Monty Python!

What makes you laugh?

I wanted to find an image to represent Monty Pythons Flying Circus, but WordPress doesn’t have any pictures of it and I couldn’t find an image I was able to share from Google.

So I made my own up!

Monty Python was on British TV from 1969 to 1974. I wasn’t allowed to watch it when it was first shown because I was too young. But I saw and enjoyed it later on.

It’s cast, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, John Cleese and Graham Chapman, together with other actors and comedians created an anarchic, silly and surreal brand of humour, consisting of a series of  sketches, often with a running joke threaded through them. Often the sketch would peter out and a cartoon foot would come down from a precenium arch and squash the characters. That is what my illustration is about.

Notable sketches included the dead parrot sketch about a pet shop selling a Norwegian blue parrot which was actually dead, also a dance where two men dressed in uniform take it in turns to slap each other in the face with fish, one eventually falls into the sea. Hells grannies was about a gang of frightening grandmother’s who terrorise a town. They all made me howl with laughter.

Once the TV series stopped the pythons made films like The Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life, and Monty python and the Holy Grail. The cast aso made their own separate films for instance a Fish Called Wanda and Time bandits among others.

As this is a long time ago you might not of heard of them. Go look them up. It’s worth it!

Farewell Terry Jones

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Terry Jones, one of the Monty Python team, has died today aged 77. He had been ill for a while with dementia. He was born in Wales in Colwyn Bay.

He was very funny and one of his lines while playing Brian’s mother in the film ‘the life of Brian’ was ‘he’s not the Messiah! he’s a very naughty boy!’

Monty Pythons flying circus was a TV programme in the 1960’s and 70’s. It was a surreal sketch show where Terry Jones, Micheal Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and animator Terry Gilliam (who’s film about Don Quixote is just being released) all worked together to create the most bizzare and wonderful and mad series of sketches. Terry Jones would often be dressed up as a woman and talk in a very high silly voice.

The pythons also made several films and Jones was of course involved with them. He also wrote sketches for the Two Ronnie’s along with Micheal Palin and went on to make history programmes later in life. He was awarded a Bafta for his work.

It’s a sad loss. He will be missed