Monty Python

I knew George Harrison funded one of them (Life of Brian, I think) just because he wanted to see it.

I remember reading that Genesis contributed to Holy Grail.

Harrison's bankrolling of Life of Brian led to the establishment of his company Handmade Films.

As far as I'm aware the Monty Python albums were released on Charisma so there was a Genesis connection there too. An aside - one of the albums, Matching Tie & Handkerchief, had 'three sides' in that one of the sides had two grooves.

I am a huge Python fan. Now the topic exists maybe we can talk about favourite sketches, etc. I seem to remember reading in one of the Genesis books that everything stopped for Python while they were recording.

I've got Michael Palin's autograph on several of his travel books & will be seeing him in December when he talks about Python & his new book Erebus. Eric Idle has also just released an autobiography.

The TV shows had such a distinctive feel to them. Some of it drags a fair bit when you see it now, it can be quite clunky and is subject to some 'time lag' issues but all that can be seen in context of it being groundbreaking and a lot of the time very inventively funny.

The films, for me, are less successful. I like Grail, find Brian overrated (but still quite funny) and Meaning of Life very hit and mostly miss.

I found they worked very well in book form. The Python books (the Big Red Book and the Bok/Papperbok) and some of the off-shoots such as Bert Fegg's Nasty Book are a very entertaining read, the sorts of books you dip in and out of. The Pythons Autobiography and Palin's Diaries are highly recommended.

By the way, another Genesis-related Python thing; a few years ago I saw a stage play No Naughty Bits, by Steve Thompson, about the famous ABC TV court case. Near the end of the play, a lawyer tells Palin she's currently on tour with Genesis. He smiles and says, "That's cool." then he frowns and says "...is it?" She shrugs and says, "Ex-public schoolboys wanking with synthesizers." It got a medium-sized laugh from the audience. I'm sure it's just the author expressing his personal view of them!