by
GRAHAM CHAPMAN
BERNARD McKENNA
DOUGLAS ADAMS

But the show has reached a sort of mythical status among fans of both Python and The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, mainly through word of mouth or badly-researched biogs or ‘companions’.  All of these are quick to bring its existence to our attention but a little reading between the lines soon proves that none of the biographers  have actually watched the thing. Robert Ross’ Python Encyclopaedia entry is little more than a sly uncredited rewrite of Kim ‘Howard’ Johnson’s effort, itself based on little more than a brief Adams-interview and a lot of guess-work. Lewihson's Guide To TV Comedy adds little by claiming that 'the general consensus was that the show lacked cohesion'.

So what was Out Of The Trees? It was a comedy sketch show starring Graham Chapman and a team of semi-unknowns including Simon Jones and Mark Wing-Davey (later to play Arthur Dent and Zaphod Beeblebrox in Hitch Hiker's ) along with Roger Brierly, Tim Preece, Maggie Henderson, Jennifer Guy, Maria Aitkin and Marjie Lawrence. Sub-titled ‘The End of the Road Show’ , it was recorded in October 1975 and broadcast only once, at 10pm on January 1976.  And if the show itself lives up to the script then we have a lost classic here, guys.

Like yer Python, there’s a fair bit of dry post-modernism at foot – two of the main characters are a voice-over artiste and a links man (Brierly and Chapman respectively) who meet on a train. Their vocations seemingly manage to hold the show (which they acknowledge as existing) together. This obviously open linking device takes us to the sketches which include a dramatic adventure about Ghengis Khan becoming jaded with the tedium of raping and pillaging (which appears to change en route into a documentary); a looks-like-it-was-rejected-from-Python skit which sends up parliamentary procedure in a cabinet meeting (the MPs are obligated to address the chair and use the word ‘draconian’ in every speech (followed by a quip) - even if, as in this case, they are simply warning the others about the building being on fire) and a great sketch in which a young couple are harrassed by some over-zealous coppers for picking a peony which sets off a chain reaction and escalates radidly towards the destruction of the world.

Other characters on the train include a bicycle-obsessed scoutmaster who’s obviously bored an American couple into a coma with his bletherings, a rude and incompetant waiter (featuring some great exchanges which follow the ‘failure to communicate’ idea typical of a lot of Series 4 Python sketches); and two pepperpot-like women (albeit played for once by female actors - Aitkin and Lawrence) who bicker and boast about their husbands in a way which isn’t a hundred of your Earth-miles away from those two characters out of The League Of Gentlemen. Does Mark Gatiss have a copy of Out Of The Trees hidden under his mattress along with all the other sci-fi-related stuff missing from the BBC archives?

Bits of the show have found their way into other projects – a brief clip of the ‘Peony’ sketch was inserted into the Making Of Hitch-Hiker video simply to illustrate that Adams had worked with Simon Jones before. Mark Wing-Davey’s involvement in the show wasn't alluded to (save for in a blipvert info-burst biog) and the inclusion of the clips shown didn’t by any means prove that Out Of The Trees has survived (‘Peony’ is one of the pre-filmed sketches and as such may have only survived as film stock - the clip, after all, does not have a laugh-track, a requirement the BBC would almost certainly have insisted upon at this time. On the other hand, said clip may only have been chosen in the first place because it ends with the destruction of the Earth, a la Hitch Hikers).

The ‘Peony’ incident is also told, as an apocryphal anecdote, in Graham Chapman’s fantastic A Liar’s Autobiography - co-written by Adams, among others.  The innocent Peony-pickers in the anecdote are Chapman and boyfriend David Sherlock.

The ‘Ghengis Khan’ sketch was reworked as a short story called 'The Private Life Of Ghengis Khan' (credited as 'based on an original sketch by Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman' and illustrated by Michael Foreman) for the 1986 Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book which Adams edited.  The text stays very faithful to the original version but adds the twist of having Khan visited by Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged (from Adams' Life The Universe And Everything) which presumably proved a tad confusing to anybody not au fait with the Hitch Hiker books.

The joke about a brutal historical figure growing tired and disgusted with rape was also re-used as the opening - and only vaguely funny - scene in the Terry Jones-penned 1989 film Erik The Viking.  A vague link, until you realise that Michael Foreman also illustrated the original Erik books, and both Erik The Viking and Out Of The Trees boasted music by Neil Innes.

Out Of The Trees was described by Adams on the Making Of Hitch Hiker video as ‘only semi -brilliant’. Whether this was down to performance or production values is open to question (until someone can confirm whether or not the thing still exists and furnishes us with a copy) but the script is marvellous. There’s a pure old-school BBC2 atmosphere to the work (which wouldn’t look out of place among Series 4 Python), and the fact that a full series was never developed - probably due in part to Chapman’s alcoholism, although that’s often used as a scapegoat for a lot of BBC idiocy so we’ll halt that theory RIGHT NOW - is a great shame.

[Enormous thanks to Jason Hazeley.  Nothing but contempt and head-shakes for Jim Yoakum.  Much love going out to everyone on the forum who argued so eloquently as the curly-haired Yank and his various dopplegangers attempted to fuck over your enjoyment of the script armed with tedium...]

NOTES:
Douglas Adams, interviewed in David Morgan's excellent Monty Python Speaks (Fourth Estate 1999) is uncharacteristically hazy in his reminiscences, but intimates that although only one show got made, maybe three full scripts were written.  He added that Out Of The Trees was probably too similar in style to Python (though why this should necessarily be a problem is unclear to us).

Jim Yoakum's The (Non-Inflatable) Monty Python TV Companion (Dowling Press 1999) requotes a few old biogs in a short section given over to Adams/Python crossovers.  He mentions that the never-filmed second show included an Adams sketch about a haddock being accepted at Eton and that Chapman's adopted son John Tomiczek claimed that Adams nicked it from rejected Python material.  There were also some rumblings from (the now late) Mr Tomiczek that Adams originally co-wrote the Hitch-Hikers Golgafrincham B-Ark material in collaboration with Chapman (for The Ringo Starr Show - another mythical project which didn't get further than script stage) but never credited his input.

The Official Hitch-Hiker Companion has some very interesting bits about Out Of the Trees but unfortunately we can't find it at the moment.

[Just found it.  Nothing too interestng as it turned out.  Just the usual meanderings subsequently ripped off by Ross, Johnson, Yoakum, etc.  Thieves, robbery, etc...]

Out Of The Trees has apparently been wiped.  The clips on the Making Of Hitch Hikers video were culled from 'whatever extant material remained'.  So, just the celluloid stuff then.  Nevertheless, if anybody out there does know the whereabouts of a full copy then please let us know.

Jim Yoakum - a lasting testament