And now for something completely awful
From the Ministry of Silly Walks to the dead parrot sketch, Monty Python’s Flying Circus is widely remembered as a classic from a golden age of TV comedy.
Newly unearthed documents show that some senior BBC managers did not see the funny side, however. The satirical sketch show was condemned as disgusting, sadistic and ‘‘simply not amusing’’ by executives responsible for assessing the broadcaster’s output.
Bill Cotton, the BBC’s head of light entertainment, said the second series in 1970 was so bad that the group ‘‘seemed to have some sort of death wish’’. Other executives complained that the show’s values were ‘‘nihilistic and cruel’’.
Managers from rival BBC departments were particularly sceptical about the anarchic sixman troupe. Robert Reid, head of science and features, accused them of wallowing in ‘‘the sadism of their humour’’, while Aubrey Singer, head of features, complained that some of the skits were ‘‘disgusting’’.
The BBC’s head of religious programming protested about a sequence in which paintings of Jesus and the Virgin and Child were animated, while the controller of BBC One lodged objections about the ‘‘appalling taste’’ of a death scene.
He was more positive about the communist quiz sketch in which Marx, Lenin and other revolutionary leaders answer pop culture trivia questions. ‘‘Quite hilarious,’’ was the verdict.
The candid views of the senior executives attending internal weekly review meetings are contained within a trove of Monty Python documents and photographs published by the BBC to mark the show’s 50th anniversary.
The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, starring John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman, aired on BBC One on October 5, 1969. Its graveyard slot – 10.55pm on a Sunday – reflected the experimental nature of the Oxbridge graduates’ humour.
Viewer reaction was broadly positive, however, and overcame the executives’ misgivings. Focus group research by the BBC found that about half of viewers ‘‘thoroughly enjoyed’’ the programme. ‘‘It is outrageous and I love every minute of it,’’ one said.
A quarter of those surveyed were unfavourable bordering on hostile, however, dismissing the comedy as sick and infantile.
The documents also expose the producers’ frustration at the group for lacing their scripts with potentially dangerous in-jokes. The real address and phone number of TV presenter David Frost were mentioned in the original 1969 versions of two sketches, The Marriage Guidance Counsellor and The Mouse Problem.
BBC History is using the groundbreaking Monty Python sketches to teach young people how to write comedy. As part of the project, pupils from Swanlea School in Whitechapel, east London, were taught to perform Hell’s Grannies and Ministry of Silly Walks.