And Now For Something Just The Same?
So the Pythons’ reunion sells out in 43 seconds. There’s
life in the franchise yet, but what kind of life? It is that of a reanimated
zombie, or a rejuvenated second spring?
In a rather blown-up spat in the Guardian, Charlie
Higson and Adil Ray took either side of the argument. To Charlie, they are a
wonderful vintage act with lessons still to teach the young’uns, to Adil a
fossilised bunch of old farts with nothing to say to a new generation.
I was lucky enough to see the pre-Python Palin perform
at a get-together of the Oxford University Etceteras Club (their version of the
Footlights). He inspired me for years, and still does. The a-logical buffoonery
of “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, with some of the team that were to become
the Pythons, spoke directly to our post-war, break-out, desperate to play
generation, and when the Pythons burst out in all their glory a year later it was
as if heaven had descended on earth.
It all began with them. Not surrealist comedy – that
had been done by the Goons – or madcap characters – ITMA was before them – but intellectually
respectable comedy. Comedy with a hinterland. Philosophy, history, abstract
concepts were all jumbled in with suburban banality and random nonsense. Marx
and Hegel jostled together with Arthur Two-Sheds. It was influenced by Ionesco
and N F Simpson as much as by Tommy Cooper, but it was never remotely pretentious.
Spike Milligan and Galton & Simpson were the
generation who fought in the war, keen to debunk the fossilised authority of
the officer class, a more egalitarian society in view. But the Pythons simply
exploded everything. Nothing made sense, the only fun to be had was to turn
everything inside out.
That was then. Today’s standups and sketch comedians
work in an entirely different landscape. Comedy is more personal and audiences
much more knowing. The rules have already been broken and put together again.
There is no great cachet now, thanks to the Pythons, of being clever, surreal
or literate. It’s just another style choice.
Let the old boys and their audience have their fun
and pay off their tax bills. Let them roar “This is an ex-parrot!” together. But
let’s not pretend it’s that different from the elderly ladies who scream “Where
the nuts come from!” in “Charley’s Aunt” (I love that, as well). They won’t be
doing any new material, but I don’t think anyone wants them to. I wish them
well, but I won’t be going along (I’d have never made the 43 second deadline
anyway).