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The story behind Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ comedy classic ‘Ripping Yarns’

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Poor Terry Jones, what a fucking dreadful way to go. Dementia—which sick fucker came up with that one? Death’s a right evil bastard. My old man had dementia and Alzheimer’s and a whole load of other shit, and I tell you it is not pleasant to watch anyone go through that disabling, destructive, and utterly horrendous disease. If that ever happens to me, well, I’ll be getting the shotgun out, so long as I can remember where I put it…

Terry Jones was an immensely talented, genuinely funny, intelligent, cuddly man, who along with his cohorts in Monty Python changed comedy as the Beatles changed music. With his long-term writing partner, Michael Palin, Jones produced some of the best comedy sketches and series and movies of the past sixty years. My word, that’s a helluva a long time.

One of the highlights that Jones and Palin devised, wrote and made was Ripping Yarns. Now, there were three series that came out of Monty Python that had an equal revolutionary effect on television comedy. Firstly, and only in order of broadcast not in order of success, there was John Cleese with Fawlty Towers (co-written with Connie Booth); then Eric Idle’s god-like series Rutland Weekend Television—from which came the Rutles; and thirdly, Palin and Jones’ Ripping Yarns, which planted its flag on the map first long before The Comic Strip Presents….
 
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After the Pythons went their separate ways, there was an idea idly passed around the controllers at the BBC over lunch and in the club that maybe there should be a Light Entertainment show with that lovely Michael Palin. It seemed a winner. Palin was approached but no one had the right idea what The Michael Palin Show should be. Only Palin was certain it should be different, original, and breaking new ground. Though the BBC seemed to only want to work with Palin, he was determined to work with his writing partner Jones. The two writers came up with a new kind of comedy series called Ripping Yarns, with a different story, a different genre every week, and no repeating characters. It was a bold move. The BBC tested out the writers’ idea with pilot called Tomkinson’s Schooldays.

Loosely based on Palin’s own experiences at school, Tomkinson’s Schooldays was a tremendous hit with both the public and critics alike, and the BBC immediately commissioned a series. Each episode presented a mini-comedy drama in 30-minutes. Tales of derring-do from a bygone age, well, really from the Boy’s Own stories popular when Palin and Jones were lads. The first series contained six episodes. A second series was commissioned, but due to production costs the BBC lost its nerve and cancelled the show after three episodes. A great loss, which also had a detrimental effect on the writing partnership of Palin and Jones who drifted apart after the series.

Over ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to produce a documentary strand for the BBC called Comedy Connections, which examined the stories and connections behind classic British TV comedy shows—just like the title suggests. I had a shortlist of what I wanted to make for the series, but had to drop some favorites like Rutland Weekend Television and The League Gentlemen in favor of programs like Sorry! I know, you’ve never heard of it either. Anyway, thank fuck I didn’t have to do Duty Free or The Brittas Empire. However, I did squeeze in quite a few faves, including Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ brilliant Ripping Yarns. Now, run VT.
 

 
More from ‘Ripping Yarns,’ after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.29.2020
08:57 am
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We’ve been expecting you: George Harrison’s charming ‘Crackerbox Palace’ short directed by Eric Idle
05.18.2016
02:32 pm
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George Harrison’s 1976 hit “Crackerbox Palace,” the second single from his Thirty Three & 1/3 album, is one of those vaguely worded songs (Sample lyric: “Sometimes are good . . . sometimes are bad. That’s all a part of life”) that could be just about anything. It’s a happy little tune that you could project just about any happy thoughts onto while you hum along.

In actual fact, the song was written about his visit to the Los Angeles home of the great Beatnik comic, Lord Buckley, after a chance meeting with Buckley’s former manager George Grief in France. Harrison was a big admirer of Buckley (as was Frank Zappa) and thought the name of his house would make a great song title. The song includes references to both George Greif (“I met a Mr. Greif”) and to his Lordship (“know that the Lord is well and inside of you”).
 

 
Monty Python member Eric Idle directed a promo film for “Crackerbox Palace” that was shown on SNL (along with another for “This Song”) that featured Neil Innes (in drag and in other weird costumes). Harrison appeared—as himself and as “Pirate Bob” his sea-shanty singing alter ego—on Idle and Innes’ BBC Rutland Weekend Television, on the show’s Christmas special.
 

A compilation of Harrison’s bits on the ‘Rutland Weekend Television’ Christmas special
 
Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.18.2016
02:32 pm
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Eric Idle’s brilliant, nearly forgotten comedy classic ‘Rutland Weekend Television’


 
“Saddlebags, saddlebags,” was an utterance that could be heard around my local school yard during the mid-1970s. We used it to signify someone talking absolute bollocks or, as an extended form of et cetera, et cetera whilst channeling your best Yul Brynner. More importantly, it was the demarcation line between those who grew-up with the Norwegian Blue of Monty Python and those who fell under the influence of Rutland Weekend Television from whence the term “saddlebags” came. Of course, part of the reason for this generational shift was age and viewing access—Python had kicked-off on very, very late night TV in 1960s, while Rutland Weekend bounced into my life at the sensible and dare I say, neatly turned-out time of nine o’clock in the evening.

Rutland Weekend Television was a spin-off from Python, the brainchild, creation and vehicle for the multi-talented Eric Idle. The Pythons have often (rightly) described themselves as being like The Beatles of comedy. There’s John Cleese and Graham Chapman as the sarcastic and ambitious John Lennon; Michael Palin and Terry Jones as the nice but bossy Paul McCartney; Terry Gilliam as a kind of hybrid Ringo Starr (with a possible hint of Keith Moon); and Eric Idle who is the George Harrison of the band—which probably explains why Harrison and Idle were such good friends. (Harrison made a guest appearance on the RWT Christmas special as a pirate.)
 

 
After the final TV series of Monty Python in 1974, each member had gone off to make their own solo “album.” Cleese had left just before the fourth series, which certainly imbalanced the show’s dynamic, to make Fawlty Towers. While Jones and Palin devised the delightful Ripping Yarns; Gilliam moved into movie-making with Jabberwocky; and Idle published his brilliant and often pant-wettingly hilarious novel Hello Sailor (apparently first written in 1970) and the series that certainly opened my eyes to the potential of television comedy and the genius of Eric Idle, Rutland Weekend Television.
 
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Idle’s concept for Rutland Weekend Television was brilliant but simple: a TV broadcast station in Rutland (a tiny—but real—landlocked English county in East Midlands) from where a continuity presenter introduces a series of films, musical numbers, documentaries, light entertainment and chat shows. The format gave creator and writer Idle to show-off his incredibly inventive magpie-like talents with which he lampooned every kind of TV and film genre—and many of his ideas would later be reused by other (lesser) talents.

From its opening credits and introduction from mine host, a cloying, simpering, insincere idiot as you can imagine, I was hooked. This was comedy gold that tapped into a generation who had been weaned on TV and understood the inventive and playful way in which Idle spoofed the format and language of television. In the opening episode, the sketch that confirmed (for me) this was definitely classic and important TV featured Eric Idle and Henry Woolf speaking nothing but gibberish:

Eric Idle: Ham sandwich, bucket and water plastic Duralex rubber McFisheries underwear. Plugged rabbit emulsion, zinc custard without sustenance in Kipling-duff geriatric scenery, maximises press insulating government grunting sapphire-clubs incidentally.

(It’s the “incidentally” at the end that makes this quote seem all too plausible, especially in a decade where language was being mutated by Marxist sociologists into into utterable, alienating, dystopian bilge, incidentally.)

This was literate intelligent comedy that destroyed the whole artifice of television interviewing and its use of intonation to express thoughts and emotions in one fell swoop. This was also the sketch where “saddlebags, saddlebags” came from, as you can imagine. It was like watching a great scene by Harold Pinter or Samuel Beckett. Indeed, Henry Woolf who was one of RWT‘s regular cast members was the very man who had original produced and directed Pinter’s first play and was friends with the playwright from his early years.
 

 
Not only was there Idle and Woolf but the genius of Neil Innes from the Bonzo Dog Band (who had previously worked with Idle, Jones and Palin on the legendary children’s series Do Not Adjust Your Set), David Battley and Gwen Taylor. The series was made on a miniscule budget (knowing the BBC probably a bus pass, a table and chairs and some paint), but the lack of funds hardly stifled Idle’s startling invention. If ever there was a man deserving to be called the heir to Spike Milligan then it is certainly Mr. Idle—though this two bit typist believes Eric is greater than Spike for a variety of reasons. Of course, the most famous spin-off from RWT was The Rutles—Idle’s mockumentary All You Need Is Cash—which grew a life of its own with Neil Innes’ brilliant songs.

Alas, RWT only lasted two series and a spin-off book and album (which I still proudly own), and has (to the best of my knowledge) never been repeated by those anonymous controllers at the BBC. Worse no DVD has ever been issued, which has nothing to do with Mr. Idle (I have personally been assured) but all to do with the Beeb. Thankfully, some absolutely delicious bastard has uploaded the whole series onto YouTube, so you can now see what you’ve been missing, as you can imagine.
 
More from Rutland Weekend Television, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.19.2015
12:28 pm
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Pre-Rutles: ‘I Want To Hold Your Handel’
07.22.2013
10:02 am
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On Friday, Eric Idle posted a photo on Twitter of what he thinks is “possibly from a very obscure ITV one off show c 1965 featuring some of the Footlights” singing a pre-Rutles Beatles parody, “I Want To Hold Your Handel.”

Music arranger John Cameron, who later worked with Donovan and producer Mickie Most at RAK Records, started out at Cambridge University with Idle. During Idle’s time as president of the Cambridge Footlights Revue, Cameron was vice president and musical director.

Cameron described “I Want To Hold Your Handel” in the liner notes to the reissue of Donovan’s Sunshine Superman:

“[Eric Idle] and I wrote a lot of pastiches of Beatles tunes… we actually wrote a thing called ‘I Want to Hold Your Handel,’ which was the Hallelujah Chorus for The Beatles. Unfortunately Messrs. Lennon and McCartney weren’t very happy about their songs being pastiched in this way and wouldn’t allow us to do it on English territory, which was a drag, but it did go on to Broadway. Eric and I used to receive royalty cheques at the Footlights in our third year at university, which put us in a rather different spending league to anybody else!”

Idle’s penchant for affectionately spoofing the Beatles developed into The Rutles on his post-Python series Rutland Weekend Television with Neil Innes, Ricky Fataar, John Halsey, Ollie Halsall, and David Battley.

The Birth of ‘The Rutles’ on Rutland Weekend Television, below:
 

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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07.22.2013
10:02 am
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Neil Innes, the ‘seventh Python’: How Sweet To Be An Idiot
04.11.2013
02:33 pm
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I’ve been listening to the music of Neil Innes a lot this week as I’ve been writing and as always, enjoying his work immensely. It’s a feast. Truly he is one of the best pop songwriters we have, a chameleon of musical styles from the earliest stages of his career. Tin Pan Alley, vaudeville, psychedelic rock, Beatles pastiches, even reggae, there’s nothing he can’t do. As Innes gets older, his genre hopping songwriting gets even better, something that can’t be said of all—or even many—of his Sixties contemporaries. Sadly, although he is undeniably a musician’s musician, Innes will probably never be recognized as such. Why? Because he’s funny, too.
 

 
Since I was a wee lad I’ve been been a fanatical fan of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, the wonderfully zany group of Dada art school rejects featuring Innes and “ginger geezer” front man Vivian Stanshall. I discovered them listening to the Dr. Demento radio show when he played their cover of “Hunting Tigers Out in ‘Indiah’” (I heard Noel Coward and The Mothers of Invention for the first time during that same show, three life-long obsessions launched that fateful evening). I ran right out and spent my birthday money on The History of the Bonzos, a two LP set with a glossy booklet filled with insane photographs and a history of the group. I loved every single song on it. Still do.
 

 
The Bonzos were much beloved of all the really heavy rock groups of the Sixties and they opened for The Who, Led Zeppelin and The Kinks. Eric Clapton was a huge fan. Paul McCartney produced their only hit, “I’m The Urban Spaceman” (under the name “Apollo C. Vermouth”) and they made a guest appearance in the Beatles’ TV special Magical Mystery Tour as the band in the strip joint playing “Death Cab for Cutie” (and yes, this is where the band got their name). If you’ve never heard their seminal albums Gorilla, The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse, Tadpoles or Keynsham (my favorite) you really don’t know as much about Sixties music as you think you do, it’s just that simple.

It’s like never hearing Captain Beefheart or The Velvet Underground and thinking you’re all clever, a glaring and unforgivable cultural blind spot, sez me.

I’ve gone out of my way for three decades now hunting down Bonzo Dog Band related bootlegs, especially video. There wasn’t a lot of it about until a few years ago when the DVD of Do Not Adjust Your Set was released. DNAYS was a hip Sixties tea-time kids show, beloved of children and parents (think Pee-wee’s Playhouse from an earlier era). It starred pre-Python Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin (Terry Gilliam did animations for the show). The Bonzos were the primarly musical performers and members of the group appeared as extras in the comedy sketches. DNAYS was thought lost for many years when the ones that were released on DVD were re-discovered. Now there is a terrific amount of “new” Bonzo material for fans like me to feast on much that has been uploaded to YouTube.
 

 
After the breakup of the Bonzos, Neil Innes continued his association with his former DNAYS co-stars by appearing and writing material for the final 1974 series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the series after John Cleese left (only Innes and Douglas Adams were ever given writing credits outside of the six Pythons during the show’s history). Innes appears in Monty Python and the Holy Grail as the annoying minstrel and singing his memorable Dylan parody, “Protest Song” (“I’ve suffered for my music and now it’s your turn…”) in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Post-Python, Innes and Eric Idle created the wonderful Rutland Weekend Television series (think Brit version of SCTV) and Innes went on—solo, I think he and Idle had a falling out—to The Innes Book of Records, a musically-oriented comedy series., quite ahead of its time.
 

 
And of course there were The Rutles in All You Need is Cash, Idle and Innes’ adroit parody of the Beatles. Innes went on to a number of children’s shows in the 1980s and 90s such as Puddle Lane. He tours solo and with others and has reformed The Bonzo Dog Band for a reunion concert (with luminaries like Britwits Stephen Fry and Paul Merton filling in for the late Vivian Stanshall). A film was made about Innes’ life and career (and featuring many of his famous friends) in 2008 called The Seventh Python, which has never been released on DVD.

Neil Innes Official Website. Follow Neil Innes on Twitter
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
The Bonzo Dog Band: Rare and Complete version of ‘The Adventures of the Son of Exploding Sausage’

GRIMMS: The most incredible 70’s Supergroup, you’ve probably never heard of

The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band: Debut appearance on classic kid’s show ‘Blue Peter’ in 1966

‘High School Hermit’: Another Delightful Moment in TV History from The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band

Bonus Clip: George Harrison performing “The Pirate Song” on Rutland Weekend Television in 1975.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.11.2013
02:33 pm
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George Harrison sings on Eric Idle’s ‘Rutland Weekend Television’

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Who needs Martin Scorsese’s documentary on George Harrison, when you can have this roughly cobbled together sequence of prime cuts of Pirate George causing mayhem on Eric idle’s Rutland Weekend Television Christmas Special.

So, here’s one somebody prepared earlier.
 

 
Previously On Dangerous Minds

Rutland Weekend Television: Eric Idle’s nearly forgotten comedy classic


 
With thanks to Neil McDonald
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.06.2011
06:14 pm
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Rutland Weekend Television: Eric Idle’s nearly forgotten comedy classic
11.17.2010
10:32 pm
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Rutland Weekend Television was the post-Monty Python series written by Eric Idle, with music by Neil Innes (of The Bonzo Dog Band fame). While many Python-related shows have been released on DVD (Do Not Adjust Your Set, Not the 1948 Show, Ripping Yarns, and of course, Fawlty Towers) it seems incredible that Rutland Weekend Televison—it’s where The Rutles came from, for god’s sake—has never seen the light of day. (At least on a retail level, because it’s quite easy to download on the Internet and there are entire episodes out there for streaming, too.)

Legend has it that John Cleese came up with the title (meant to evoke a tiny, tiny television network) and Eric Idle bought it from him for one pound. The show’s pretense to being made on a tight budget was no pretense, as Idle and Innes had been granted the smallest of budgets by the BBC. Much of the show was shot in the same threadbare studio and jokes often revolved around how low budget the entire affair was.

Idle told the Radio Times in 1975:

“It was made on a shoestring budget, and someone else was wearing the shoe. The studio is the same size as the weather forecast studio and nearly as good. We had to bring the sets up four floors for each scene, then take them down again. While the next set was coming up, we’d change our make-up. Every minute mattered. It’s not always funny to be funny from ten in the morning until ten at night. As for ad-libbing, what ad-libbing? You don’t ad-lib when you’re working with three cameras and anyway the material goes out months after you’ve made it.”

After the second series of Rutland Weekend Television, Eric Idle, of course, went on to mostly make a bunch of really shitty movies and “Spamalot.” Neil Innes went on to the marvelous Innes Book of Records TV series (also not on DVD but easy to download), children’s television and continues to make great, funny music.

It might be heresy to say this, but I actually find Rutland Weekend Television, generally speaking, to be a bit funnier than Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Maybe that’s just because I am over-familiar with the Monty Python material and Rutland Weekend Television is fresher-seeming to me. Maybe it’s because of what Neil Innes brought to the table (I’m a huge. huge Bonzos fanatic). In any case, I’m sure it will get battled out in the comments.

Below, Eric Idle barters his soul with a uncooperative Satan.
 

 
More Rutland Weekend Television after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.17.2010
10:32 pm
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The Rutles return with ‘Lunch’!
08.03.2010
08:22 pm
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Baby, you’re a rich man, and goo goo ga joob, but all you need is Lunch: If you happen to be a fan of The Rutles, the “Prefab Four” created by Monty Python’s Eric Idle and Neil Innes of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band there will be much smileage with this clever fan-made megamix parody of the Beatles/Cirque du Soleil mash-ups created by George and Giles Martin. Dangerous Minds pal Paul Gallagher has the scoop on his Planet Paul blog:

After ‘Monty Pyhon’s Flying Circus‘, Eric Idle went on to write and star in one of TV’s lost comedy classics, ‘Rutland Weekend Television‘.  The series co-starred Neil Innes, Henry Woolf, Gwen Taylor and David Battley, and ran for two series over 1975 and 1976.  ’RWT’ was required viewing for a generation of impressionable youngsters, myself included, who had arrived late to ‘Python’ and were just at the right age to enjoy the brilliance of Idle, Innes et al.

For me, ‘Rutland Weekend Television‘ was better than ‘Python‘, as it was edgier, closer to Spike Milligan‘s ‘Q‘ series and all the better for being mainly one man’s vision.  Now ‘RWT‘ is best known for unleashing The Rutles: Ron, Dirk, Stig and Barry, the original Prefab Four, who first appeared in a comic musical homage to The Beatles’ ‘Hard Day’s Night’ and then later in 1977, through Idle’s and Innes’ genius collaboration with ‘Saturday Night Live’ producer, Lorne Michaels, in the brilliant mockumentary ‘All You Need Is Cash‘.

Now, over 30 years later, The Rutles return with ‘Lunch‘, one fan’s brilliant musical celebration of Idle’s and Innes’ original concept.  ’Lunch‘ owes much to the Cirque du Soleil’s show ‘Love‘, which was based on a cycle of Beatle songs, and even claims to be a collaboration bewteen Rutle Stig O’Hara and Circle of Hay’s founder, Captain Liberty.

Have a listen and hear how Rutlemania brought joy and laughter to the world, and made The Prefab Four wider than Elvis and taller than The Beatles.  Enjoy.

 
The Official Lunch webpage

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.03.2010
08:22 pm
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