Found! The lost Holy Grail of Python sketches
HAVE you spent decades pining for the Pythons?
Well here’s some news to make you sit up on your perch.
After more than 35 years without any new material, two unseen sketches by the comedy legends have been discovered.
The Pythons – John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman and Terry Gilliam – have not released any collective work since The Meaning of Life film in 1983.
The two sketches, written for the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, were found in archives Palin handed to the British Library last year. The files also contained dozens of unused script ideas. One sketch is about a Wild West bookshop while another features an ‘amorous Pink Knight’.
There are plans for them to go on display to the public along with more than 50 notebooks on Holy Grail and the 1979 film Life Of Brian, according to The Times. Scenes and jokes deemed controversial at the time were discarded while the Pink Knight material is very politically incorrect from a modern viewpoint.
The archives also reveal how Holy Grail, a typically Pythonesque take on the exploits of King Arthur and his knights, was meant to have a different ending – an epic battle scene – but it was ditched to save money.
In one of the unseen sketches a man appears from the desert in need of a beer only to find a Wild West saloon which is actually a bookshop.
The Pink Knight sketch, which was written by Palin and Jones, begins with a knight standing ‘in a slightly camp pose’ while declaring that King Arthur cannot cross a bridge unless he gives him a kiss. Another unused script in the archive has a handwritten sequence for Sir Tristram, a knight who tries to track down the grail using scientific principles.
Palin, 75, said the group often created more material than was needed. He added: ‘We did produce an awful lot of material when we were on song. Sometimes you have things like that.
‘I can’t think why it wasn’t used. The Holy Grail took shape gradually and at the beginning it had far more ideas in it than ended up on screen because you had to have a narrative. In the end the story of the knights was strong enough.’
Palin said the unused sketches were a surprise to him. He explained: ‘For me there’s lots of material in those boxes that I’ve not yet seen myself [since it was written]. It’s rather wonderful to hear them.’ The archives showcase Palin’s creative life from 1965 to 1987.
Palin told The Times the Pink Knight sketch would be very different if written today, adding: ‘I think probably it wouldn’t be quite the same because the establishment attitude has changed quite a lot.
‘When we were writing Python in 1973 there was much more homophobia – or rather not homophobia exactly, but awkwardness of dealing with the whole subject of homosexuality.’
Palin’s writing partner Jones, 76, has dementia, but his family have approved the publication of the sketches. Cleese has suggested that Monty Python’s Flying Circus is no longer regularly on TV is because it’s ‘too funny’ compared to modern comedies.
‘I can’t think why it wasn’t used’