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, (serialised 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?
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