The year is 1969. An obnoxiously-mustachioed Brit slides into a bar seat. His derby hat-wearing businessman neighbor (also mustachioed, but not obnoxiously) glances over, and continues to gently sip from his pint. After some awkward, petty banter, Brit #1 questions Brit #2, requesting to know if his wife is “a real go-er, eh?” his tone excitedly raunchy.
The businessman pulls back, his body language surprised, asking, “Beg your pardon?” But he continues to play along unknowingly, and Obnoxious Mustache intensifies his witless banter with suggestive hand motions, his insinuating elbow jabs shaking the businessman’s pint.
Eventually the straight man smacks his glass on the table and raises his voice: “Look, are you trying to insinuate something?” Six ‘no’s and a ‘yes’ later, Eric Idle becomes nervous and specific. “…You’ve done it, you’ve slept with a lady?” Terry Jones replies with a singular, off-balance “Yes,” and here's the twist: in sheer, curious earnestness Idle begs, “What’s it like?”
Never has a group of entertainers, before or since, influenced their art more than the slimy Brits who dubbed themselves “Monty Python.” A troupe of war babies (and one pond-hopping pseudo-American), the Pythons spawned 45 brilliant episodes of a television show, five films, numerous books, record albums, and stage shows that altered history forever with ridiculous sketches like “Upper Class Twit of the Year,” “Dead Parrot,” and “How to Recognise Different Types of Trees From Quite a Long Way Away.”
Sketches like the above “Nudge Nudge” embody the Pythons’ impact on Great Britain and the rest of the world, particularly thanks to their groundbreaking television show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The quirky Python character played by Idle dances all around Jones’s straight businessman in the same silly way the show famously thumbed its nose at a culture in transition. Many critics of the time found the punchline-less humor “macabre,” the loosely tied thematic threads “disorienting.” Later, in 2000, the British Film Institute ranked the show fifth on its list of the “100 Greatest British Television Programmes.”
The influence of Flying Circus is incontestable. Their myriad non-sequiturs, bizarre characters, and dizzying cohesion are today copied by American cult-hit shows (Family Guy, Arrested Development, and South Park) and mainstream programming (Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock) alike.
“Being eight years old, that was my introduction to humor," Trey Stone, co-creator of South Park once said of Flying Circus.
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Great piece and wonderful reminder of all that Monty Python has contributed to the world.