kinda cool.
'' lt was a very good experience.
Mike and Terry wrote, usually, the piece that was the film insert of the week, sort of three-minute piece, and Eric often wrote solos for Ronnie Barker, and Gray and l usually wrote one of the big sketches of the week which probably all three of us, the Two Ronnies and l, performed together.
What exactly were you doing on the night of the 1 4th of October? We pulled some birds, slapped 'em back to the drum, bit of a giggle, all down to larking, all that carry-on.
Now, look here.
l can't understand a word you're saying.
The great thing about The Frost Report, anybody who had any good input could come in and work, which is why the roller caption was so long and went spinning through at an enormous rate, so my parents could never see my name.
Barry Cryer, bless him, used to refer to the writers' credits going through at the end of the Frost programme as the Dead of World War 2.
Well, it did hold on ''David Frost'' for rather a long time.
There was no danger of David Frost's parents being unable to see his name, put it that way.
Jimmy Gilbert, who was directing and producing the show, had pity on us, and started us actually performing, we did these little film inserts.
And he got us That was a way of getting us a bit more money.
We got paid more for performing.
- 50 quid a - Well, 20 quid, l think.
- l don't know.
- .
.
a day, was it? l got 50.
l think there was a sort of little hiatus between David and the Python boys.
l think they sort of resented his entrepreneurial touch.
We gradually began to realise that, along with Michael Palin and Terry Jones and Eric ldle, we were actually writing about 90 of the programme.
Then they went and did At Last The 1948 Show, which was the Python team, really, with Tim Brooke-Taylor.
lt was actually David Frost, to give him his due, who suggested the show, l think to me.
He didn't want John in it because he was doing The Frost Report, but for me, it was essential that John did it.
- Name? - Gibbon-Posture.
''Possible loony''.
Tim was terrific, and terribly, terribly funny when he was frightened.
Right, well, what are the problems, then? Well, it's rather embarrassing to say, really.
l don't like to tell people cos l'm frightened of them laughing at me.
Sometimes l wanted John to react more.
Somebody told him he was a good actor, the last thing you should tell a comedian.
l want you to feel absolutely at your ease.
Of course, anything you say to me will be in the strictest confidence.
l must tell you about the bloke who was in this morning! l said to Marty, ''He's playing it so subtly.
'' He said, ''Halfway through, just stamp on his foot.
'' What's the matter? You come in here Well, l did do that, and he got so angry, but he had to keep going, because the cameras were going, and he was absolutely brilliant.
l wouldn't dare do it again.
He's bigger than me.
So will you please tell me, once and for all, in God's name, what's the matter with you? l think l'm a rabbit.
''l think l'm a rabbit!'' lt's one of the funniest moments l've ever seen.
We must have been writing for The Frost Report, and Humphrey Barclay said to me, ''l want to do a kids' show.
''l've got this group, the Bonzo Dog Band, l want you to write it.
'' And l said, ''Well, l want to write it with Mike, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, ''cos l think we'd be great.
'' And he said, ''OK, then.
'' So we were a little group of writers.
City editor? - l've got a great story for you.
- Oh, yes? - A great story.
- Let's hear it.
Once upon a time, in the Land of the Wobbly Dum-Dum Tree, Ricky the Gobbly Pixie sat beneath the magic oak tree That's enough! l'm not interested in fairy stories! This is a newspaper.
- Miss Perkins, show this lunatic out.
- But l haven't finished.
Come away, ere break of day, to Fairyland! To the golden shores of Fairyland, l will lead you, my lt was kind of a fun show, because we got to write it, it was only 23 minutes, cos it was an lTV half-hour.
The Bonzo Dogs were on every week, they were the most bizarre group of people you've ever seen.
There were 1 4 of them the first week, then they pruned themselves down to seven or eight.
You're wanted in the Twilight Zone now, sir.
Thank you, Rigor.
They said, ''Go and make some children's television.
'' We didn't think about that, we just thought about making silly television.
And what a lot of fun it was.
They play, you know, they play the washboard and they play the hoover.
And they would do really weird and bizarre situationist songs.
lt was Dada, really.
The Doo Dah Band was a Dada band.
And that, l think, influenced us enormously.
l think their influence on Python is huge, because we were doing little tight little sketches from Cambridge, but they were doing weird, it was situationally weird.
l was still working on magazines and illustrating and art-directing, and l said, ''Come on.
l gotta get out of magazine work.
''lntroduce me to somebody in television.
'' And that person, ultimately, was Humphrey Barclay, who was producing Do Not Adjust Your Set, which Mike, Terry and Eric were doing.
And we were on our second series, and this weird guy came in, with this biglong hair, hairy Afghan coat, and had been sent by Cleese.
Everybody keeps talking about the legendary moment when l walked in with my coat.
A man and a coat.
And Eric loved that coat.
l fell in love at first sight.
l just loved that Afghan coat.
And he also had a very cute girlfriend and there was something about him.
And Michael and Terry went, ''We don't fucking need'' Like two little rodents hunched in the corner, all You know, their little bit of territory was threatened by this man in the coat.
And l don't know why, l knew there was something about him, and we brought him into our group.
He hadn't done any experience, hadn't written sketches, he'd got a few sketches he'd written which weren't very funny, but for some wonderful, weird, instinctive reason, l said, ''He has to be with us.
'' And that was really how it all began, and then the next series of Do Not Adjust Your Set, l started doing some animation on that.
We were all stuck together by then.
As far as l was concerned, we've all got different versions, of course, Graham and l were writing, for about 18 months, we just wrote, cos l'd just married Connie Booth, she was American, l did not want to be spending a lot of time in a studio when she was a stranger in London.
So l deliberately worked from home for a year and a half, and Gray and l wrote a number of scripts.
Our treat for the week was always to turn on, l think it was Thursday afternoon, about 4:30, Do Not Adjust Your Set, which, for us, was the funniest thing on television.
lt's time for Party Games.
Here are some exciting games you can play this Christmas.
First, from Terry, here's the A and B game.
Well, all the teams are divided - guests, l should say - are divided into two teams, A and B.
And B are the winners.
Well, you can make it more complicated if you want to.
We'd done two series of Do Not Adjust Your Set.
There was discussion about doing another series.
l didn't want to do it, cos l was fed up with the way it was being directed.
Eventually, because we knew them from The Frost Report, we rang them up and said, ''Well, why don't we do something together?'' And they were a bit snotty, cos they'd just had an offer from Philip Jones at Thames Television.
They said, ''You've been so good, done two seasons, ''adults are coming home at 5:25 to see your show, you're getting huge ratings, ''we want to give you a grown-up show.
''The only trouble is, we have no studio for two years.
'' So when John suggested doing something together, we said, ''Yes, please!'' And, ''Can we bring Eric along? And Terry Gilliam?'' John wanted to work with Mike.
And it's as simple as that.
Everybody wanted to work with Mike.
And that was the beginning, and we tagged along.
And l think it's really happenstance that that group came together.
l don't think it was hand-picked or selected in any way.
lt sort of fell onto the table and it worked.
lt's
Hello, and welcome to this documentary containing new and exclusive interviews with the five surviving members of Monty Python.
The producers wish to make it clear that any opinions expressed herein are those of the individuals speaking and hold no truth whatsoever.
Pursuant, therefore, to clause 46 of the Broadcasting, Video, Television Act, 1989, subsection 4, 3 and 2, clause .
.
subject to clause 4.
123, no viewer or watcher may copy, repeat, impersonate, mime, either contextually or noncontextually, any material whatsoever in any public place, such as a street, pub, club, hotel, oil rig, Baptist church Python The brand-new documentary of Python lt's a new documentary lt's about Monty Python Unlike other Monty Python documentaries This is brand-new lt's a new documentary lt's not complimentary But it's better than a hysterectomy lt's Monty Python Meanwhile, how glad and grateful is Britain that thousands have fought their way out and come home.
And are they glad to be back again? Well, they'll tell you that after what they've been seeing, England looks all right.
- You glad to be back, boys? - Sure! England was in black-and-white after the war, and until about 1959, l think, we had rationing.
l remember we didn't have enough.
We had butter rations, you can have a piece of butter a week, and bread rationing and meat rationing.
London was completely composed of holes and bomb sites, and it was a sort of grey duffel-coat-wearing, very respectable, everybody talked in received English ''Good evening, this is the BBC, and here is the news.
'' On the radio, the news announcers wore black tie to read the news.
So it was that kind of unnecessarily uptight place.
l think l had quite a happy childhood.
My poor old dad gets quite a bad press, cos l've mentioned him being a bit cantankerous.
Apart from his slight cantankerousness, he was a fond father, he quite liked jokes, he liked practical jokes a lot.
ln fact, l've still got a fake dog turd that he bought me.
l mean, how many people's fathers would buy their sons a dog turd? ''You've got into Oxford.
Here's a turd.
'' My mother, she was terrific, my mum.
She was absolutely great.
And she was more encouraging what l wanted to do.
My father was obsessed with money, or rather, the lack of it, and worried that l might follow my sister's progress into acting.
He just didn't want that, he just said he felt that was the way to rack and ruin, whereas my mother, l think, understood a little bit of my interest in performing.
My relationship with my father was lt wasalways at one remove, in a way, because l think he must have seen me when l was a few days old, but he was in the RAF, up in Scotland.
Then he was shipped off to lndia, and spent the war in lndia, so he never saw me again until l was four and a half.
And l can remember going down to Colwyn Bay railway station and walking up the steps with my mum and my brother and standing on the platform, and then my mother getting terribly anxious that he wasn't there.
Suddenly, as the crowds vanished, there was a man in a forage cap and a kit bag, a big kit bag, at the end of the platform.
And that was my dad.
And so he kisses my mum and my brother, and then he kisses me, and he's got a moustache! l'd never been kissed by anybody with a moustache before.
So l've always been l've always had horrors about being kissed by men in moustaches ever since! Graham, as a policeman's son, had had a very good, solid family background, but l think, because life was tough when he was growing up, and for a country copper during the war, it was a very busy time.
There was not a lot of time for the children while they were growing up.
And l think Graham actually missed a really warm and supportive atmosphere.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, Minnesota being the furthest north state in America, probably the most middle.
So we're in the middle and at the top.
We lived in a little summer cottage out in a place called Medicine Lake that my dad had put insulation in so we could get through these winters.
But it was some years before we got an indoor toilet.
So l think the memory of my childhood is one that is really odd, because l can remember it, but l can't feel it, was going out in the middle of winter for a dump in the biffy, as they were known.
And l don't know how we did that, there was no heating, nothing, you just sat there on a wooden plank with a hole, and did your business, then you came back in.
lt was a decent world there, and l was part of that decent world, with a decent family, and we would go to church on Sunday, and we would go to youth camps.
And, at least in school, and particularly in high school, the emphasis was on science and maths, you know, we were engineering for a new future in America.
l was in the Boy Scouts.
l did all the things that you were supposed to do.
My dad was born Reginald Francis Cheese, his dad was John Edwin Cheese.
He stayed a Cheese until 1915, when he joined the army and he changed the name to Cleese.
l don't know why, cos when l went to school, l was always called Old Cheese, it made no difference at all.
But anyway, he was the only Cleese.
l went to the Weston-super-Mare post office and in the phone books, there was no Cleese.
lt's not a proper name of any kind.
And as a result of that, when he married my mother, there were two Cleeses, when l came along, there were three.
l'm tempted to change it back to Cheese, cos l think it's a splendid name, and my American friends call me Jack, l could be Jack Cheese, which is a great name for a comedian.
l think that l had, from what l can figure out, rather than from what l can remember, a very difficult early relationship with my mother that was compensated for, more than compensated for, by a very warm, very affectionate, very loving relationship with my father.
But with both of them, there was a good comedic connection.
My mother l could connect with because she had a very black sense of humour, believe it or not.
And l could make her laugh with black humour.
And Dad was much more witty.
l remember watching a particularly inane dance routine with him on television once, and he said, ''l don't think this will ever replace entertainment, do you?'' l remember thinking, it's a beautiful phrase.
The interesting thing about the Pythons is we didn't have TV until we were teenagers, we were the last generation to grow up with radio.
l was an avid listener to radio shows like Take lt From Here.
Before that, Jewel and Warriss, Hancock, all sorts of radio shows, and then later, when l was about 13, 1 4, the Goon Show.
The Goons were very important as being, not just their comedy, but the fact that they were the first people to really use radio.
The whole point of radio is that you can conjure up anything you like.
lt was that week that Nugent Dirt was taken to court by his wife.
Silence in court! Silence! The court will now stand for Judge Schnorrer.
And if you'll stand for him, you'll stand for anything.
The Goons can take you anywhere.
So can any All form of radio is in the imagination and creates all that.
l think that was significant for us.
Here came a show which was not like any of the other shows.
lt didn't have the same kind of rules, or any rules.
lt didn't even like the medium that was putting it out.
lt didn't like the BBC.
Wonderful! There was something that l could relate to.
This is the BBC Home Service.
Thank you.
l was introduced to the Goons when l was about 1 1 , 12 years old.
And l just remember discovering this strange, odd, weird and wonderful show that was so different from anything you could see on a film, or on television.
And l became almost obsessed with them.
l used to listen to the show, and then, two nights later, l would listen to the repeat, because l wanted to catch everything, and there was so much laughter, you couldn't hear certain lines.
l used to lie on the bed with the radio there and a pillow on my ear, just to try and get the line that l'd missed two days before.
The Phantom Head Shaver of Brighton, Part Three.
By now, the position was serious.
All told, 300 men had been balded by the Phantom.
l mean, listening to the Goon Show on Sunday lunch time was a ritual in our family.
Come out, Phantom Head Shaver, you're surrounded! You hear? We're all heavily armed.
lf you don't come, we'll come to the door, and so help me, we'll knock! Yeah! That's telling him, yeah! lf you don't come out, we'll come and we'll knock! - Shut up! - Shut up! There was nothing like these people just being very ridiculous and silly and strange voices, and long pauses and, you know, playing around with this whole sort of form of radio show in a way that felt genuinely kind of subversive at the time.
- Bluebottle? - l heard you call, my Captain.
l heard my little ragged Captain call me.
Enter Bluebottle.
Pauses for audience applause.
As usual, not a sausage.
At the same time, my parents were listening to mainstream stuff, like Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, and Take lt From Here, which were the sort of shows which we all sat and listened to together, that was what bound the family together.
So l'd be listening to those, whilst at the same time, on whenever it was, Tuesday night or something, having my own fix of this new show, the Goons.
l don't know what my folks wanted me to be.
l can remember one day some man l'd met insisting on walking me home and telling my parents that l ought to become a dentist.
Well, thank God, l never did.
l thought, ''What a terrible idea.
'' Dad was very keen that l should join Grace, Derbyshire and Todd, a firm of chartered accountants on Whiteladies Road, and l remember he said to me, ''My boy, if you join them, ''by the time you're 21 , you will have the initials ACA after your name, ''and the world will be your oyster.
'' ln other words, he was, in a sense, very petit bourgeois.
My father wanted me to get a good job and make a lot of money, so l wouldn't be dependent on him.
l don't think he had any idea of what he wanted me to do.
He just had a lot of ideas of what he didn't want me to do, which was mainly, sort of, acting and performing, writing, all that sort of stuff.
And he sent me away to public school, Shrewsbury, which had a good reputation, l think he felt, ''They'll sort him out there.
'' One of Michael's great talents, which was perfectly easily arrived at, was, sort of, taking off the character of the masters.
Michael had a natural way of drawing their character out, their little mannerisms.
From quite early on, l could entertain people, in a small way.
And l remember, in 1953, when it was the time of the Coronation, l would do an improvised little show at milk break in the morning, at 1 1 o'clock, for anyone that wanted to come, in this tiny room, and l'd play all the different characters, and it was all very silly and low-level, but it was things like, you know, the Duke of Edinburgh being caught short, during the actual Coronation, looking round and having to fish out a toilet roll.
Oh, it was funny when l was ten! Growing up in Wolverhampton, that's not something anybody did - trying to escape is what you did.
lt was a miserable fucking place, but l was abandoned there about the age of seven, in a playground, and my mum left, thinking it would be nicer if she just slipped away, rather than say goodbye, so l hadn't got it that l was going to stay, l knew we'd taken the suitcase, it had all my names on it, on the underwear and six pairs of socks, but l hadn't got the concept, ''Wait, wait, no, l'm ready to leave now.
'' Too late.
So that was a bummer.
The Royal Wolverhampton School is based on the fact that you must have lost one or other of your parents.
ln Eric's case, his father, who was in the RAF and was air crew, went all through the war, and then, l think, within 12 months of taking a civilian job, died in a road crash on the way home from work.
There's hundreds of memories, mainly nightmares.
l was there from seven.
l didn't escape till l was 19.
You escape into, you know, various things.
l was in a little skiffle group.
First of all, l played harmonica.
We identified with the black slave movement in America, because we felt like we were oppressed.
And l was once in a drama.
l played Second Fieldmouse in Toad Of Toad Hall.
Which l was offered the part of First Fieldmouse, but l realised that Second Fieldmouse had more words, so l held out for that part.
His headmaster at that time was Owen Dickinson.
And Owen always said, ''ldle by name, idle by nature.
'' This idle bastard left that school with ten O levels, three A levels and two S levels, so and going to Cambridge on a scholarship, so not quite so fuckin' idle! High school, you know, l did all the right things there.
l didn't actually know l was doing the right things.
Most things come to me as surprises, because l ended up by the end of it, l was student body president, valedictorian, head cheerleader, it was crazy, l don't know how it happened, because l never applied myself for any of these things, they just kind of happened around me.
There was a thing in the '50s, you got inundated with all this right-wing material.
But anti-communism seemed to go hand-in-hand with racial discrimination, so you'd get all these pictures of black guys being lynched, because they'd been seen talking to a white girl.
This was the right thing, in America.
You had the Ku Klux Klan and the anti-communists inundating every student body leader at the time.
l was just shocked by it, l thought it was horrifying, awful stuff.
On one hand, you had drag racing, and cool things like in American Graffiti, on the other hand, you had this undercurrent of the Klan and the right-wingers.
We did feel in the early '60s that life was changing and that we'd never go back.
You felt that religion was becoming a bit of a dodo and that people were questioning religious authority as well as class authority, as well as any kind of authority.
The most significant moment in my life was when, 1962, l was down in London and we went to see Beyond The Fringe, and we couldn't get tickets, only standing tickets, which l was so grateful for, cos l just rolled around the wall, l wouldn't have stayed in a seat.
They made me laugh so hard, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore.
l didn't realise you could be that funny.
lsn't that fantastic? Children under ten, twelve-and-six.
That's very cheap, you know? l agree.
lt's very cheap.
l think they're probably imported.
- Probably frozen, l should think.
- Or foreign.
Foreign or frozen.
You wouldn't get local children at that price.
l wonder how they prepare them.
l shouldn't think they do.
l should think they spring it on them.
The influence of Peter could hardly, hardly be exaggerated, cos this was a guy who'd had, l think, two separate West End revues running, totally his material, while he was still at Cambridge.
l mean, they were so brilliant, and they attacked everything that l'd just spent 19 years being oppressed by.
Royalty, police, authorities, teachers, every single authority figure was completely pilloried and destroyed.
And that just My life just changed.
Peter Cook playing Harold Macmillan on the stage.
Macmillan came to the show one night, and Peter goes right off the script and starts talking, as Macmillan, to Macmillan.
People said, ''He's playing the Prime Minister!'' lt sounds quaint now, because everybody does.
The government had been in power 13 years, and the slogan was, ''You've never had it so good.
'' And so when Peter Cook did Harold Macmillan on stage, he completely made them a figure of fun and redundant, and not up-to-date, and it was no longer possible to take them seriously.
And l think that satire, occasionally, can do things like that.
We shall receive four minutes' warning of any impending nuclear attack.
Some people said, ''My goodness me, ''four minutes, that's not a very long time.
'' l would remind those doubters that some people in this great country of ours can run a mile in four minutes.
And the government was thrown out and then Harold Wilson came, smoking his pipe, and there were satire shows on telly, and the whole loosening of the way of being of England was changed.
We went from this almost 1950s deferential society to a society where, suddenly, people were making jokes about the Queen and the Prime Minister and this kind of thing, it was a completely different atmosphere, an enormous release of energy.
College was a wonderful time, it was Occidental College, very classy little college.
Kids tended to be rich there, or smart, like l was.
l was there on a scholarship, a Presbyterian scholarship, l went on a church scholarship because at one point, l was going to be a missionary, and then l got smart.
At that time, in America, there was a magazine called Help! Harvey Kurtzman, who was the guy that began Mad comics, was the idol of all of us, of my generation, the cartoonists, anyway.
l was doing this magazine and l started emulating Help! with Fang.
He wanted to take over the magazine and he had all these plans, it was going to be four issues instead of two and it was going to be this, that l don't know if he had a budget.
Fang magazine lost money all the time, and Terry said, ''We can make a change on that.
'' This is the very first edition.
That was one of his last-minute cartoons.
There wasn't time for him to do it in pen and ink, so this is pencil, so he was disappointed that it didn't come out better than it did.
Before Terry took it over, it was pretty boring.
lt was poetry, and a few cartoons, and essays and things like that.
Terry wanted to transform it into something exciting and really do something with it.
One thing we did, which l suppose is the beginning of what eventually became either animation or film for me, was we would do fumetti, which basically is ltalian for little puffs of smoke.
And Help! magazine was doing these and we started doing them in our magazine.
We'd go out and you'd find locations, you would cast the parts, you'd get costumes and you'd go and shoot these little photographs that tell a story, and then put bubbles.
We just generally used the magazine to cause mayhem wherever possible, because one thing about the university was it was quite a conservative place.
So our job was to dismantle all of that as quickly as possible.
On graduation, the dean, when handing me my diploma, said, ''Gilliam, you deserve a good spanking.
'' l don't know what he really meant, really.
l first met Graham when we came up as freshers to Emmanuel College in 1959.
Graham was doing an undergraduate course in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and pathology, prior to going to do three clinical years in a London medical college.
l think, because it seemed the simplest course for me at the time.
Writing essays and doing anything artistic in school for me, called for a little more effort.
Whereas anything to do with science meant l had to learn things, and l was reasonably good at learning things.
l didn't have to create anything.
So it seemed simpler to do that.
l was a little afraid of creating.
l think it's a good training ground for anything.
You meet all sorts of people, naturally, in very strange predicaments.
And you do strange things to them sometimes.
He was also eccentric and rather zany, and he liked to entertain.
We always had the feeling that he liked to entertain almost a bit He showed off, almost, a little bit.
But he was very amusing, he would lie down in the road, smoking his pipe, and refuse to get up when the cars couldn't get by.
Things like that.
l first met John in 1961 .
He'd come up as a freshman in 1960 from Clifton.
l supervised him in 1962, 1963.
Oh, John was an admirable, excellent lawyer.
And l'm bound to say it's a loss to the legal profession that he didn't qualify as a lawyer.
l can just see him at the bar, which he never joined, and then one could equally see him being elevated to judicial office, which he never aspired to.
l didn't really enjoy Oxford that much.
l found it a bit daunting, l think.
l sort of liked saying hello to people.
You'd say hello to somebody and they'd just brush past.
lt was also daunting cos you thought, ''Oxford! Everybody's going to be so bright.
''They're going to be so much cleverer than me.
'' And then you gradually realise it's all an illusion, nobody's cleverer than anybody else.
When Michael got up to Oxford l think he was very certain that he wanted to act and wanted to do revue.
And he teamed up with another Brasenose chap called Robert Hewison and they made a very good early team.
l first met Michael Palin in the autumn of 1962 when l went up to Brasenose College, Oxford.
And it just so happened that Michael Palin was at the same college, and he was reading the same subject, which was history.
l was really bluffing my way through university, telling my parents l was studying, and l was studying, but l used to study in the evening, and during the day, l waswe were writing, we were doing cabaret shows, putting together 30 minutes' worth of material.
Thanks to Robert.
l wouldn't have done this myself.
l didn't know what cabaret was, really.
l thought it was something rather naughty, involving ladies and suspenders and stockings and all that.
But he said, ''No, cabaret, it's just performing.
''lf we can put together half an hour's worth of jokes, we can make some money.
'' Robert drew me more into this theatrical world.
And Terry was in a different college, but he was doing theatre.
And l remember this dark, intense figure with a cigarette, then, l think, and a very old coat which he wore all the time.
Terry, in those days, wore this brown lumpy overcoat, and rode a Vespa, you know, kind of Lambretta type little motorcycle thing.
- Terry was very cool at the time.
- Really? Yeah, he was very cool.
He had that sort of dark, kind of Surrey-Welsh look of someone who clearly was not sure where he fitted in.
lt was kind of mysterious.
And it took me quite a long time to realise that actually, A, he was a very good actor, very talented actor, and B, he was actually a very, very funny man.
Robert was very pushy at getting us to do anything.
- Yeah.
- lt was great.
Without him pushing along, l don't think l'd probably be doing what l'm doing now.
l suppose, from then on, we were sort of aware that all three of us liked writing and performing, but particularly writing as well as the performing.
And l think that some of the first work l did with Terry was not acting with him so much as writing with him.
There's a difference between Oxford and Cambridge in creating comedy.
And that is that Cambridge, typically, because it's, l think, a slightly more scientific university, had a pretty scientific way of producing comedians, this thing called the Footlights Club which goes back to 1882.
Well, it was an exclusive little club, really, at the time.
lt only had about 25 student, or undergraduate members, as they're called in Cambridge.
And you had to be asked by a member of the club, a current member, to do an audition.
And then you did an audition at what they called a smoking concert.
And on the basis of that, if you got enough laughs, you were asked to join.
l auditioned for Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor.
And they had the good wit and grace and talent to discover me, and put me in a Pembroke smoking concert.
And the first piece of material l did was written by John Cleese.
And Cleese couldn't be in the show, cos he was in Fitzwilliam, or one of those little gay universities, l don't know what they're called.
So he couldn't be in it, so the first time l met him, l'd just performed a piece of his material, which was a piece called BBC BC, it was the BBC giving the news, the Old Testament news, and l did the weather.
There'll be a plague of locusts coming in from the northeast, followed by frogs and death of all the first-born.
Sorry about that, Egypt.
The great thing about the Footlights was that we had a club room.
The Oxford guys didn't.
lf they wanted to put a show on, they had to hire a hall and hire a stage and make curtains work, and find lights.
We had all that.
We had our own bar.
lt was fantastic.
When everybody else had to go to bed cos the pubs were closing at 10:30, we went down the Footlights.
''What'll you have, sir?'' Two or three in the morning, we could drink as long as we wanted to, there was lunches catered for.
You could live entirely through the Footlights.
Producing Oxford comedians was a much more accidental, casual, organic way of doing things.
There was a kind of loose organisation, not nearly as organised as the Footlights, but basicallyfor the same end, which was to produce a revue for the Edinburgh Festival.
l'd met Eric ldle in Edinburgh, when he was doing l think they did a revue called My Girl Herbert, and l knew that John Cleese was around, because l'd written a monologue which l did in revue in 1964, which wasturned out to be almost identical to something that John had written.
And we'd never collaborated.
Graham and l met auditioning for the Footlights revue that would have been 1961 .
And we went out afterwards together and sat down and had a coffee.
And the extraordinary thing is, l thought, ''l don't like this guy.
'' And then shortly after, we started writing together on a regular basis.
l must have completely forgotten this intuition that l didn't like him.
lsn't that strange? The first time l ever saw John and Graham was actually in their revue at Wyndham's Theatre.
l went along to a matinee.
Graham didn't seem like a performer at all.
lt was like he'd wandered on, and was just sort of on stage and was wondering why he was there.
''Well, l suppose l must be acting, l suppose.
'' And then he'd wander off again.
We went to see our rivals, the Oxford Revue, and Terry Jones was in that.
And that was nice, and then we met them and hooked up, and, you know, the Oxford-Cambridge And a year later, l met Michael Palin, also in Edinburgh, in Cambridge '64.
And he was really something to watch on stage, and clearly really special.
Was it love at first sight? Or did we just fancy each other secretly, and across a crowded room, wait for another 1 4 or 1 7 years to pass? lt You know lt was There's a recognition when you see somebody doing something good.
Watching Terry Jones on stage, it was clear that he was good.
And it was clear he was good in the revue, and it was clear Michael was good.
Cleese, of course, was outstanding.
l mean, to see Cleese on stage in 1963, everybody else was being funny.
Cleese was being serious, and that was so funny.
l mean, he was the only one who never broke character, never indicated to you he was being funny, and he was head and shoulders, and that's not just height, above the rest.
lt was when we were in Edinburgh, doing that show, in the hall that we'd hired from the Parks and Burials Department of Edinburgh Council, that l suddenly realised, ''This is something l would really quite like to do, after l leave university, ''there's a slim, slim possibility l might do this as a career.
''l'm making people laugh, we've got full houses every night, ''we've written the stuff, we've performed it.
'' But the problem was my parents, my father particularly, l couldn't go back and say, ''l've decided to go on the stage and entertain.
'' He would have just had a fit.
Well, when l left Cambridge in '63 and was going to be a solicitor, with Freshfields, solicitors to the Bank of England, l told them that l was going into show business l didn't say that, l said, ''l'm joining the BBC.
'' And that was OK, because the BBC was the same as the Civil Service.
lt was respectable, you got a pension, you had financial security, and that was fine.
Terry actually had a salaried job at the Beeb, didn't you? ln '66? - Yeah.
Yeah.
l don't know - Script editor? l don't know what l was doing.
lt's one of those mysteries in life.
l'd just accepted a job, l'd been down for about a year.
Suddenly, Frank Muir's office rang up.
So l went along to Frank Muir's office in the BBC, and he said, ''We'll give you a job, for £20 a week,'' which was a huge amount of money, it seemed like.
And so l had this job, but l didn't know what it was.
He said, ''Well, you can just have a look around, see what's happening.
'' And l had two tables, two typewriters, four telephones, and no idea what l was meant to be doing.
- So you were doing that.
- Then you l was doing a pop show.
l was hosting a pop show on TWW, in Bristol, actually, where we're going.
l have to thank that programme, now, for keeping me going, and for me, being able to tell my parents, my father particularly, that l was working in Bristol.
''Oh, who's that for?'' ''Television.
'' ''Ah, BBC.
Jolly good.
'' ''Well, no, not the BBC.
''lt's one of the many local independent companies.
'' lf he'd actually seen what was going on, he might have been a bit upset.
But it gave me the chance, the cover, as it were, to develop a lot of other interests and ideas.
So l was able, during that time, thanks to the money from this one show called Now, to start writing with Terry Jones at the BBC.
Graham telephoned me one evening, and said he wanted a chat.
The reason he wanted to see me was because he had qualified in medicine, but he had to make a choice.
The choice was whether or not to do a houseman's year, an intern year in hospital, and become registered with the General Medical Council, or whether Graham would go to lbiza and write sketches with John Cleese.
He chose to go to lbiza, and l'm sure, for him, that was the right choice.
Terry decided that, after he graduated, that he wanted us to keep doing what we were doing, we could make some money selling stuff to Harvey Kurtzman's magazine.
So he decided he was going to go to New York and find Harvey Kurtzman, who was our idol.
So l came to New York and managed to have a meeting with him, l walked in, it was the Algonquin Hotel.
He wasn't there, but it was full of all my favourite cartoonists, all the people that had worked for Mad and were now working for Harvey.
These were my gods, and they were all in the room, and Harvey turns up a little bit later, and Chuck Alverson, who was the assistant editor at that time, was quitting, and they needed somebody to take his job and that was me.
l just walked into the job out of nowhere.
And that was when he came back, at the beginning of my senior year, and sat down in the dorm and told us that he had gotten a job, working for Harvey Kurtzman.
You know, which to me was just like, you know, ascending Mount Olympus and getting a job working for Zeus, or something like that! lt was, like, unthinkable that people like us could be doing things like that, but Terry just saw, ''Yeah, we can do that.
'' Help! magazine, in that sense, was the beginning of my connection with what would become Python, because we had written a story about a man who falls in love with his daughter's Barbie doll.
About that time, Terry and l went to Greenwich Village to see this show that had opened called Cambridge Circus.
lt was playing in Greenwich Village, it was comedy from England, and it was supposed to be really funny, so we went, and it was hilarious.
And there was this guy in the show named John Cleese.
Terry met me and he said, basically, ''l like the faces you pull.
'' Which is very, very complimentary.
People used to say it to Laurence Olivier.
''You know, Sir Larry, love the faces you pull.
'' John, of course, stood out in every possible way from the crowd, and l got him to appear in this, and that was the beginning of a friendship.
And so when Terry, later on, wound up in England, many years later, he hooked up with John again, and the rest is history.
l think that the show that really focused us all on television was That Was The Week That Was, because it was an extraordinary event, people now can't realise how epoch-shattering it was in that very deferential culture that still existed in England.
One you may have missed this week in the Radio Times, in Woman's Hour, What l've Been Doing, by Cecilia Bevan, mother of 13 children.
David Frost has always been extremely good to me, l have to tell you, and l suppose l had enough talent, but he saved me so much time.
And he used to phone me every couple of months.
We'd stayed not exactly friends but acquaintances, professional friends.
And he'd set up the satire boom, in That Was The Week That Was, and he's doing this smart Cambridge satire.
l'd written two or three things for That Was The Week That Was, which was great excitement.
And he used to ring me up, always from the airport, and l remember him calling and, ''Oh, hello, David,'' l said.
He said, ''Hello, how are you?'' l said, ''Fine, how are you?'' He said, ''Super, super, super, super.
'' ''Oh,'' he said, ''would you like to be in a television series?'' And l said, ''What?'' He said, ''Well, l'm doing a new television series, ''it's going to be super, with Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.
''You won't know them yet, but it will be great fun.
''We're going to start in the spring.
Would you like to be in it?'' And l said, ''Yes, please!'' And he said, ''Super! Super! Oh, l have to go now, they've called my flight.
'' And l said, ''l think you Did that happen?'' Whilst the pop show in Bristol was keeping me in funds, it was actually The Frost Report which gave me, really, the important breakthrough as a writer.
So we all wrote for that.
He came to us as a pool of talent.
And the next thing l knew, l was rehearsing with the Ronnies.
The entire Python team were writing The Frost Report.
And that's really where l knew them all and what made Ron and l feel part of their outfit.
Does it hurt you if l do this? - Of course it does, l mean - You see, it hurts.
- Still - Quite.
But it's not No, it isn't, is it? What was so good about David is, if he trusted you, he trusted you.
He just let you get on with it.
And you would be writing a show that was going out live that night.
l know what adrenaline looks like.
l remember being in the pub, the Sun ln Splendour, on Portobello Road, writing a joke, putting it in the taxi, going back and there it is on television.
And l thought, ''Whoa! That was kinda cool.
'' lt was a very good experience.
Mike and Terry wrote, usually, the piece that was the film insert of the week, sort of three-minute piece, and Eric often wrote solos for Ronnie Barker, and Gray and l usually wrote one of the big sketches of the week which probably all three of us, the Two Ronnies and l, performed together.
What exactly were you doing on the night of the 1 4th of October? We pulled some birds, slapped 'em back to the drum, bit of a giggle, all down to larking, all that carry-on.
Now, look here.
l can't understand a word you're saying.
The great thing about The Frost Report, anybody who had any good input could come in and work, which is why the roller caption was so long and went spinning through at an enormous rate, so my parents could never see my name.
Barry Cryer, bless him, used to refer to the writers' credits going through at the end of the Frost programme as the Dead of World War 2.
Well, it did hold on ''David Frost'' for rather a long time.
There was no danger of David Frost's parents being unable to see his name, put it that way.
Jimmy Gilbert, who was directing and producing the show, had pity on us, and started us actually performing, we did these little film inserts.
And he got us That was a way of getting us a bit more money.
We got paid more for performing.
- 50 quid a - Well, 20 quid, l think.
- l don't know.
- .
.
a day, was it? l got 50.
l think there was a sort of little hiatus between David and the Python boys.
l think they sort of resented his entrepreneurial touch.
We gradually began to realise that, along with Michael Palin and Terry Jones and Eric ldle, we were actually writing about 90 of the programme.
Then they went and did At Last The 1948 Show, which was the Python team, really, with Tim Brooke-Taylor.
lt was actually David Frost, to give him his due, who suggested the show, l think to me.
He didn't want John in it because he was doing The Frost Report, but for me, it was essential that John did it.
- Name? - Gibbon-Posture.
''Possible loony''.
Tim was terrific, and terribly, terribly funny when he was frightened.
Right, well, what are the problems, then? Well, it's rather embarrassing to say, really.
l don't like to tell people cos l'm frightened of them laughing at me.
Sometimes l wanted John to react more.
Somebody told him he was a good actor, the last thing you should tell a comedian.
l want you to feel absolutely at your ease.
Of course, anything you say to me will be in the strictest confidence.
l must tell you about the bloke who was in this morning! l said to Marty, ''He's playing it so subtly.
'' He said, ''Halfway through, just stamp on his foot.
'' What's the matter? You come in here Well, l did do that, and he got so angry, but he had to keep going, because the cameras were going, and he was absolutely brilliant.
l wouldn't dare do it again.
He's bigger than me.
So will you please tell me, once and for all, in God's name, what's the matter with you? l think l'm a rabbit.
''l think l'm a rabbit!'' lt's one of the funniest moments l've ever seen.
We must have been writing for The Frost Report, and Humphrey Barclay said to me, ''l want to do a kids' show.
''l've got this group, the Bonzo Dog Band, l want you to write it.
'' And l said, ''Well, l want to write it with Mike, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, ''cos l think we'd be great.
'' And he said, ''OK, then.
'' So we were a little group of writers.
City editor? - l've got a great story for you.
- Oh, yes? - A great story.
- Let's hear it.
Once upon a time, in the Land of the Wobbly Dum-Dum Tree, Ricky the Gobbly Pixie sat beneath the magic oak tree That's enough! l'm not interested in fairy stories! This is a newspaper.
- Miss Perkins, show this lunatic out.
- But l haven't finished.
Come away, ere break of day, to Fairyland! To the golden shores of Fairyland, l will lead you, my lt was kind of a fun show, because we got to write it, it was only 23 minutes, cos it was an lTV half-hour.
The Bonzo Dogs were on every week, they were the most bizarre group of people you've ever seen.
There were 1 4 of them the first week, then they pruned themselves down to seven or eight.
You're wanted in the Twilight Zone now, sir.
Thank you, Rigor.
They said, ''Go and make some children's television.
'' We didn't think about that, we just thought about making silly television.
And what a lot of fun it was.
They play, you know, they play the washboard and they play the hoover.
And they would do really weird and bizarre situationist songs.
lt was Dada, really.
The Doo Dah Band was a Dada band.
And that, l think, influenced us enormously.
l think their influence on Python is huge, because we were doing little tight little sketches from Cambridge, but they were doing weird, it was situationally weird.
l was still working on magazines and illustrating and art-directing, and l said, ''Come on.
l gotta get out of magazine work.
''lntroduce me to somebody in television.
'' And that person, ultimately, was Humphrey Barclay, who was producing Do Not Adjust Your Set, which Mike, Terry and Eric were doing.
And we were on our second series, and this weird guy came in, with this biglong hair, hairy Afghan coat, and had been sent by Cleese.
Everybody keeps talking about the legendary moment when l walked in with my coat.
A man and a coat.
And Eric loved that coat.
l fell in love at first sight.
l just loved that Afghan coat.
And he also had a very cute girlfriend and there was something about him.
And Michael and Terry went, ''We don't fucking need'' Like two little rodents hunched in the corner, all You know, their little bit of territory was threatened by this man in the coat.
And l don't know why, l knew there was something about him, and we brought him into our group.
He hadn't done any experience, hadn't written sketches, he'd got a few sketches he'd written which weren't very funny, but for some wonderful, weird, instinctive reason, l said, ''He has to be with us.
'' And that was really how it all began, and then the next series of Do Not Adjust Your Set, l started doing some animation on that.
We were all stuck together by then.
As far as l was concerned, we've all got different versions, of course, Graham and l were writing, for about 18 months, we just wrote, cos l'd just married Connie Booth, she was American, l did not want to be spending a lot of time in a studio when she was a stranger in London.
So l deliberately worked from home for a year and a half, and Gray and l wrote a number of scripts.
Our treat for the week was always to turn on, l think it was Thursday afternoon, about 4:30, Do Not Adjust Your Set, which, for us, was the funniest thing on television.
lt's time for Party Games.
Here are some exciting games you can play this Christmas.
First, from Terry, here's the A and B game.
Well, all the teams are divided - guests, l should say - are divided into two teams, A and B.
And B are the winners.
Well, you can make it more complicated if you want to.
We'd done two series of Do Not Adjust Your Set.
There was discussion about doing another series.
l didn't want to do it, cos l was fed up with the way it was being directed.
Eventually, because we knew them from The Frost Report, we rang them up and said, ''Well, why don't we do something together?'' And they were a bit snotty, cos they'd just had an offer from Philip Jones at Thames Television.
They said, ''You've been so good, done two seasons, ''adults are coming home at 5:25 to see your show, you're getting huge ratings, ''we want to give you a grown-up show.
''The only trouble is, we have no studio for two years.
'' So when John suggested doing something together, we said, ''Yes, please!'' And, ''Can we bring Eric along? And Terry Gilliam?'' John wanted to work with Mike.
And it's as simple as that.
Everybody wanted to work with Mike.
And that was the beginning, and we tagged along.
And l think it's really happenstance that that group came together.
l don't think it was hand-picked or selected in any way.
lt sort of fell onto the table and it worked.
lt's