The 40th aniversary of the first broadcast ot Monty Python’s Flying Circus today.
I first heard of the show when I was working at my college radio station. We got in Monty Python’s Previous Album, which I reviewed for the station. I reviewed their comedy albums, and I had never heard anything like it. I managed to persuade someone to play it on his show; he was unable to move on to anything else.
Later I met a student from the UK who talked about it (she disapproved the nudity).
Finally, in 1974, our local PBS station started running the series at 10:30 on Sunday. I’ve been a big fan every since.
My first encounter was at the Worldcon in Boston in 1971. Worldcon (science fiction’s world convention) normally has a 24-hour movie schedule of, duh, f&sf films. Yet they had And Now for Something Completely Different on the lineup at one or two in the morning.
I had heard something to make me want to seek this out. I sat down. My jaw sagged to the floor. This lived up to its title in every way. The most fantastic set of comedy sketches in the history of haha. I was an instant fan.
The only one I’ve seen so far was Holy Grail, but that was awesome funny. My brother and I still go around quoting it to each other. Plus, I managed to use a famous line in a moment of such pure awesome that I think I’ve filled my cool quotient for the next ten years. So yeah, I love them.
I came into the world some time after the release of Monty Python’s body of work so wasn’t around to see it as it came out. However, many of my friends and I were introduced to Flying Circus and the films through our parents and older siblings.
The first Monty Python I saw was the Holy Grail when I was about 8 or 9 and have been in love (in general, and in particular with Michael Palin) ever since.
I’ve been a fan ever since seeing it on PBS in Monterey California, in 1975.
It’s not possible to say what sketch is my favorite, but if I absolutely had to choose I might go with the dead parrot. But I’d miss the Spanish Inquisition, or Hell’s Grannies, or “How Not to Be Seen”, or the lumberjack song, or…you get the idea.
Huh… I should break out the DVD and play Ep 1 just for kicks tonight. It’s a pity none of the episodes aired on my birthday, however. That would have been cool.
I first discovered it on PBS in middle school. My family had two TVs so I had to watch MPFC in my parents’ bedroom because everyone else in the house was in the family room watching Lawrence Welk or whatever. Haven’t seen any of the episodes in years, but watch Holy Grail all the time still.
My parents used to watch MP on channel 13/WNET, our PBS here in NYC on Sunday nights. I remember going into the den and being startled to see an animal blow up, and then a woman standing by a window starting to strip only to be blocked/interrupted by John Cleese’s Man in a Dinner Jacket with “And now for something completely different…” I laughed and my parents let me watch the rest of it. (It was the It was 1974 and I was eight. I think they decided a good sense of humor was important in a young girl’s life. It was a smart decision, I think, because MP absolutely had a huge impact on what I considered funny.
On the downside, the other eight year olds didn’t appreciate my Doug Piranha-like sense of sarcasm much in those days.
I first saw it when I lived in England as a kid in the mid-70’s. I was there from '74-'77 so I’m not sure if I saw any original broadcasts, but it’s possible.
I know I saw the original broadcasts of Fawlty Towers on BBC2.
I came across Monty Python’s Flying Circus back in the late '70s on late-night TV in Los Angeles. I was growing up overseas at the time, and was already listening to some British humor (Swann & Flanders and Hendra & Ullett), so Monty Python fed an already-curious appetite.
Fast forward nearly 35 years. My wife gave me the entire Monty Python Flying Circus DVD collection, even though she doesn’t understand the humor at all and generally finds it “stupid”. It was Christmas day, and I settled in to watch some old friends.
My daughter walked in during the Musical Mice sketch and was slightly bemused, when, all of a sudden the actor started playing the Mouse Organ. She went from shocked to horrified to laughing hysterically in about 10 seconds.
Of course, we ended the day by watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
To this day, she says things like, “Pinety teeth” and “I fart in your general direction.”
We can all thank Ron Devillier. According to Terry Jones, the tapes of the show may well have been wiped by the BBC if Ron, who managed the PBS affiliate in Dallas (!), wasn’t personally lobbying to syndicate them in America. He’s the one who persuaded eleven other US stations to take the show and, apparently, saved it from destruction.
Don’t give me that, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings! Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, malodorous, pervert!
I’m sorry. I thought you said abuse. Arguments are over at Great Debates.
Hey Great Debates! Lust4Life wants an argument… and nothing else.