David Jason & Monty Python: Part Two

What I'm Reading Wednesday

David Jason's first big TV comedy came in 1967 with "Do Not Adjust Your Set."  In addition to costar Denise Coffey, he played alongside Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones.  Whereas the latter three attended prestigious Cambridge and Oxford, Jason hadn't possessed the right background or grades to attend any sort of university. The three Pre-Pythons were younger than him, and boasted far less acting experience. Nevertheless, they exuded a confidence in their abilities that Jason greatly envied.  

Another factor which separated him was their friendship. The three already knew each other well, having shared so many experiences, and previously collaborated together.  As a result, Jason found them "posh" and "a bit cliquey."  I've enjoyed Michael Palin's diaries from the 1970s and '80s, so I was glad to learn that he "seemed the nicest," and that Jason "felt that there was less of a boundary with him."  Nonetheless, the show was divided into halves, with Jason and Coffey filming their silent comedy routines, and occasionally performing on studio-bound skits written by the other three.  

While Jason and Coffey contributed a few skits, and improvised their "Captain Fantastic" routines, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones wrote the bulk of each episode.  During the first season, David Jason recalls that everyone contributed enthusiastically.  But as would reoccur on "Monty Python" at the BBC, Idle, Palin, and Jones grew increasingly frustrated during the second season.  They saw their imaginations being stifled by the limitations of a children's show.  Eventually, the three petitioned the Head of Comedy at Rediffusion to schedule the show later in the evening.  He refused, on the grounds that "Do Not Adjust Your Set" was the most successful show the company had ever produced. Feeling that they needed to explore their creativity in different ways, the three left Rediffusion, which effectively ended the show.

Although he didn't know it at the time, David Jason was one of the budding young stars of English comedy.  "Do Not Adjust Your Set" would serve as a stepping stone for his career, and he would go on to perform (and star in) a great number of TV shows, including one of my personal favorites, "Open All Hours."  He may never have been a writer, but through hard work and persistence, he later became someone whom TV producers sought out and asked, "What type of program would you like us to build around you?"  He became so highly regarded in Britain that in 2005 he was knighted by the Queen. 

Still, when he was climbing the ladder of British TV, and he saw Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones shoot to worldwide fame with "Monty Python," he felt tremendously jealous.  Well, be honest: wouldn't you?  But then, none of us know all that the future holds in store for us.

"All hail Sir David Jason, knight of the British TV realm!"

Dragon Dave  

Related Internet Links

Watch an episode of "Captain Fantastic" on youtube

Watch the first episode of "Open All Hours" on youtube

Writer Roy Clarke and cast on the 2013 "Open All Hours" reunion episode

Beware Frank Bellamy's Winged Avenger

Marvelous Monday Comics

In The Avengers episode "Winged Avenger," someone is killing ruthless industrialists.  Government agents Emma Peel and John Steed find their clawed corpses in locked, upper-story offices.

At first, Emma Peel doesn't notice this comic lying among the papers knocked off the desk of one victim.

But when another ends up dead, on the grounds of his estate, she remembers one panel from the comic, and Steed agrees on the striking similarity.

This leads Emma Peel and John Steed to the offices of Winged Avengers Enterprises, where they find a man dressed up in the Winged Avenger costume, poised to savage beautiful women with his deadly claws.  But even if the killer wore the costume, how did he climb up the sheer walls of office buildings?  And who might have used the costume to murder the heartless businessmen?  The artist who is gradually taking over every aspect of the comic book's production?  The writer who is growing more and more frustrated with his partner?  Or the model, who sometimes leaves the office at the end of the day, so comfortable in the costume that he's forgotten he's wearing it?

"Winged Avenger" features lots of comic book imagery, drawn by Frank Bellamy, a British artist who died too young.  He may be most remembered by fans of the comics version of Gerry Anderson's Sci-Fi puppet TV show "Thunderbirds."  Die-hard Monty Python's Flying Circus fans can also find his artwork in Terry Jones and Michael Palin's children's book Bert Fegg's Nasty Book For Boys & Girls, which satirized British annuals of the period, and recycled Monty Python scripts.  That is, if you can find a copy.

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries
Emma Peel & Daleks

Related Internet Links
Watch "Winged Avenger"
Frank Bellamy at Wikipedia

Roald Dahl's Advice to Michael Palin

While vacationing in Ireland in October 1980, Michael Palin's friend, cartoonist Mel Calman, suggested they collaborate on a children's story. Palin started work on two ideas the next day, and that evening, he handed "the scribbled pages (snatched from Rachel's drawing pad) to Mel to think about." As it would turn out, Calman (best known for his "Little Man" newspaper cartoons) would illustrate neither.  But three months later, Methuen, who had previously published Dr. Fegg's Nasty Book (a parody of British annuals) for Palin and Terry Jones, expressed interest in one of the stories.  

Methuen promised Palin a 15,000 print run for his first story, Small Harry and the Toothache Pills, and tasked an illustrator named Caroline Holden with the artwork.  Palin didn't fuss over the contract terms, as he had much bigger projects (i.e. movies) on his mind.  He would later publish additional children's books, and Holden would illustrate the second story he wrote during that 1980 holiday: Cyril and the Dinner Party.

A year after his initial meeting with Methuen, in January 1982, Palin was attending a function at the BBC when who should he find next to him but the famous author Roald Dahl.  By this time, Palin was a celebrity in his own right.  Yet Palin went to "introduce myself and bother him with praise."  Dahl advised him "that a good standard popular kids' book is the way to make money," and further added, "a successful children's author will do a lot better in the long run than Graham Greene."  

Having read several of Dahl's stories, I'm not convinced that he (or for that matter Palin) ever wrote a standard kid's book.  Both men possess an edgy, if unconventional sense of humor.  Dahl even mentioned "he had received many letters of complaint about his books from teachers, and Danny [Champion of the World] was banned in Denmark because it 'teaches children to cheat.'" But he seems to be right about Graham Greene, as I've never read a novel about this Nobel-nominated author who saw many of his stories adapted into movies.   

Chance meetings like this, between a young author and an idol who inspired his own writing efforts, offer another reason to get my work published as quickly as possible.  It also amazes me that, even though he was on holiday, Palin leapt at the opportunity to write a story with his friend.  With so many competing demands on his time, he could have put the idea off for later, or dismissed it as being unworthy of his time. (It wasn't as if the books would greatly enhance his fame or bank balance).  Yet he grasped the opportunity when it was presented to him, and when he later met Roald Dahl, he met the man as, if not an equal, at least as a fellow children's author.

That must have been a good feeling.

Dragon Dave

P.S.  I can't find much information on Caroline Holden's life and work, except that she later ended up in California, were she worked as a lifeguard during the final four seasons of the TV show "Baywatch." Probably not the same woman, but hey, you never know....

Related Internet Links
Mel Calman cartoons
Two short reader reviews of Small Harry and the Toothache Pills

Monty Python Discover The Meaning of Life

In the 1970s, when John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idol, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin started working together, they were full of enthusiasm.  The ideas flowed, and each was excited by the others' efforts.  But as the years went by, tensions mounted as each yearned to pursue his own projects, and all were frustrated by the low pay they reaped from their TV shows and movies.  In 1981, after innumerable discussions, writing attempts, and delays, the men felt as if they were getting nowhere with a follow-up to their previous film, "The Life of Brian."  In his diary from November 25th, Michael Palin records that he'll be "mightily relieved when this next Python film is done and out of the way and we don't have to write together for another four years."

Hoping that a change of venue might inspire them, the six men flew to Jamaica in January 1982, where they rented a house.  At first, they floundered to write material they all liked, or devise a structure that could encompass all the skits they had come up with.  One morning, while Michael Palin and Graham Chapman were working together, their cook told them she needed a ride to the market.  So they threw out ideas as they chauffeured Beryl around the island to buy the ingredients for the evening meal.  They dreamed up a musical number involving fish and a mystery play.  After lunch, none of the others liked their idea. John Cleese and Eric Idol wanted to revisit an old idea for an over-arching narrative, but no one liked that either.  When the two Terrys then suggested the old TV idea of "a rag-bag of non-sequiturs and complex connections" to link the various skits, the mere idea of repeating themselves sapped everyone's creativity.  "It's as if...this is the moment that this material--the best of three years' writing--finally defeated us."

But their efforts would not end in defeat.  The next day, Terry Jones estimated that they had roughly 100 minutes of good material.  "This seems to spur people into another effort," Palin wrote.  Within minutes, they had a title they liked, "Monty Python's Meaning of Life," and began hammering out the various phases of the movie's structure.  They are on a roll again, they are all excited, and most importantly, they had found the direction they needed to finish the script.  

Although they didn't know it at the time, "The Meaning of Life" would be the last movie the six men made together.  It may not be the best film ever made, but it holds an enviable 89% critics rating and an 82% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  More importantly, it was a film that the six men cared about, and dearly wished to make.  Yes, a moment of inspiration allowed them to assemble the film into a form that they could all agree on, but it only occurred after three years of hard work, and because they didn't give up on a project that was important to them.

Dragon Dave  

Related Internet Links
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life on Rotten Tomatoes

Please Don't Criticize Michael Palin

On November 9, 1981, Michael Palin records in his diary:

"The Missionary: Mark II" arrives from the typist's, and I fall on it and read it through eagerly.  It reads very well and I'm happy with the last-minute cuts and readjustments.  And I laughed more, much more, than at Mk 1.

Sent the script round by cabs to Neville [the producer] and Richard L [the slated director].  Watch some television.  Can't keep my mind on my writing.  I'm half hoping the phone will ring before I go to bed and bring some breathless enthusiasm from one or another of them for the new script.  This is what I need now.

Ironically, the phone rings a few hours later, and he learns from the distribution company that "Time Bandits," the film over which he and Terry Gilliam worked so hard (and agonized so much) has taken in more during its first three days in America than any film the company previously handled.  

I'd still rather have had a phone call about The Missionary, he records.


The following morning, Neville Thompson calls.  

"My heart sinks utterly as he tells me that he wants to see the original script, because he feels I've lost a lot in the rewrites.  I'm sure he doesn't realize what a dashing blow this is after two months' rewriting. Anything but wild enthusiasm is a dashing blow!"

At the 2006 World Fantasy Convention, a celebrated Fantasy author said during a panel discussion that he hated it when a reader told him what he disliked about one of his stories.  Even if the reader generally liked it, but had a few small criticisms, he didn't want to hear them.  The author simply preferred to hear, "I enjoyed reading it," and nothing else about the story.  I can certainly understand where that author was coming from.  An author tries, as best he (or she) can, to translate the vision or idea in his head into words.  This is not easy, and no matter how pleased he is with the end result, all art is subjective, and thus, not all of his readers will feel the same way about his efforts.  

At the same convention (one which, by the way, celebrated the centenary of Robert E. Howard's birth), I overheard another author telling someone how members of her publishing house had sat her down in their suite, and then raked her manuscript over the coals for two hours. It must have seemed as if nothing she had written was good enough. From what little I heard, it sounded like a pretty terrible experience. When the book was finally published, she thanked one member of the publishing house in her Acknowledgements for giving her the idea of rewriting the novel from the perspective of one particular character. Having read the novel, I can attest that I enjoyed it.  As I never read the earlier draft, I cannot compare the two versions.  However, I can imagine how difficult it must have been for her to rewrite the manuscript, and how long that process must have taken her.

One thing seems certain as I look (with hopeful eyes) toward eventual publication: people will criticize my work.  Some will criticize the story before it reaches its final form, and others (readers and reviewers) will criticize it once it goes on sale.  It will be up to me to not just accept the fact that someone is criticizing my efforts, but also to determine if I can use their ideas to improve my current or future stories.  I suppose that if people have taken the time to read my story, I should be willing to hear their reactions to it.  But, as the celebrated Fantasy author said in 2006, and as Michael Palin records in 1981, I'm sure there will be times when I will feel as if I really need to just get a verbal pat on the back, and nothing else.

Artists are fragile.  Handle with care.

And whatever you do, please don't criticize Michael Palin.  He's awesome!

Dragon Dave

Michael Palin’s Discipline

Hawaii’s remote location is both a blessing and a curse.  Traveling there makes for a delightful change of place, where aided by the warm temperature, the cool tradewinds, the stunningly beautiful landscape, and the laid-back, carefree nature of islanders, one can cast off the cares of the world.  And yet, because so much must be transported there, everything becomes more expensive.  Staying in a remote location such as Punalu’u becomes even more expensive, with such necessities as a half-gallon container of ice cream (which in recent years has been bastardized down to 1.75 or even 1.5 quarts) costing ten or twelve dollars in a local grocery store.

So it was that my wife and I embarked on the hour-plus drive back to Hilo, where for a mere seven or eight dollars, our modern, sleeker cartons of ice cream could be found.  Other comforts of civilization cost too much, and had to be left on the shelves for budgetary reasons.

While there, in this pinnacle of Hawaiian civilization, we took the time to visit Hilo Bay Books.  There I secured a few precious items of literature that I had wondered if I might ever find.  Noticing the man behind the counter was watching a clip from "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" on his computer, I mentioned that I was currently reading Michael Palin’s Diaries.  To my surprise, he asked which of the two volumes I was referring to.  "The second one, concentrating on the 1980s," I told him. Like me, he loved the classic TV series, and was amazed by the creativity of its founders.

Michael Palin has been blessed with enviable talent, but that didn’t mean he could simply sit down and whip up a masterpiece whenever the mood struck him.  As a successful actor, writer, and TV presenter, his time and talents were in constant demands, to say nothing of all his personal commitments to his family and friends.  In the spring of 1981, Palin had finished his scenes for “Time Bandits.”  Yet he was constantly involved with the film, due to his friendship with Terry Gilliam, the disagreements between the Pythons and their management, the brewing trouble between Gilliam and George Harrison over the film’s music, and the constant rejections from American distributors.  Add to all that his regular meetings with the Pythons as they transacted business and tried to cobble together various ideas for what would become their final theatrical movie, “The Meaning of Life.” 

Finding time to pursue personal projects proved nearly impossible.  He constantly fended off offers from TV, movies, and fellow Pythons to participate in other movie and TV productions.  Yet he carved out several hours each day for writing.  Initially, he wasn’t sure what type of story he wanted to tell.  With so many competing distractions, this uncertainty over the shape and scope of the finished project didn’t help.

On March 9^th, he records, “Nothing springs instantly to my pen—no characters so all-consumingly important that I have to write about them.  It’s a shame really—all those people out there with burning convictions and desperate messages to the world which they can never make anyone listen to and here am I, pen poised to create entertainment for the world and not knowing what I want to say.”

Three days later, he faces another long day at his desk.  He estimates when he should finish.  He wonders when he can have his next cup of coffee.  He records, “Yawn.  Stretch.  Yawn.  Look blankly through all I’ve written this week, trying desperately to summon up any belief in the purpose of these arbitrary scribblings and character snippings.” 

“The hour passes without hardly a line written.  It’s like insomnia, in reverse.  My mind refuses to wake up.”

Later that day, he opts to go for a run during an unseasonable dry spell.  As he pounds around Parliament Hill and nearby surroundings, inspiration strikes.  By the time he returns home, he sits down with renewed enthusiasm, and with clarity of focus starts to write what would eventually become the film “The Missionary.”

Okay, his breakthrough didn’t occur while he was actually sitting down at his desk, trying to write.  The idea only struck him when he went out for a run.  But would it have occurred to him if he hadn’t chained himself to the desk each day for hours at a time?  I don’t think it would have.  How about you?

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries

Palin’s Perspective

Related Internet Links

Hilo Bay Books

Palin’s Perspective

Before I read Michael Palin’s Diaries, I only knew him as a performer, and in that regard, chiefly for his work in Monty Python.  But just as there was more to the comedy ensemble than their TV show and movies, Michael Palin is much more than a performer.  There’s Michael Palin the family man, Michael Palin the entrepreneur, and Michael Palin the creator.  As a writer, I enjoyed reading about how he constantly turned his mind to new and interesting challenges.  Using his fame and prestige from Python, he tries his hand at all kinds of creative endeavors, from writing and directing his own TV shows, to acting in nonPython feature films, and writing stories of all kinds, including children’s stories and novels for adults. 

In addition to his creativity, Halfway To Hollywood reveals his perspective on life in the 1980s.  We see London through his eyes, and glimpse other places he visits, from other areas of England, to other cities in Europe, and even to the United States.  These insights function as a mirror, reveal how we often disregard what is immediately in front of us, praise what seems new and noteworthy, and reject what seems too different to be desirable.

Recently, I chatted with a friend about his business trips to England.  His initial perspective on English cuisine was that he didn’t like it.  But then, as we talked further, it became apparent that he had enjoyed many pleasant meals there.  This jibes with my own trips to England, where I tried many of the delicacies I had seen or read about in English fiction.  While I ultimately decided that Black Pudding and Kippers weren’t my favorites, I loved Cornish Pasties, Steak and Kidney Pies, and many of the cakes and tarts I tried.

In his entry for October 27, 1980, Michael Palin writes of a trip to Ireland, in which he ate “eggs and bacon like it used to taste before it was sealed and suffocated in cellophane packets, and home-made bread and toast too thick and generously cut to fit in any toaster.”  Cuisine in England must have changed since the early 1980s, for his appreciation of Irish breakfasts sound akin to my appreciation of English breakfasts.  I certainly never had eggs and bacon that tasted mass-produced.  In fact, the bacon there was far better, in my opinion, than what we get in America.  Also, the rich flavor of their breads made me appreciate our varieties all the more upon my return to the United States.  I never enjoyed dining at Panera Bread, for example, until we visited England.  It has since become one of my favorite lunch spots.

There’s only one problem with appreciating cultural differences.  For, while travel can broaden the mind, it can also broaden the hips.

Dragon Dave  

A Ramble, a Triumph, and a Risky Sacrifice

"Ooh, bookshops!"

After we left St. Martins in the Fields, the next stop on our list was the British Museum.  The one o’clock service had left us feeling rather mellow, so as we walked London’s streets, we wandered inside any stores that interested us, particularly several bookshops, where I searched the shelves for the work of several English authors.  I eventually found a novel I didn’t have by E. F. Benson.  This prolific English novelist wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but his work is little remembered in the States.  I had hunted down all six books in his Mapp and Lucia series. Now I had a new novel to enjoy.  In Mrs. Ames, the title character dominates everyone in her small town, but when latest social triumph backfires, her previously obedient husband falls under another woman’s thrall.  In order to reclaim him, she is forced to endure a painful journey of self-discovery.  While it was yet another novel of social manners (I had been hoping for one of his biographies, memoirs, or tales of the supernatural), it was a still a new book to read by an author who has brought me much joy.  I left the store in a triumphant mood.

After awhile, we realized that we had become lost, and consulted the doorman standing outside a boutique hotel.  He directed our footsteps onward, and a few blocks later, we found ourselves outside the British Museum.

We joined the throng, and made our way inside.  The lives of the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks hold great interest for me, and here I was, where I could explore so many relics of these ancient civilizations.  Yet, I suddenly realized that with the afternoon passing so quickly, we could spend the rest of the day here (just an hour or two was left until closing), or we could hurry to see the other places on our list before they closed for the day.  After a quick huddle, we decided that we really needed more time to explore this building’s many treasures.  So reluctantly, we consigned the British Museum to another vacation, and left in search of Covent Garden.

A beautiful woman poses for my camera

It may seem odd for someone to choose a popular shopping area such as Covent Garden over studying such important historical artifacts as the Rosetta Stone, a limestone fragment from the Sphinx, or statues from the Parthenon.  But my primary purpose in traveling to England was to understand how people here lived their daily lives, as well as gain deeper insight into their culture and traditions.  And there was one shop in particular that we wanted to visit, one that epitomized the difference between our two great countries: Neal’s Yard Dairy.  The moment we had seen it in a Rick Steves’ travelogue on PBS, we had decided that we needed to go there. 

Neal’s Yard is a small area located near Covent Garden.  In his book Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years, Michael Palin relates that he and Terry Gilliam were once part owners of a film studio there.  I find this ironic, because if you poll any group of Monty Python fans, along with the “Ministry of Silly Walks” and the “Dead Parrot” sketch, another that is sure to be mentioned is “The Cheese Shop.”  Cheese plays an important role in English culture.  In shows as diverse as “Fawlty Towers” and “Yes, Prime Minister,” people are seen concluding their meals with several types of cheese.  And these are not varieties that most Americans would recognize, but those that, if they are offered in our supermarkets, are almost always imported from other countries.  As Stephen Fry (actor, writer, comedian, and poet) states in his book, Stephen Fry in America:

“America doesn’t get cheese.  They put up with the most hideous orange melted gunk, weird vestigial descendants of Munster and Cheddar…Cheese, in the real sense of the word, along with proper bread, can only be found in special places in America, usually cities with a student and artist population.”

We wanted to discover what exactly it was that the English “got” and Americans didn’t.  For this, we had sacrificed seeing the priceless treasures of the British Museum.  We could only hope that we would not later regret our decision.

Related Dragon Cache stories

Our visit to St. Martins in the Fields

The first entry in my England series

How Monty Python battled for Americans’ rights

Related Internet Links

A little about E. F. Benson

The E. F. Benson Society

Monty Python’s Crusade Part Three: “...And For Eternity”

In 1975, the giant ABC network purchased the group's Season Four episodes for broadcast to American viewers.  This represented the first real opportunity for everyone in the United States to witness the wonder that was Monty Python.  But instead of broadcasting the six shows individually and uncut, the network chose to edit nearly every skit and combine the resultant material into two specials.  Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin flew to America in the hopes of achieving a satisfactory compromise, but after meeting with executives, realized that preserving the artistic merits of their material outside of court was impossible.  So the following day, the two men went into a New York City court room to take on the giant American network.


They lost.


After fighting so hard, and being robbed of even a compromise settlement, Monty Python decided to fight on, believing that not only their reputation in America, but also the artistic merits of their material, had been significantly harmed by ABC.  This legal process continued throughout 1976, until on December 16th, nearly one year after Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin had battled the American giant and lost, a settlement was reached.  In addition to paying Monty Python’s legal costs, ABC agreed not to transmit any more shows unless the group approved any cuts made to their material.  More important, as neither the BBC nor ABC seemed to care about the artistic merits of their material, the group would receive their original tapes back after five years, and Monty Python would hold all rights associated with them.


Because Gilliam and Palin traveled to America to fight on behalf of their group, and because the members continued to crusade for their rights, not only did Monty Python emerge victorious from this battle, but the entire world benefited.  In the 1960s and 70s, TV was still a relatively new art form.  Not able to foresee the proliferation of cable television channels and the home video market, studios and production companies often failed to properly preserve their creations.  TV episodes that had broadcast in their home countries and sold abroad were often junked.  Some shows, such as Doctor Who, and even big budget movies from the past have thus been lost forever, or exist only in edited form.  (Even an episode of John Cleese and Connie Booth’s hilarious “Faulty Towers” is missing footage cut for a later rebroadcast).  And, as incomprehensible as it seems, before releasing them on home video, studios today continue this practice of editing these priceless artifacts of entertainment history to conform to today’s politically-correct tastes. 


You never know what others will find of value, either today, or in the years to come.  If this story teaches us anything, it is that you cannot count upon others to treasure your work.  So if you believe what you have created has value, you must fight to preserve it, or risk losing it.  For yourself.  For everyone.  And forever.


In fighting to secure all rights to their material, Monty Python ensured that later generations would be able to enjoy these timeless shows so rich in truth, hilarity, and as (to adapt what their friend) Douglas Adams said, everything “to do with life.”  So thank you Monty Python, and especially Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin, you real-life crusaders, you!


Research for this blog post was entirely taken from Michael Palin Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years, published by St. Martin’s Press.  And yes, to present his views in this abbreviated account, his entries were heavily edited.

Monty Python’s Crusade Part Two: “...For You”

In 1975, the ABC Network purchased the rights to Monty Python’s Season Four.  Instead of broadcasting each episode individually and in its entirety, the network chose to combine the six shows into two specials.  During this process, they made so many cuts to nearly every skit that the comedy team felt the American network had robbed their material of all artistic merit.  So in mid-December, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin flew to America to fight for an injunction against ABC’s first scheduled broadcast on the December 26th.


The two were forced to cancel personal commitments, deprive their families of their presence during the holiday season, and give up days that could have been spent on more creative tasks.  After facing weather delays, the two men arrived in New York City, where they suffered the annoyances of jet lag and lost luggage.  They attempted to reach a satisfactory compromise with ABC, but after meeting with executives, realized that an out-of-court settlement was impossible.  So on December 19th, the two Englishmen walked into a New York City courtroom to take on the giant American network.


How does one describe a sketch to a court and make it sound funny?  How do you make the judge understand how ABC’s cuts robbed the material of its creators’ original intent?  And how does an Englishman explain why an aspect of his society that is wholly alien to American culture is not only funny but worth preserving for ABC’s viewers?  These were the dilemmas Michael Palin faced as he struggled to answer the judge’s detailed questions.  Later in the day, a TV was rolled into the courtroom and everyone squeezed in around the judge.  The format for the viewing was this: they would watch an episode from Season Four as it was originally transmitted by the BBC, then follow that with ABC’s highly-edited version. 


After considering the evidence, the judge decided that while Monty Python’s original material was irreparably damaged, he couldn’t issue an injunction.  However, he would consider ordering that a disclaimer from the group be placed at the beginning of each special.  While this wasn’t what the comedy team had sought, at least such a disclaimer would accomplish the group’s intent of making American viewers aware that these specials did not represent their original artistic vision.  So it appeared their efforts had not been wasted: Monty Python had won a compromise, if not out-right victory. 


While the men yearned to return home immediately, weather had delayed or canceled many flights.  All available planes returning to England seemed fully-booked.  Somehow, the men got themselves aboard an Air Iran flight to Tehran via Heathrow.  Back home in England after a difficult flight (and realizing that their luggage was on its way to Tehran), the two made up the time lost with their work and their families.  Then, on the day before Christmas, the bomb fell.  Gilliam and Palin learned that ABC had appealed the judge’s decision, and won.  The network would not be forced to transmit the following disclaimer: “The members of Monty Python wish to disassociate themselves from this program, which is a compilation of their shows edited by ABC without their approval.”  Instead, two days hence, all the network would be required to display before each special was: “Edited for television by ABC.”


So, as Michael Palin so eloquently put it, they had “tilted at windmills and lost.”  Yet this was not the end, but merely the beginning of the group's fight with the giant American network.


This story will conclude in Monty Python’s Crusade Part Three: “...And Forever.”


Research for this blog post was entirely taken from Michael Palin Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years, published by St. Martin’s Press.  And yes, to present his views in this abbreviated account, his entries were heavily edited.