8.   A discarded idea, suggested to Terry Jones by editor Julian Doyle (and mentioned in Monty Python Speaks), was to cut the reprise of the Mr Creosote restaurant scene (in which the surviving characters philosophise about the meaning of life) and tack it to the end of the film, running under the credits. This excellent proposal was sadly ignored which, in retrospect seems a shame as it would have provided a fantastic conclusion - Idle's French waiter leading us for miles and miles, getting all misty-eyed, very possibly about to reveal something special and finally telling us to fuck off. Class. Although Doyle claims that the idea didn't get any further than a suggestion to Jones, it's tempting to think that the idea may at one point have been considered but that they changed their mind at the eleventh hour, accounting for the section being labelled 'Part 6b' (thereby allowing them to retain 'Death' as the seventh-stage-of-man joke).

	'ASIDES #2' - Squidy talks about the Meaning Of Life Region 1 DVD Yippee and yeehaw. It's the 2nd of September 2003 and Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life Special Edition DVD has just arrived in the post. And despite webwide panicking over wonky picture quality, it appears to play beautifully. Take that, Region Two! Anyway, here's a full list of of the disc's extra features. Warning: contains big hairy spoilers with bells hanging off them, so please don't read this message: Firstly, the menus. Ach, the same old fake-Gilliam nonsense with little CG men hopping about and that. Very classless. But a genuinely witty touch is the Crimson Permanent Assurance music being played over the Universal logo at the start. Disc one contains two versions of the films, the original and a 'Director's Cut', featuring three scenes from the rough cut forcably inserted into the film, scratches and all. Shame the full rough cut wasn't included, as it would've been a great thing to see in full, with undubbed dialogue, sloppy edits, replacement music until the score gets finished, and big captions saying "ANIMATION HERE" (I'd imagine). Worth noting that a rough cut for Life of Brian survives also, albeit on tape rather than 35mm film as per the Meaning Of Life. Both were privately archived by, hooray, Terry Jones, and have been the unique source of the unused scenes for their respective DVDs. Also featured on the first disc is a jolly introduction from Eric Idle (dressed in familiar spangly jacket as seen in Rutland Weekend Television, George Harrison's 'Crackerbox Palace' video, and that famous shot of the Pythons dressed up in Tunisia), reciting the poem with which he pitched the movie to Universal bosses. Finally, there are two commentaries. The first is by Terrys Jones and Gilliam and suffers the same problems that the 'Holy Grail' conmmentary had, i.e. they each recorded their track separately. Although there are a few interesting rememberances in there, the editing doesn't quite come off and you're left wondering whether the one who you can't hear was saying something interesting about this scene as well. The second commentary is Michael Palin, being silent except for the sound of him fidgeting in his chair. Tsch.The extras on the second disc are placed into five sections: "Snipped Bits", "The School of Life", "Show Biz", "Fish", and "Foreigners". "Foreigners" is just a list of English and foreign subtitles, but the rest are described below..."Snipped Bits": Eighteen minutes of unused scenes, with occasional commentary and even the odd clapperboard:- "The Adventures Of Martin Luther': You know what this is. This version has an unremovable Terry Jones commentary over most of it, the full version appearing on disc one as part of a 'Director's Cut'. It's slight yet interesting.- "An Expert": Daft little sketch as a narrator (Terry Jones) talks over war footage as a Lady (Eric Idle) translates it into French in a circle in the corner as stock footage of battles and cheeses plays behind him and she prepares a piperade for six without the anchovies.- "The Cheese Lady": The full take of Idle's French woman doing the monologue above, with new English subtitles. At the end of the skit, he comes out of character and asks to do one more take (not included on the disc, unfortunately). According to the clapperboard, this footage was shot 1/9/1982. Cor.- "Randy In The Jungle": The full take, plus clapperboard and camera setting-up. The one-legged Idle, being carried through the jungle, admits to Doctor Chapman that he is "incredibly randy": "All this jigging about ... It's like being on a bus. One of those country routes, where they're making the road up". Lots of ad-libbing here from both leads (Chapman talking about "feeling a little stiff") and it's all one shot, with no pick-up shots or close-ups. The opening, with Cleese having the branch lifted up for him, appears in the finished film. Shot 27/8/1982. - "The Hendys": Again, we all know this so no need for description. And again, it has a commentary from Jones, who feels great regret over cutting the sketch, especially over the loss of Carol Cleveland's performance. Between the two missing Hendy scenes is something that doesn't appear to have been bootlegged around like the others: an extended version of the scene where the Hendys meet M'lady Joeline (Gilliam) with additional dialogue when she warns them of the cholera epidemic in the hotel: "Right now, we need cholera like a hole in the head!". This was supposed to be a back-reference to a phone call Mr Hendy receives in his room but this piece of dialogue was seemingly cut very early on, considering all this footage comes from an early rough cut anyway. All cholera dialogue appears in the early draft. The M'Lady Joeline extention also replaces the used edit of the scene in disc one's 'Director's Cut'.- "Mr Creosote Arrives At The Restaurant": You know that photo of Mr Creosote in a park with a bowler hat and wheels that appears in "Monty Python Speaks!"? Well, this is the sketch. Short but bizarre, as Creosote has his specially designed wheeled zimmer frame taken away by the restaurant's valet. After the cut Jones leaps out of the restaurant, still in the fat suit, and starts to dance, and then falls over. Ha ha. A very odd song, which doesn't appear to be sung by a Python member, plays over the opening of this sketch. - "Gaston Takes Us For A Good Long Walk": He does and all. Five minutes of Eric Idle's waiter wandering around, waving at people, ad-libbing and generally being lovely and French. At one point he gets on a bus and you can hear Terry Jones directing him for the retake. Beautiful. 11/9/1982 says the board."The School Of Life": A selection of Makings Of, both real and fictional:-"The Meaning Of Making The Meaning Of Life": Fifty-minute documentary with all the Pythons as talking heads. Includes extracts from what appears to be an original EPK (Electronic Press Kit) showing interviews with the Pythons and b-roll footage from the shooting of certain scenes, including 'Every Sperm Is Sacred' and the 'War' sketch. The use of this archive interview causes the rather brilliant editing of an interview with Graham Chapman being shown between two new and relevent interviews with Palin and Jones, making it look like he was talking just recently about the film. The documentary also contains footage of the Pythons rehearsing the blue screen fish effects, an interview with Chapman where he's chatting on the beach at Cannes, and an archive (and timecoded) interview with Jones about winning the award. Sadly, this and other archive footage (including the Fish-Slapping Dance) have been squashed to fit the 16:9 screen, making everyone look very fat. Not all of the footage looks like this, interestingly, some being cropped accordingly. It's very bad technically, this doc: the blue-screen's awful, and Cleese's hand disappears off the screen at one stage. The documentary also suffers from the same over-editing the doc on the 'Holy Grail' DVD had: everytime Palin or Jones said "Grail" there was a cut to Tim the Enchanter saying "A Grrrrail?", and so on. The same thing happens here (Gilliam discusses a written but never filmed sketch in which handbags are used as condoms so there's a cut to Mrs Hendy opening a handbag in an entirely unrelated sketch), but thankfully it's to a much lesser extent this time round and allows the interviewees to speak for themselves, and the nice long running time allows lengthy anecdotes to be told unedited, even including things like Palin's stream-of-concious nonsense about Cleese having opposite legs and one buttock. Shame the archive footage wasn't available unedited in its original form elsewhere on the disc, but there y'go. Witty editing, too: 1983 Cleese complaining about the shoot, how uncomfortable he was and what a tremendously unrewarding experience it was. Cut to 2003 Cleese: "It was a very happy set...". - "Education Tips": Ooooh dear. A new Python sketch and, to be fair, it's not *awful* (certainly not as bad as 'How To Use Your Coconuts' on the "Holy Grail" disc) but it ain't vintage stuff. The opening joke, rewinding the footage as the narrator (Palin) messes up his lines, is repeated *far* too often, and there are less funny lines than there are funny wigs. The 'plot' of the skit is that it's a promotional video for St. Titus (Tit-Arse, you see?), the school where Cleese teaches sex in the film. Only Cleese and Palin appear on screen (Cleese not reprising his role, but playing a South African headmaster and a Scottish teacher, flailing accents around like an unretired Lacrobat) and they don't appear together. Annoyingly, none of the Pythons recorded in the same room as another, meaning that the Palin/Jones exchange at the beginning of the sketch sounds very artificial. Still, it's a new Python sketch, which is rare in itself, and has an imaginative ending as the sketch is literally shredded into nothing. And Palin says "fucking" in it. - "Un Film De John Cleese": Doh! A trailer containing all the Cleese bits, narrated by Cleese, directed by Cleese, lots of Cleese, Cleese Cleese Cleese. Not very funny, but quite short. - "Remastering A Masterpiece": This is weird. Real-life film restorer James C. Katz (he put the homosexual subtext back into 'Spartacus', you'll remember) discusses remastering film. Quite interesting really. Cut to jokes about Terry Jones finding the rushes of MoL in a rubbish tip and Terry Gilliam scrubbing celluliod with a wire brush. Yeah, those kind of jokes. Still, it's not everyday you see Terry Jones on the Universal backlot or Terry Gilliam editing at a Steenbeck, so we should be thankful. Weirdly, the laundry where Jones gets the film washed is my local laundrette, up in Soho. That's my laundry bag you can see in the background. Well, no, it isn't, but it looks the same. - DVD-Rom: Mentioned in this section on the disc for some reason. Contains: -- Screenplay: Typed up from the book, it seems, but edited so it has 'Crimson Permanent Assurance' at the beginning. Contains 'Martin Luther' and the cut 'Hendy' sections. -- The Lost Scenes: Two unused scenes from an early draft. "The Middle Of The Film": Contains members of the public making movies with celebrities (weird, but Charles Bronson, as written in the earlier draft, now replaced by Robert De Niro) and film stars giving advice to members of the overheated audience. The Pythons seem to be unsure about which star to use (or which they can get) for this sketch as certain directions read "Clint Eastwood (or Robert Redford)". Followed by "RAF Pipes", a strange little piece about Biggles types who swap pipes and legs. Coo. Only two lost scenes? What about the Kenneth Kendall introduction, or the early Hendy stuff about dead bodies in the showers, or the wonderful subtitled board meeting? See what you're missing here at Garrett Gilchrist's site -- The Song Sheets: Not Eric Idle's original notes or nothing like that, just straight reprintings of the music and lyrics for the film's songs. -- The Fat Recipes: Odd. Real recipes for all the food that Mr Creosote orders, pate de fois gras, jugged hare, etc. Pointless and mad. Bit of a wasted opportunity, all in all. One good thing about the DVD-Rom extras: all are easily printable. One bad thing about them: The impossible-to-use cursor, in the shape of the Hand Of God. "Show Biz": Clips about the film and that: - 'Song and Dance': Smashing this. Ten minutes devoted to 'Every Sperm Is Sacred' and 'Christmas In Heaven', with insightful interviews with choreographer Arlene Phillips, Terry Jones flipping through his storyboards, and Jane Leeves, being interviewed on the 'Frasier' set about her role as a topless dancer. B-roll footage of 'Every Sperm' features, including shots of Jones directing the film while half dressed as a middle-aged Pepperpot. - 'Songs Unsung': Three videos of some new recording sessions, of varying goodness and badness: -- Eric Idle sings 'Every Sperm Is Sacred' to a new, and really rather bad, tune. He's behind a fishtank and one of the fishes supposedly joins him in a duet, singing in an unidentified female voice. A waste of disc space. -- Terry Jones sings 'It's The Meaning Of Life'. This is more like it! An unused title song sung by Jones, previously unheard for twenty years (although the deliberately repetitive lyrics appeared on PythOnline once). Jones sings in his dull, monotonous 'I'm So Worried' voice which suits the song perfectly, plus you see André Jacquemin mixing in his studio, which is nice. -- Eric Idle sings 'Christmas In Heaven'. Idle sings an early version of the song with the unused verses, including more mentions of fish and other programmes on TV in Heaven ("Celebrity Squares has Brando on.."). Quite pleasant really. - 'Selling The Film': A selection of damn fine promotional material: --Trailer: Traditional theatrical trailer, nothing special but nice to have. Two interesting things appear here that don't in the film: a shot from the 'Telepathy' trailer (see below) and, because the trail is 4:3 when the film was cropped to 1.85:1, you can just see Terry Gilliam's desk at the top of the title card! (Much like when they showed 'Holy Grail' at the NFT recently and it was projected out of rack, so that Gilliam's art table could be seen throughout the animations.) -- TV spots: Two 30-second TV ads. Again, nothing special but rather nice. -- US promotion: The fuck is this?! A bizarre video of an American who clearly isn't Terry Jones dressed in the Creosote suit as he wanders around Hollywood buying everything in every restaurant whilst accompanied by two men with buckets. Why?! What was this travesty made for?! Sadly, there's no explanation on the disc, but it's lovely to see it for it's own sake. Beautifully point-missing from Universal's promotions department. -- Rejects: A selection of unused (and occasionally used) poster art as a British voice (John Goldstone?) dismisses them all. A nice little gallery of some really ugly portraits. (But why is there no gallery of the used posters, or some publicity stills, or anything for that matter?) -- UK radio: Bingo! This is the stuff: Three radio ads for the film. The first features Palin as one of the Vercotti brothers talking about bootlegging videos and urging people to see the film, or else. The second is a philosophy quiz where famous philosophers are asked what the Meaning Of Life is, and where it's playing. Palin is the host, and Jones and Cleese play the philosophers. The third features a voice-over artiste (Palin again) getting his ads confused. All three are gold. -- Telepathy: Wow. An original teaser trailer shows a roller caption explaining that this will be the first cinema trailer to show clips from the film telepathically. Then all the Pythons come out and stare at the audience intently (one second of this shot apears in the trailer above). After a minute or so they disperse chattily and another caption comes up saying that the telepathy doesn't work for everybody, and apologises for wasting our time. Brilliant. The highlight of the disc. The Pythons here are dressed as their characters from the 'Fighting Each Other' sketch, and Gilliam, in his Zulu skin, has a man crouching behind him, presumably trying to stop his costume falling apart. Palin mentions the mystery man as they walk off. Joyous. "Fish": A selection of unrelated Pythony left-overs. Like fish, they stink if you leave them too long: - 'Virtual Reunion': Quite sweet really. The Pythons have been individually placed in front of a blue screen and have obviously been asked to ad-lib actions for a minute or two. They are then placed in the same CG room, and completely fail to interact with each other. Lots of mime: Palin picks his nose with difficultly, Idle chats with an invisible Graham ("Haven't seen you in a long time? Who's next, I wonder"), and Cleese answers a (seemingly real) phone call with boredom in his voice. Marvellously, he has a 'Fawlty Towers' ringtone! (Shades of Jamie Lee Curtis displaying her 'Halloween' ringtone on the 'Fish Called Wanda' disc.) - 'What Fish Think': Well, bugger me if it isn't a continuous fifteen minutes shot of a fishtank. Fifteen minutes of a fishtank. Fifteen. Minutes. Of. A. Fishtank. Yes, the Pythons say things over them occasionally but nothing worthwhile, and you can't help but think this could contain something better, like the full 1983 EPK, or the unedited Fish rehearsal footage, or even 'Away From It All'. John Goldstone saving up footage for a three-disc special special edition in twenty years time, perhaps. - Weblinks: www.pythonline.com and www.montypythondvd.com. That's what this page says. - Credits: Credits. Interestingly, lots of extra extras described in Universal's press release for the disc have gone AWOL. Extras such as: Including an Alternate Ending No.deleted scenes spiced with no-holds-barred commentary on why they didn't make the cut. deleted scenes accompanied by scathing commentary from the PythonsNot 'no holds barred' or 'scathing', or even by 'The Pythons'. It's just Terry Jones giggling a bit over two of the clips and feeling sad that they had to go. A madcap 50-minute featurette, The History of the Meaning of Life is "guided" by animated versions of unforgettable characters Mr. Creosote, A Fish, The Headmaster and The Man in Pink.Hardly 'madcap', and hardly guided by these animated characters. Although they do appear in the DVD menu, they *only* appear in the DVD menu and not in the documentary or anything. contemporary interviews with the children from the "Every Sperm is Sacred" sequence Nope. There was one of these children interviewed on Python Night but not here. and a "where are they now" look at the film's topless runners. Nope. Only Jane Leeves and even then she was only "topless" in 'Christmas In Heaven'. And even then they were fake. Plus, contemporary interviews with people who hated the film! Unless you count John Cleese, no such thing is on the disc. The DVD-ROM edition features [...] and the Python's Good Death Guide. No Good Death Guide, although that is the title of the disc's chapter for that Arthur Jarrett sketch. Maybe John Goldstone *is* saving up for a fortieth anniversary Even More Special Edition.

So you thought that the Monty Python computer games were just cheap cash-ins containing dull RPG storylines, unsolvable lateral thinking puzzles, and a game of Tetris involving plague victims called 'Drop Dead', huh? Think again. They actually contain quite a lot of never-before-heard Python out-takes, including snippets of rushes from Monty Python And The Holy Grail and unreleased album sketches. Including:

The CD-Rom game Monty Python And The Quest For The Holy Grail contains several short snippets of audio rushes from the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail hidden throughout the game, most notably in the bumpers between levels where an animated King Arthur says a different line from the movie each time. As well as some alternate takes of certain dialogue ("Be quiet! I order you to shut up") there are also takes of Chapman fluffing his lines ("Where can we find this tave, oh Kim?", "Those who live seldom... [laughs] those who see them seldom live to talk about it", "I am King Arthur... oh, that should be 'of the Britons', sorry", "We have travelled the length and b-breadth of the land... no, sorry, we'll have to do that bit again", "We have ridden since the snuh... heh", "Oh damn, was that right?", "We'll have to do that again", "But these are not strangers to our land... ugh, my bloody head") which are very amusing, but made less amusing with the stories of Chapman's giving up of alcohol at this time and becoming very shaky. Some of these takes are very clear, giving rise to the theory that they could have been recorded in a London studio at a post-production session rather than on location, but this is disproved by an equally clear take which could only have been recorded up hill in Scotland (Eric Idle asking if "maybe we ought to leave the smoke out of this shot").

Other sounds of note include: - John Cleese halting a take of the 'Prince Herbert' scene ("Oh fair one... no, that's very bad. Start again, sorry") followed by him throwing a tantrum at one of the directors (you can even hear him stamp his foot!) by saying "No, don't, I'm sorry but it's very off-putting. I know you're trying to direct me and... okay", plus a few other failed 'Prince Herbert' takes; - a distorted Terry Jones as one of the Three-Headed Knight forgetting his line and whining "I know it, I know it, I know it! Oh, don't tell me! It's, oh... it's on the tip of my tongue. 'Who are they?'"; - out-takes from the very end of the film, where a policeman (played by editor Julian Doyle?) is saying through a megaphone "Pick that up, pick that up! This isn't a rubbish dump, get out!" and, laughably, "My trousers are falling down, this is ridiculous"; - John Cleese saying "And now, the big one" (is this an out-take? I can't identify it. There was another piece from Eric Idle I thought might be a 'Holy Grail' out-take, where he says "I hear you laughing, that's good enough for me" but after closer listening it seems to be an off-mic ad-lib from his new recording sessions for this computer game. Cleese, however, didn't do any voices for the game so who knows where "And now, the big one" comes from); - and finally a bizarre bit where Terry Jones' voice says "Do you want me to play Sir Galahad?". Alright then, theories about this last one: This must have been recorded very early on in the making of the film, before casting had been settled on, but why? If it was recorded on location during a take then wouldn't this be very late for them to be deciding roles, half-way up a expensive hill in Scotland? And if it was recorded earlier then when? As part of a writing session? An early production meeting? If so, does more of this session/meeting exist in audio form? And why wasn't more of it or any of the out-takes included on either the game or the DVD? Either way, I'll bet all these takes came from Terry Jones' lovely big personal archive of things, which also contains rough cuts of Life Of Brian and The Meaning Of Life. And all these alternate reels of Holy Grail dialogue must still exist in their original form somewhere, unless Roger Saunders sold them off as filler during the past five years.

The game also features some previously unheard scripted dialogue, taken from the scene where Arthur and Bedevere are in town looking for a shrubbery. After a panicked Old Crone says "No, we have no shrubberies here!" there is a brief aside between the two:

	BEDEVERE Surely there must be...? ARTHUR Oh, now, don't argue. [whispers] These simple people are terrified by the Knights Who Say Ni. There is only one way we can get the information we want... BEDEVERE Uh, send her a letter from a long way away? ARTHUR No, no, no, no, no, we must... BEDEVERE Tie ourselves to the tree? ARTHUR No... BEDEVERE How about talking to her in funny voices? ARTHUR No! The only way is to make her as afraid of us as she is of the Knights Who Say Ni. BEDEVERE (UNDERSTANDING) Ahhhhhh. Hit ourselves on the head with a big rock? ARTHUR No, look, nothing we do to ourselves will frighten her as much as what we can do to her. We must threaten to say 'Ni'. Monty Python And The Holy Grail (cut dialogue), 1974

The next line, delivered to the Crone, is King Arthur's "If you will not tell us where we may buy a shrubbery, my friend and I... we shall say 'Ni'", which features in the film along with everything that went after it. Shame this scene is missing these first few lines as they set up Bedevere's idiocy in the sketch rather nicely: "Nu!". Jones stumbles over the line about tying themselves to "the tree" (it sounds like he wanted to say "a tree" and, indeed, in the scriptbook this is how it is written) so maybe that's why it was cut. The opening bit of "don't argue" is a bit of a non-sequitur, though. If the "Surely there must be...?" is directed at the Crone then why doesn't Arthur want Bedevere to argue, either with her or with himself? The scriptbook suggests the slightly more regal line "It will be not good to argue".

By the way, the King Brian The Wild sketch at the end of the game isn't an out-take from the film (the sketch was never filmed anyway) but is a new recording by the cast accompanied by some clever new black-and-white line animation based on Gilliam's sketches printed in the Holy Grail scriptbook. Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Jones reprise their roles as Sirs Galahad, Robin and Bedevere, but the parts of Lancelot and King Arthur are both played (without much success) by Michael Palin as Cleese didn't take part in the game and Chapman is still dead. New roles in the sketch were King Brian, played by Terry Jones, a knight of King Brian's, played by Eric Idle, a tiny soldier, played by Michael Palin, and the Herald, played rather well by Idle again. Certain dialogue, including the word "fucking" and the punchline where King Brian decapitates the Herald, is missing from the sketch.

Other 'Holy Grail' game bits: An rather-faded extract from the trailer features in the disc, as well as a clip from the Black Knight scene dubbed into Japanese, both of which appeared on the Criterion laserdisc. Plus, the music played over the end-credits of the game is the complete DeWolfe theme music from the film, most of which isn't heard in the film. MP3s of this tune and King Brian available at PythonNet.org at any rate.

At the very end of The Meaning Of Life computer game your 'prize' for completing it is a video clip of "The Adventures Of Martin Luther". Its first official release. It's a bit pixelly in the game but with a Bink/Smacker converter it was easy enough to make it into a nice 450mb avi file. There's a nasty tear in one frame near the beginning of the clip, and it's been slightly edited, shamefully cutting out the exchanges about eating fat, and the line "So what do you keep up here? Adipose tissue?". Other deleted scenes are alluded to in the game: one with a brief animation of Creosote walking, created around the photo of him in a hat and with wheels under his stomach that appears in David Morgan's book Monty Python Speaks but is missing from the film, and another where Carol Cleveland's Diane The Waitress turns up before the 'In Conversation With The Hendys' game, her breasts acting as 'Start'/'Quit' buttons. She speaks one line from the scene ("Hello, I'm Diane, I'm your waitress for tonight") so the game's makers obviously had access to this footage of this sketch. Maybe Terry Jones offered out his longer cut.

The game also features the beginning of 'Galaxy Song' sung without a musical backing track. Unfortunately the compilers have bunged the sound of a whirring fridge underneath it.

Also, hidden in the back of a book in the final level is a radio headed with the caption '...And Now For Something Completely Unrelated To The Game'. Clicking on it plays three previously unreleased album tracks, thereby proving the claim made on the packaging that the game contains 'new material from all of the Pythons', despite Graham Chapman's persistent deadness. Two ('Mrs Particle & Mrs Velocity' and 'Psychopath') should be familiar to anyone who's heard the unreleased Hastily Cobbled Together For A Fast Buck out-takes album, but another, a very odd courtroom sketch with Chapman as a judge, Jones as an usher, Palin and Idle as two bickering barristers, and a jury of murderous Pepperpots determined to prove the defendant guilty, is the first appearance of this sketch anywhere. If Hastily Cobbled...'s anything to go by, it's probably an out-take from Contractual Obligation... You know, for an album the Pythons didn't want to make they certainly put in a lot of effort writing and recording sketches that they wouldn't even use. Is there any more of this in the archive I wonder?

(Apropos of nothing, the Dennis Moore song appears in the MoL game, resung by session singers to an entirely new copyright-free tune. Robin Hood PRS and that.)

(Actually, apropos of even less, the entire final level of the MoL game is set in a 360-degree tour of a cottage full of toys, models and puppets who tell lot of unconnected stories of the past. This cottage, as confirmed with an article in the January-February 2000 issue of 'Right Angle' magazine, is actually Terry Gilliam's place in Highgate, full of statues and knick-knacks from Gilliam's world travels and several props and models from his movies, such as the baby mask from 'Brazil', tiny models of the cast of 'Baron Munchausen', the odd piece of original artwork from Meaning Of Life, a huge mouth advertising "Neals Yd Abattoir", and a model of The Crimson Permanent Assurance, all of which have been snazzily interwoven into the game to tell stories and move the gameplay along. And if the photo in 'Right Angle' is anything to go by, the tapes of various Python titles across the top of the TV haven't been planted by canny game designers, but are there in Gilliam's house normally. Lovely.)

The reason why there isn't a Life Of Brian computer game is complex. Work began on one started after the 'Holy Grail' game came out (obviously the plan was for the games to be released in the order of the films) but it was felt that the writing wasn't strong enough and that the storyline throughout the game wasn't working so it was put on the back-burner to be finished later, while the game-makers began on the Meaning Of Life game, which was originally due to be released after the 'Brian' game. Halfway through making the Meaning Of Life game, 7th Level, the company behind all these games, went bust, and so Take Two software leapt in to help, financing, finishing and eventually releasing the Meaning Of Life game with the moribund 7th Level. The hurried finishing of the game produced problems which show in the finished product: there are at least two 'bugs' in the final level of the game, rendering it uncompleteable unless you go searching for online help (http://www.bettycat.com/ is the place for all that). And because of 7th Level's non-existence there will never be a proper reissue or downloadable patch made available with these problems fixed. Meanwhile, there is still a half-finished Life Of Brian game out there somewhere which has never been released and, as far as I know, has never been bootlegged. This is a shame for two reasons: one, judging from the other two games, we can guess the Life Of Brian game would have featured the out-takes seen on the Criterion DVD as well as lots of other interesting unreleased footage and sound. Also, Meaning Of Life would have been a clever way to end the Monty Python computer games series, what with its references to previous games and its ultimate prize of the meaning of life itself. There were also plans around this time for Enteractive Inc to create a CD-Rom version of Gilliam's book Animations Of Morality.

The first CD-Rom game, Monty Python's Complete Waste Of Time, contains nothing interesting like this in it at all. Sod all. Not a sausage. Nothing.

10.   At the 1988 Baftas Monty Python were awarded the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema. The show was hosted by Michael Aspel and the prize was presented to the team by Princess Anne. Since this appearence doesn't seem to be on everyone's video list, here's a transcript of the speeches:

	PRINCESS ANNE This year's Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema goes to a team of... 'young' men who changed the guidelines of British comedy, firstly on television, and then in a unique way in the cinema. Whether producing their own films as a team or influencing others by their writing or performance, their influence has been unique. Comedy is never safe. It's often uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous, certainly for the performers. And for the audience, it can prick our conscience, and that is how it should be. 'The Meaning Of Life', 'The Life Of Brian' and 'The Holy Grail' (SMATTERING OF AUDIENCE APPLAUSE) are just three of the vast range of work these men have made their own. This year's Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema goes to the Monty Python team. APPLAUSE. THE BAND STRIKE UP 'LIBERTY BELL'. GRAHAM CHAPMAN, TERRY GILLIAM, TERRY JONES AND MICHAEL PALIN APPROACH THE STAGE. GILLIAM IS HOLDING A HEAD-AND-SHOULDER CARDBOARD CUT OUT OF JOHN CLEESE ON A STICK (WHICH HE WAVES AT THE CAMERA). JONES IS HOLDING ONE OF ERIC IDLE. THEY EACH SHAKE HANDS WITH PRINCESS ANNE ASPEL And while you prepare your ad libs, (PALIN LAUGHS; JONES MAKES AN 'OOOH!' FACE) we'll see some of the finest moments from your great films. Thank you. CLIPS ARE SHOWN OF 'HOLY GRAIL' ('CONSTITUTIONAL PEASANTS'); 'LIFE OF BRIAN' (BRIAN ADDRESSES THE CROWD, AND THE STONING) AND 'THE MEANING OF LIFE ('CHRISTMAS IN HEAVEN' AND 'THE END OF THE FILM'). THE BAFTA AUDIENCE ARE HEARD LAUGHING UNDERNEATH - ESPECIALLY AT THE KNOWING 'GOLD ENVELOPE' JOKE IN THE LATTER CLIP. APPLAUSE AS WE CUT BACK TO THE STUDIO. PALIN Um, your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen, first I'd like to apologise that there are so few of us here tonight. Um, we were advised that if all six came the podium would probably collapse. Er, so, er, John and Eric are represented here on photograph. We thought they were the most dispensible. Um, you know, it's funny to think on this, er, wonderful evening, with this wonderful award... how very difficult it was to get money out of you bastards eighteen years ago... AUDIENCE EXPLODES WITH LAUGHTER. CAMERA FINDS VARIOUS COMEDY PERSONS IN THE AUDIENCE - A SMILING BEN ELTON (SITTING WITH JOHN LLOYD, STEPHEN FRY AND GEOFFREY PERKINS); A MID-SHOT OF FRY SMOKING A FAG, LOOKING A BIT DRUNK AND A CLAPPING MEL SMITH. ...so we'd like to thank, first of all, tonight all those who actually, er, dipped into their pocket and er, their pockets and made our films possible - Victor Lownes, Michael White, the late lamented Tony Stratton-Smith, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd... A SLIGHT LAUGH FROM ONE OR TWO AUDIENCE MEMBERS WHO EVIDENTLY THINK HE'S JOKING ...George Harrison and Denis O'Brien who saved The Life Of Brian when EMI dropped out, reportedly after reading the script, um, and Universal Pictures who allowed us practically unlimited sums of money to buy vomit in the Meaning of Life. So we'd like to thank them all very much indeed. APPLAUSE. TERRY JONES APPROACHES THE PODIUM JONES I'd just like to say on behalf of the team and the 'dead' members (INDICATES CUTOUTS) um, thank you to Anne James who's been, um, managing our affairs behind the scenes for the last fifteen years, to Steve Abbot who's been... well, used to look after all the money we used to have, and, um, finally to Alison Davies who's typed practically every word we've ever written, and very often improved it. Thanks a lot to those three. APPLAUSE. TERRY GILLIAM APPROACHES THE PLATFORM GILLIAM My friend John here wanted me to thank Mr and Mrs Balcon, without whom Michael Balcon wouldn't have been possible and we wouldn't be here tonight. Thank you. APPLAUSE. GRAHAM CHAPMAN APPROACHES THE PODIUM CHAPMAN Uh, I'm sorry if they all went on a little bit. Thank you and goodnight. APPLAUSE THE PYTHONS EXIT THE STAGE TO THE STRAINS OF 'LIBERTY BELL' ASPEL The Monty Python team. Wonder whatever happened to them. The Bafta Awards, 1988

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