Eric Idle, away from the other Pythons, has so little talent. Terry Jones acts like he's forcing himself to try to be funny. Benny Hill really was funniner than MP evr was.

Hi,
Benny Hill was a terrible programme , it wasnt comedy it was sexist slapstick, i think that anyone could have played the part of Benny Hill , anyone who looked like a fool or a dirty old man and someone who could make stupid facial gestures or remarks where as if you really looked at Monty Python and some other shows Eric Idle and the rest of the Python team did then would see British Comedy at one of its best , the shows were well written and well 'ACTED' not preformed , like a circus clown which was the case with Benny Hill , which is also the way typical American style comedy shows are.
The Python Team were very intelligent and skilled comedy actors and acted their roles very well, so well that for some people that was the only way they can be perceived and in other roles they played later in thier carrers they were still expected to be Pythons
i really worry when someone says they like Benny Hill , I worry very much ........ i can only assume the writer of the last post was either American or Canadian , as this will give some indication of their sense of 'Humour'
Mark

I know everyone has their own opinions but it might also be the humor. Even when I watch it I don't find myself laughing out loud much, but I think it's funny. I think it's just that their sense of humor was different and dated. You either got it or you didn't. But then again I haven't really watched a lot of Benny Hill so I couldn't give my own opinion on that. Can't really sit through a lot of it but I don't think it's awful.

With respect to the post from 'japanesemark' whose talking points apparently came from the P.C. brigade that has been ramming down the whole "Benny Hill bad" drumbeat for the last 20 or so years . . . I'd have to concur with 'Vicki L.' about Python being overrated, but more on the basis of historical evidence than the issue of talent (or lack of same) of the individual members. Consider:
* When they started, they were not exactly universally beloved, with the BBC attempting to kill them off in more ways than one (graveyard time slots, or time slots where not every region would air them). And that's not counting the censorship battles by the third series, due to their particular 'push-the-envelope' ethos which, according to many cultural critics, has plagued popular entertainment to this day.
* They were not exactly a ratings darling, either. In my research of JICTAR ratings during a trip to London in 1990, I found that Python, on its original 1969-74 airing, didn't make the Top 20 even once. Even the lowest-rated Benny Hill Show to make the Top 10 in the U.K. (Dec. 27, 1972, ranked 10th for the week ending Dec. 31, 1972 and seen in only 6.05 million households) was higher than the highest-rated Python (seen in an average of somewhat less than 5 million homes by the third series).
* They were almost entirely a media-driven show - or, to put it another way, it was one of the first cases of the news media dictating public taste in TV programs, telling everybody how good Python was and all that. The main critics who took to (and ran with) it were generally of same or similar educational background as the Python members (the most stand-out being Cambridge-educated Clive James, whose time there, as well as feminist writer Germaine Greer's, was contemporaneous with Eric Idle's). And it's instructive that the show's taking off in America was due not to commercial television where attempts to break it in flopped badly, but on taxpayer-funded PBS which has been accused in some circles of having a certain political bias - and it didn't seem to hurt from that perspective that Python was pushing what appeared to be a hidden political agenda behind all the silly walks, dead parrots, et al. (You can't tell me that they weren't promoting an agenda with their "Lumberjack Song.") No wonder why many in the entertainment and news media worship Python - the latter's ethos is pretty much in lockstep with the former's.
* The closed, country-club-style atmosphere that sprung forth. All the references to classical composers and trendy, "with-it" authors and filmmakers would play well with "Eastern establishment elite" and "effete snob" circles (per the words of Spiro T. Agnew), but didn't exactly resonate with the average person on the street.
* At certain points, they appeared extremely mean-spirited and strident (especially as coming from John Cleese and Graham Chapman), and that wasn't the type of attitude that would warm audiences over. That they meant for it to be that way didn't exactly assuage anybody either. Their "Pepperpots" were also especially shrill, compared with Mr. Hill's forays in drag.
I could envision an American equivalent as being a comedy troupe where the key members were educated at Harvard and Yale, with one member a part of the infamous "Skull and Bones" clique from which Bushes 41 and 43, Kerry, and generations of families such as Rockefeller and Harriman emerged.

Small wonder that, when Hill's show was first syndicated to America in 1979, it took off like a rocket: its audience base, and the show's overall bent, was more populist-oriented than the snob-worshipped Python, which tells me, at least, that the American Python cult was more a case of it being the only British comedy available in the U.S. to that point. Indeed, I've found it was the "snob factor" that explained as much about the antipathy towards Mr. Hill as anything else. After all, since Benny wasn't Oxbridge-educated, therefore he, his show and his audience must be somehow "morally and/or intellectually inferior." Besides, much of the Benny-haters I met in England were almost heavily biased towards Python and their ilk (i.e. The Young Ones).

To be sure, I'm more preferential towards the comedy aspect of Benny Hill (the parodies of TV shows, films and commercials; the blooper segments; the impersonations) than the T&A factor that marred his shows from 1979 on (and don't get me started about the segments with the children of key cast and crew). I also liked some of the musical numbers from guests on the shows pre-1978 (as on A&E's Complete and Unadulterated sets).

Hi,
a well expressed point of veiw from W.B. actually a lot of interesting points, but as per usually I have to disagree with one point . I am not a very PC type of person and an example of this is my favourite TV show is Love thy Neighbour which is another one of the shows that will never be shown in the UK because of all the racial jokes in it. So this isnt why I cant stand Benny Hill . I would also like to say that there are a few points that make me decide if I find something funny or not. One of them can be seen in a great comedian such as Tommy Cooper who did very little but said a lot and said it in a way that was funny,not making silly faces but by the content and the choice of words which is the same for Dave Allen, but cant be said about Benny Hill.
Benny Hill was slapstick and not really comedy and when he 'appeared' in shows , I cant say acting , it is easy to see that he has very little talent. If you like this type of show then thats your personal choice and the shows are well written for that type of show which in another way because they were well written it really means that his routines could have been done by any 'Preformer' and had the same amount of laughs and it isnt Benny Hill that is funny or has Talent but the writers
Mark

:eek2:

MP: Innovative. Comedy that didn't follow set guidelines. Sometimes the sole purpose seemed to be what they could get away with. Endlessly quotable. Legendary comedy. Besides Star Trek it's my favorite TV show of all time. The films were classics!

But...you guys go ahead and pick it apart. Just stressing my own feelings.

:bonk:

Hi,
Benny Hill was a terrible programme No it wasn't. :mad:

I feel I've won this argument. ;)


:D

I have always enjoyed Monty Python. It's well written, well acted and the animation is so unique. The Pythons show how they can play most of the characters, even a lot of the female roles in drag. Despite the title having no contextual meaning, it's a comedy classic that's not overrated.

I like them both, but don't think they're comparable. MP was cutting edge, Benny hill was titillating (what's wrong with that) but also a very funny, i loved his play on word's a couple that spring to mind are the potato clock sketch,
The jist of it is, he says he's got a potato clock, the guy he's talking to say's you've got a potato clock? He says no i got up at 8oclock. I don't know if that work's with the american pronunciation of potato:)
Another was, irish stew,( i arrest you ) i.e. irish stew in the name of the law.

Hi,
a well expressed point of veiw from W.B. actually a lot of interesting points, but as per usually I have to disagree with one point . I am not a very PC type of person and an example of this is my favourite TV show is Love thy Neighbour which is another one of the shows that will never be shown in the UK because of all the racial jokes in it. So this isnt why I cant stand Benny Hill . I would also like to say that there are a few points that make me decide if I find something funny or not. One of them can be seen in a great comedian such as Tommy Cooper who did very little but said a lot and said it in a way that was funny,not making silly faces but by the content and the choice of words which is the same for Dave Allen, but cant be said about Benny Hill.
Benny Hill was slapstick and not really comedy and when he 'appeared' in shows , I cant say acting , it is easy to see that he has very little talent. If you like this type of show then thats your personal choice and the shows are well written for that type of show which in another way because they were well written it really means that his routines could have been done by any 'Preformer' and had the same amount of laughs and it isnt Benny Hill that is funny or has Talent but the writers
Mark
Hi. Think you'll find Love thy Neighbour was a uk sit com first.

Hi. Think you'll find Love thy Neighbour was a uk sit com first.
Oh, it was, in the early 1970's . . . but the point is, thanks to the P.C. police, you'll likely never see repeats of that show ever in Britain. Nor (I think) Mind Your Language.

As for Mr. Hill's "potato clock / 8:00" bit, he was impersonating someone with a very bad cold therein.

And finally, as for the "sexism" bit: Any of you seen, on Python, the "visitors" sketch (from Episode #9, "The Ant - An Introduction") lately? Or the "Dirty Vicar"? In both cases, there was the kind of sexism that even Benny would've frowned at. Especially, in the former bit, the conduct of John Cleese's loutish, amoral "Mr. Equatol" towards Carol Cleveland's character. Funny how Ben Elton had nothing to say about the correlation between that sketch and the possible link to incidences of rape in England at the time, as he was so quick to do with Mr. Hill's show. . . . or do Python get a free pass because of their "intellectual" reputation, eh?

And finally, it should be noted that on TBHS, Benny Hill was the writer.

Python for us US-ers was the first stuff we got from the land of great comedy, it definately influenced me, watching it for the first time at probably 12 or so and loving instantly. Benny Hill was on soon after/about the same time but I couldn't get into it, just not my cup of tea, I love the bizarre BritComs (been getting into Little Britain lately, it's hads me in tears, just brilliant).

Something else on Python which didn't seem to faze the Benny-haters: The bit (in the same episode with the "Dead Parrot" sketch) where a man - er, art critic, was strangling his wife on an open outdoor field - wonder to what that extent that induced violence against women. At the very least, it didn't faze that crowd enough for them to call for Python to be taken off the air completely, as they had done with Mr. Hill.

And then there was the bit from the "Interesting People" sketch where a man (Graham Chapman) takes a cat by the tail and then hurls it into a bucket. Wonder how many people were "inspired" to do such so-called "harmless pranks" as putting his/her roommate's pet cat into a washing machine (the type you see in laundromats). And to those who think that that bit was "no big deal": Just imagine if it were your cat (or dog, or other pet) all this was being done to.

The double standard reeks, I.M.H.O.

monty python was more stupid than it was funny, to me. like jim carey...too stupid for me..yet the world thinks he's/it's actually funny.
there are big differences between funny and stupid.
i'm not saying that MP is a bad show, i'm just saying i thought it was way below juvenile...

W.B. is presumably some sort of troll. Firstly, you say how unpopular Python was, then say their sketches apparently influenced a mass wave of woman-strangling and cat-drowning in the UK in the 1970s. Which one is it? Benny Hill's sketches may have been hilarious, but almost without fail women in his shows were nothing more than prettily dressed objects to leer at, or ugly old harridans who shouted at their husbands. I find it sad that people in the 21st century are defending that. Python mocked sexism and homophobia with their sketches, and for you not to get that means you really don't understand it (or are deliberately misunderstanding it to make a point). The thing about cats being thrown in laundromats- show me some evidence this happened, or stop making completely spurious allegations.

Then you make an identical mistake when talking about Python. You first say it was forced on America via PBS, which has a left-wing political bias. You then compare the Pythons to the Bush brothers, who most definitely don't have a left-wing political bias. Which one is it?

You then draw an incorrect conclusion from irrelevant data. Benny Hill had better viewing figures than Monty Python, therefore Benny Hill was better (otherwise why mention it?). Their terrible timeslot troubles are mentioned but you don't think that had anything to do with their lower ratings. By your line of reasoning, "Titanic" is the best film ever made and "Citizen Kane" was some piece of minor left-wing trash produced in the 1940s. "Monty Python's Life Of Brian" recently won two separate polls in the UK to find the best comedy film of all time. So that would tend to blow your "the Pythons weren't popular" argument out of the water, wouldn't it?

If you don't like Python, then fair enough. Some of their sketches were a bit off the mark, but most of what they did was brilliant, clever, mocked those in power, mocked sexism and homophobia and most importantly made a lot of people laugh. Benny Hill is rightly consigned to the history books- there's a good reason why not even the channels which show any crap old TV they can get their hands on don't show Benny Hill any more.

W.B. is presumably some sort of troll. Firstly, you say how unpopular Python was, then say their sketches apparently influenced a mass wave of woman-strangling and cat-drowning in the UK in the 1970s. Which one is it? Benny Hill's sketches may have been hilarious, but almost without fail women in his shows were nothing more than prettily dressed objects to leer at, or ugly old harridans who shouted at their husbands. I find it sad that people in the 21st century are defending that.
I detect the usual "hate Benny" talking points from a lesbian feminist and/or radical homosexual Mafioso who finds anything pertaining to heterosexual behavior "offensive." The whole vendetta against Mr. Hill which was generated in the 1980's and which is still prevalent among such types as yourself to this day, was and is part and parcel of a larger attack against heterosexual males in particular, and heterosexual behavior in general. I see this, too, in comments Jesse Jackson made to Paula Zahn on CNN in the wake of the Durham, NC rape case, to the effect that he thinks that for a man to even think of a beautiful woman should be made illegal.

Secondly, I am going by the ratings each show garnered at their original airing, thus the "overrated" designation for Python was in relation. Nor were they the only such case: the original William Shatner-Leonard Nimoy Star Trek was another "influential" show that, in the U.S., was a ratings flop - and only due to constant reruns did it become a classic.
Python mocked sexism and homophobia with their sketches, and for you not to get that means you really don't understand it (or are deliberately misunderstanding it to make a point). The thing about cats being thrown in laundromats- show me some evidence this happened, or stop making completely spurious allegations.
Yeah, like you have no misunderstanding whatsoever of what Mr. Hill's show was all about, you phoney hypocrite. It also shows the utter contempt you have towards: a) anybody who "doesn't get" Python, and especially b) fans of Benny Hill (i.e. they're "morally and intellectually inferior"). I know that very attitude, having spoken personally to such types in two trips to London in 1989 and 1990. It's also exemplary of a mindset that's described in a saying from a famous U.S. talk radio host: "Liberalism is a mental disorder."

Then you make an identical mistake when talking about Python. You first say it was forced on America via PBS, which has a left-wing political bias. You then compare the Pythons to the Bush brothers, who most definitely don't have a left-wing political bias. Which one is it?
Graham Chapman's lover/partner, David Sherlock, openly admitted Python's liberal-left bent in the book Python Speaks. It's right there, in black-and-white, on p.57. I also submit the late Red Skelton (to whom - and to whose work - Mr. Hill's has been sometimes compared), who told a reporter in 1974 that he saw nothing funny about abortion, rape and murder, and that's why he was taken off the air in the 1970-71 period. For this he was condemned as "out of touch" and "old hat" by the Norman Lear-worshipping media of the time. But Skelton had a point. Unlike Ben Elton's unproven, spurrilous allegations claiming a link between the Hill show and incidences of rape in England in the late '80's. Are you aware, by any chance, that in a 2000 radio interview Elton claimed that what he really meant was he preferred Hill's earlier (BBC-era) work, and that the overemphasis on pulchritude "seriously" detracted from what the focus of the show was to have been. What do you think of that? Or do you think Ben Elton is a traitor and a sellout for having said some - for that matter, any - praise for Mr. Hill?

I also point out another aspect of the mean-spirited tone that came through now and then in Python: The "Farewell to John Denver" number that was taken out of Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album in 1980 after Denver's lawyers objected. And I know why they would: Because of that reputation of Python's. Except for one bit in 1983 where an impersonation was removed from later broadcasts because a celebrity who was impersonated (more specifically, Tommy Cooper) had died, I haven't seen any other similar equivalent with the Hill show of any celebrity objecting to an impersonation.

You then draw an incorrect conclusion from irrelevant data. Benny Hill had better viewing figures than Monty Python, therefore Benny Hill was better (otherwise why mention it?). Their terrible timeslot troubles are mentioned but you don't think that had anything to do with their lower ratings. By your line of reasoning, "Titanic" is the best film ever made and "Citizen Kane" was some piece of minor left-wing trash produced in the 1940s. "Monty Python's Life Of Brian" recently won two separate polls in the UK to find the best comedy film of all time. So that would tend to blow your "the Pythons weren't popular" argument out of the water, wouldn't it?
Python's "popularity" was largely derived from their post-1974 U.S. breakthrough. I was specifically talking about their "initial" run. (Not just related to Hill, but Jimmy Tarbuck, Morecambe & Wise, Tommy Cooper, Dick Emery, Mike & Bernie Winters, Frankie Howerd . . . ) As to Life of Brian, I refer people to this article (http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/04Apr/apr2gab.htm).

And in fact, Citizen Kane was indeed a virtual box-office flop when first released. Only in later years did it become the classic it is regarded as today. Comparing Titanic to Mr. Hill would be like comparing apples to oranges. Or bananas to a stalk of celery.

If you don't like Python, then fair enough. Some of their sketches were a bit off the mark, but most of what they did was brilliant, clever, mocked those in power, mocked sexism and homophobia and most importantly made a lot of people laugh.
About that point of mocking "those in power . . . sexism and homophobia": I quote an oft-repeated saying used by Mr. Hill, "Biiiiig . . . deal." So did "limousine-liberal" Hollywood TV producer Norman Lear in his 1970's "soapbox sitcoms" such as All in the Family (which, we're all told, had its basis in the Britcom Till Death Us Do Part), Maude and One Day at a Time. All of which wore a "liberal-left" agenda on their sleeve. And on All in the Family (as but one example), Lear pulled out all the stops to mock and ridicule blue-collar conservatives as ignorant bigots - which is pretty much the attitude of the liberal-left elites.

There are people I know who see nothing funny about undertakers proposing to eat potential customers' dead mothers. Or people bleeding profusely (as in "Salad Days" or the stabbed patient being forced to fill out a form). Or draft-dodging or desertion (the young soldier going to his recruiting colonel's office and announcing his intention to leave the Army because "it's dangerous" - any time I see it, I hear a U.S. Congressman, John Murtha, urging young people not to register for military service, as he did earlier this year). "Salad Days," in particular, those with humanity or sensitivity towards others see that one more "repulsive" than funny. Obviously that would mean that quite a few of those who see nothing wrong with it, have been thoroughly desensitized to the pain and suffering of others.

Benny Hill is rightly consigned to the history books- there's a good reason why not even the channels which show any crap old TV they can get their hands on don't show Benny Hill any more.
Yeah. Pillocks and cultural brownshirts like you who have undue influence on the British TV industry and the media. There's a very good reason why "feminists" are called "Feminazis" in various circles. And who are you to be the judge on Benny Hill? Who voted you in that position? Who died and left you in charge?

It also shows the hypocrisy of people like you in another area. You people keep yapping about "free speech" for shows like Python and the various venues of the "alternative comedy" cabal, and whine about "censorship" viz such routines as "Summarize Proust" or "Salad Days," yet when it comes to Mr. Hill, all of a sudden "free speech" doesn't apply, and the last decade of his work (which I'm no fan of - I much prefer his earlier stuff), as I see from your fascistic attitude, completely and totally nullifies and invalidates his entire career, and when it comes to him you're all of a sudden pro-censorship. This is so reminiscent of the "students" at Columbia University in New York a month ago, who silenced a conservative speaker whose views they violently (and I mean this literally) disagreed with, and justified their brownshirt tactics by claiming that the speaker's "speech" was "illegitimate." (Just as the moonbats on the Left think that conservative voices have no right whatsoever to free speech, and act on it continually in so many ways.) Compared to your lot, the NVALA and Festival of Light were more consistent in their thumbs-down (that is, they didn't care for either Hill or Python).

I am totally aware of Python's influence everywhere in the entertainment industry: the debasement of our culture, the ratcheting up of "shock" humor or other "push-the-envelope" moments, and "comedy" shows whose writing staffs consist mainly of people of elite educational background (or, as called in the U.S., "Ivy League") - as exemplified by the original Saturday Night Live, for example, or these days The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

I also point to the 100-plus countries (140 at top count) that have shown the Hill show at one time or another. I'm wagering about half that amount have seen Python. This is not to knock it, mind you, just pointing out certain aspects in relation to one another.

I'm sorry, I thought from your previous posts I should attempt to take you seriously, and I can see I was wrong.

Oh, I'm very serious. The fact that repeats of Mr. Hill's show are not seen in his own country today (with the exception of a few years' spell on the now defunct Granada Plus, or annual Bank Holiday showings of The Best of Benny Hill) was, is and remains the most egregious example of LIBERAL CENSORSHIP and POLITICALLY-MOTIVATED BLACKLISTING in the annals of censorship cases. This, combined with the continuing "Big Lie" campaign of marginalization, demonization and Stalinization of his name and reputation - especially now that he is no longer around to defend himself - is totally unconscionable. Makes what was done to Benny's idol, Charlie Chaplin, in America in the early 1950's world of McCarthyism (when there was a de facto ban on all his films being distributed or shown here, after he was all but driven out of the U.S. and to exile in Switzerland) look like child's play.

And I'm very serious about terming this "cultural fascism." This is the very definition of the term: 'We don't like his comedy, therefore he should be taken off the air and you the public have no right to see his work ever again.' It was there, in black-and-white, a few posts up.

It's also an example of what has been called the "upside-down" world of liberalism, where deviancy and degeneracy are glamorized and upright behavior is looked down upon and sneered at.

But it's also part and parcel of why Python is so worshipped in those parts: They denigrated conservatives and anti-Communists as deranged lunatics, not to be listened to let alone taken seriously (the end of "Bicycle Repairman" where the announcer has a meltdown a la "Screaming" Howard Dean after mentioning B.R.M.'s fighting Communism"), and conversely worshipped Communist icons while airbrushing the atrocities that went on under such regimes (their "World Forum" with such T-shirt images in colleges as Che, Karl Marx, Mao and Lenin; I should note that Terry Jones today is a supporter of Venezuelan dictator and Castro ally Hugo Chavez); they debased the military in such sketches as that Army sketch previously mentioned (the kind of agitprop I could imagine being done by "Hanoi" Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland in their early 1970's "**** The Army" shows); they glorified the ugly and repulsive with such stock characters as Ken Shabby; and they occasionally (from what I could see) mocked and ridiculed (and not in a nice way) the ********, handicapped and otherwise disabled (developmentally or physically) - for all I can tell, their Gumby characters made fun of people with, say, cerebral palsy - and was done in such a way that one would laugh at such characters, not with them.

I've lived in the real world, especially in my younger days, so my indignation is real and my perspective is different. I've had contacts with the kind of people Python seemed to hold up as objects of ridicule. I've seen cruelty to animals first-hand (a dog practically vivisected a helpless stray cat in the backyard of where I live), and it was no laughing matter. I've seen people bleeding and helpless on the street, and nearly lost a relative to a fibroid tumor which had led to massive bleeding.

But notice, I don't advocate pulling that show from the airwaves. I'm not saying take them off. I'm just saying, read between the lines and be aware.

Venezuelan dictator and Castro ally Hugo Chavez
Democratically elected, deposed by a group of far-right military leaders and reinstated due to public demand. Must try harder.

Democratically elected, deposed by a group of far-right military leaders and reinstated due to public demand. Must try harder.
{RULE #1: Never trust anyone "certified" by ex-President Jimmy Carter (of "{Americans have an} inordinate fear of Communism" fame). That anyone buys into that party line about Chavez is key as to their leanings and/or sympathies. If he gives a "leader" a seal of approval, a clear-thinking person knows something's amiss, not on the level, and very suspicious. And Carter certainly "certified" Chavez, per here (http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200408310659), thus that whole "democratically elected" rubbish. To cut to the chase, Chavez wasn't "democratically elected" - he literally STOLE those elections, under Carter's watchful - and approving - eye.}

That anyone would fall for that party line, further adds to the impression that "Python tackled sexism, homophobia etc." is code for "Python pushed a P.C./liberal-left/homosexual agenda in their 'comedy'." (No less than a tome such as an encyclopedia of gays and lesbians in the arts, entertainment and literary fields specifically cited "The Mouse Problem" as an example of the latter, in their bio on Graham Chapman.) And that while Benny Hill sought to make people laugh, the Pythons were more out to make a point - not only on the show, but behind-the-scenes in their battles royal with the BBC.

There's another manifestation of Python's "influence" and legacy: The prevalence, in America and some other countries, of TV shows, movies, to a lesser extent music, etc., that overtly push a socio-political agenda (think Brokeback Mountain, Fahrenheit 9/11, The West Wing, and the likes of The Dixie Chicks, just as a few examples) - and hide behind the mantle of "free speech/expression" and then whine about "censorship" if anybody complains - this while at the same time trying to stifle any viewpoint or project they don't like (i.e. Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, The Path to 9/11).

Which do you think has aged better? Monty Python or Benny Hill?

"Monty Python" aged better. The jokes are sooooo off-the-wall that they are memorable. "Benny Hill"...not so.

Monty Python was OK. My favorite is John Cleese and Michael Palin. The Holy Grail was a funny movie. The Norwegian Blue sketch. Their old TV show had its moments.

Comedy is very subjective. Having said that, the only reason I would watch Benny Hill in the old days was the remote chance of seeing a nude lady on the show...I never, even as a 12 year old, found it very funny.

MP on the other hand, was something I would faithfully watch every week, and try to emulate in my own attempts at comedy sketches. Not sure if I would react quite as strongly to it now, close to 40 years later, but then I could say that about a lot of things. The guys were just ahead of their time; off the wall, shameless, well educated, and very avant garde.

This is not every fan of their work, but most people I have known who likes Python are people of over average intelligence, and people who smoked dope. Usually people of higher than normal intelligence who smoked dope.

I have a friend who is from Iceland that was my best friend in China and he LOVED Monty Python to the point of evangelizing the series to me literally. Even bought me a DVD of their Brit series. Like I said, I was kind of hit and miss with them. The skits and things they did was either hilarious, gut busting funny, or just ho hum. My two favorites were John Cleese and Michael Palin but they were all good. My friend loved Terry Gilliam and his movies and I did like the animation.

I am a big fan of Fawlty Towers and wish Cleese would do the character one more time in a movie. Although the show came out in the 1970s, I did not see it or even heard of it until the 00's and I played those DVDs so many times, they just eventually stopped working. John Cleese even taught me (literally) how to open a wine bottle with my knees. "doing a Fawlty" and yes, it works!