The
troupe that was
Monty Python's Flying Circus, the
Pythons, has a long, long, long history in
British humour. Before Monty Python's Flying Circus, many of the same troupe were together in the
David Frost Report. This was before
David Frost started interviewing people like
Richard Nixon.
There is a book somewhere which shows the lineage of the Pythons. This seems to include so many, many of those active in the BBC from the 60's on. (But then the BBC has always been a rockin' place, and we never really get to see the genius that it, and a public broadcaster can be.)
It always seemed to me that the greatest strength of the Pythons was their ability to pie language. (Does anyone here know that to pie something comes from shaking up a case of lead type? Its what was used not so long ago to print what I am printing now.)
How often did we see Pythons use dictionaries, or books of translation, and get it all so horribly, so uproariously wrong? Or those situations in bureaucrats' officies, with bureaucratese? Or those parodies of the Beeb itself?
Language gone mad is both the funniest thing possibly, because language includes everything---and it is the greatest nightmare.
Quelle cauchemar!