Pre-Python Shows

         Although Monty Python's Flying Circus does not resemble anything that had been made before in terms of television comedy, its authors have been influenced by a number of television programmes. Spike Milligan and his Goon Show undoubtedly represented the strongest source of inspiration of the Pythons, yet not the only one. Their different personal experiences prior to the Flying Circus acted as a kind of gathering storm before the actual formation of Monty Python. The members of the group have served long apprenticeship as writers and performers and this certainly accounts for their mastery of television comedy.

                  a) That Was the Week that Was

         John Cleese was the first to have a professional experience in writing for television, while he was still studying at Cambridge. That Was the Week that Was started in September 1962, starring David Frost, former president of the Footlight Club and including John Cleese in its writing team. The reactions that the programme engendered just show how such satirical shows were necessary to prepare the audience for something stronger like the Flying Circus.

         Sir Cyril Osborne, conservative MP for Louth, called it "a low sexy thing", adding that he felt that he "would like to give the performers a good bath."[1] This complaint highlights how different the world was when satire was first on television and what an abundance of material there was for it to prey on. The Daily Express called it "irreverent, tough, cynical, snobbish, leftish and witty"[2], and it was probalbly indeed all those things. the show once prompted 443 angry calls, which, out of 13 million viewers is not bad.

         That Was the Week that Was was the voice of an emergent generation apalled by the MacMillan government and that was enough to get MP's talking of a ban. The show once took up the gauntlet on behalf of John Osborne who had been accused of being unpatriotic. The atmosphere was very much that of an Oxbridge supper club, with music, debates and satire. "There was a capital S in those days, Satire, like Modern jazz, being something new, a vital part of the movement against the establishment."[3] That Was the Week that Was ended at Christmas 1963 for the BBC did not precisely want the programme to be shown in election year and possibly influence the result.

         Most of the team went on to another programme, Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life in late 1964.

                  b) Not Only...But Also...[4]

         Another major television comedy programme of the 1960's is Not Only...But Also... . If Python, a few years further, in 1969, broke the mould of television comedy, Not Only...But Also... summed up what had been so good about comedy in the 1960's.

         When it appeared in 1965, it shared with That Was the Week that Was a few years earlier a joyful absence of "taste". The surreal humour it showed was a perfect reflection of the time. Even the musical sections which, at that time, were often the "serious bits" allied both musical brilliance and an insane style of humour.

         Starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, but also Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Ronnie Barker and others, the show often parodied contemporary television and was quite fond of Edward Lear-like nonsense, two features that will have a great importance in the Python style. Not Only...But Also... with sometimes too-long sketches often lacking punchlines - an innovation wrongly attributed to Python - and its surrealism, established a reference which would only be exceeded later by changing the rules.

                  c) The Frost Report

         When he left Oxford in 1965, Terry Jones came to work for the BBC Light Entertainment Script Department. He also wrote several pantomimes ; Aladdin and Beauty And the Beast, for Watford Civic Theatre Rep. Company. He also wrote with Michael Palin for various television shows. Michael Palin appeared in Now, a television pop show produced for TWW. As for John Cleese he had worked for That Was the Week that Was and had joined the BBC as a writer as early as 1963. He had since made a variety of radio shows.

         But the really significant programme for them all was to be the Frost Report in 1966.

         The Frost Report, produced by David Paradine Frost, started on 10 March 1966 with a first series of 13 episodes. The second series, also including 13 programmes, started on 6 April 1967. The writing team was very large and the Frost Report has sometimes been described as a joke factory. The important thing is that the show brought together for the first time the entire team that was to become Monty Python except for Terry Gilliam. At that time Graham Chapman was still at Cambridge and was waiting to take his exams for the second time[5].

         It is also interesting to note that the infiltrations of the show-business world by the Cambridge Footlights ended with Eric Idle. Since then, the connection has been broken and the revues produced by the Footlights seem no longer to generate outside interest, even if its members still occasionally make brief appearances at the Edinburgh Festival or on radio.

         As for the Frost Report, there were twenty-six editions, in two series, starting on 10 March 1966. Each programme consisted of long and short sketches, a song from Julie Felix and a monologue from David Frost. Each show dealt with a definite topic such as women or crime, etc. Again this is a feature Monty Python used later in the Flying Circus, though in an unconventional manner.

         The principal performers were Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker (who both later produced the show entitled The Two Ronnies) and the Pythons-to-be were only part of the writing team. This did not prevent Roger Wilmut from writing : "So, if for no other reason, the Frost Report is interesting as the first meeting-ground for the future Python team."[6]

         Still, the Frost Report stands up well as an amusing programme, but it is true that it represented an important step towards the creation of Monty Python's Flying Circus. John Cleese says :

      "I still acknowledge that without David Frost I would have taken a very long time to get off the ground. I always assume I would have done eventually [sic], but God knows how long it would have taken - and literally since then I've never had a day out of work"[7]

         And Indeed, since the Frost Report, Cleese and Frost have always remained in contact and have worked on numerous projects together.

                  d) At Last the 1948 Show

         By the end of the first series of the Frost Report, David Frost proposed to John Cleese, Tim Brooke Taylor, Marty Feldman and Graham Chapman to collaborate and produce another comic show for television. He also suggested that Graham Chapman should collaborate with Barry Cryer as writing partner.

         At that time, Chapman had passed his exams and had the possibility of occupying a position as a general practitioner. However he felt that it was not what he expected from his life and he accepted David Frost's proposition[8]. He suggested that Eric Idle should join the team. The idea filled David Frost with enthusiasm and this is how the programme began, initially under the title No, That's Me Over Here and then retitled At Last the 1948 Show. Cleese remembers:

     "The whole title was a joke about BBC television executives - At Last the 1948 Show, arriving in 1967, the whole idea was that it had been on the shelf for nineteen years while the TV executives decided whether to run it or not!"[9]

         The first series ran for six weeks from 15 February 1967 and the second series ran for seven weeks from September 1967. The show had no real particular style. The sketches could vary from normally constructed sketches with a beginning, a middle and a punchline to totally surrealistic sketches. This foreshadowed the savage surrealism of Monty Python with other elements such as the fascination with television and the use of captions.

         At Last the 1948 Show was one of the most successful television comedy shows of the Sixties ; it was in the Top Ten in the London area and it is considered to be one of the most important steps to the evolving of Monty Python's Flying Circus.[10]

                  e) Do Not Adjust Your Set [11]

         When, in 1967 Humphrey Barclay was offered the possibility of producing a comedy programme for children which would be on at tea time, his choice of comedian naturally fell upon Eric Idle, as the next university comic who had not been used. Most of the others were either in the 1948 Show or another programme called Twice a Fortnight. Barclay also asked Terry Jones to join the team for he had seen him in an Oxford revue in London. Jones accepted to come into the show and suggested that Michael Palin should also participate in the show. Although Barclay didn't know Palin at that time, he accepted. The team was completed with two non-university performers ; David Jason and Denise Coffey.

         The shows were titled Do Not Adjust Your Set, from the standard apology caption : "There is a fault - do not adjust your set". The first series ran for thirteen weeks, starting on 4 january 1968.

         The sketches, though kept short and simple, were well written and very entertaining. The team who was not accustomed to writing for children developed a mildly fantastic style which proved to be very successful. The fourth programme was even entered for the Prix Jeunesse International TV Festival in Munich in June 1968, where it won the first prize in its category. Although aimed at children, the programme was also watched by many adults. Among them were John Cleese and Graham Chapman.

         It is during this period that John Cleese introduced Terry Gilliam, whom he had met in America while touring with Cambridge Circus to Humphrey Barclay.

         Terry Vance Gilliam was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 22, 1940. In 1951 he moved to Los Angeles. Seven years later, he enrolled in Occidental College, where he edited Fang, the university's humour magazine. Graduating with a degree in political science, he went to New York in 1962 and was employed by Harvey Kurzman, creator of Mad magazine, as illustrator and Associate Editor of Help! His most notable work was a fumetti strip which featured John Cleese as a man falling in love with his daughter's Barbie doll. Gilliam said :

      "One of the things we did in the magazine were "fumetti"- like the Italian romance magazines which are like a comic book except that they are photographs of people, and they talk in balloons. We were getting reasonably well-known people to appear in these things, and we got John Cleese, who wasn't well known but was funny, to appear in one."[12]

         Gilliam then travelled to Europe where he worked for several newspapers and magazines and with people such as Goscinny. Finding himself jobless once again, he turned to John Cleese who introduced him to Barclay. Gilliam hung around the studios and gradually got to know the performers and he later made small contributions to Do Not Adjust Your Set.

         Do Not Adjust Your Set was really the last "rehearsal" before the Pythons would all assemble to create a show of their own, where they could eventually free themselves from the frustration of having always worked on somebody else's programmes.