Got a favourite Python sketch? So do the Monty Python comics

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This article was published 17/01/2006 (7241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PASADENA — And now for someplace completely different…

If there’s one thing a member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus should know all about, it’s being weird. And when Eric Idle was asked last weekend to reminisce about the legendary British comedy troupe’s performing heyday and its exceedingly devoted and uninhibited fans, his thoughts immediately wandered back to a strange encounter with a strange group in a very strange, very out-of-the-way place.

Not London. Not New York. Not Hollywood. But you may have heard of it.

“They’ve always been weird about Python,” Idle said of Python’s fan following when he met with TV critics gathered here for the U.S. networks’ winter press tour.

“I remember when we toured Canada in 1973, we were in Winnipeg, and the curtain went up and the whole of the front row was dressed as a caterpillar.”

Apparently, it was the sort of gesture that showed the Pythons that they and their audience were on the same wavelength.

“You go, ‘We’re not going to lose this show; it’s OK, we can relax,'” Idle explained.

It’s probably a bit of a stretch to suggest that the encouragement gained by that long-ago Manitoba moment inspired the plucky Pythons on their silly-walk march into comedy history. But there has to be something complimentary — at very least to the loopy locals who were inside the insect that night in 1973 — in having made such an indelible impression on a performer who spent a large part of his professional life playing Spot the Loony and competing for the title of Upper-Class Twit of the Year.

“When I did my (solo) tours, I always encouraged people to come dressed in silly costumes,” Idle said of his post-Python performing efforts. “I think it liberates people. And they like dressing up.”

Idle and longtime Python producing partner John Goldstone appeared during PBS’s press-tour presentation to discuss Monty Python’s Personal Best, a six-part series that will air Feb. 22 and March 1 and 8 on the U.S. public broadcaster.

Five of the films are compilations of classic Python bits and sketches, arranged in “personal best” collections chosen by each of the surviving Python members (Idle, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin). The sixth film, produced collaboratively by Goldstone and the five group members, is a “best of” tribute to departed Python Graham Chapman.

Eric Idle’s Personal Best, which opens the six-film series on Feb. 22, includes such classic Python segments as the Silly Olympics, Lumberjacks, the Bruces, and the Hairdressers’ Expedition to Mount Everest.

He said the selection process proved to be an illuminating exercise that revealed the very different tastes of the troupe’s members.

“It’s called my personal best,” Idle said of his contribution to the series. “I mean, it’s a choice. I found it interesting, in the end, to think back and go, ‘Oh, what did you select?’ And you know, everybody chose different things. There were one or two things that everybody wanted, and we sort of agreed to let some people have them.”

Goldstone added that there was something of a pecking order to the Pythons’ picking of personal favourites, with Cleese choosing first, Idle second and so on down the line until Jones identified his best-of list.

“It became complicated,” said Goldstone. “By the time we got to him, he wanted a lot of sketches that everybody had already chosen. So we had to negotiate… In the end, it wasn’t that difficult, except in one case — everybody chose Fish Slapping, and it’s in everybody’s program.”

In addition to the six new compilation films, PBS is also planning to air all 47 original episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, beginning in April.

“I’m proud of a lot of it,” Idle said of the Pythons’ accumulated body of TV and movie work. “I really think we encouraged each other to be quite outrageous. And I think that we did that right up until the last thing that we did, which is (Monty Python and) The Meaning of Life, which is probably still the most outrageous thing we did. And it still looks quite shocking to this day; I’m kind of proud of that. You still go, ‘Oh, gosh, are they really going to do The Liver Donor?’ Or ‘Is Mr. Creosote really, really going to throw up?'”

And while he’s very happy to have Monty Python’s Flying Circus continually re-introduced to new generations of comedy fans, the one thing Idle isn’t considering is a reunion to perform new Python material.

“We’re all over 60,” he said. “Comedy is really a young man’s game; it’s sort of about what you had to say when you were fresh and young.

“I’m perfectly happy to get drunk with the rest of them; I was just in London, and we had a really spectacular dinner. But I think it should go no further. I think that, you know, we’ve earned that.”

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca