Come back Monty Python

This TV show ran between 1969 and 1974. It was sometimes hilarious, sometimes dull but always nibbling at the edge of good taste, convention and conservatism. Python in its often ridiculous way captures the foolishness of authority.

In the recent cost of living crisis as the media has embarked on money saving food ideas, offal and fish heads have appeared on the menu and, of course, Spam. This square-shaped mash-up of pork, water, salt, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrate recently celebrated its 85th anniversary. One myth insists that its name is actually an acronym for "Scientifically Processed Animal Matter." Others that it stands for “Spiced Ham” or “Specially Processed American Meat.”

It has sold over 8 million cans and in over 44 countries. It’s still one of the most famous food brands. It even has its own T-Shirt “I think therefore I Spam.”

But it was Monty Python that really brought Spam back to life 50 years ago in their lyrically complex musical tribute: 

Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!
Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam

Spa-a-a-a-a-a-a-am
Spa-a-a-a-a-a-a-am
Spa-a-a-a-a-a-a-am

Lovely Spam! (Lovely Spam!)!)
Lovely Spam!

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam!

 

And it struck me that some of their most famous sketches remain relevant today:

 

The Dead Parrot sketch which brilliantly encapsulates the issues we’ve just experienced with our departing  Prime Minister and her denial of her demise.

 

The Four Yorkshireman who were affluent businessmen reminiscing about their deprived backgrounds. Their nostalgia becomes more livid and competitive reaching this absurdity:

 

“Right.. I used to get up in the morning at half-past-ten at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of freezing cold poison, work 28 hours a day at mill, and pay da mill owner to let us work there. And when I went home our dad used to murder us in cold blood, each night, and dance about on our graves, singing hallelujah. Yah, you try an tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you...”

I’ve been like that recently telling younger people about the Three Day Week in the 1970s and, as I say, you try telling young people of today that and they won’t believe you.

 

But when it comes to bureaucracy and the offices of government what can beat the Ministry of Silly Walks? This may be the best thing John Cleese ever did.

 

 

The occasional shaft of absurdity or silliness can be highly effective satire. Monty Python could do that sometimes although – not unjustly - Morecambe and Wise criticised them saying the Python team could be annoying and unprofessional.

“…there’s five or six minutes of utter boredom. And then there’s three minutes of very funny and then another eight minutes of boredom.” 

I used to get irritated by being told by friends  from abroad that leaving Brexit had made us a laughing stock but I accept now we’re reputationally diminished after the Truss farce and the possibility of Johnson standing again when he’s highly likely to be expelled from the Commons for lying to them - no I didn’t, yes you did…

The past few months should have been enough to convince even the most right wing Tory member that we can’t go on like this, that the parrot is dead, that Boris is a bad man and own up to the fact that this government is damaging the country. I am not an especially political person and avoid ideological debates but it’s time for Monty Pythonesque ridicule to return.

In the meantime sit back and experience what might be one of the most loony weeks in our history.

LAUGH? I NEARLY DIED

I have always believed in the power of humour, whether satire or farce.  The sharpest of knives is comedy in debunking, clarifying and fumigating.  Which leads me to Ireland and to the “troubles” which always sounded more like a tummy bug than the carnage which saw 3,500 people slaughtered in the latter part of the 20th century. At the time I was running a salesforce. One of my salesman in Northern Ireland said conversationally to me:

“I was Just about to make a call on the House of Frazer when there was a great whoomph sound and the windows blew out, glass and blood everywhere”

“My God” I said, “that’s terrible. What did you do?”

“I strolled down the road and went to call on Woolworth instead.”

My sense of the troubles from this was that people got on with it however terrible things were. More recently  I visited Belfast which felt like going to Berlin, modern architecture, trendy bars and restaurants. The reality a decade before had been tragic – or farcical - depending on how you see things.

Last week we saw “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” by Martin McDonagh.  It first appeared in the West End in 2001 and Broadway in 2006. Back then it must have touched some raw nerves – the Good Friday agreement had only been signed in 1998. Martin has a rip roaring reputation for black comedy and drama. His most recent triumph is writing and directing the award winning film “T.”

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is set in 1993 as IRA violence was revving up. In a nutshell the play is a non-stop farce culminating with a stage covered by four corpses, three of whom are partially dismembered and two dead cats. It includes some gruesome onstage torture – the pulling out of toenails and planning the next outrage “which is your favourite nipple? I’ll be kind - tell me and I’ll only cut the other one off.”

Its roller-coaster hilarity springs from the behaviour of Mad Padraig whose behaviour is too violent for the IRA and subsequently too much for its offshoot the INLA. He makes even Iago look civilised. Knowing there’s nothing he wouldn’t do, his dewy eyed sentimentality about Wee Willy his pet cat creates the contrast and unpredictability between brutality and tenderness that makes for such uneasy laughter. In a situation where three men being blinded by an airgun-carrying teenage girl brought the house down, you have to admit that’s a cool theatrical trick being flaunted. And you also have to admit the overreaction, beastliness and clumsy inanity of everyone in the cast indelibly suggests the absurdity of conflict and violence especially when the cause of it all is a misunderstanding. Desdemona’s
hanky is Padraig’s black cat. And cats are funny in the way hankies aren’t.

It’s reframes our understanding of those troubles and like all great plays has us always on tenterhooks. It’s a masterpiece. It’s also very, very funny.