Hmmm… I have a python who’s rather fond of crunchy frogs.
Hear Hear…his Pepperpot women were spot on. I swear to God I was walking down a London road one day and he rounded the corner dressed as one…voice included. It was uncanny…and a little disturbing.
I still think one of his best lines was in a man on the street segment as a Pepperpot woman who says matter of factly “Oh my…I really don’t care for all this sex on the telly. I keep falling off.”
John Cleese. To me, he epitomizes what Python’s humor was all about: sticking a pin in the overblown, erudite, stuffed-shirt, upright Englishman (and woman). Cleese just looks the part and then is devastatingly funny when he insults people with his curt, clipped witticisms. Think “Dead Parrot Sketch” and you’ll know what I mean.
Nice description! Palin’s my favorite, too.
Palin. I’m biased though. He’s the only one I’ve met, and he was absolutely lovely. Plus, his characters are so earnest.
Terry Jones and Michael Palin, because they’re the most overlooked. Also I found the duo to be most entertaining on the Holy Grail DVD extra where they traipse across Scotland to the various locations and reminisce. One gets the impression they really enjoy each other’s company.
Cleese over Palin by a hair. Palin sometimes gets short shrift because he’s somewhat understated, but his work is brilliant. Still, Cleese is just a little bit better.
IIRC, Monty Python was first introduced to the U.S. in the 1970s on a summer replacement for the Flip Wilson Show. I want to say the show was called “Copycats,” but that show featured mimics such as Rich Little and Frank Gorshin. Whatever show it was showed clips from the Flying Circus show.
Anyway, It was Eric Idle in the “wink wink, nidge nudge” and self defense skits who first caught my eye. So up to the 1980s, I would have said he was my favorite. Then I saw Fawlty Towers and Cleese became number one.
But now, like many other posters, I think it would be a tie between Cleese and Michael Palin.
Tough one. I have to go against the grain and say Cleese isn’t even in the running (like him better than Gilliam, but he’s not up there with the others). When he works, he works WELL, but when he doesn’t, he grates.
I think I’d have to call it a tie between Palin and Jones, with Idle right behind, Cleese and Chapman coming in third, and Gilliam taking up the rear.
As others have said, a tough choice - but I’d have to give the #1 spot to John Cleese, the staid, proper Englishman saying and doing the most ludicrous things but always with a deadpan expression.
I noticed some people mentioning both Michael Palin and Terry Jones. They work well together. (Think of the Arthur “2 Sheds” Jackson sketch. I still have trouble trying to describe that sketch without laughing my head off).
That was actually Eric Idle and Terry Jones, but you’re right it is one of Jones’ shining examples. Palin and Jones did the interview with-the-man-who-contradicts-people sketch as well as the getting-hit-on-the-head-lessons part of the Argument Sketch. I always liked Jones as Ken Maniac, the man who hypnotizes bricks.
Graham Chapman.
I like his facial expressions. He’s very visually funny and I like his delivery. His face isn’t as rubbery as Cleese’s, but I just like the way it goes.
One of the reasons they work so well together is that they were friends before the days of Monty Python. They often wrote together as a team. Cleese and Chapman wrote together as team, Idle did his own thing, and then there’s Gilliam, piecing together his cartoons in his attic.
If only for his ad-lib, to the original host of the Daily Show (congenital shallow smartass Craig Kilborn), who asked as the fifth of Five Questions:
CK: Why does British food suck?
Cleese: (mildly shocked expression) We had an empire to run!
Not a tough choice for me: my favorite Python is Monty.
By which I mean that I like all six of them together far more than any one of them alone. (I refer to their work, not them as individuals. Terry G. is the only one I’ve met personally, but I’m sure they’re all charming people.)
IMO, the Python shows and movies in which they all participated are far better than anything that any of them has done separately (or, as someone pointed out, the last season of the show without Cleese). It’s truly a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Together their humor worked in a way that has never been matched by their individual efforts.
Fawlty Towers was probably the funniest of the individual works, but it’s still basically a one-joke show: How will Basil blow his top and embarrass himself this week? Idle’s Rutles/Rutland stuff was clever and spot-on parody (and kudos to Neil Innes for some terrific music), but that and Palin’s Ripping Yarns rarely made me laugh out loud. I’d watch and think “that’s funny.” But I didn’t actually laugh.
Chapman, sadly, did almost no separate work. Yellowbeard comes to mind, about which the less said, the better.
(I’m leaving Tery Gilliam’s many brilliant films out of this account, because he has clearly gone beyond simple comedy, and thus wrecks the curve. Otherwise, I’d just have to flat out say that he’s my favorite, which is contrary to my stated thesis. A Fish Called Wanda is also very funny. Especially Kevin Kline. “It’s K-K-K-Ken! He’s c-c-coming to k-k-k-kill me!”)
I truly enjoy Palin’s travel shows, although there have been a few occasions in which he attempts a little weak “comedy” just because he (or some producer) thinks it’s expected of him.
It’s tempting to say that Python is funniest because it jumps around so much that you don’t have time to get tired of any person’s (or pair’s) style of humor before it moves on. Whereas in the individual works you only have one particular style that can more easily become cloying. That may be partly it, but I think it’s more. I think it’s that together they leavened and raised each other to a level of genius that none possessed on his own.
Since I haven’t mentioned Jones at all, let me close by joining in other people’s praise of him and suggesting that the next time you watch the “Nudge, nudge” sketch, you keep your eye on him the whole time. It’s hard to avoid watching Idle, but I think Jones’ reactions are just as funny, and they sum up a part of the Python genius: silly isn’t funny unless there’s something to react to it. And Jones is the master. He makes Idle really funny.
My brain 'urts!
Eric Idle. I love all the rest but Eric is my favorite.
BTW, my fellow Ameicans: it’s properly pronounced PY-thin, with a decided emphasis on the first syllable and swallowing the second, not PY-THAHN with equal emphasis on both. (This applies to the group. You can pronounce the snakes any way you want. I don’t care.)
I was addressing Americans as well as Ameicans.
That was Graham Chapman thankyouverymuch.
hrrmph
Terry Jones, partly because of some of the wonderfully hapless characters he played (like Arthur ‘Two Sheds’ Jackson) and because I just read his wonderfully funny and informative book on the Crusades.