All language subtitles for The Meaning of Monty Python 2013 1080p WebRip H264 AC3 5.1

af Afrikaans
sq Albanian
am Amharic
ar Arabic
hy Armenian
az Azerbaijani
eu Basque
be Belarusian
bn Bengali
bs Bosnian
bg Bulgarian
ca Catalan
ceb Cebuano
ny Chichewa
zh-CN Chinese (Simplified)
zh-TW Chinese (Traditional)
co Corsican
hr Croatian
cs Czech
da Danish
nl Dutch Download
en English
eo Esperanto
et Estonian
tl Filipino
fi Finnish
fr French
fy Frisian
gl Galician
ka Georgian
de German
el Greek
gu Gujarati
ht Haitian Creole
ha Hausa
haw Hawaiian
iw Hebrew
hi Hindi
hmn Hmong
hu Hungarian
is Icelandic
ig Igbo
id Indonesian
ga Irish
it Italian
ja Japanese
jw Javanese
kn Kannada
kk Kazakh
km Khmer
ko Korean
ku Kurdish (Kurmanji)
ky Kyrgyz
lo Lao
la Latin
lv Latvian
lt Lithuanian
lb Luxembourgish
mk Macedonian
mg Malagasy
ms Malay
ml Malayalam
mt Maltese
mi Maori
mr Marathi
mn Mongolian
my Myanmar (Burmese)
ne Nepali
no Norwegian
ps Pashto
fa Persian
pl Polish
pt Portuguese
pa Punjabi
ro Romanian
ru Russian
sm Samoan
gd Scots Gaelic
sr Serbian
st Sesotho
sn Shona
sd Sindhi
si Sinhala
sk Slovak
sl Slovenian
so Somali
es Spanish
su Sundanese
sw Swahili
sv Swedish
tg Tajik
ta Tamil
te Telugu
th Thai
tr Turkish
uk Ukrainian
ur Urdu
uz Uzbek
vi Vietnamese
cy Welsh
xh Xhosa
yi Yiddish
yo Yoruba
zu Zulu
or Odia (Oriya)
rw Kinyarwanda
tk Turkmen
tt Tatar
ug Uyghur
Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:02,770 --> 00:00:06,650 {\an8}Good morning, good morning, 2:30 in the morning. 2 00:00:06,730 --> 00:00:08,270 It's tea time. 3 00:00:10,320 --> 00:00:12,900 This is worse than fucking filming. 4 00:00:16,700 --> 00:00:19,830 {\an8}Old comedian's home. Hello, comedian. How are you? 5 00:00:19,910 --> 00:00:21,000 Yes. 6 00:00:21,330 --> 00:00:23,160 - Hello, hello... - Hello. 7 00:00:23,250 --> 00:00:24,500 Uncle Weiner. 8 00:00:24,580 --> 00:00:25,920 This is lapsang souchong. 9 00:00:26,500 --> 00:00:28,500 So it's a bit like a tea and a cigarette. 10 00:00:32,050 --> 00:00:34,260 I'm going to evacuate and have a shower. 11 00:00:34,340 --> 00:00:36,990 Hope I feel a little better, I'll come out back again. 12 00:00:45,270 --> 00:00:46,980 Still doing a gig in California. 13 00:00:48,270 --> 00:00:49,270 There's Eric. 14 00:00:49,360 --> 00:00:50,400 Hey! 15 00:00:50,480 --> 00:00:52,400 - Good morning. - Good morning. 16 00:00:53,440 --> 00:00:54,950 {\an8}What time is it? 17 00:00:55,030 --> 00:00:56,506 {\an8}It should be dark there, shouldn't it? 18 00:00:56,530 --> 00:00:57,830 {\an8}It's three in the morning. 19 00:00:59,200 --> 00:01:00,750 {\an8}It's three in the morning, yes. 20 00:01:00,790 --> 00:01:02,440 So that's why you look like that. 21 00:01:03,250 --> 00:01:06,370 This is how I look at three in the morning. 22 00:01:06,460 --> 00:01:07,726 So which chair am I sitting in? 23 00:01:07,750 --> 00:01:10,540 The only other one that's not occupied, John. 24 00:01:10,630 --> 00:01:12,420 Work it out, work it out. 25 00:01:12,510 --> 00:01:15,196 What you on, Eric? Are you having something to drink or not? 26 00:01:15,220 --> 00:01:19,220 I had a lapsang souchong and now we're on Brendan's breakfast. 27 00:01:19,300 --> 00:01:21,156 Trying to see the books on Eric's shelf. 28 00:01:21,180 --> 00:01:24,060 Can you see that clearly? I... you're very fuzzy. 29 00:01:24,140 --> 00:01:26,166 - Can you read books entirely? - No, I can't at all. 30 00:01:26,190 --> 00:01:28,246 I'm just wondering if any of them are mine. 31 00:01:28,270 --> 00:01:29,440 Really? 32 00:01:30,770 --> 00:01:32,650 There's a Michael Palin section. 33 00:01:32,730 --> 00:01:33,900 Oh, where is it? 34 00:01:33,980 --> 00:01:37,360 I have some very rare, unsigned Michael Palin books. 35 00:01:37,450 --> 00:01:39,070 Where? Where did you find them? 36 00:01:39,160 --> 00:01:40,966 Eric, where... I've been trying to find one. 37 00:01:40,990 --> 00:01:42,846 You have to send up for them from the publisher 38 00:01:42,870 --> 00:01:45,500 because they come signed from the factory. 39 00:01:45,580 --> 00:01:49,250 Don't worry, Eric, I'll come over and soil them, personally. 40 00:01:49,330 --> 00:01:53,670 There is a shop in Henley, apparently, where you can get unsigned copies... 41 00:01:53,750 --> 00:01:56,600 It's called something like Jonkers or something like that. 42 00:01:57,010 --> 00:01:58,550 I'm gonna vouch for that. 43 00:01:58,630 --> 00:02:00,510 I, Me, Mine by George Harrison. 44 00:02:01,350 --> 00:02:03,366 That's even greater than the unsigned ones. 45 00:02:03,390 --> 00:02:04,470 On the bottom shelf. 46 00:02:04,560 --> 00:02:05,640 That's actually my... 47 00:02:05,720 --> 00:02:08,820 No, it's not by George Harrison, it's by somebody very similar. 48 00:02:09,480 --> 00:02:11,610 Uh... John Locke. 49 00:02:11,690 --> 00:02:14,360 - John Locke? Oh. - John Locke, yeah... 50 00:02:14,440 --> 00:02:16,400 - It's Francis Bacon. - Francis Bacon? 51 00:02:16,490 --> 00:02:18,240 Francis Bacon, yes. 52 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:21,796 He actually... No, it was actually Shakespeare who pretended to be him. 53 00:02:21,820 --> 00:02:26,500 I have a theory that all Francis Bacon's works were written by Shakespeare. 54 00:02:26,580 --> 00:02:28,370 They were. Oh, clearly, yes. 55 00:02:28,460 --> 00:02:30,790 Do you know he died in my house? Francis Bacon. 56 00:02:30,880 --> 00:02:32,056 - Francis Bacon? - It's true. 57 00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:34,340 - What? - Francis Bacon died in my house. 58 00:02:34,840 --> 00:02:35,986 Not at your mother's... 59 00:02:36,010 --> 00:02:37,696 Thousands of people died in your house. 60 00:02:37,720 --> 00:02:39,260 By the way, lucky bastard. 61 00:02:39,340 --> 00:02:41,680 Exactly. 62 00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:44,696 He set the tone for it. 63 00:02:44,720 --> 00:02:47,430 He was trying to invent the TV dinner it appears. 64 00:02:47,930 --> 00:02:53,230 And found a dead chicken, stuffed it with snow, got a chill. 65 00:02:53,310 --> 00:02:57,740 They put him to bed in the house, the bed hadn't been heated properly, 66 00:02:57,820 --> 00:02:59,950 he caught pneumonia and he died. 67 00:03:00,030 --> 00:03:01,660 - In your house? - Which room? 68 00:03:01,740 --> 00:03:03,926 - I don't know. I don't know. - In the kitchen? 69 00:03:03,950 --> 00:03:06,290 - Francis Bacon the artist? - No. 70 00:03:10,080 --> 00:03:11,830 Criminal political leader. 71 00:03:11,920 --> 00:03:15,670 The one who's so encouraging, he said, "We must put nature on the rack... 72 00:03:15,750 --> 00:03:16,880 Oh, you're right. 73 00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:19,380 ...and force her to reveal her secrets." 74 00:03:19,470 --> 00:03:21,550 It's a nice Elizabethan turn of phrase. 75 00:03:21,630 --> 00:03:23,550 That's very good, that's rigorous. 76 00:03:24,470 --> 00:03:26,486 Wasn't the sort who died on the bed or on the pillow, 77 00:03:26,510 --> 00:03:29,770 one sort of teethes the secrets out of nature. 78 00:03:32,770 --> 00:03:34,770 Any famous die in your house, Terry? 79 00:03:34,860 --> 00:03:36,230 No, no... 80 00:03:36,320 --> 00:03:38,780 I thought Aristotle had died in our house, 81 00:03:38,860 --> 00:03:40,530 but it was all bloody rumor. 82 00:03:40,610 --> 00:03:42,450 - He'd never even been there. - Who? 83 00:03:42,530 --> 00:03:45,450 Aristotle. 84 00:03:45,530 --> 00:03:48,120 Never been anywhere near Kensington. 85 00:03:48,990 --> 00:03:52,330 You know, the estate agents will tell you anything, won't they? 86 00:03:53,040 --> 00:03:57,000 "Oh, it's very, you'll like this, Aristotle was here for three years. 87 00:03:57,090 --> 00:03:59,800 Why is it called "Aristotle Lane" then? 88 00:04:00,460 --> 00:04:02,340 Exactly, exactly. 89 00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:05,010 Absolute cheeks. 90 00:04:05,090 --> 00:04:08,366 I bought it on the basis of Aristotle Lane, thought it'd be good for me. 91 00:04:08,390 --> 00:04:10,720 It was to toughen me up a bit intellectually. 92 00:04:10,810 --> 00:04:12,036 He was a bugger for the bottle. 93 00:04:12,060 --> 00:04:14,786 - Bugger for the bottle, yeah. - He was a bugger for the bottle. 94 00:04:14,810 --> 00:04:17,110 Hobbes was fond of a drum and René Descartes... 95 00:04:26,160 --> 00:04:27,910 - Wittgenstein? - Wittgenstein. 96 00:04:27,990 --> 00:04:31,176 It's come up again. The second time this morning Wittgenstein's come up. 97 00:04:31,200 --> 00:04:33,136 We were talking about Wittgenstein earlier 98 00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:36,750 and I was asking whether it was "Wittgenstein" or "Vittgenstein." 99 00:04:36,830 --> 00:04:38,130 What do most people say? 100 00:04:38,210 --> 00:04:41,146 I should imagine it's depends whether it was in Austria or Cambridge. 101 00:04:41,170 --> 00:04:42,420 Oh, very good answer. 102 00:04:43,170 --> 00:04:46,510 He was the Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University in 1940. 103 00:04:46,590 --> 00:04:47,640 Oh, right. 104 00:04:47,720 --> 00:04:51,656 And, also, interesting enough, he went to school with Hitler in Graz, in Austria, 105 00:04:51,680 --> 00:04:52,730 when a little boy. 106 00:04:52,810 --> 00:04:54,760 There's pictures of him next to Hitler. 107 00:04:56,310 --> 00:04:58,270 That's a bummer for your CV isn't it? 108 00:04:58,360 --> 00:05:00,546 There's some theory that Hitler developed his anti-Semitism 109 00:05:00,570 --> 00:05:02,820 because he hated Wittgenstein so much. 110 00:05:03,820 --> 00:05:05,926 Just 'cause he liked the boy next to him, he didn't like. 111 00:05:05,950 --> 00:05:07,926 That's... that's probably what it's about. 112 00:05:07,950 --> 00:05:12,490 Isn't it sad? Yeah, and Wittgenstein had a one-handed brother pianist. 113 00:05:13,330 --> 00:05:17,960 He lost his arm in the first World War and became a concert pianist. 114 00:05:18,040 --> 00:05:19,936 - Oh, great. - A one-handed concert pianist. 115 00:05:19,960 --> 00:05:23,210 And people like Ravel wrote special pieces for him. 116 00:05:23,300 --> 00:05:24,380 I love that. 117 00:05:24,470 --> 00:05:28,220 It's like being a one-handed cricketer, you know, gotta admire their spirit. 118 00:05:29,090 --> 00:05:31,930 I was watching Somerset playing Glamorgan once 119 00:05:32,010 --> 00:05:36,310 in the pub, Terrace Pub, Weston-super-Mare, 120 00:05:36,390 --> 00:05:40,020 and the guy next to me was moaning on about Somerset. 121 00:05:40,730 --> 00:05:43,336 And he was talking about a fellow who played for his local village team, 122 00:05:43,360 --> 00:05:47,820 he said to me he'd give his right arm to play for Somerset. 123 00:05:49,740 --> 00:05:55,200 Not that he would've stood out because they were wooden spoon winners, 124 00:05:55,290 --> 00:05:59,330 you know, bottom of the championship table, for seven consecutive years. 125 00:06:01,420 --> 00:06:03,170 Why a wooden spoon? 126 00:06:03,250 --> 00:06:06,566 I don't know where that came from. That's the right expression, isn't it? 127 00:06:06,590 --> 00:06:08,356 - Yes, wooden spoon. - Yeah, wooden spoon. 128 00:06:08,380 --> 00:06:10,010 From the bottom of a... 129 00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:13,236 Eric, our wooden spoon correspondent. 130 00:06:13,260 --> 00:06:16,060 - It's rhyming slang, Michael. - What for? 131 00:06:16,140 --> 00:06:18,366 It's cockney rhyming slang for being fucking bottom. 132 00:06:18,390 --> 00:06:20,490 - Oh. Oh, yes. - It's not particularly good 133 00:06:20,560 --> 00:06:21,810 cockney rhyming slang. 134 00:06:21,900 --> 00:06:23,246 Fucking bottom wooden spoon. 135 00:06:23,270 --> 00:06:25,360 That's got a certain non-ring to it. 136 00:06:26,150 --> 00:06:27,820 Like Vaticans, remember? 137 00:06:28,280 --> 00:06:29,740 Vatican cities. 138 00:06:29,820 --> 00:06:31,320 - Oh, yes. - Oh, yes. 139 00:06:34,030 --> 00:06:36,266 They were known as Bristol cities in the old days. 140 00:06:36,290 --> 00:06:37,540 Yeah, Bristol's. 141 00:06:37,620 --> 00:06:39,516 No, don't worry about the cause of this, just do it. 142 00:06:39,540 --> 00:06:41,830 And will it. Sorry. 143 00:06:41,920 --> 00:06:43,920 - Who? - You mean this is not "doing it"? 144 00:06:46,760 --> 00:06:51,260 I think we all have a completely different feeling about Meaning of Life. 145 00:06:51,340 --> 00:06:54,260 I think some of it's the funniest stuff we ever did 146 00:06:54,350 --> 00:06:56,770 and other bits I didn't like at all. 147 00:06:56,850 --> 00:06:59,890 - Yeah. - And I always felt that the problem was 148 00:06:59,980 --> 00:07:01,850 that we rushed into it. 149 00:07:01,940 --> 00:07:05,456 We really shoulda just stepped back from Life of Brian for a couple of years, 150 00:07:05,480 --> 00:07:09,376 and then I think something would've come together that would be more integrated. 151 00:07:09,400 --> 00:07:12,410 We were trying to find a form, a narrative, weren't we, like, 152 00:07:13,030 --> 00:07:15,136 the holy search for the grail was a narrative, 153 00:07:15,160 --> 00:07:17,450 Life of Brian was a narrative. 154 00:07:17,540 --> 00:07:21,290 The trouble was it was almost on the last day in Jamaica 155 00:07:21,370 --> 00:07:22,726 that we came up with the title. 156 00:07:22,750 --> 00:07:25,590 And then it was, "That's it, that's it, this goes here," 157 00:07:25,670 --> 00:07:28,066 - because everything then fitted. - Three days in, actually. 158 00:07:28,090 --> 00:07:33,140 It was three days in and I came down to breakfast 159 00:07:33,220 --> 00:07:36,100 and everybody was looking glum and thinking, 160 00:07:36,180 --> 00:07:40,520 and Mike suggested we should turn it into a TV series. 161 00:07:43,900 --> 00:07:49,990 I thought, "What if I only got, I've got the script timings, which..." 162 00:07:51,150 --> 00:07:53,110 One of the script girls did. 163 00:07:53,200 --> 00:07:55,370 And I thought, "What are we worrying about? 164 00:07:55,450 --> 00:08:00,950 We've got 70 minutes of really great material, 165 00:08:01,040 --> 00:08:04,250 and we only need to write 20 minutes more." 166 00:08:04,630 --> 00:08:09,170 And then that turned around. And Eric came up with The Meaning of Life. 167 00:08:09,250 --> 00:08:12,220 And we could say, "the life of man," 168 00:08:12,300 --> 00:08:15,510 and that was the third, Wednesday, three days in. 169 00:08:16,010 --> 00:08:19,640 And I know when Terry said that, Eric looked very surprised, 170 00:08:19,720 --> 00:08:21,850 but I have to say that's how I remember it, 171 00:08:21,930 --> 00:08:24,350 because I believe that after a couple of days, 172 00:08:24,440 --> 00:08:28,440 we read this material out, we didn't see any way of integrating it, 173 00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:31,030 and I'm almost sure that I said, 174 00:08:31,110 --> 00:08:33,490 "Look, guys, why don't we just forget this, 175 00:08:33,570 --> 00:08:35,780 - Yeah. - and have a lovely two week holiday, 176 00:08:35,860 --> 00:08:41,250 and then go back to London and say 'We worked our brains to death 177 00:08:41,330 --> 00:08:44,960 and it just didn't work. It's a failure and we're not gonna make it.'" 178 00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:46,920 And the next morning you came down 179 00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:50,630 because I think you'd been working on it that night or in the morning... 180 00:08:50,710 --> 00:08:53,920 Well, I just thought, "What have I got that nobody else has got?" 181 00:08:54,010 --> 00:08:59,430 And I thought, I got the timings the script girl had done in the thing. 182 00:08:59,510 --> 00:09:02,640 So, I didn't, just came... 183 00:09:02,720 --> 00:09:05,286 I remember sitting out at the table, do you remember? 184 00:09:05,310 --> 00:09:10,070 Outside the place in Jamaica and all these guys walking out of the beach 185 00:09:10,150 --> 00:09:11,980 offering to sell us weed. 186 00:09:12,690 --> 00:09:15,256 "No, no, we're writing comedy. Writing comedy, please." 187 00:09:15,280 --> 00:09:16,820 We should've just taken it. 188 00:09:16,910 --> 00:09:20,080 And the film would've probably made much better. 189 00:09:20,160 --> 00:09:21,580 But I do remember them. 190 00:09:21,660 --> 00:09:24,346 -I still love the idea, -Couldn't believe the court case though. 191 00:09:24,370 --> 00:09:26,580 - What? - Remember the idea of a court case? 192 00:09:26,670 --> 00:09:29,380 The whole thing was being, taking place within a court. 193 00:09:29,460 --> 00:09:32,880 And, because it was a con that we had made this film 194 00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:36,220 and we needed to do Hamlet on an island out somewhere in Jamaica, 195 00:09:36,300 --> 00:09:38,616 the whole thing was a lie and, ultimately, we all then, 196 00:09:38,640 --> 00:09:40,236 we're going to be killed at the end. 197 00:09:40,260 --> 00:09:42,036 We were going to be found guilty. Don't you remember this? 198 00:09:42,060 --> 00:09:43,360 No! I don't remember this. 199 00:09:43,390 --> 00:09:46,060 - Do you remember it, Eric? - Nope, not at all. 200 00:09:46,140 --> 00:09:48,916 I remember it being more of a tax deductible, a tax dodge. 201 00:09:48,940 --> 00:09:51,400 - But that was the idea. - Big tax dodge. 202 00:09:51,480 --> 00:09:54,610 It was a tax dodge, and we were in court having to justify 203 00:09:54,690 --> 00:09:57,820 why we were playing Hamlet in Jamaica. 204 00:09:58,450 --> 00:10:00,136 Don't remember that happening but it's really good. 205 00:10:00,160 --> 00:10:01,830 Do you remember we once? 206 00:10:01,910 --> 00:10:04,620 Do you remember we were once having a writing meeting 207 00:10:04,700 --> 00:10:06,460 - and somebody came in... - Yeah. 208 00:10:06,540 --> 00:10:08,290 ...from outside and said, 209 00:10:08,370 --> 00:10:13,420 "Guys, they're setting up a corporation which is going to help with tax, 210 00:10:13,500 --> 00:10:15,210 and they just want a name for it." 211 00:10:15,300 --> 00:10:18,840 And we said, "Call it, 'Evader Tax Inc.'" 212 00:10:20,050 --> 00:10:22,890 And they went back and told the accountants in New York 213 00:10:22,970 --> 00:10:25,180 - and several of them fainted. - Yeah. 214 00:10:25,270 --> 00:10:28,390 The fear that adjourned us. 215 00:10:30,100 --> 00:10:32,360 - It was our own company, wasn't it? - Was it? 216 00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:36,940 - KGB. - So you remember it 217 00:10:37,030 --> 00:10:39,296 - as being a court case? - No, it was what Eric was talking about, 218 00:10:39,320 --> 00:10:40,910 in fact, it was a tax dodge. 219 00:10:40,990 --> 00:10:44,590 It was when you could get lots of money from the government and da da da. 220 00:10:45,370 --> 00:10:47,346 Then we were putting it in a court room, 221 00:10:47,370 --> 00:10:50,870 and we'd the sketches, and each one would be thrown up as evidence 222 00:10:50,960 --> 00:10:54,460 of why it wasn't a tax dodge when it obviously was, 223 00:10:54,540 --> 00:10:57,550 and that's why the executions, 224 00:10:57,630 --> 00:11:01,106 we were talking, at one point, about how each person would be executed, 225 00:11:01,130 --> 00:11:03,576 - how... what you would choose for it. - Oh, right. 226 00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:08,230 And that ended up with the scene with Graham being chased by the topless girls. 227 00:11:08,310 --> 00:11:10,060 That was a product of that. 228 00:11:10,140 --> 00:11:12,340 It was also World War Three, was the other... 229 00:11:12,690 --> 00:11:14,060 I remember that bit. 230 00:11:14,150 --> 00:11:15,746 - Yeah. - Huh? What do you remember? 231 00:11:15,770 --> 00:11:17,836 World War Three, I remember we had World War Three, 232 00:11:17,860 --> 00:11:21,740 and it was going to be sponsored by various corporations. 233 00:11:21,820 --> 00:11:26,240 So people were going into battle carrying, you know, Nike on their backs, 234 00:11:26,330 --> 00:11:29,790 and huge slogans, "Coca-Cola, bombs." 235 00:11:29,870 --> 00:11:34,170 And that ended up with a very nice World War Three sketch which Mike wrote, 236 00:11:34,250 --> 00:11:38,630 which is about the prime minister going into the bunker, the alarm's gone off, 237 00:11:38,710 --> 00:11:40,196 and he comes down, he's in the bunker, he says, 238 00:11:40,220 --> 00:11:42,156 "Good morning, sir." "Good morning, I am the Prime Minister" 239 00:11:42,180 --> 00:11:43,930 "Yes, could I just see your pass?" 240 00:11:44,010 --> 00:11:47,720 "Uh, yeah, no, unfortunately, I left my pass on my desk." 241 00:11:47,810 --> 00:11:50,406 He said, "Well, that's perfectly all right, sir, I just can't let you in." 242 00:11:50,430 --> 00:11:51,916 "Well, I am the Prime Minister." 243 00:11:51,940 --> 00:11:54,416 "Well, anybody could say that at this point, couldn't they, 244 00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:56,270 at this particular juncture?" 245 00:11:56,770 --> 00:12:00,990 It's a very funny end, that the Prime Minister couldn't get into the bunker. 246 00:12:01,070 --> 00:12:03,450 Cause there's a lot of very good stuff called, 247 00:12:03,530 --> 00:12:05,740 when it was called Monty Python's Fish Film. 248 00:12:05,820 --> 00:12:07,756 - Yeah. - And I actually have a script of that. 249 00:12:07,780 --> 00:12:08,880 Have you ever read it? 250 00:12:08,910 --> 00:12:12,516 It was a brilliant, another brilliant script by Michael and Terry, I think, 251 00:12:12,540 --> 00:12:15,170 where they're on a plane and they're bombing Dresden. 252 00:12:16,790 --> 00:12:20,130 "Sir, have you seen the rear gunner?" 253 00:12:21,380 --> 00:12:24,680 - Bit of a peach, isn't he? - Oh, yeah. 254 00:12:25,390 --> 00:12:27,800 "I mean, no seriously, he's startling beautiful. 255 00:12:27,890 --> 00:12:30,720 I mean, he's got a sort of otherworldly quality to him. 256 00:12:31,520 --> 00:12:33,416 I don't know, it's just makes me feel better 257 00:12:33,440 --> 00:12:36,770 in a whole moral and spiritual way," he says. 258 00:12:36,860 --> 00:12:39,876 "No, I don't think that's proper in the RAF, you shouldn't, you know, 259 00:12:39,900 --> 00:12:41,716 this is not really... we're on a bomber mission. 260 00:12:41,740 --> 00:12:44,336 Alright, of course, I don't mean we should touch him or anything, I just think, 261 00:12:44,360 --> 00:12:48,780 Isn't it nice to have someone who's such a peach at the back of the aircraft today?" 262 00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:53,410 And it turns out he's an angel. They've got an angel in the back. 263 00:12:54,250 --> 00:12:57,016 And then they say, "Wait a minute, if there's an angel in the back, 264 00:12:57,040 --> 00:12:58,380 did we just die?" 265 00:12:58,460 --> 00:13:00,550 That's clever. 266 00:13:00,630 --> 00:13:02,760 Very clever, we should put that in a film. 267 00:13:03,720 --> 00:13:05,486 There's some smashing stuff in that thing. 268 00:13:05,510 --> 00:13:12,520 We also had an idea at one point that a spacecraft was going to arrive, 269 00:13:12,600 --> 00:13:17,850 and everyone surrounded the spacecraft to see what was coming in 270 00:13:17,940 --> 00:13:19,536 because they were people from another planet. 271 00:13:19,560 --> 00:13:23,506 And they came out and they explained that they were much more evolved than we were. 272 00:13:23,530 --> 00:13:27,820 They were going to teach us how to live peacefully together, 273 00:13:27,910 --> 00:13:30,740 and we were all very, very excited, the crowd outside, 274 00:13:30,830 --> 00:13:36,460 and then the turn around and the door of their spacecraft had closed on them. 275 00:13:37,620 --> 00:13:42,960 And they couldn't get back in and they started to bitch at each other. 276 00:13:46,470 --> 00:13:48,390 - Do you remember that? - No. 277 00:13:48,470 --> 00:13:50,156 - I do remember. - You do remember? 278 00:13:50,180 --> 00:13:53,600 Yeah, yeah. There must be box files a mile high with all this stuff. 279 00:13:53,680 --> 00:13:57,690 But we also, Graham and I wrote some stuff about a mad ayatollah. 280 00:13:57,770 --> 00:13:59,620 - Do you remember any of this? - Yeah. 281 00:13:59,650 --> 00:14:01,036 And I just remember two things: 282 00:14:01,060 --> 00:14:03,900 First, was he was going into constant rants 283 00:14:03,980 --> 00:14:08,490 about these disgusting and decadent Western devices, 284 00:14:08,570 --> 00:14:10,240 like toilet paper, you know. 285 00:14:10,320 --> 00:14:14,450 And the other thing was, I remember there were British troops 286 00:14:14,540 --> 00:14:16,016 that were caught at some point, 287 00:14:16,040 --> 00:14:18,226 and I remember they were all going to be tortured to death. 288 00:14:18,250 --> 00:14:22,630 And I remember the regiments and sergeant major come out of the offices 289 00:14:22,710 --> 00:14:25,356 and saluting, and they said, "Yes, regimental sergeant major. 290 00:14:25,380 --> 00:14:27,590 Permission to panic, sir?" 291 00:14:30,890 --> 00:14:32,350 That's a very good memory. 292 00:14:32,430 --> 00:14:35,826 No, but we all remember different things. If anything, extraordinary. 293 00:14:35,850 --> 00:14:39,020 But, I mean, it's interesting, 'cause you were saying 294 00:14:39,100 --> 00:14:41,800 we perhaps rushed into it, writing The Meaning of Life, 295 00:14:41,860 --> 00:14:45,690 yet I remember we wrote an awful lot of stuff over a very long period. 296 00:14:45,780 --> 00:14:47,216 - Very long period. - But maybe you're right. 297 00:14:47,240 --> 00:14:50,070 Maybe we did start it too early after Life of Brian. 298 00:14:50,160 --> 00:14:53,450 Well, we didn't have a theme. We didn't have an idea. 299 00:14:53,530 --> 00:14:55,766 I mean, we didn't have a theme, that was the problem. 300 00:14:55,790 --> 00:14:58,636 - We were writing to find a theme. - We were just writing sketches. 301 00:14:58,660 --> 00:15:01,000 - Yeah. - And then trying to find the subject 302 00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:05,380 for reading out the sketches, 'cause there was that long expedition 303 00:15:05,460 --> 00:15:09,220 to the Himalayas in search of the meaning of life. 304 00:15:09,300 --> 00:15:13,680 In search of the meaning of life, and that was sponsored by Benson and Hedges... 305 00:15:14,100 --> 00:15:16,640 ...cigarettes. 306 00:15:18,770 --> 00:15:22,810 This was an idea ahead of its time, where you get, literally, 307 00:15:22,900 --> 00:15:25,900 people to sponsor things. Not just product placement. 308 00:15:25,980 --> 00:15:28,440 Smoking a Benson and Hedges. 309 00:15:29,030 --> 00:15:30,966 That's what I thought was absolutely brilliant, 310 00:15:30,990 --> 00:15:34,410 we could've just paid for the whole film with all these sponsorships. 311 00:15:34,490 --> 00:15:35,870 Just do it blatantly. 312 00:15:35,950 --> 00:15:38,500 Don't lie, don't be clever about it, just do it. 313 00:15:38,580 --> 00:15:41,266 But we had that, remember we wrote a thing ages before, 314 00:15:41,290 --> 00:15:42,806 - I think based on that. - Yeah, yeah. 315 00:15:42,830 --> 00:15:46,840 It was a BBC Comedy Hour, or something like that, 316 00:15:46,920 --> 00:15:50,170 all based on the idea there was sponsorship everywhere in the UK, 317 00:15:50,260 --> 00:15:53,430 including the monarchy; became the Sony Royal Family. 318 00:15:53,510 --> 00:15:56,720 And every year, one member of the public 319 00:15:56,810 --> 00:16:00,366 would become a member of the Royal Family if they sort of tick the right boxes 320 00:16:00,390 --> 00:16:03,376 and became the Sony Princess or something like that, just for a year, 321 00:16:03,400 --> 00:16:05,456 and then they go back to being ordinary again. 322 00:16:05,480 --> 00:16:09,440 You know, it's an idea ahead of its time. And now, of course, 323 00:16:09,530 --> 00:16:14,410 Back to The Meaning of Life, I remember reading the script we'd written 324 00:16:14,490 --> 00:16:18,200 on the plane, going over, and we, I think it was based on Buñuel's... 325 00:16:19,450 --> 00:16:21,150 Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. 326 00:16:21,370 --> 00:16:25,540 And it was repeated, it kept on repeating, and I just thought, 327 00:16:25,630 --> 00:16:27,230 "No, this is not going to work." 328 00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:35,050 It was Henry Jaglom at Cannes who, when Meaning of Life played in Cannes, 329 00:16:35,140 --> 00:16:37,930 I remember Henry Jaglom, remember Henry Jaglom? 330 00:16:38,010 --> 00:16:40,310 - Vaguely. - He made several films, 331 00:16:40,390 --> 00:16:44,270 he was also sort of the amanuensis of Orson Wells in his latter days. 332 00:16:44,350 --> 00:16:47,810 And Henry came out saying it was the finest work Python had done, 333 00:16:47,900 --> 00:16:49,746 the best work. I remember sitting in the car, 334 00:16:49,770 --> 00:16:52,240 I think a couple of others were in there, arguing, 335 00:16:52,320 --> 00:16:53,836 "What are you talking about, Henry?" 336 00:16:53,860 --> 00:16:58,490 But he was so convinced that the bad bits worked brilliantly 337 00:16:58,580 --> 00:17:01,750 because they amplified the great moments. 338 00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:03,436 And he thought it was just a perfect balance. 339 00:17:03,460 --> 00:17:06,556 And it was the only film of ours that ever won anything at Cannes, wasn't it? 340 00:17:06,580 --> 00:17:10,590 Grand Prix du Jury. 341 00:17:10,670 --> 00:17:14,590 Well, actually, I remember that very well because I went to Cannes 342 00:17:14,670 --> 00:17:18,010 I think with you, Terry, and John Goldstone, 343 00:17:18,090 --> 00:17:21,770 you got up on stage and you announced that, right there, 344 00:17:21,850 --> 00:17:25,246 right at the opening conference, that you were confident we were going to win 345 00:17:25,270 --> 00:17:27,060 because we bribed the jurors. 346 00:17:28,690 --> 00:17:31,070 And this was in all the French papers. 347 00:17:31,400 --> 00:17:35,490 It would be announced, it would get the payoffs just as soon as we won. 348 00:17:35,570 --> 00:17:39,280 Well, the chairman of the jury was the person who was releasing our film. 349 00:17:39,370 --> 00:17:41,240 Oh, no, seriously? 350 00:17:41,330 --> 00:17:44,410 - Yes. - Oh, how wonderful. 351 00:17:44,950 --> 00:17:46,410 All right, enough of that. 352 00:17:46,620 --> 00:17:50,566 And at the end, no, but at the end when we won, Terry got on stage to thank the jury 353 00:17:50,590 --> 00:17:54,640 and told them that their money was taped behind the pipes in the gentleman's room. 354 00:17:57,430 --> 00:18:00,930 And John and I had "Eat more pork," on our... 355 00:18:02,890 --> 00:18:04,930 A stained shirt, brown coats, yeah. 356 00:18:06,180 --> 00:18:07,366 There still is that great, 357 00:18:07,390 --> 00:18:09,456 Isn't that the picture of all of us on the beach, 358 00:18:09,480 --> 00:18:11,416 - with our breasts...? - Oh, right, yes. 359 00:18:11,440 --> 00:18:13,940 - That was a previous year, I think. - Was it? 360 00:18:14,030 --> 00:18:15,680 That's when I had my big breasts. 361 00:18:15,740 --> 00:18:18,240 - Was Graham there? - Yeah, Graham was there. 362 00:18:18,490 --> 00:18:20,426 With a knotted handkerchief I seem to remember. 363 00:18:20,450 --> 00:18:23,080 - That's right, yeah. - Quite small breasts. 364 00:18:23,160 --> 00:18:26,830 I do remember that, really, A Fish Called Wanda came out of it 365 00:18:26,910 --> 00:18:31,210 because I felt that some of the stuff, like the liver donor, 366 00:18:31,290 --> 00:18:33,140 you know, which is wonderfully funny. 367 00:18:33,210 --> 00:18:35,066 I mean, just as good as anything we did. 368 00:18:35,090 --> 00:18:36,380 It was fantastic, yeah. 369 00:18:36,460 --> 00:18:39,356 And some of it was great, but I felt there was a whole lot of it that wasn't good, 370 00:18:39,380 --> 00:18:41,986 and I thought there was better material that had not got in the film, 371 00:18:42,010 --> 00:18:43,076 and I remember thinking, 372 00:18:43,100 --> 00:18:48,310 "Well, I now want to do a film where I have at least 40 percent of the say 373 00:18:48,390 --> 00:18:51,940 and not a sixth of the say." Do you see what I mean? 374 00:18:52,020 --> 00:18:54,940 That's when I sat down with Charlie Crichton, 375 00:18:55,020 --> 00:18:58,466 who I met many years before, and we started to knock together the plot, 376 00:18:58,490 --> 00:19:00,360 but it came out of that feeling of, 377 00:19:00,450 --> 00:19:03,160 that I didn't want to be out-voted anymore from... 378 00:19:04,580 --> 00:19:08,580 I do think that Meaning of Life had, really had some of our very best things. 379 00:19:08,660 --> 00:19:10,396 - Oh, absolutely. - Just what we didn't have 380 00:19:10,420 --> 00:19:14,880 was that kid of narrative which kind, of the knights chasing, or... 381 00:19:14,960 --> 00:19:18,606 Brian being chased, which kind of held it all together during the quieter bits. 382 00:19:18,630 --> 00:19:23,390 I think I figured out at one point that we were short of at least one rewrite, 383 00:19:23,470 --> 00:19:26,180 and if we had taken the idea of the meaning of life 384 00:19:26,260 --> 00:19:32,440 and put on it the seven ages of man, we could've gone from birth to death 385 00:19:32,520 --> 00:19:36,690 using the same character, even though we'd gone backwards in time, in and out. 386 00:19:36,770 --> 00:19:38,820 We could've told the story of one person 387 00:19:38,900 --> 00:19:42,030 and there was a possibility of some kind of plot. 388 00:19:42,110 --> 00:19:45,950 If you don't have some sort of a story or narrative holding it together, 389 00:19:46,030 --> 00:19:52,170 it sort of rises or falls on the quality of every single scene. 390 00:19:52,250 --> 00:19:54,170 - Yeah. - So that the bad stuff 391 00:19:54,250 --> 00:19:56,090 sticks out much more. 392 00:19:57,590 --> 00:19:59,380 What do you call the bad stuff? 393 00:20:00,010 --> 00:20:03,220 I never thought we did the World War I, 394 00:20:04,300 --> 00:20:07,986 presenting the clocks and watches, I never thought that was very well done. 395 00:20:08,010 --> 00:20:09,996 I didn't think it was a very strong idea. 396 00:20:10,020 --> 00:20:12,940 - Oh, yeah. - And then that strange fishy thing 397 00:20:13,020 --> 00:20:15,610 I thought was weird without being funny. 398 00:20:15,690 --> 00:20:20,150 - But that's an icon. - That's an image, that's iconic. 399 00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:23,176 It turns up on YouTube and everything, and on the web, always. 400 00:20:23,200 --> 00:20:24,796 - It's huge. - There's something about that 401 00:20:24,820 --> 00:20:27,450 that is just so surreal, so inexplicable. 402 00:20:27,530 --> 00:20:30,700 People just find it wonderful, it's interesting that one. 403 00:20:30,790 --> 00:20:32,306 That basic thing about The Meaning of Life, 404 00:20:32,330 --> 00:20:34,930 as opposed to all our other films, is it's a musical. 405 00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:36,840 It actually has eight numbers in it, 406 00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:40,420 which is already more that any usual picture would normally have. 407 00:20:40,510 --> 00:20:42,946 There's nothing better than, "Every Sperm is Sacred." 408 00:20:42,970 --> 00:20:44,880 Just the way it's shot and filmed 409 00:20:44,970 --> 00:20:46,446 - with song and dance. - Yeah, that's true. 410 00:20:46,470 --> 00:20:48,600 It's just an extraordinary moment. 411 00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:52,980 It was voted the best film musical number... 412 00:20:53,060 --> 00:20:56,100 - Really? - ...by Rotten Tomatoes, I think it was. 413 00:20:57,650 --> 00:21:02,650 It was nominated for, we rarely got nominated for anything at BAFTA, 414 00:21:02,740 --> 00:21:05,450 but it was nominated for best song at BAFTA, 415 00:21:05,530 --> 00:21:08,450 and they played the three songs that were winners. 416 00:21:08,530 --> 00:21:12,540 And when "Every Sperm is Sacred," little clip came on, 417 00:21:12,620 --> 00:21:14,660 the place just erupted, it was wonderful, 418 00:21:14,750 --> 00:21:18,540 and then, "The winner is, 'Up Where We Belong,' 419 00:21:18,630 --> 00:21:19,976 from Officer and a Gentleman." 420 00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:25,430 So the same theme, but you could hear the sort of total groan in the audience. 421 00:21:25,510 --> 00:21:27,360 It was just, you know, it was just... 422 00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:30,470 Well, maybe we should do The Meaning of Life, Part Two, 423 00:21:30,970 --> 00:21:34,680 with all the stuff that wasn't good enough to put in the other shows. 424 00:21:34,770 --> 00:21:38,940 I think we made a big mistake, I think we tried to write in Jamaica. 425 00:21:39,020 --> 00:21:41,970 I think we should just sit on the beach and film in Jamaica. 426 00:21:42,280 --> 00:21:45,450 Or maybe read the sketches in the situation where they were. 427 00:21:45,530 --> 00:21:49,240 A little bit of deck chairs. You know, little cocktails with umbrellas on. 428 00:21:49,320 --> 00:21:51,346 I think that could be a very nice location. 429 00:21:51,370 --> 00:21:53,820 You would go back to St. Ann's Bay, remember then? 430 00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:56,806 And all those carved phalluses they used to bring around. You remember? 431 00:21:56,830 --> 00:21:58,580 - The what? - Weren't they real? 432 00:21:58,670 --> 00:22:01,750 Uh, sorry, that was just mine. 433 00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:03,226 -Also, along with the weed, -What? 434 00:22:03,250 --> 00:22:05,670 - They brought great carved... - Lemon... 435 00:22:06,130 --> 00:22:09,050 ...carved phalluses. "You want one of these?" Remember? 436 00:22:09,140 --> 00:22:10,190 - Want a dick? - Card? 437 00:22:10,260 --> 00:22:12,890 - No, "carved" phalluses. - Oh, carved. 438 00:22:12,970 --> 00:22:14,496 - I thought you said "card." - Oh, sorry. 439 00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:16,156 - I thought he said "card." - Teeth. 440 00:22:16,180 --> 00:22:18,416 - Carved phalluses. Do you remember now? - No. 441 00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:20,940 Because you bought one. You bought that huge shape. 442 00:22:21,940 --> 00:22:24,900 'Cause I remember you could get BBC 2 and BBC 1. 443 00:22:25,860 --> 00:22:27,010 No, I do remember them. 444 00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:30,070 I still got mine at home. 445 00:22:30,950 --> 00:22:32,240 Watch, I'm sitting on it. 446 00:22:32,410 --> 00:22:33,660 My wife won't give it up. 447 00:22:37,460 --> 00:22:39,936 They didn't vibrate in those days though, did they? 448 00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:42,766 They should unpack all the boxes of all that old material. 449 00:22:42,790 --> 00:22:44,976 I mean, because it's obviously some good stuff. 450 00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:47,986 Some of the stuff Eric was remembering I'd completely forgotten. 451 00:22:48,010 --> 00:22:50,616 Well, the fish film is very good, John Goldstone gave that to me. 452 00:22:50,640 --> 00:22:52,366 If you read that, you'll have a lot of laughs. 453 00:22:52,390 --> 00:22:55,470 And some of it was in the movie and some of it wasn't. 454 00:22:55,560 --> 00:22:57,906 And I guess it was our first draft called, it was called 455 00:22:57,930 --> 00:23:00,190 Monty Python's Fish Film. 456 00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:03,626 Because there's much, much more material written for Meaning of Life 457 00:23:03,650 --> 00:23:05,900 -and not used, -Oh, absolutely. 458 00:23:05,980 --> 00:23:08,570 Probably about three times as much as we put in. 459 00:23:08,650 --> 00:23:10,256 I found a wonderful cricket sketch. 460 00:23:10,280 --> 00:23:13,180 I think it might've been the last, he must have written it. 461 00:23:14,740 --> 00:23:18,040 - Someone nudges him, "Oh, sorry." - That's right. 462 00:23:18,120 --> 00:23:21,460 It's, and Eric's doing Peter West, I think. 463 00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:24,590 Graham and I wrote "A Fish Song." 464 00:23:24,670 --> 00:23:26,316 "I'd really rather care for fish, 465 00:23:26,340 --> 00:23:28,460 in fact they are my favorite dish. 466 00:23:29,090 --> 00:23:32,390 I lunch on tench and I dine on cod, 467 00:23:32,470 --> 00:23:35,640 and I break my fast on a gastropod." 468 00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:39,560 There you are, that's good. 469 00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:41,826 So do you think we should do another film together? 470 00:23:41,850 --> 00:23:45,270 I think we should sit on the beach at St. Ann's Bay together. 471 00:23:45,360 --> 00:23:46,910 I think we may agree with that. 472 00:23:46,980 --> 00:23:49,490 We'll ask for a studio that will give us... 473 00:23:51,110 --> 00:23:54,490 a month on the beach somewhere nice next February, 474 00:23:54,570 --> 00:23:58,290 and if a movie comes out of it, the studio can have it. 475 00:23:58,370 --> 00:24:01,710 I'd need to pay off my mortgage, so I'd love to do another film. 476 00:24:02,500 --> 00:24:04,556 I think we should get Graham, somehow or other. 477 00:24:04,580 --> 00:24:06,856 This should be the challenge for the scientific community. 478 00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:08,986 - To recreate Graham. - We could get someone to channel him. 479 00:24:09,010 --> 00:24:10,276 - That'd be wonderful. - No, but that's... 480 00:24:10,300 --> 00:24:12,356 Or we take it with you. Take a medium with us. 481 00:24:12,380 --> 00:24:16,470 The remake of Holy Grail with the holy relics. 482 00:24:16,550 --> 00:24:18,010 Let's take the great idea. 483 00:24:18,310 --> 00:24:20,156 Because there's enough recorded material of Graham 484 00:24:20,180 --> 00:24:22,230 that he could always be there speaking. 485 00:24:22,310 --> 00:24:24,100 I like the idea of having a medium 486 00:24:24,190 --> 00:24:26,810 who just has no sense of comic timing at all. 487 00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:29,900 It's got Graham's voice, "Oh, hello." 488 00:24:31,070 --> 00:24:33,860 But not able to do anything funny. 489 00:24:35,450 --> 00:24:36,660 Poor Graham. 490 00:24:36,740 --> 00:24:39,490 If it's Graham's sense of timing, he won't show up. 491 00:24:39,580 --> 00:24:41,910 No, no, 492 00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:46,630 That's right, that's very funny. He'd be late for meetings, wouldn't he? 493 00:24:47,540 --> 00:24:50,960 "No, he's coming in a minute. All right, he'll be down shortly." 494 00:24:51,050 --> 00:24:52,106 "He'll be here in a minute." 495 00:24:52,130 --> 00:24:54,236 And when the medium started to go like this, 496 00:24:54,260 --> 00:24:57,680 you would know it was finally channeling Graham. 497 00:25:00,140 --> 00:25:03,600 And the medium, "Oh, I've got Norman Wisdom by mistake." 498 00:25:05,310 --> 00:25:08,036 If we did anything, I think it would have to be about death. 499 00:25:08,060 --> 00:25:10,046 Because I spent three years writing "Death: The Musical," 500 00:25:10,070 --> 00:25:12,220 and had to stop it because nobody wanted it. 501 00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:14,200 It's really a Python subject, death. 502 00:25:14,280 --> 00:25:16,610 - It's a very big one, you know. - Yeah. 503 00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:20,790 As a tax write-off, too, you know, obviously. 504 00:25:21,620 --> 00:25:25,370 I like this idea. I think a month on the beach writing a movie would be fun. 505 00:25:25,540 --> 00:25:27,226 Or in prison or something like that. 506 00:25:27,250 --> 00:25:29,960 Somewhere where we can be secure. 507 00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:33,300 We have to be there, no one could leave. 508 00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:36,776 Because people always leave meetings early. 509 00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:38,680 It should be a short prison sentence. 510 00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:41,696 I'm always surprised at how much good material there is around, 511 00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:44,180 that you suddenly remember that it was not done. 512 00:25:44,270 --> 00:25:49,020 I mean, I remember Graham and I wrote a sketch 513 00:25:49,650 --> 00:25:54,690 which was originally intended to be in The Holy Grail. 514 00:25:55,440 --> 00:26:00,990 And if I remember correctly, ten percent of the first draft of The Holy Grail 515 00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:03,540 actually made it into the final movie. 516 00:26:04,450 --> 00:26:08,330 And this sketch was done in the final six programs that I wasn't in. 517 00:26:09,330 --> 00:26:10,580 - Oh, yes. - Yeah, yeah. 518 00:26:10,670 --> 00:26:13,000 - Buying an ant. - Buying an ant, yes. 519 00:26:14,550 --> 00:26:17,930 So it's extraordinary what material is lying around. 520 00:26:23,890 --> 00:26:24,890 Next question. 521 00:26:28,060 --> 00:26:29,770 That was a wonderful pause. 522 00:26:30,350 --> 00:26:32,360 Right there we'd run out, hadn't we? 523 00:26:32,980 --> 00:26:36,150 "Yes, now the other thing," 524 00:26:40,110 --> 00:26:42,870 Our growing years were dreadful, we had rationing, 525 00:26:42,950 --> 00:26:45,176 you know, it was freezing, there wasn't enough food, 526 00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:46,910 and, you know, it was cold. 527 00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:49,960 But then, it gradually, bit by bit... 528 00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:54,920 I remember having ice on the walls, inside walls, in my bedroom. 529 00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:58,510 Not just on the window pane, but ice. 530 00:26:58,590 --> 00:27:00,590 You were lucky, we never had ice at all. 531 00:27:02,350 --> 00:27:04,500 - We had ice right up our legs. - Literally. 532 00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:07,786 We lived in a fridge in the middle of the road. 533 00:27:07,810 --> 00:27:11,980 And to think after every major war there's a time when there's sort of a, you know, 534 00:27:12,060 --> 00:27:15,440 a renaissance, if you like. People come in and change things. 535 00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:18,900 You know, it happened in the 20s after the first World War. 536 00:27:18,990 --> 00:27:22,346 There was people... dance and there's people going, "Have a good time." 537 00:27:22,370 --> 00:27:26,240 They want to throw off warfare and being in the army and all the dullness. 538 00:27:26,330 --> 00:27:28,290 We were a very fortunate generation 539 00:27:28,370 --> 00:27:30,660 and we just came along from all over England, 540 00:27:30,750 --> 00:27:33,226 and people were doing various things we didn't know, 541 00:27:33,250 --> 00:27:36,250 but all our contemporaries like, Floyd and the Stones, 542 00:27:36,340 --> 00:27:37,550 and, you know, Beatles. 543 00:27:37,630 --> 00:27:40,776 That was all going on at the same time as we were doing our thing, 544 00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:42,260 which was being comedy. 545 00:27:42,340 --> 00:27:44,800 But there was an enormous amount of great comedy, 546 00:27:44,890 --> 00:27:47,390 and a lot of it came out of those concert groups, 547 00:27:47,470 --> 00:27:49,600 - what were they called? ENSA. - ENSA. 548 00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:53,400 Well, a lot of the great comedians of the 50s, 60s, 70s 549 00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:55,730 had actually been traveling around the world 550 00:27:55,820 --> 00:27:59,240 entertaining British troops, and we all had an enormous affection 551 00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:01,570 for musical, as it was called in those days. 552 00:28:01,650 --> 00:28:05,950 You know, the Frankie Howerd's and the Morecambe and Wise's. 553 00:28:06,030 --> 00:28:09,330 The Goon Shows came out of the second World War. 554 00:28:09,410 --> 00:28:12,870 They all sort of, well, Milligan, Secombe, I think fought together. 555 00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:18,880 So in the middle of all this awfulness, humor was sort of really important. 556 00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:22,630 There was a kind of resentment, wasn't there, of the governing class, 557 00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:26,010 feeling that they were idiots and scheming idiots? 558 00:28:26,100 --> 00:28:28,060 And that came out in The Goon Show. 559 00:28:29,010 --> 00:28:34,100 It was a time, and that was just a time, when Beyond the Fringe happened. 560 00:28:34,190 --> 00:28:37,480 So that you had the great old musical tradition, 561 00:28:37,570 --> 00:28:41,190 and the best people there, Max Wall, you know, it was wonderful. 562 00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:43,336 Tommy Cooper, the funniest man they'll ever be. 563 00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:47,320 You had that, and you suddenly had Peter Cook and Dudley Moore 564 00:28:47,410 --> 00:28:52,000 and Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller and John Bird and John Fortune 565 00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:54,556 and Eleanor Bron, so they're all coming in at the same time, 566 00:28:54,580 --> 00:28:58,000 - so it was an extraordinary... - They came about 15 years 567 00:28:58,090 --> 00:28:59,226 after the war ended, wasn't it? 568 00:28:59,250 --> 00:29:02,800 Forty-five, and Beyond the Fringe was 1960, something like that? 569 00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:04,906 - Sixty-two, I think. - 'Cause after the first World War 570 00:29:04,930 --> 00:29:08,076 everything suddenly went wild, you know, immediately afterward. 571 00:29:08,100 --> 00:29:12,310 It was almost as though, I think our generation, my parent's generation, 572 00:29:12,390 --> 00:29:16,440 was so bruised by two World Wars and a major depression 573 00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:17,916 that they just didn't, you know, 574 00:29:17,940 --> 00:29:19,876 didn't know what to do after the second World War. 575 00:29:19,900 --> 00:29:24,200 Very nervous of any sort of expression of how you were feeling, 576 00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:27,620 anything like that was dug in, austerity, keep quiet, 577 00:29:27,700 --> 00:29:29,800 you know, let's hope nothing awful happens. 578 00:29:31,330 --> 00:29:34,096 The biggest change is, of course, the arrival of television, 579 00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:35,960 which made an enormous difference. 580 00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:39,420 I mean, it meant that the Vaudeville people couldn't carry on. 581 00:29:39,500 --> 00:29:42,526 You could do your acts in Vaudeville for the rest of your life. 582 00:29:42,550 --> 00:29:45,646 But one night on television they say, "What you doing next week?" 583 00:29:45,670 --> 00:29:48,590 So there was a whole change over of types of comedian, 584 00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:52,140 and it made it possible for people like us to get in there. 585 00:29:52,220 --> 00:29:55,366 It's very strange because in England, unlike the rest of Europe, 586 00:29:55,390 --> 00:29:57,490 television is what people wanted to be in. 587 00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,770 If you were Italian or if you were Spanish or if you were French, 588 00:30:00,860 --> 00:30:02,460 then you wanted to be in movies. 589 00:30:02,690 --> 00:30:07,240 And the television was considered rather second rate, 590 00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:11,280 and sort of people, politicians got their friends into easy sinecures there. 591 00:30:11,370 --> 00:30:16,040 Right? So television in this country was always that heart of our arch. 592 00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:18,476 But the style of humor changed, and I think that had to do with education, 593 00:30:18,500 --> 00:30:21,210 university. People suddenly going to university. 594 00:30:21,290 --> 00:30:24,960 So there was one kind of comedy, it was like the musical comedy. 595 00:30:25,050 --> 00:30:28,526 And suddenly this wave after the war, it happened in America the same thing, 596 00:30:28,550 --> 00:30:29,970 suddenly, after the war, 597 00:30:30,050 --> 00:30:35,220 You know, suddenly there's Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, intellectual comedians, 598 00:30:35,310 --> 00:30:37,456 and that's where, you know, Beyond the Fridge came out of. 599 00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:40,600 But oddly always with this great respect for the old. 600 00:30:40,690 --> 00:30:41,770 Oh, totally. 601 00:30:41,860 --> 00:30:46,150 And Python was so lucky, I hadn't realized that we were 602 00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:53,240 on the first, the first week that BBC went into color. 603 00:30:53,330 --> 00:30:54,910 Yeah, we were very fortunate. 604 00:30:54,990 --> 00:30:56,976 - And we would... - Is that so? I never realized that. 605 00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:58,250 It's absolutely true. 606 00:30:58,330 --> 00:30:59,580 Yeah, the first, 607 00:30:59,670 --> 00:31:04,960 so we would've been made in black and white if, you know, for BBC 1. 608 00:31:05,300 --> 00:31:08,550 Someone said to me the other day about Silly Walks. 609 00:31:08,630 --> 00:31:10,446 How could we write something like that? 610 00:31:10,470 --> 00:31:14,180 And their point was, that it now would seem very offensive 611 00:31:14,260 --> 00:31:17,770 - to people with disabilities. - That's right. 612 00:31:17,850 --> 00:31:21,900 My point was that the way you did it was just, it was a wonderfully, 613 00:31:21,980 --> 00:31:25,820 it wasn't, it wasn't sort of awkward, it was incredibly smooth. 614 00:31:25,900 --> 00:31:28,250 So you're absolutely, actually, rather athletic. 615 00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:30,676 Wonderful, the bottom half of the body only moving. 616 00:31:30,700 --> 00:31:34,740 When other people came in, like the lady who served the tea, 617 00:31:34,830 --> 00:31:37,466 and the tray all shook, then it did look like you were sort of 618 00:31:37,490 --> 00:31:40,096 - making a joke about disability. - I remember John and Graham 619 00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:44,040 ringing us up and, we were writing together, 620 00:31:44,130 --> 00:31:46,960 and John and Graham rang us up and said, 621 00:31:47,050 --> 00:31:50,630 "We're having this problem with this sketch, 622 00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:54,800 'The Ministry of Silly Walks,' would you like to write it?" 623 00:31:54,970 --> 00:31:56,510 - Really? - Yes. 624 00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:58,746 And so we wrote them "Ministry of Silly Walks." 625 00:31:58,770 --> 00:31:59,930 I know you did. 626 00:32:00,270 --> 00:32:05,610 I think you knew that you were going to do such a grotesque walk, 627 00:32:05,690 --> 00:32:10,110 that everybody would laugh at it and nobody would listen to the script. 628 00:32:11,610 --> 00:32:13,756 It's extraordinary how we remember things differently. 629 00:32:13,780 --> 00:32:17,160 I always assumed that you two had written that sketch, 630 00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:21,210 and I remember practicing the movements in the corridor 631 00:32:21,290 --> 00:32:23,870 of my little flat which, believe it or not, 632 00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:26,130 was in Basil Street, extraordinary fact. 633 00:32:26,210 --> 00:32:29,420 And I remember, you know, figuring out the movements. 634 00:32:29,510 --> 00:32:32,630 And I also remember, vis a vis, what Mike just said, 635 00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:36,760 that the week after it went out and everyone thought it was so funny, 636 00:32:36,850 --> 00:32:40,350 I was walking along Oxford Street and I bumped into a guy called 637 00:32:40,430 --> 00:32:45,230 Con Mahoney, who was the head of BBC Radio Light Entertainment, 638 00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,230 and he talked about the sketch and was I not worried... 639 00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:51,490 - Ah. - ...that we were making fun of people 640 00:32:51,570 --> 00:32:54,450 with physical disabilities, seriously? 641 00:32:54,530 --> 00:32:59,200 And I suddenly thought, "This is so weird to have this objection." 642 00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:02,346 But Mike's saying that people would be more concerned about it now. 643 00:33:02,370 --> 00:33:05,960 I think that's the problem, it's so easy to cause offense now. 644 00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:08,646 At least it was a bit more difficult when we were doing Python. 645 00:33:08,670 --> 00:33:11,720 The thing is you could get away with what's going on in Syria, 646 00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:12,800 we can't stop that. 647 00:33:12,880 --> 00:33:17,800 But we can stop people using certain words like I read when I got back recently, 648 00:33:17,890 --> 00:33:22,140 I read a piece in The Spectator, and he was talking about the fact 649 00:33:22,220 --> 00:33:25,690 that someone had got into trouble by talking about a transsexual 650 00:33:25,770 --> 00:33:30,230 because transsexual persons like to be called transsexual persons, 651 00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:32,966 and not being called transsexuals. Do you see what I mean? 652 00:33:32,990 --> 00:33:38,660 There's an extraordinary sensitivity to a single word or phrase, 653 00:33:38,740 --> 00:33:43,000 meanwhile, the most appalling things are going on all over the world 654 00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:45,886 - that nobody can stop. - Yes, well they can't really help that. 655 00:33:45,910 --> 00:33:47,936 At least we can stop people saying the N-word. 656 00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:50,130 That's something, you know, 657 00:33:50,210 --> 00:33:54,340 but what would we do about serious, rather, indefinite at the moment. 658 00:33:54,420 --> 00:33:57,920 - We're hoping for developments. - Would comedy help in that situation? 659 00:33:59,260 --> 00:34:01,260 Sorry, 660 00:34:01,350 --> 00:34:03,930 That was like what we did in Life of Brian, 661 00:34:04,020 --> 00:34:07,480 when Brian says, "I'm not a Roman, I'm a Jew, 662 00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:11,820 kike, sheeny, Red," we used every word you could use. 663 00:34:11,900 --> 00:34:14,666 And said, "And I'm proud of it." I mean, I thought that was really great. 664 00:34:14,690 --> 00:34:18,450 And that's the problem with what goes on now with language, 665 00:34:18,530 --> 00:34:22,330 it's people are so uncertain of which words cause offense and which don't, 666 00:34:22,410 --> 00:34:25,120 so people tiptoe around language all the time. 667 00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:27,516 Am I right in thinking that the word "homosexual" 668 00:34:27,540 --> 00:34:30,250 is now thought of as being vaguely unpleasant? 669 00:34:31,460 --> 00:34:32,670 It's rather serious. 670 00:34:32,750 --> 00:34:35,510 I think, I think just the act, John. 671 00:34:37,970 --> 00:34:40,340 I think the word itself is perfectly innocuous. 672 00:34:43,100 --> 00:34:44,560 You could be on television. 673 00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:46,060 Oh, he is on television. 674 00:34:46,140 --> 00:34:47,810 He is on television. 675 00:34:48,730 --> 00:34:51,650 Satirizing the modern world is really complex, I think. 676 00:34:51,730 --> 00:34:53,150 Because it's so diffused. 677 00:34:53,230 --> 00:34:55,690 It's so unfocused, everything, you know, 678 00:34:55,780 --> 00:34:56,876 where there's a class system. 679 00:34:56,900 --> 00:34:59,046 There's no class system in the way there was before 680 00:34:59,070 --> 00:35:01,910 where you could actually aim very clearly at things. 681 00:35:01,990 --> 00:35:05,160 It's so undefined, and that's what I think is interesting. 682 00:35:05,790 --> 00:35:07,426 A year ago I was talking to Stoppard. 683 00:35:07,450 --> 00:35:10,226 We were talking about, "Oh, is there a way of doing another Brazil?" 684 00:35:10,250 --> 00:35:13,670 Because Brazil is the now-now, even though it was done in '84. 685 00:35:13,750 --> 00:35:16,686 And it's like, he said, "I don't know how to get to grips with it. 686 00:35:16,710 --> 00:35:19,010 What is it you actually start dealing with it?" 687 00:35:19,090 --> 00:35:22,510 And I think that's one of the big problems, 688 00:35:22,590 --> 00:35:25,010 it was easier when the class system was clearer, 689 00:35:25,100 --> 00:35:27,616 when everything was in its place. Then you can pull it apart. 690 00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:31,626 That's why I've always thought, you know, a medieval film, like Brian, is very good. 691 00:35:31,650 --> 00:35:33,336 You've got a king, you've got a knight, you know, 692 00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:35,416 - You know where you are. - There's archetypes, stereotypes, 693 00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:36,756 and you can deal with them. 694 00:35:36,780 --> 00:35:40,360 - Now it's really hard and it's... - But don't you think that's to do 695 00:35:40,450 --> 00:35:41,506 with us being younger? 696 00:35:41,530 --> 00:35:43,796 I mean, when you're young, you do write sketches. 697 00:35:43,820 --> 00:35:46,006 You have a very simple black and white view. That things... 698 00:35:46,030 --> 00:35:48,556 Whereas when you get older everything becomes grayer, 699 00:35:48,580 --> 00:35:52,186 because you can't really, you have to be nice about other people, their viewpoints. 700 00:35:52,210 --> 00:35:53,606 Whereas when you're young, you're really, 701 00:35:53,630 --> 00:35:56,460 you know, really know good people and bad people. 702 00:35:56,550 --> 00:35:58,526 You're on the side of good things and anti bad things. 703 00:35:58,550 --> 00:35:59,550 Yeah, yeah. 704 00:35:59,630 --> 00:36:03,340 And as you get older, it all becomes a bit more mixed up, you know. 705 00:36:03,430 --> 00:36:04,656 - You like people. - The question is, 706 00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:07,720 what do you make fun of? Because when we grew up in, 707 00:36:07,810 --> 00:36:12,230 let's say the 50s, all right, we were at school, right. 708 00:36:12,310 --> 00:36:17,820 And it seemed at that time that we lived in a relatively stable society, 709 00:36:17,900 --> 00:36:20,320 but a lot of it was obviously stupid. 710 00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:24,030 And it was great, great fun making fun of the stupid bits 711 00:36:24,110 --> 00:36:26,886 because you thought, "Well, eventually, people will see how stupid they are, 712 00:36:26,910 --> 00:36:28,096 and they'll sort things out." 713 00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:30,540 Now we have a very fractured society. 714 00:36:30,620 --> 00:36:33,120 I don't think anyone understands what's going on. 715 00:36:33,210 --> 00:36:36,250 I had dinner with somebody who was in the world of marketing 716 00:36:36,340 --> 00:36:39,380 a few months ago, and I said, "Explain it to me," 717 00:36:39,460 --> 00:36:43,760 and he said, "You know, the present developments, they make no sense. 718 00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:48,430 There's no logic to them. It's very hard for anyone to understand what's going on." 719 00:36:48,510 --> 00:36:51,930 And, you know, comedy's about knocking things down 720 00:36:52,020 --> 00:36:55,150 because they're ridiculous and need to be improved. 721 00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:57,610 What do you start with now? 722 00:36:57,690 --> 00:37:00,190 I mean, we know that the BBC is a mess, 723 00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:02,950 we know the national health service is a mess, 724 00:37:03,030 --> 00:37:06,046 that politicians have never been held in such low regard. I mean... 725 00:37:06,070 --> 00:37:09,530 You know, the invasion of Iraq was a con. 726 00:37:09,620 --> 00:37:12,016 I mean, what about Family Guy, do you ever watch Family Guy 727 00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:14,160 or South Park at all these days? 728 00:37:14,250 --> 00:37:17,000 - No. - 'Cause Family Guy is funny. 729 00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:21,050 Family Guy does some very funny stuff, and as indeed, South Park. 730 00:37:21,130 --> 00:37:23,066 But I think what you were saying earlier 731 00:37:23,090 --> 00:37:25,446 is it's very hard to get any kind of grip on a thing 732 00:37:25,470 --> 00:37:29,026 because it all seems to be falling apart and nobody seems to have any solutions, 733 00:37:29,050 --> 00:37:30,196 so what can you make fun of? 734 00:37:30,220 --> 00:37:32,616 I mean, they sort of just deal with very small things, 735 00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:35,270 - you know, relationships, all that. - Yeah. Yeah. 736 00:37:35,350 --> 00:37:38,730 I think you can do daily life and the way people act together, 737 00:37:38,810 --> 00:37:41,296 the way people are just in ordinary, everyday life. 738 00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:43,240 That's still good ground for comedy. 739 00:37:43,820 --> 00:37:45,770 It's not really what Python did though. 740 00:37:45,820 --> 00:37:48,450 No, we never did anything that approached sitcom 741 00:37:48,530 --> 00:37:50,990 or anything about domestic life at all. 742 00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:55,080 It was always on the level of absurdity if we went into it, you know. 743 00:37:55,160 --> 00:37:59,000 I think that's one of the great appeals of Python, it's ideas lead. 744 00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:02,880 You know, if you're doing a sitcom, then it has to be Attila the Hun 745 00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:06,300 coming home, saying, "Honey, I'm home," you know, 746 00:38:06,380 --> 00:38:09,890 it's always had a very bright, you know, 747 00:38:09,970 --> 00:38:13,220 encyclopedic sense of ideas coming from it. 748 00:38:13,310 --> 00:38:16,496 I think people felt a little bit more intelligent when they watched it, 749 00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:18,730 even though we were being banal at times. 750 00:38:18,810 --> 00:38:19,810 Yes, absolutely. 751 00:38:19,900 --> 00:38:22,456 Somebody said 20 years ago, and I thought it was true, 752 00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:24,586 that the world seemed to be getting madder and madder, 753 00:38:24,610 --> 00:38:27,700 and trying to exaggerate the madness, or make fun of it now, 754 00:38:27,780 --> 00:38:29,320 the world was ahead of us. 755 00:38:29,410 --> 00:38:31,846 And I read something in the papers about two weeks ago, 756 00:38:31,870 --> 00:38:35,176 and it was a guy in England who was a burglar who'd been imprisoned. 757 00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:38,540 And he went to the European Court of Human Rights 758 00:38:38,620 --> 00:38:41,590 to say that this imprisonment 759 00:38:41,670 --> 00:38:48,550 was depriving him of his human right to have a family life. 760 00:38:49,590 --> 00:38:50,680 And he got out. 761 00:38:52,140 --> 00:38:53,510 I mean... 762 00:38:54,060 --> 00:39:00,100 There's a woman PC that's just suing this garage owner 763 00:39:00,190 --> 00:39:03,110 because she was called to the site of this robbery, 764 00:39:03,190 --> 00:39:06,490 and it was at night, and she tripped over the curb. 765 00:39:06,570 --> 00:39:11,110 And she's now suing the victim for not lighting that curb properly. 766 00:39:12,070 --> 00:39:15,790 Now what's interesting is her head constable is saying, 767 00:39:15,870 --> 00:39:17,976 "We're not actually agreeing with this woman," 768 00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:21,040 but the organization above that 769 00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:23,750 that looks after police people all over the country, 770 00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:27,130 they're backing her. I mean, unbelievable. 771 00:39:27,210 --> 00:39:30,210 - So you got a world where the victim... - The Python sketch. 772 00:39:30,260 --> 00:39:35,350 ...is, is, actually, Victimization is what the modern world is about. 773 00:39:35,430 --> 00:39:39,480 And if you can be a victim, you got a halfway decent chance, I think. 774 00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:40,960 Works in marriages, as well. 775 00:39:45,730 --> 00:39:49,570 I think if we can show that John is a victim of a predatory woman 776 00:39:50,070 --> 00:39:52,030 who has destroyed his... 777 00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:55,240 - He is a serial victim. - Exactly. 778 00:39:55,620 --> 00:39:59,500 We can take a class action against, how many is it, three or four? 779 00:39:59,580 --> 00:40:00,910 He's a marital recidivist. 780 00:40:04,380 --> 00:40:07,340 Very good. Very good. 781 00:40:11,170 --> 00:40:13,680 It's what I hear from all the young comedians now, 782 00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:15,510 is that there's an executive class 783 00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:19,390 that has never written, performed, or directed comedy, 784 00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:23,850 that thinks that by some mystical process 785 00:40:23,940 --> 00:40:27,730 they know what is funny and what is not funny, and they've never done it. 786 00:40:27,820 --> 00:40:30,586 Never done it in their life. If somebody who'd never flown a plane 787 00:40:30,610 --> 00:40:32,950 started telling pilots how to fly planes... 788 00:40:33,030 --> 00:40:35,740 - It's like so obvious. - It's insane. 789 00:40:35,820 --> 00:40:40,750 Where as in the old days, the good people, they'd come through floor managers, 790 00:40:40,830 --> 00:40:44,880 you know, directors. They worked on comedy for years, 791 00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:50,880 and they kind of absorbed this strange thing that we do to make people laugh. 792 00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:55,760 It infuriates me now to hear young people say that they don't want to go to the BBC 793 00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:59,760 in particular because they're gonna want, not just the pilot script, 794 00:40:59,850 --> 00:41:02,906 they're gonna want detailed outlines for all the other episodes. 795 00:41:02,930 --> 00:41:04,416 And I just want to say to them, 796 00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:09,730 "When Michael Mills trusted us to produce something because he thought we had talent 797 00:41:09,820 --> 00:41:12,190 we were able to do that." Sometimes you won't. 798 00:41:12,650 --> 00:41:16,910 But there's no fall, fail safe program. 799 00:41:16,990 --> 00:41:19,596 There's no way you can be absolutely sure you're going to produce something. 800 00:41:19,620 --> 00:41:22,016 No, no, you have to take the risk that it's not going to be very good, 801 00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:23,556 but you have to take that risk. 802 00:41:23,580 --> 00:41:27,356 He was good. There were a lot of other people at the BBC in executive positions, 803 00:41:27,380 --> 00:41:28,936 we said earlier, who didn't like it. 804 00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:30,606 I thought, "Why are we doing this?" 805 00:41:30,630 --> 00:41:32,630 There was a confidence, wasn't there? 806 00:41:32,710 --> 00:41:36,316 They knew things would flop, but there was a confidence that they were worth trying. 807 00:41:36,340 --> 00:41:39,260 The executive class didn't exist as it does now. 808 00:41:39,350 --> 00:41:42,826 That's simply what's happened everywhere. Not just the BBC, but everywhere. 809 00:41:42,850 --> 00:41:45,350 Television, cinema, everything. 810 00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,916 It's all risen up, so you've got this layer of people that sit on the top 811 00:41:48,940 --> 00:41:50,230 who are the gatekeepers, 812 00:41:50,690 --> 00:41:53,990 that are the ones who decide what the public will or will not like. 813 00:41:54,070 --> 00:41:57,216 And as you say, none of them have any particular talent or skill. 814 00:41:57,240 --> 00:41:58,966 But why is it that so much good stuff 815 00:41:58,990 --> 00:42:01,340 is coming out of America now in the comedy line? 816 00:42:01,990 --> 00:42:03,870 - Why is that... - Yeah. 817 00:42:03,950 --> 00:42:06,266 - ...did you say? - Do you agree with the statement? 818 00:42:06,290 --> 00:42:08,960 Yeah, I think there's a lot of great comedy here. 819 00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:11,340 I think television's in a very good state here. 820 00:42:11,420 --> 00:42:13,800 I don't see a lot of it coming in the movies, 821 00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:16,316 I think television, things are funnier by and large. 822 00:42:16,340 --> 00:42:19,316 But I think there's so much of it, I think there's plenty of room 823 00:42:19,340 --> 00:42:22,310 for people, now, to get in on a low level and get good. 824 00:42:22,390 --> 00:42:24,930 I don't find network television very funny. 825 00:42:25,020 --> 00:42:28,520 But I would say this, I would say that I don't think any network 826 00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:30,000 could still put on Python... 827 00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:32,876 - ...after all these years. - Yeah, yeah. 828 00:42:32,900 --> 00:42:35,150 I think we'd have to do it in Salford. 829 00:42:36,780 --> 00:42:39,410 We're still cable, you know. We are still cable. 830 00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:43,426 But that's what happened in America, was cable TV came in, HBO and all, 831 00:42:43,450 --> 00:42:46,136 and suddenly there were subscribers, and the money was in a pot, 832 00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:49,226 and that's when things started happening, 'cause Simpsons, South Park, 833 00:42:49,250 --> 00:42:53,840 all of it came out of, basically, a new system that suddenly appeared. 834 00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:55,276 The networks couldn't do it. 835 00:42:55,300 --> 00:42:58,760 And they're, HBO, Showtime are still doing the best work. 836 00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:00,776 - Yes. - Because there's real freedom with it, 837 00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:01,800 and is much freer, 838 00:43:01,890 --> 00:43:05,930 television is much, much freer than the Hollywood studio system now. 839 00:43:06,020 --> 00:43:07,326 - Yeah. - I mean, to get films through 840 00:43:07,350 --> 00:43:11,560 is really difficult, but more and more people are going on to HBO. 841 00:43:11,650 --> 00:43:16,150 My ex-son-in-law, Ed Solomon, who wrote Men in Black, 842 00:43:16,230 --> 00:43:21,110 he said that writers are much more respected in American television then 843 00:43:21,200 --> 00:43:24,620 if they're working in television than if they're working in film. 844 00:43:24,990 --> 00:43:27,266 And that's why they've gravitated to television, 845 00:43:27,290 --> 00:43:30,500 and now a lot of ex-writers are producers, 846 00:43:30,580 --> 00:43:33,380 and they are working with writers and guiding them. 847 00:43:33,460 --> 00:43:35,420 Not perhaps writing themselves anymore, 848 00:43:35,500 --> 00:43:38,550 and that that's why the programs are so much better. 849 00:43:38,970 --> 00:43:42,510 But it seems to me that breaking television up in this country 850 00:43:42,590 --> 00:43:47,810 into all these very small audiences has done nothing for the quality of it. 851 00:43:48,180 --> 00:43:49,180 What do you think? 852 00:43:50,770 --> 00:43:53,810 Yeah, maybe right. I sort of agree. 853 00:43:53,900 --> 00:43:56,820 - I don't watch a lot of comedy anymore. - No. 854 00:43:56,900 --> 00:43:58,990 But I think that Python was, 855 00:43:59,070 --> 00:44:02,530 I mean, at the time we didn't think it was a ground breaker. 856 00:44:02,610 --> 00:44:05,260 We didn't even know it was going to last another year. 857 00:44:05,330 --> 00:44:08,290 You know, shows weren't repeated much. 858 00:44:08,370 --> 00:44:10,516 And that was it. Then we'd go on to the next thing. 859 00:44:10,540 --> 00:44:12,830 But it just was, and we look back at it now, 860 00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:16,170 we were dealing with things, and, you know, 861 00:44:16,250 --> 00:44:19,396 churning out material that people wouldn't be able to do nowadays 862 00:44:19,420 --> 00:44:23,090 with the kind of exuberance that lasted for two-and-a-half series. 863 00:44:23,180 --> 00:44:25,080 It was six people making the decision. 864 00:44:25,140 --> 00:44:27,850 It was within us, there was nobody else. 865 00:44:27,930 --> 00:44:31,560 There was no outside influence. If it'd make us laugh, it went in. 866 00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:34,536 And, you know, sometimes we were right and sometimes we were wrong. 867 00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:36,496 That's what always intrigued me, some of the stuff 868 00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:39,956 that we thought was really funny, in the end, we look back, it was not. 869 00:44:39,980 --> 00:44:43,980 And I think the great thing in those days were, there were always a lot of people 870 00:44:44,030 --> 00:44:45,546 - who didn't know what they were doing. - Yeah. 871 00:44:45,570 --> 00:44:48,660 But there was this extraordinary number of people at BBC 872 00:44:48,740 --> 00:44:50,596 at that time who did know what they were doing, 873 00:44:50,620 --> 00:44:52,960 and they did not want to be stars. 874 00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:55,630 It's all changed now, it's all so individualistic. 875 00:44:55,710 --> 00:44:56,540 Do you remember? 876 00:44:56,630 --> 00:45:02,050 People in the old days, it was quite something to get a byline in a newspaper. 877 00:45:02,130 --> 00:45:04,880 Now you have a photograph of the journalist. 878 00:45:04,970 --> 00:45:06,736 - Right, yeah. - Do you see what I mean? 879 00:45:06,760 --> 00:45:08,510 And what you have now is executives 880 00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,720 who want to be thought of as famous executives. 881 00:45:11,810 --> 00:45:14,660 This was unheard of. Michael Mills is completely forgotten 882 00:45:14,730 --> 00:45:17,280 except when we thank him for making Python possible. 883 00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:21,230 But they want to be stars now, and that's why they want to control everything, 884 00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:25,530 so it has their name on it rather than the name of the talent. 885 00:45:28,620 --> 00:45:32,290 How did we do with the BAFTA awards? 886 00:45:32,370 --> 00:45:36,170 I mean, the strange thing about Python was that, from the very beginning, 887 00:45:36,250 --> 00:45:39,130 a lot of the most important people just didn't like it. 888 00:45:39,210 --> 00:45:43,720 Tom Sloan accosted Ian MacNaughton in the lift and said, 889 00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:46,010 - "What the hell are you doing?" - Yeah. 890 00:45:46,090 --> 00:45:49,550 And then The Independent newspaper, under this Freedom of Information 891 00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:51,890 got some minutes out about four years ago, 892 00:45:51,970 --> 00:45:55,916 and all the heads of department, I think there were about eight heads of department 893 00:45:55,940 --> 00:45:59,940 and six of them condemned Python, 894 00:46:00,020 --> 00:46:04,900 and these were not cosmonauts or matadors or plumbers. 895 00:46:04,990 --> 00:46:09,280 These were people whose job it was to understand what was good television, 896 00:46:09,370 --> 00:46:11,966 and six out of eight of them couldn't see they had something 897 00:46:11,990 --> 00:46:14,636 under their noses that was actually rather interesting. 898 00:46:14,660 --> 00:46:17,330 - And I think that kind of... - Yeah. 899 00:46:17,420 --> 00:46:21,500 - But thank God they put it on, you know. - Oh, well, that's Michael Mills. 900 00:46:21,590 --> 00:46:24,356 But then when it came to film, I remember Alexander Walker, 901 00:46:24,380 --> 00:46:26,196 who was the leading critic at that point, 902 00:46:26,220 --> 00:46:29,930 he did a book on British films of the, I don't know, 60s, 70s, 903 00:46:30,010 --> 00:46:32,260 and Python was a footnote, that's all it was. 904 00:46:32,350 --> 00:46:34,770 Where you went, I remember going to Brussels 905 00:46:34,850 --> 00:46:37,440 and all they talked about was Python films. 906 00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:39,286 - And yet, we didn't exist. - But, Terry, Terry, 907 00:46:39,310 --> 00:46:41,810 - Yeah? - We had lampooned the piss out of him 908 00:46:41,900 --> 00:46:44,416 - in one of the episodes, if you remember. - There was that. 909 00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:47,490 We did Alexander Walker, and he had this hair which was funny, 910 00:46:47,530 --> 00:46:50,430 and as I talked, his hair got bigger and bigger and bigger, 911 00:46:50,490 --> 00:46:52,700 - and bigger and bigger! - Yeah, I know. 912 00:46:52,780 --> 00:46:56,096 Normally, he would like that, any attention Alexander would love it. 913 00:46:56,120 --> 00:46:57,210 He was Canadian. 914 00:46:57,290 --> 00:47:01,790 But it was interesting if you actually read books on cinema of the 70s, 915 00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:06,380 we're not... or 80s, whenever it was we were, we don't really exist there. 916 00:47:06,460 --> 00:47:09,986 It's very strange, it's as though the British film industry thought of us 917 00:47:10,010 --> 00:47:13,720 as a kind of a separate unit that didn't really count as a British film. 918 00:47:13,810 --> 00:47:16,930 My recollection, and I ought to check this, 919 00:47:17,020 --> 00:47:22,020 is that Life of Brian got one nomination... 920 00:47:22,110 --> 00:47:25,530 - Did it? - And that was for costume design. 921 00:47:25,610 --> 00:47:27,240 - What, for BAFTA? - Yeah. 922 00:47:28,570 --> 00:47:29,860 Sheets. 923 00:47:31,610 --> 00:47:35,030 Did Python, did Python ever get an Academy Award for anything? 924 00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:36,120 - No. - No. 925 00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:38,080 - No. - No Emmys. 926 00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:39,710 No. 927 00:47:39,790 --> 00:47:42,630 - No Grammys. - No. Not that we're bitter. 928 00:47:44,130 --> 00:47:46,050 We're at... Badge of courage. 929 00:47:46,130 --> 00:47:48,106 It was puzzling, actually, I think that's the main thing. 930 00:47:48,130 --> 00:47:51,090 I don't feel angry by that, I'm just kind of puzzled. 931 00:47:51,180 --> 00:47:56,260 I remember being frustrated that the summary of when we made The Holy Grail 932 00:47:56,350 --> 00:48:00,520 and The Life of Brian, the summary of that year of film didn't include, 933 00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:07,110 in the papers, didn't include anything. No mention of the, of the... 934 00:48:07,190 --> 00:48:09,466 We always thought we were doing something right. 935 00:48:09,490 --> 00:48:10,820 It was supposed to be... 936 00:48:10,900 --> 00:48:12,636 I'm happy in our attitude because, I mean, 937 00:48:12,660 --> 00:48:17,240 we were very, dismissive of awards. 938 00:48:17,330 --> 00:48:18,556 - Do you remember? - Yeah. 939 00:48:18,580 --> 00:48:21,540 We did actually do a send up, didn't we? Of BAFTA. 940 00:48:21,620 --> 00:48:23,630 Oh, yes. Crying, the onions. 941 00:48:23,710 --> 00:48:25,566 You did Dickie Attenborough, didn't you? 942 00:48:25,590 --> 00:48:30,170 Yes. We did Dickie Attenborough and we brought on David Niven's fridge, 943 00:48:30,260 --> 00:48:31,630 - Yes. - That's right, yeah. 944 00:48:31,720 --> 00:48:33,510 To accept the award. 945 00:48:33,590 --> 00:48:36,486 'Cause David couldn't be here tonight so he sent his fridge. 946 00:48:36,510 --> 00:48:41,140 And this is the fridge in which David keeps all his cheese, his vegetables. 947 00:48:41,230 --> 00:48:44,060 It was his second best fridge, or was it the best? 948 00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,110 Yeah, we did show a certain amount of contempt for them. 949 00:48:48,150 --> 00:48:49,900 - Yeah. - I think it's fair. 950 00:48:50,070 --> 00:48:53,240 It was returned in, in spades. 951 00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:56,990 It's funny because, you know, sometimes people were a little bit upset, 952 00:48:57,080 --> 00:48:58,466 even when it was quite affectionate. 953 00:48:58,490 --> 00:49:01,250 For example, every time that I ever met Alan Whicker, 954 00:49:01,330 --> 00:49:05,420 he always talked about Whickerida, which was actually an affectionate parody. 955 00:49:05,500 --> 00:49:09,960 It was as though it somehow got under his skin. And people... 956 00:49:10,050 --> 00:49:12,090 So, it... it got under his skin? 957 00:49:12,170 --> 00:49:14,120 - Yeah. - It was an affectionate parody. 958 00:49:14,180 --> 00:49:16,340 Exactly. People are very... 959 00:49:16,430 --> 00:49:20,680 We did another film critic, we made fun of. 960 00:49:22,390 --> 00:49:23,940 -Philip, -Oh, Gavin Millar. 961 00:49:24,020 --> 00:49:25,600 - Yes. - Gavin Millar. 962 00:49:26,600 --> 00:49:29,610 - You made fun of him. - Yes, I... and I wrote that. 963 00:49:29,690 --> 00:49:35,700 I think the fact was that we were so obviously not kowtowing, 964 00:49:35,780 --> 00:49:39,740 not obviously wanting to belong to any particular group, 965 00:49:39,830 --> 00:49:45,670 and that without quite realizing it we got the natural response to that. 966 00:49:45,750 --> 00:49:47,766 Which is that we're not bothering about you, 967 00:49:47,790 --> 00:49:49,936 but we're not saying it's really at a conscious level. 968 00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:53,146 You'd think that film critics were rather pleased to be in Python. 969 00:49:53,170 --> 00:49:54,770 I mean, they're usually ignored. 970 00:49:55,930 --> 00:49:58,640 I remember once, I mean, this is absolutely true, 971 00:49:58,720 --> 00:50:02,180 when we did Fish Called Wanda, 972 00:50:02,270 --> 00:50:04,600 and I was in LA 973 00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:08,190 and they wanted to link 974 00:50:08,270 --> 00:50:12,230 so that I would appear in the BAFTA awards. 975 00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:15,610 And I wasn't particularly keen 976 00:50:15,700 --> 00:50:18,700 because none of us had ever been that crazy about awards. 977 00:50:18,780 --> 00:50:21,530 And I remember they said, "You have won something," 978 00:50:21,620 --> 00:50:23,766 and I thought, "Oh, really. Well, that's nice, I suppose," 979 00:50:23,790 --> 00:50:28,960 then I go to appear and I assumed that I'd won the writing prize. 980 00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:34,090 And when they announced the writing prize and said somebody else's name, 981 00:50:34,170 --> 00:50:37,470 My face went, "What?" 982 00:50:37,550 --> 00:50:40,180 Because I realized that I'd won Best Actor. 983 00:50:40,260 --> 00:50:45,770 And to get Best Actor for that role of Archie is ridiculous. 984 00:50:45,850 --> 00:50:49,350 It's a good comedy performance but it's hardly up there with Gandhi. 985 00:50:51,520 --> 00:50:53,270 Though, were you up against Gandhi? 986 00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:54,756 No, no, we weren't up against, 987 00:50:54,780 --> 00:50:58,070 But I remember the film that got the Best Script, 988 00:50:58,150 --> 00:50:59,586 nobody's ever heard of it again. 989 00:50:59,610 --> 00:51:02,950 It's never been mentioned since that evening. 990 00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:07,210 Why are fish funny? 991 00:51:07,290 --> 00:51:09,870 Very good question. Because they are. 992 00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:11,000 Are they? 993 00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:13,800 Well, they are. We did a lot of fish stuff. 994 00:51:14,670 --> 00:51:17,550 The fish license, "License my pet fish, Harry." 995 00:51:17,630 --> 00:51:18,816 "How do you know my name is Harry?" 996 00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:21,680 That's right. Very good. 997 00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:23,866 I think animals were always a theme with us. 998 00:51:23,890 --> 00:51:28,230 There's something funny about animals, and there's something funny about eating. 999 00:51:28,310 --> 00:51:33,270 An awful lot of our sketches had something to do with one or the other of those. 1000 00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:34,440 Do you agree? 1001 00:51:34,860 --> 00:51:36,070 - No. - No. 1002 00:51:36,150 --> 00:51:37,966 - That's just a quick thought. - Next. 1003 00:51:37,990 --> 00:51:42,110 I mean, "Fish Slapping Dance," would not be any better with cats, would it really? 1004 00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:44,030 Well, 1005 00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:45,990 I think we got the thing right there. 1006 00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:47,870 Big cat, 1007 00:51:48,830 --> 00:51:51,210 The cat was in Holy Grail with the old woman. 1008 00:51:51,290 --> 00:51:53,920 - Oh, yes. - Beating the cat on the wall. 1009 00:51:54,460 --> 00:51:55,816 Sort of thrown away, that was. 1010 00:51:55,840 --> 00:51:57,670 I don't even remember it. 1011 00:52:02,970 --> 00:52:05,350 Beating the... 1012 00:52:06,510 --> 00:52:07,866 - It was very funny. - Come on, now. Sorry. 1013 00:52:07,890 --> 00:52:08,956 We got chatting there. What have you got to say? 1014 00:52:08,980 --> 00:52:11,440 No, I, what? About the what? 1015 00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:13,916 Amuse us. You're a very funny man, and we love you. 1016 00:52:13,940 --> 00:52:17,506 No, no, I'm, Look, I may be funny, but it's four in the morning, you know. 1017 00:52:17,530 --> 00:52:19,570 I don't really play this late. 1018 00:52:20,570 --> 00:52:22,660 This is the latest gig I've done. 1019 00:52:25,870 --> 00:52:29,556 Professor Brian Cox, I had a dinner with him, a couple of dinners with him, 1020 00:52:29,580 --> 00:52:31,806 and when I dined with him about a month later, I said, 1021 00:52:31,830 --> 00:52:35,840 "So has the universe expanded enormously since our last dinner?" 1022 00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:39,420 And he said, "Actually, the surprising thing is it's quite small 1023 00:52:39,510 --> 00:52:43,180 because it's so big the expansion is may be fast, 1024 00:52:43,260 --> 00:52:45,430 but the percentage in which it expanded 1025 00:52:45,510 --> 00:52:48,560 during a very small period of time, is very, very small. 1026 00:52:48,640 --> 00:52:51,270 - There you are. - So, it has expanded, but... 1027 00:52:51,350 --> 00:52:54,730 Well, it is expanding all the time, even during this short program. 1028 00:52:54,810 --> 00:52:57,900 - It's just expanding... - You just can't notice it, can you? 1029 00:52:57,980 --> 00:53:01,086 I mean, stand in the square out there, it looks like the same size to me. 1030 00:53:01,110 --> 00:53:03,530 Technically a little bit further away. 1031 00:53:07,070 --> 00:53:09,240 That's a nice thought. I like that thought. 1032 00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:13,750 You're going away! 1033 00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:18,266 - I'm against it. - Terrific. 1034 00:53:18,290 --> 00:53:21,550 - I think it's a great idea. - I'm in favor of it for others, 1035 00:53:21,630 --> 00:53:23,066 but I'm against it, personally. 1036 00:53:23,090 --> 00:53:24,630 What was Woody Allen said? 1037 00:53:24,720 --> 00:53:26,116 It was not that he was frightened of it 1038 00:53:26,140 --> 00:53:28,490 but he didn't want to be there when it happened. 1039 00:53:29,010 --> 00:53:32,210 What I'm frightened of is an afterlife. I don't want any of that. 1040 00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:35,786 To think, all those virgins, all those Muslim virgins, that are all over you, 1041 00:53:35,810 --> 00:53:37,020 you don't want that. 1042 00:53:37,100 --> 00:53:40,900 I wonder if, as you get older, I'm going to feel, as I get older, 1043 00:53:40,980 --> 00:53:43,150 I get more sort of child-like in a way. 1044 00:53:43,650 --> 00:53:47,386 - That's called senility, Michael. - I can relate to my grandsons very well. 1045 00:53:47,410 --> 00:53:50,306 'Cause it's a bit like Python, you know, you can do any silly things with them, 1046 00:53:50,330 --> 00:53:53,910 and all that, why do we get sillier as we get older, which is some hope. 1047 00:53:54,000 --> 00:53:55,080 Do you think so? 1048 00:53:57,750 --> 00:54:01,186 I read a bit about this stuff and I think there is something going on, 1049 00:54:01,210 --> 00:54:03,710 but I, you know, after we die. 1050 00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:06,106 I actually think there may be something going on 1051 00:54:06,130 --> 00:54:08,720 because there's a lot of interesting books out there 1052 00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:13,270 written by, not loonies or mediums who may be very strange people, 1053 00:54:13,350 --> 00:54:16,140 but written by academics, particularly in America. 1054 00:54:16,230 --> 00:54:18,900 And if you look at some of those stories, 1055 00:54:18,980 --> 00:54:21,520 I mean, I'm most fascinated by these things, 1056 00:54:21,610 --> 00:54:26,820 these out of body experiences, where people claim to have left their bodies. 1057 00:54:26,900 --> 00:54:32,540 I mean, there was one that was tested in a psychological laboratory 1058 00:54:32,620 --> 00:54:34,620 by a guy called Charlie Tart, 1059 00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:38,710 Charles Tart, who was a very well known professor of psychology, 1060 00:54:38,790 --> 00:54:42,316 and he discovered that the person working for him was a sort of au pair, 1061 00:54:42,340 --> 00:54:44,550 said that she often left her body. 1062 00:54:44,630 --> 00:54:51,180 So, he checked it, and on six occasions she just lay in the bed in the laboratory 1063 00:54:51,260 --> 00:54:56,100 and they placed a five-digit number on the ledge above her bed, 1064 00:54:56,640 --> 00:54:58,850 which couldn't be seen except from above, 1065 00:54:58,940 --> 00:55:01,730 and on five occasions she did not leave her body, 1066 00:55:01,810 --> 00:55:04,110 and on the sixth occasion she did, 1067 00:55:04,190 --> 00:55:06,860 and she was able to report the correct number. 1068 00:55:06,940 --> 00:55:09,360 She'd gone up, looked it, remembered it, 1069 00:55:09,450 --> 00:55:11,796 and then was able to report a five-digit number. 1070 00:55:11,820 --> 00:55:15,870 Now, you can say it was a coincidence, but you kinda think, 1071 00:55:15,950 --> 00:55:20,540 well, if this is possible, there are these veridical experiences 1072 00:55:20,620 --> 00:55:22,000 by people who've had OBEs. 1073 00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:25,920 In other words, they've seen things that they could not possibly know 1074 00:55:26,010 --> 00:55:29,430 and report them accurately afterwards and can be checked. 1075 00:55:29,510 --> 00:55:34,930 If that is going on, if our consciousness could be separate from our body... 1076 00:55:35,010 --> 00:55:38,206 In other words... if our consciousness is like a television receiver, 1077 00:55:38,230 --> 00:55:40,770 the programs are not made in the television set, 1078 00:55:40,850 --> 00:55:45,690 they're made somewhere else, but you have to watch the television set to see them. 1079 00:55:45,780 --> 00:55:48,586 If one had a, if there was a kind of consciousness like that 1080 00:55:48,610 --> 00:55:53,280 and the reductionist, materialist, reductionist people who simply 1081 00:55:53,370 --> 00:55:59,080 find all the research and all the anecdotal information so absurd 1082 00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:01,976 that they won't even look at it and they sweep it under the carpet. 1083 00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:04,316 Which is what happens to every scientific theory 1084 00:56:04,340 --> 00:56:07,630 because people become so attached, emotionally, to the theory 1085 00:56:07,710 --> 00:56:10,236 that they don't want to think that it couldn't be right. 1086 00:56:10,260 --> 00:56:11,970 I mean, it's always. 1087 00:56:12,050 --> 00:56:15,510 Your shamans have always believed in out of body experiences, 1088 00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:18,770 but that's while you're alive. That's not the afterlife. 1089 00:56:18,850 --> 00:56:22,730 I would rather not even think about it. I'm not counting on it. 1090 00:56:22,810 --> 00:56:24,440 I'd like to be surprised. 1091 00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:27,506 But the idea of... when you start talking about the afterlife, 1092 00:56:27,530 --> 00:56:30,530 it's about how do you get the afterlife? 1093 00:56:30,610 --> 00:56:33,570 How do you get where it should be that you can control it? 1094 00:56:33,660 --> 00:56:36,160 My attitude is don't even count on it. 1095 00:56:36,240 --> 00:56:38,910 If there happens to be something, hunky-dory. 1096 00:56:38,990 --> 00:56:41,750 - But it's... - But at least be interested in it 1097 00:56:41,830 --> 00:56:44,920 because what you get from the Dawkins' and the Dennetts 1098 00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:49,380 and the Christopher Hitchens' is an attack on the very worst type of religion 1099 00:56:49,460 --> 00:56:54,050 that no one is ever going to try and really defend anyway. 1100 00:56:54,140 --> 00:56:56,260 You know, there's an enormous amount 1101 00:56:56,350 --> 00:56:58,826 about organized religion that is absolute nonsense. 1102 00:56:58,850 --> 00:57:02,560 But underneath it all, I think there is something going on. 1103 00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:04,416 It's just that the organized church... 1104 00:57:04,440 --> 00:57:07,246 Organized religion was really... Enlightenment started the whole thing 1105 00:57:07,270 --> 00:57:10,570 that religion has to be reasonable, has to be scientific. 1106 00:57:10,650 --> 00:57:11,716 You have to explain it. 1107 00:57:11,740 --> 00:57:15,780 In the 19th century, all the biblical scholars in America were, you know, 1108 00:57:15,870 --> 00:57:18,700 "It's, it's historically true, the Bible." 1109 00:57:18,780 --> 00:57:21,250 The Bible... Religion is about myth. 1110 00:57:21,330 --> 00:57:24,170 Myth is not Logos. It's not real. 1111 00:57:24,250 --> 00:57:26,330 It's not the reason, but it is a form. 1112 00:57:26,420 --> 00:57:30,630 And I think that's the problem, that people start confusing myth 1113 00:57:30,710 --> 00:57:33,670 with, you know, the solid reality around us. 1114 00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:36,316 I mean, I learned last night, one book I was reading, 1115 00:57:36,340 --> 00:57:40,100 that the Crucifixion is not mentioned in Christian documents 1116 00:57:40,180 --> 00:57:42,560 until 40 years after Christ's death. 1117 00:57:42,640 --> 00:57:45,140 - Which is somewhere around... - Duh. 1118 00:57:45,230 --> 00:57:48,626 When you think about it, you would've thought someone should mention it. 1119 00:57:48,650 --> 00:57:50,730 Yeah, I know, no, that's the whole thing. 1120 00:57:50,820 --> 00:57:53,440 And that's been the problem where, when, you know... 1121 00:57:53,530 --> 00:57:55,070 Except it was commonplace. 1122 00:57:55,150 --> 00:57:57,910 - No, but I think myth is wonderful, -Yeah, commonplace. 1123 00:57:57,990 --> 00:58:00,990 Because it gives form to things. And gives shape and gives... 1124 00:58:01,080 --> 00:58:04,040 Explains things a different way that words and reason can't, 1125 00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:06,670 - but it doesn't mean it really happens. - No. 1126 00:58:06,750 --> 00:58:09,226 And I think the whole point is... What is it, meaning of life? 1127 00:58:09,250 --> 00:58:12,486 It's trying to give meaning to life. Not that there is any meaning to life. 1128 00:58:12,510 --> 00:58:15,670 I just think we should have an attitude of curiosity towards it. 1129 00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:17,356 - Oh, yeah. - Instead of sort of condemning it 1130 00:58:17,380 --> 00:58:19,616 as Richard Dawkins. I know Richard a little bit 1131 00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:22,560 and I like him very much indeed, but he kind of condemns. 1132 00:58:22,640 --> 00:58:25,406 He's so aggressive about anyone who thinks anything goes on, 1133 00:58:25,430 --> 00:58:26,810 but be interested. 1134 00:58:26,890 --> 00:58:30,336 I think if you're a comedian, or whatever, you enjoy humor and comedy. 1135 00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:32,956 - You got to... Everything's up for grabs. - Exactly. 1136 00:58:32,980 --> 00:58:36,110 And that's what you got to be. Certainty is our enemy. 1137 00:58:36,530 --> 00:58:38,546 - Yeah, that's right. - That was very good, Mike. 1138 00:58:38,570 --> 00:58:41,830 - And finally, yes. - My last words, yeah. 1139 00:58:42,830 --> 00:58:44,926 What are you going to have on your gravestone then, John? 1140 00:58:44,950 --> 00:58:47,540 Um, "Calls referred to..." 1141 00:58:47,620 --> 00:58:48,830 Yes. 1142 00:58:50,380 --> 00:58:53,340 "Gone to lunch, back soon." 1143 00:58:54,670 --> 00:58:57,470 Mine says, "Say no more." 1144 00:58:57,550 --> 00:58:59,680 Very noble. 1145 00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:03,366 And hopefully when we're all dead we'll be doing commercials, 1146 00:59:03,390 --> 00:59:06,480 because, you know, they'll be using us and chopping us up 1147 00:59:06,560 --> 00:59:08,350 to sell vacuum cleaners, I think. 1148 00:59:08,690 --> 00:59:10,400 -And on that note, -On that note. 1149 00:59:12,020 --> 00:59:14,480 Please send your contributions to this address. 1150 00:59:14,780 --> 00:59:16,690 It will appear on your screen now. 1151 00:59:16,780 --> 00:59:19,910 Help the old unmarried and married Pythons. 1152 00:59:22,910 --> 00:59:24,990 - Very good. - Thank you. 1153 00:59:25,080 --> 00:59:26,160 Thank you, Eric. 1154 00:59:26,540 --> 00:59:28,500 - Well done. Sleep well. - Be good. 1155 00:59:28,580 --> 00:59:31,040 Thank you very much. It was great to see you all. 1156 00:59:31,130 --> 00:59:33,356 I miss you. I mean, we should do this, you know, 1157 00:59:33,380 --> 00:59:36,420 sometime when we can get together without the cameras. 1158 00:59:37,340 --> 00:59:39,170 And the great... 1159 00:59:39,260 --> 00:59:41,616 That would seem very strange without the cameras. 1160 00:59:41,640 --> 00:59:44,180 They're talk about death. 1161 00:59:47,100 --> 00:59:49,310 - Good night. - Good night. Bye-bye. 1162 00:59:49,390 --> 00:59:50,890 Thank you, John. 1163 00:59:54,610 --> 00:59:55,980 Are we still wired up here? 1164 01:00:03,530 --> 01:00:05,120 What is this for again? 1165 01:00:05,830 --> 01:00:06,870 Posterity. 1166 01:00:06,950 --> 01:00:08,620 Austerity? 98549

Can't find what you're looking for?
Get subtitles in any language from opensubtitles.com, and translate them here.