Monty Python
Spamducken, anyone?
As we tumble headlong into Thanksgiving Thursday and the traditional day-long feast of turkey and all the trimmings, let us not forget the one food that helped put British comedy on the map a mere 42 years ago. Monty Python’s Flying Circus immortalized SPAM, the quintessential ‘mystery meat’ that now boasts its own museum in [...]
How Fawlty Towers almost never opened its doors
This gem comes from Shaun Usher over at Letters of Note, a Manchester site dedicated to the seeking out fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. To the British comedy world, there is none more ‘fascinating’ that this accompanying 1974 memo graphic supplied by Sam Ward. While we knew of this story through several interviews [...]
Czech Republic Olympic team courts unlikely spokesperson
And Now for Something Completely Different Touting his Olympic experience, former Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star, John Cleese, finds himself in the Czech Republic this week where he will become the face of the Czech Republic Olympic Team in all advertising leading up to the London 2012 games. Cleese, who says that the Czech [...]
R.I.P. John Howard Davies – Thanks for a lifetime gift of smiles and laughter
There are only a handful of individuals that any one of us crosses paths with, either directly or indirectly, who have an impact on so many lives. John Howard Davies was one such individual. You may not know the face, unless you happen to have a DVD of the 1948 classic David Lean film, Oliver [...]
The London Underground in a multi-screen world
Harry Beck was a London Underground employee who, basically, decided that the physical locations of the mostly underground stations were irrelevant to travelers of the day whose main desire is to know how to get to one station from another. It was the topology of the railway mattered. His uncommissioned idea was make clearer design [...]
The Office UK – Happy 10th!
Somehow, I had the strange feeling as I was beginning to write this that I was starting the lyrics to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (you know, “It was 20 years ago today that Sgt Pepper taught the band to play…”). Ok, not quite, but it WAS 10 years ago today that the world (well, [...]
All-time best Monty Python sketches. Vote early and often.
You may have heard, recently, that the Pythons will lend their voices to the upcoming film, A Liar’s Autobiography, an animated 3D movie based on the memoir of the late Python member, Graham Chapman, who died in 1989. Chapman’s own voice will be pulled from his original reading of his autobiography of the same name. Interestingly, [...]
Holy Flying Circus, Batman, the controversy over Life of Brian explored
It started out innocently enough as the story of, one, Brian Cohen, born on the same day as, and next door to, Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, in truly probably the first recorded instance of ‘separated at birth‘, Brian was immediately mistaken for the Messiah. Produced, written and starring the brilliant minds of Monty Python, Life of [...]
