Monty Python
‘Comedy is much more important than I thought’: John Cleese on the press, his new talk show and the power of Fawlty Towers
John Cleese enjoys tough questions. He’s currently touring America with An Evening with the Late John Cleese, and a substantial…
Un-cancel Terry Gilliam!
I am starting to wonder if the world of arts and culture is staffed, in large part if not exclusively,…
Bleak, brutal and bloody
Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is set in the 14th century and is a tale of rivalry and rape told…
40 years on, Life of Brian has made the world a darker place
I went to the Battle of Ideas at the Barbican last weekend, a free speech festival organised by the Brexit…
A force for good
When I saw this book, a biography of Huw Wheldon, who was managing director of BBC Television between 1968 and…
Being and nothingness
Florian Zeller has been reading Pinter. And Pinter started out in repertory thrillers where suspense was created by delaying revelations…
Say Cheese
Like many of my generation I was enchanted by the surrealistic irreverence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, until I overheard…
Flogging a dead parrot
Monty Python was funny once. But a revival is a dreadful idea
