Trivia for
"Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969)

photos

board

trailer

details

• Other possible names for the series were "Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus", "Owl-Stretching Time" (which was used as the name for one episode), "Bun, Whackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot", "A Toad Elevating Moment", "Sex and Violence", "A Horse, a Bucket and a Spoon". One early working title for the series was simply, "It's..."
  
  
• The head of comedy at the BBC said that the title had to include the word "Circus", because the people at the BBC had referred to the six cast members wandering around the BBC offices as a circus, so they added "Flying" to make it sound less like a real circus and more like something out of the first world war. And in front of that, added "Monty Python" because it sounded like a really bad theatrical agent, and also that the large, constricting snake was appropriate imagery.
  
  
• The phrase "And now for something completely different" is taken from a real phrase often used by the BBC during their TV and radio broadcasts.
  
  

• Ringo Starr was a huge fan of the Pythons. He appeared in one sketch, as himself appearing on a chat show hosted by the "It's" man (Michael Palin).
  
  
• The theme music is the concluding portion of John Philip Sousa's "Liberty Bell March". Reportedly, one of the chief reasons the song was used is that it was in the public domain and no royalties would have to be paid (the opening part of the march makes an appearance in the James Bond film Octopussy (1983)).
  
  
• Following a television interview in which Graham Chapman mentioned (not for the first time) that he was a homosexual, the Pythons received a letter from an enraged woman who said she heard an "anonymous" member of Monty Python had confessed to being gay. She enclosed several pages of prayers for his salvation and said that if he repeated them every single day he might acquire some form of purgatory. Eric Idle replied to her saying that they had found out who it was and had stoned him. Shortly thereafter, John Cleese left the show for the last season. The woman never wrote back.
  
  
• The BBC made the Pythons edit out the word "masturbation" from the "All-England Summarize Proust Competition", in which one of the contestants (Graham Chapman) claimed his hobbies included "golf, strangling small animals and masturbation". While the vocal track was edited to remove the last word, the huge laugh from the audience remained in the final recording. During one of the negotiation meetings on the topic, Eric Idle reportedly asked the head of the BBC, "Everyone masturbates. Don't you masturbate, sir?" He was not given a response.
  
  
• Ranked #5 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Top Cult Shows Ever!" (30 May 2004 issue).
  
  
• The Pythons wrote all of their sketches in teams. Cambridge graduates John Cleese and Graham Chapman wrote together, as did Oxford men Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Eric Idle, another Cambridge alumnus, wrote alone. "Links" between sketches were the only pieces written by the entire group collectively. Animator Terry Gilliam worked independently of the five core members, but joined them for writers' meetings to help them piece it all together and act as a sort of test audience.
  
  
• At least two sketches can trace their origins back to How to Irritate People (1968) (TV), a TV special that John Cleese starred in and wrote with Graham Chapman prior to "Flying Circus". First, the "Silly Job Interview" in which Cleese rings a bell and has people scoring Chapman's reaction came directly from the special. Also the infamous/famous "Parrot Sketch" was adapted largely from a sketch Chapman wrote for the earlier show about a car salesman who flatly refused to admit that there was anything wrong with the car that was literally falling apart on stage.
  
  
• One of the first things the Pythons decided was to get rid of the obligatory, though often disappointing punch line of most comedy sketches. The "Restaurant Sketch" (or "Dirty Fork Sketch") pokes fun at this.
  
  
• The "Dead Parrot Sketch" was based, in part, on a drama school exercise/game in which two actors improvised dialogue, the object of which was for one participant to try to get the other to repeat a line without himself repeating. The first person to repeat is the "loser" of the game. Tom Stoppard, in his Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) featured a more elaborate version of this exercise which is cited in the quotes section for that movie.
  
  
• In the final sketch in "Royal Episode 13", when the studio audience charges the set, they are led by a plant in the audience: Ian MacNaughton, the show's producer, who makes various appearances throughout the show.
  
  
• The Pythons did almost all of their own stunts, including Graham Chapman (a qualified mountaineer) reading a sketch while hanging upside-down on a rope, and Michael Palin plummeting 15 feet into a canal in "The Fish-Slapping Dance" after John Cleese smacks him in the head with a trout.
  
  
• The main logo for the show (as seen in the end credits) is written in the same font as (the similarly-named) Pussy Galore's Flying Circus from the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964.)
  
  
• The first U.S. broadcast of Monty Python's Flying Circus was in July of 1974 on the PBS station KERA in Dallas, Texas.
  
  
• After three seasons of 13 episodes each, John Cleese refused to return for a fourth because he believed the show was becoming repetitious and had run out of ideas. The rest of the cast only managed to produce a final fourth season of just six episodes without him.
  
  

Related Links