Terry Jones talks about writing Python sketches
Ever since that fateful day in 1974 when KERA, the public television station in Dallas, became the first PBS station in the U.S. to broadcast Monty Python’s Flying Circus I have wondered just what went on in the heads of Oxford graduates, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, and Cambridge graduates, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman. Just how did they come up with the classic sketches such as the Dead Parrot sketch, the Lumberjack Song or the Spanish Inquisition?
We caught up with Terry Jones back in 1999 as we paid tribute to 25 years of British comedy on public television and he talked about how the Pythons wrote as partners and how, overall, he and Michael teamed up to write the infamous Lumberjack Song sketch, how John Cleese and Graham Chapman partnered for the much more intellectual and organized material like the brilliant Dead Parrot sketch.
