ABSTRACT - MEDIA – THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 10/01/2006 – VOLCANIC CLEESE AND THE STRIFE OF BRIAN, BY PALIN
Chris
Hastings reports on the publication of Monty Python’s Flying Circus star,
Michael Palin’s diaries, (serialized in this very newspaper). It seems that when the team discussed the
casting of the Brian Role in their controversial Life Of Brian Movie about a
man mistaken for Jesus throughout his life, there was some disagreement among
the Python regulars. John Cleese in particular took the huff as he had his
sites locked on the central role, of Brian, which everyone else decided to give
to Graham Chapman, following his performance as King Arthur in their earlier
Holy Grail comedy. Cleese had always
regarded himself as the leading light of the team, and he was now enjoying some
success with his solo BBC television series, Fawlty Towers. Such revelations are likely to cause
friction betwenthem surviving Python members, (Chapman died a few years back).
The extracts from the diary itself are mostly light hearted and good humoured,
covering the whole of Palin’s professional life from early That Was The Week
That Was appearances to his later work as BBC Travel Show Presenter with such
work as Around The World In Eighty Days (His epic attempt to follow in the
footsteps of Jules Verne’s Phineus Phogg). In some ways, making a news item to
plug a diary that is already carried in the same newspaper prevents the diaries
speaking for themselves, and invites readers to pick out the more assertive
aspects over the larger body of material highlighting the humorous aspects of
work and creativity in the groundbreaking Python team. The diary extracts show that when the first
episode of Python (The TV show) went out, even veteran Goon Spike Milligan was
quick to praise them as comic geniuses. The diary promises much more than the
news feature has to say, in its bias in favour of infighting and bitchiness. To
that, this reader asks, so what? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
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