Introduction

            On October 5th, 1969, a little comedy show made its first half-hour appearance on BBC-1, under the meaningless title of Monty Python's Flying Circus. The show was written and performed by five British young men, all graduated from Oxford or Cambridge ; Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. The show also included cartoon animations by Terry Gilliam, a born-and-bred American artist who had come across the Atlantic to find something interesting to do. It is those six individuals, who together became known as "Monty Python".

         The programme, which the BBC had advertised as being "nutty, zany and oddball" certainly proved equal to the expectations or - depending on the individual case - to the fears of the audience. Nevertheless, Monty Python's Flying Circus did not exactly take the country by storm. In fact, the first episodes were largely ignored - or at best, viewed with total bewilderment - by the British public. however there was a small segment of the population who caught on to what these six young men were doing, and those who appreciated the effort became avid devotees. Eventually, word go round, the audience began expanding rapidly and the Pythons - as they came to be referred to - began to make a serious impact on U.K. society. Over a period of five years, they produced three and a half series of the Flying Circus - a total of 45 half-hour programmes.

         However, Monty Python grew even more significantly in popularity in the early and mid 70's, with films such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or The Life of Brian, which helped them to conquer the American and European audiences.

         In 1996, although the team ceased to produce anything almost fifteen years ago, Monty Python still boasts countless fans in Great Britain of course, but also in the United States and in all Europe, including younger generations that were not yet born in the early years of the group. Thus, Monty Python is now acknowledged as a reference in terms of comedy and it has virtually become a cult. The trouble is that - as with all cults - everything Python is now received by Python fans with the same unreflected approval and enthusiasm. Moreover, it seems that hardly anybody dares to see in Python humour anything more than just an extraordinarilly crazy entertainment, as if Python was both too funny and too irreverent to be talked about seriously.

         Yet, Monty Python was certainly more than a mere ordinary comic team. Indeed, the context in which the Pythons-to-be did their studies undoubtedly represented a sine qua non for the achievement of  the style of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Moreover, Monty Python had a profound influence on television comedy and it totally turned upside down its traditional form, as well as the conventions of television themselves. Finally, the numerous threats of censorship that the group encountered all over the years tend to prove that - since Python humour is sometimes disturbing - it might well mean that Monty Python is more than just entertaining.

         Consequently, what we want to do is to consider the Monty Python phenomenon as a whole, so as to try to undestand the gist of Python humour, as well as its cultural, social and artistic implications.