Graham Chapman (1941–1989)

The Brand New Monty Python Bok [sic] is the second book to be published by the British comedy team. Edited by Eric Idle, it contains more text based humour than the first book, Monty Python's Big Red Book.

The hardback version was originally published with a white dust jacket that was deliberately designed to appear grubby, with realistic looking smudged fingerprints on the front, which fooled enough booksellers to complain to the publishers when it first hit the shelves in the 1970s. This show more was just the beginning of the real gag however. Should the offended parties attempt to dislodge the grubby dust cover, they were met with an even more 'grubby' mock pornographic magazine cover underneath which purported to be titled 'Tits 'n Bums - a weekly look at church architecture', with articles such as "Are you still a verger?". Just imagine the shriek of embarrassment from browsers in WH Smiths, innocently slipping off the dust cover out of curiosity and then going red in the face with panic as they fumbled to stuff the book back into its sleeve as tits and bums, blazoned across the cover, caught the attention of opinionated bystanders in the shop. Mutterings of 'pervert' and disdainful glares following them as they 'leg it' out the door before they are recognised! (Or, at least, I like to imagine such a scenario). I laughed myself to tears before I'd even opened the cover - which is a good way to start a comedy book.
If you did not find that offensive enough, then the first page contains a glued in school library fly sheet containing a list of all the students who withdrew the book; incl. J.P. Sartre, S. Davis Jr., Shirley Bassey, and lastly a certain 'M. Thatcher'.
Once again, I fell onto the floor visualising this crude porn cover sitting proudly on the shelves of Ferndean School Library. What a thing to suggest! At this point I was crying so hard with shame and laughter that I could barely read the words on the first page. I don't think there has ever been a funnier T.V. Tie in comedy book released before or since!

Inside:
Learn the secret Welsh art of self defence Llap-Goch, acquaint yourself with the Python Book of Etiquette, read the comic adventures of Walter the Wallabee, learn how to cook rat, learn to play Cheeseshop - an exciting new word game for two based on real life retailing, Hamsters: a warning, Teach yourself surgery, and many, many other ridiculous and amusing notions...

Its all good smutty fun. Naughty school-boy humour really; with one foot just over the line of decency which made this troop of comedians so cutting edge at a time when businessmen still wore bowler hats and rubbed shoulders on the tube with the first punk rockers. Strange days indeed!

p.s. Look out for page 71 !!! show less

A companion book of some sort to Monty Python's Flying Circus, published in 1971. There's a lot of familiar stuff in here: the Upper-Class Twit of the Year competition, silly walks (in the form of a series of still photos), Dinsdale and his hedgehog, etc. There are also lots of very silly ads, naughty pictures, a bunch of forewords consisting entirely of people complaining about not being invited to write the foreword... Basically lot of the kind of silliness you expect from Python. The show more result is random, surreal, and ridiculous. So, pretty much exactly like the experience of watching an episode of the show, only without having the actual Pythons to watch, so not quite as good.

Still. I paid 50 cents for this at my local library sale, and I got at least a dollar's worth of laughs out of it, so I'm happy. show less

My parents are responsible for getting me hooked on Monty Python. I remember seeing the dead parrot sketch, the lumberjack song, the Spanish Inquisition, and so much more on PBS back in the day. But what hooked me forever was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My parents had a copy of the movie on Betamax. I lost track of the number of times I'd watched the film after about the 40th time.

I even got to see Graham Chapman on a speaking tour in 1987 while I was in college. I don't recall much show more from it, but one thing still sticks with me. He was talking about the making of Holy Grail and confessed when he realized that he was an alcoholic. They were in the Scottish Highlands. The weight of playing King Arthur was getting to him. He desperately wanted a drink to steady his nerves, but there was nothing available. Between the cold, the dampness, the pressure, and withdrawal symptoms, he was shaking and feverish in his chain mail and wool. He was completely miserable. The auditorium had grown completely silent as Chapman revealed that he was not an invulnerable comedic hero but a human being with all the frailties of mortality.

In October of 1989 he died of cancer.

This book is an account of the group's lives growing up, their days at university, their early pre-Python work, the coalescence of what would become Monty Python, the TV show, the movies, and the inevitable end. Each of the Pythons provided the information in interview format with Chapman's parts taken from previous memoirs and from his brother and his partner. So you would get each of their recollections about events, what they were doing and thinking.

It's clear to me now that postwar English schools were horrid places. Roger Waters, Bruce Dickinson, and the members of Monty Python have all provided details about how miserable these places were. It's almost as if the adults were punishing the children for not having a dour disposition brought on by the travails of the war.

It was really interesting to see how the Python troupe came together, and I'm curious to know how well the pre-Python work holds up. Of course, with the BBC in the habit of recycling all of its tapes back then, I don't know if any of it still exists.

There was a certain joie de vivre that the group back in the days of the TV show, and it was a delight to read about it. But you could see it start to slip away. Certain members didn't want to do the TV show anymore, so others suggested a movie. And for a while they were happy again. Holy Grail was a success and then Life of Brian. They would separate to work on their personal projects, but they would always come back. But they got the work process wrong with The Meaning of Life. Lessons of creation were forgotten. The joy was gone.

When Chapman died, the unraveling of the knot that kept them together quickened. They tried to reunite, but there was always someone to veto a project, whether it be TV, movie, or tour. While they still professed their love for one another, it was clear to me by this book's publication in 2003 that Monty Python had ceased to be as a creative entity.

While there was an abundance of detailed material for their early years, it seemed like when the joy was gone, so too went many of the details. All of these non-Python side projects they were involved in left huge gaps between events in the Python history. The interview format kind of broke down with grudges and hurt feelings creeping in. Subjective accounts obscured objective reality, forcing the reader to deduce what actually happened.

I'm glad that I read it, but now it's more of a reference book than something to revisit for nostalgia's sake, which I guess is why I read it in the first place. show less

Em honra dos 50 anos do Flying Circus a ser comemorado esse ano.
Depois de ler ess livro não sei gosto mais tanto assim do John Cleese, claro, ele é um gênio da comédia física e verbal, mas ele me parece ser particularmente insuportável de se conviver, mas tudo bem, também acho isso do Peter Sellers e nem por isso ele é menos gênio.
No mais é um livro super informativo para fãs dos Pythons, há diversos detalhes e pequenas informações que me passaram batido em todos essas décadas show more admirando-os, além de também reiterar informações que os fãs de comédia inglesa sabem por osmose, eles nunca deixam de mencionar que foram os Goons e o pessoal do Beyond The Fringe que abriram as portas para o tipo de comédia que faziam, o que achei bem ético da parte deles.
A informação mais interessante desse livro é a afirmação dos Terrys que a influência cinematográfica principal do Holy Grail foi Pasolini. E nóis achando que era o Monicelli. Italiano errado. show less