Convention sketch 1988 – Terry Gilliam

And now for something completely different.

We interrupt the scheduled second of three reports on the summer London Film and Comic Convention that took place last month to present this sketch to coincide with something we were only just made aware of – that Royal Mail today issued a special set of stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the cinema release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I cannot claim to be quite old enough to say I was in on the ground floor with Monty Python’s Flying Circus when the first series came out in 1969 but I do remember it was a highlight of the week to be allowed to stay up way past my normal bedtime on a weekday to see the later series, which finished in 1974, on our black and white television. My mother’s short nickname for the programme when translated was “the set of teeth” which was an allusion to the dancing teeth of Conrad Poohs (who was played by Terry Gilliam). That I was allowed to watch the programme after the watershed when I had school the next day was testament to how liberal my parents were as some of the material, especially the animations, were quite adult. Later that decade my class in school had a trip to London that involved an overnight stay. I cannot recall why I did not go – perhaps poverty – but I was told that the entire class went to see Life of Brian in a cinema in the West End. The entire class except for one boy who was strictly prohibited from seeing it by his parents so one teacher took him to see The Big Fix starring Richard Dreyfuss on another screen. I hope that fellow does not mind me mentioning it (although it is highly unlikely he will ever read this) just as I would not mind him mentioning any of my embarrassing schoolboy incidents (any of them except for “that one” of which the less said the better) but in any case it all turned out okay for him as he grew up to be a bank manager and respected pillar of the community. Make of that what you will. The regular repeats of the tv series through that decade meant that Monty Python was a part of the vernacular of every schoolboy of the 1970s.

I have met only one of the Pythons which was Terry Gilliam and that was at UKCAC ’88. He was not a guest. He was just a fan, although in preparing this upload it occurred to me that it was not a coincidence that his presence at the convention was in the same year that Harvey Kurtzman was a headline guest. I have no evidence of it happening but I would guess Harvey and Terry got together to catch up. When Harvey met Terry for the first time back in the 1960s the former gave the latter a job as assistant editor on Help! magazine. It was there that TG was introduced to John Cleese of whom photographs were taken to appear in a fumetto that was to appear in Help! and when Cleese was starting to put Monty Python together with his four other associates it was he who enlisted Terry Gilliam who it might be said leavened the troupe who were otherwise all OxBridge graduates. It is notable that Harvey Kurtzman changed the face of North American humour comics but he also greatly affected the demeanour of British film and tv comedy.

Terry Gilliam was sufficiently well-known and recognised in 1988 that when I saw him he was surrounded by a small group of fans to whom he was chatting and dispensing convention sketches. He was, umm, animated and buzzing with excitement at the imminent release of the film he had then been working on which was Baron Munchausen, which he said had the most original and visually-arresting shots he had up-to-that-point committed to celluloid. He was especially proud of the entrance of Uma Thurman, in her film debut, as Venus in the film which is engraved on the retina of every male of a certain age.

The above drawing dates from when I did not carry a drawing book around with me at conventions. That is why the drawing is in the convention programme. The monoped character recalls the giant foot which was the most common image associated with Monty Python, and as most devoted Python fans can tell you that foot is swiped from Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid, which can be seen in London’s National Gallery.

Thank you to Terry Gilliam for the amusing convention drawing and for the laugh-out-loud hilarity he and his fellow Pythons have provided for millions of their fans over the years, and of course thanks to Richard Barker, Frank Plowright, and Hassan Yusuf, the organisers of UKCAC ’88. Cheers, guys.

Given more time I might have been able to come up with some witty remark tying in the OA fans’ appropriating of the “Grail” term and the name of the film being celebrated by the Royal Mail issue of stamps today but that is beyond my feeble mind’s intellectual capacity so I will instead end in a way that is characteristic of many Monty Python skits – suddenly and without a punchline.