A python in the Tron
The death of Monty Python’s Terry Jones has rather been forgotten in all the hoopla since about a basketball player. The twin tragedies are another litmus test of our time, further evidence that the populace is divided along generational lines.
If you were born during World War II or shortly thereafter the likely response to news of the helicopter crash was a shrug of the shoulders and a ‘‘who’s Kobe?’’ quip.
The New Zealand Baby Boomer is no doubt as emotionally devastated as the average North American was upon being told that Martin Crowe had prematurely met his maker.
By contrast, the archetypal millennial, grief struck at the social media outpourings about Bryant if perhaps challenged by postings about his 2003 rape case and the suspension of the one journalist in the world brave enough to depart from the hagiographic script, probably missed an earlier story concerning the demise of Monty Python’s sole Welshman.
The (not so) Virgin Mandy, mother to that naughty boy Brian, Mr Creosote, the fattest man in the world, numerously shrill ‘‘pepper pot’’ working class caricatures and the melodic singer who gave us Never Be Rude to an Arab ,isno more. A man of unending political incorrectness, who insensitively mocked race, body shape, gender and religion, a relic from an era when humour dared to be funny.
Sufficiently aged to have enjoyed Terry Jones before his and the Python material became just that little bit problematic, I was saddened.
Moreover, celebrations of Jones’ legacy revealed an earlier, associated death. Monty Python had lost not just one but two members of the family.
A Python associate, often called the troupe’s ‘‘seventh member’’, had expired at the very end of 2019: Neil Innes.
I only knew Jones through television, movies and records. Innes I saw in the flesh.
On March 4, 2002 he was the most unlikeliest of headline acts at Waikato University’s Orientation Week. If he didn’t actually open the then new Academy of the Performing Arts he was its first international star.
Even back then, it was a hard sell to first year students born after the release of the Python’s last truly original collaboration, 1983’s The Meaning of Life.
You also had to be in the know about Innes himself, whose close association with Eric Idle, collaborating on the shortlived Rutland Weekend Television and its cult spin-off, All You Need is Cash, a very knowing parody of The Beatles, led some to believe that he had written more Python ditties than he had.
My friend Thom Burton was amongst the youngest in a crowd that filled no more than a third of the flash new venue.
Expecting something anarchic, he didn’t entirely warm to a performer whose idea of audience interaction was the collective blowing of raspberries.
Thom remembers the material being ‘‘more earnest’’ than anticipated, with Innes affecting an American accent at times both between and during songs. ‘‘It was nice’’, he says, ‘‘but it didn’t make me laugh’’.
The anticipated Python sing-along didn’t eventuate, though Innes did favour us with anecdotes about working with the boys.
A highlight of the night was the now classic story about how he had once initiated an evocation of the famous Iam Spartacus scene from the film of the same name whilst on a flight to Canada, with each of the Pythons standing up in turn and repeating the phrase I am Mr Cohen. Innes also played his hits, How Sweet to Be an Idiot and‘I’m the Urban Spaceman, as well as the devastatingly funny Lennonesque Cheese & Onions.
One knowledgeable fan present was Graeme Cairns, the Laird McGillicuddy, whose own efforts in the political sphere perhaps took something from the Python’s ‘‘Election Night Special’’ skit. Graeme’s appreciation of Innes dated back to the musician’s work with the avant garde Bonzo Doo-Dah Band, with Vivian Stanshall, which he felt had more wit and originality than the later parodies.
Believing that Innes lacked the vocal range to achieve the same kind of bizarre sounds as Stanshall could at the band’s peak, Graeme was happy to discover otherwise.
A few months later Innes took his place with the Pythons at London’s Royal Albert Hall in the Concert for George, a magnificent tribute to George Harrison a year on from the Beatle’s death, watched by thousands live and millions thereafter on film.
If the Hamilton O-Week crowd was rather small and muted in comparison it didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.