UKC

I don't like Monty Python.

Now that may not seem like a big deal but I am in my early 50's and I have been in so many situations where friends, people who I meet through work, etc, quote lines from Monty Python to me. Generally to me staring blankly back at them or saying 'I don't really find the dead parrot sketch that funny'.  At the moment my Facebook thing is full of quotes and quips from Terry Jones. 

I find it strange that people assume that I like MP because of my age. 

Any one else here in my age group that doesn't like MP? Or am I alone?

I'll take any thumbs down as rebukes from the said people who expect me to like python!

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Some of it was really pathetic and corny but some of it was brilliant.

Al (71)

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I loved it when it came out but it’s showing its age rather badly. The flashes of brilliance are slowly crumbling at the edges.

In reply to Gaston Rubberpants:

Same opinion here. 

In reply to colinakmc:

It will stand as one of the mould-breakers for comedy, just as The Goons were ten or fifteen years before. It seems difficult to believe these days but once grown men talking in silly voices was comedy's cutting edge. Then Python's more surreal sketches which didn't end in a punchline were the new cutting edge; and just like The Goons, it has dated rather.

Also sometimes forgotten is that it wasn't always revered. The first episode has parts filmed in front of a studio audience that were performed to a chorus of boos.

But parts of it - Life Of Brian, especially - will stand for a long time as amongst the top rank of comedy. I'm sure I won't be the only one thinking that if there is a heaven, someone up there is currently shouting, "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy".

T.

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Loved the 'Life of Brian' but a lot of their stuff was 'Pure pish' as the weegies say.

In reply to Gaston Rubberpants:

True. It was genuinely experimental in the context of British comedy at the time. That meant trying out all sorts of nonsense, some of which was ridiculously funny, and some absolutely rubbish. Looking back, one of the main contributions was in terms of format - throwing in all sorts of comedy tropes and forms, using animation and live sketches, and presenting them in a non-linear sequence - opening sequence in the middle, interrupted sketches and so on. 

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I (69) was never a fan back in the day, more bizarre and repetitive than funny,

Chris

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I'm happy to see so many dislikes. It proves my original point. 

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Take it or leave it really. Some good bits. 

Fawlty towers still great, but more standard sitcom format I suppose.

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I'm with you all the way with the exception of "The Life of Brian" which I found to be especially funny.

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I'm 55 and also just didn't get it, never got the Clash either

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I agree.....aged 54!! Never thought it was funny!

In reply to Removed User:

And the Holy grail in my opinion. 

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I thought it was brilliant when I was a young teenager but then so did everyone else so you could just go with the flow. Now it is no longer so much a part of common culture I find it less funny and tedious in parts. I think a lot of its appeal was the fact that you could act out the characters and sketches in a way you couldn't with The Good Life or Butterflies. Reggie Perrin had a similar repeatability but with a good story thrown in. I can watch Perrin over and over but apart from the two excellent films I haven't watched Python more than once or twice in the last few years.

In reply to Le Sapeur:

the Pythons were very hit and miss-most of the sketches are pretty rubbish to be honest. Strangely enough at around the same time there was a genuinely WTF? out there series on-namely the Spike Milligan "Q" series which really was bonkers.

In reply to Le Sapeur

I find your post intriguing. I'm just turning 86 and was brought up on ITMA, which was religiously listened to on a Thursday evening by my parents  in the 1940s, and I can still quote its stock characters " it's being so cheerful ad keeps me going", Mrs Mopp signing off. At school there were innumerable copies of Punch going back well into the 19th century  lying around.  All of which  showed how humour dates and and always will. Beyond the Fringe and the Establishment. An intellectual howl for my undergraduate generation: one member was in my College.

After years working abroad not altogether happily, I came back to UK and entered a rather personal  iconoclastic age adjusting. The Goons: Needle nadle noo. Not my stuff, typical kind of thing to amuse Prince Charles: " Oh do grow up Charles"  as his mother said. Peter Sellers in contrast, would be considered today racist and certainly non PC: Indian accents but as a result funny. "We all 'ope you a have ' appenis" by the waiter to the newly weds. Total contrast Tom Lehrer whom I found intellectually brilliant and can still quote/sing large chunks of. I once played it to an Oxford climber physicist 20 years younger who saw nothing amusing in it all, to my amazement. A few days ago, I watched some Fawlty Towers sent me by a relative 35 years younger who obviously still loved it and I thought thoroughly stilted and dated.

But Monty Python, remains the puzzle. Totally outrageous, yet my French wife, very Catholic thought it a real laugh (though I am not sure she may have quite followed the plot exactly: "I wank with the highest in Wome").  And some of it is still outrageously funny, outrageous being the crucial term. Is it that has dated because it laughed at what were still current religious norms? Surely, and does the modern generation even watch it if they don't understand what these were?  Yet much remains a turning point in British humour for me precisely for those reasons. It was because I learnt to laugh at myself, to see the contradictions in my own character and thinking that it hasn't really dated for me.

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Bizarrely anti python thread 🙁.

Dont be put off by people doing the dead parrot sketch badly in your face. The Fast show might bore people because so many people of a certain age will say ‘this week I have mostly been eating xyz’ and expect you to laugh. Go to the source, I hope the beeb will show a few of the originals again now after Terry Jones’s death. They were the definition of hit and miss but when they hit they were brilliant. Don’t forget Terry Gilliam’s stuff, often very funny, and new at the time.

Don’t tell me you’ve never done a Gumby. If not you should do one.

And now for something completely different.

In reply to Le Sapeur:

MP is pure eccentric English comedy genius full of classic scenes and terms that are a part of established British comedy culture, especially from LoB and the HG and still they still raise a smile and warm glow after all these years and lots of viewings. 

Big nose! 

Ps. Ripping Yarns to is wonderful. 

In reply to Pefa:

My favorite ripping yarns episode

youtube.com/watch?v=rdC2aMIXvDw&

Brilliant 

:-D

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Can I enquire as to what comedy act/sketch shows/ stand ups or whatever that you do find funny ?

I'd be interested to know .

TWS

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I find it quite bizarre that several people have used the time of the death of a member of a group to make a big deal about how they don't actually appreciate the work of the group.  

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

I agree, the feature length stuff was much more consistent and all still funny. I was really thinking about the sketch shows which as you say were ground breaking (not so much so as the Goon Show) but now mainly look dated and lame.

In reply to Pefa:

Good enough to name a route after, at least. 

In reply to marsbar:

Yes it's an odd choice of time .

In reply to marsbar:

Yep completely agree with you there and pasbury’s post too. 
 

Does seem like an odd time to express a critical opinion imo 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Aye that one's priceless as is this one in which the handsome Ian Ogilvey plays the school bully. Classic stuff. 

youtube.com/watch?v=GWn2kFMGnB8&

In reply to marsbar:

It's fairly normal, given that Terry Jones' death has brought talk of Monty Python's Flying Circus to the the forefront, and a lot of people are waxing lyrical about it. I don't see this thread as particularly "using" Jones' death. More just a reaction to being reminded of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Le Sapeur states this right there in the OP. 
I don't think it's bizarre. Quite the opposite. 

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Some of it is just plain awful and not funny at all ( 60).But others like the Yorkshire men sketch stand the test of time.

Looking back it reflected the experimental nature of tv at the time and at least they were given the chance to develop.

Some of my friends at that time use to be able to recite whole episodes and colelcted the LP's.All a bit weird.

In reply to neilh:

I used to share an office with a Latvian (now in his 50s) who could (& would) recite entire episodes of Monty Python, I suspect he'd learnt his excellent English by watching British comedy.

In reply to neilh:

That sketch pre-dates Python. 

I'm a fan of Python exactly because some of it is head scratchingly bizarre. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Correct me if I’m wrong but after the subsequent deaths in the last few years of so many artists and actors I’m yet to recall any counter threads appearing at the same time that ‘critiqued’ the artists work.
 

For example, the recent passing of Neil Peart (drummer of Rush) was there another thread along the lines of  ’I don’t like Rush’ - no I don’t think so but had there been, there would have been the same response as a few others had expressed here  - ‘bizarre time to say you don’t like something’ 

In reply to Le Sapeur:

I bought the Matching Monty Python Bow Tie and Handkerchief, which came with a free LP of sketches.

On playing it I found that there were actually 3 sides to the LP!  That was original and completely different and I found it as funny as any of the sketches.

You played side 1 normally.  Side 2 seemed to play rather quickly (for only about half the play length of side 1) so you might reposition the needle to replay it again ...

Only you might hear something completely different - two stereo tracks side by side and it was pretty random which one the needle would find first.

That still amuses my small mind

In reply to marsbar:

Possibly, but check your timings and don't retroject. I wrote my piece last night and it was only in the BBC this  morning that I read of his death. 

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Always loved the series and the films and it defined my youth - Terry Jones' passing made me feel quite old yesterday. My kids love it too and they are also big fans of MP's heir apparent Eddie Izzard. There are definitely weaker sketches which haven't held up well but the number of classic lines that are in regular use in everyday English is testimony to its longevity. The Dutch love it too.

Comedy is like that though, some of it you like, other stuff you can't even begin to see what is remotely funny about it. Mrs Brown drops into that category for me.

Alan

In reply to Tobes:

No specific examples spring to mind but I am almost certain that there have been. I would not call them "counter" threads. They are just comments arising from a renewed awareness of a person's work, and maybe not always in new threads. 

I imagine Lemmy came in for some criticism, for example. 

 

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Monty Python was successful because it was genuinely subversive in the way it poked fun at the institutions and ways of the seventies. English small-mindeness and snobbery were its targets; I wonder what the Pythons would make now of the social snobbery that some first and second-generation immigrants have imported from their countries of origin? I don't watch TV comedy so I don't know if there's a modern equivalent.

In reply to Le Sapeur:

It’s probably your age. All my friends who were really into it are at least 55+. I think at 50 you just missed it. I’m not a great fan but I guess they’re like the Beatles, seeing them when they were new would have been novel and exciting. Watching a repeat 5-6 years later wouldn’t and doesn’t have the same impact. And several years on, only those who were really impacted at the time would still be cult followers. 
 

I find Fawlty Towers is a masterpiece of farce. I think John Cleese will elicit the greater response of the team. 

In reply to marsbar:

‘A big deal’?

A few lines of text debating why so many people assume someone of a certain age should find them funny? It’s a valid question. Hardly a critique. 

In reply to Rigid Raider:

I'd hope that they might ridicule someone who worked where I was a few years back who believed in the caste system.  If that is what importing people from outside the EU means I can't see the benefit to our society.  Plus she was absent drawing salary for all but the first 3 months or so of her "employment" of a year and a half - drawing salary but they couldn't even find out whether she was still in the country or had gone back to her high flying family in the middle east

she told us she was asked at her interview what she would do if something urgent happened in her new "job".

Her reply of "I'd just order people not to go home" is probably what you can do to the lower castes.

In reply to Rigid Raider:

I think you would find it difficult to find any funny comedy these days

Al

In reply to Tobes:

Exactly. Not being familiar with their work, I was moved by the adoration in the Pearl/Rush thread to listen to a few tracks. I thought it was some of the worst musical drivel I’d ever heard. But I wouldn’t have dreamed of commenting along those lines at a moment when fans wanted to give thanks for their enjoyment and the artist’s contribution. This thread is somewhat offensive in my view.

In reply to Removed User:

Always (and still do) preferred the Holy Grail

In reply to pasbury:

Listening to Radio 6 a little while back and they played the 'Cheese Sketch' never heard it before, it was one of the funniest things I'd heard in ages. A lot of Monty Python was a bit surreal and (I suspect by design) would leave me pondering rather than laughing but when they hit the mark they did it as well as any. 

As for dating, note how the Americans eventually caught up and fell in love with them too; decades later.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

I loved MP but at (68) it came at the right time for me - a different type of comedy compared to the usual on TV at the time.

However, each to their own.

I also really liked the Fast Show and League of Gentleman but can't understand why anyone watches Mrs Brown's Boys.

Dave

In reply to BnB:

It’s not offensive at all. The OP is not making any personal attack on Terry Jones. 

In reply to jcw:

Our 12yr old was in stitches when I said that I ate spotted dick with custard at school. I'll test him out with the biggus dickus sketch in a few years. He's already watched the 'it's just a flesh wound" bit. Some of the humour in the films is timeless, the weekly tv episodes less so. 

In reply to Le Sapeur:

For me the very best sketch was the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, as it poked fun at the pomposity of the church and the idiocy of the "upper classes". 

youtube.com/watch?v=ashgP4YMdJw&

l take any thumbs down as rebukes from the said people who expect me to like python!

I gave you a thumb down only because I don't care if you like it or not, only mildly bemused and irritated that you think it worth mentioning. 

In reply to overdrawnboy:

Do you have a rulebook on what's worth mentioning? 
Woes with BT ok is it? 
Induction stoves?
Marmite peanut butter?
 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Anyone who finds this thread offensive ought to visit the actual Terry Jones RIP thread. I'm sure there's a lot more there to be offended about, if you're that way inclined.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Do you have a rulebook on me expressing an opinion? I dislike avocados but wouldn't presume that anyone else would be remotely interested. 

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

Actually, I think the true mould-breaker, rarely given enough credit, was the kid's programme "Do Not Adjust Your Set". Most of the Python team were involved, plus David Jason, and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, with Neil Innes. Looking at the programme now you can definitely see how "Pythonesque" it was, with silly sketches, odd links and occasional lack of punchlines.

In reply to Rigid Raider:

"Five is right out!" is one of my favourite Python lines.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

G'day Bruce

I propose a new thread on how unfunny HHGTTG is

In reply to mbh:

for me the Philosophers football match

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Is this the thread for an argument...?

In reply to captain paranoia:

Not from me - I always like to think of myself as a bit conciliatory......

In reply to BnB:

I doubt it. Rush fans have been listening to Rush for 40 years now and have grown up listening to them. We are well aware that nobody else ‘gets’ them and that’s why despite being the third biggest selling rock group of all time, hardly anyone has ever heard of them. You’d have to go a long way to find anyone to upset with your opinion.

Incidentally, I’m a part time musician and 6 of my friends posted tributes to Neil on Facebook, all of them musicians. Non of my friends are comedians but 3 of them posted Monty Python memes. 

In reply to Jack:

Love Fawlty T and watched some recently. It’s still very funny but a bit too manic at times. Polly, fit as feck!

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Whoosshhh...?

In reply to Tom Valentine:

This is what the Captain was getting at...

youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ&

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

I realised that, hence my use of the word "conciliatory", a reference to the secretary's dismissal of the first possible candidate for Palin to argue with.  

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Don't watch it then

In reply to krikoman:

From the OP "At the moment my Facebook thing is full of quotes and quips from Terry Jones. "

In reply to wercat:

 

Smarmy smug Douglas Adams bitter self-therapy after failing at academia...

In reply to krikoman:

I don't. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Get some new friends

In reply to Le Sapeur:

Good, don't.

In reply to BnB:

There is quite a difference between declaring something to be drivel and saying that, personally, you don't get it or like it.

Looking at old MP episodes I don't find about 70% of them in least bit funny but the remaining 30% are comedy gold.

Similarly Rush. I'm a huge fan of about half their output but don't get on particularly withe the later material. I don't think its disrespectful to Neil Peart

In reply to krikoman:

That's more like it!

Saw a review (just a randommer, not a "critic") of Cats that started "My friends wanted to see this and out of pure curiosity i went with them . Now i have fewer friends. "