I just had an innovative invitation to my mate Sizzi’s birthday ‘party’. We’re going to hook up on Zoom and watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail for his 60th celebrations. Then we’re all going to get really pissed (alone) and smash up the bathrooms (our own) in a celebration of 70s culture. I’ve got a six pack of really trendy designer brewery beers with fancy but stupid names, like Dracula’s Kiss and Uncle Chaim’s Halitosis, and a bottle of Laphroaig in case they don’t work properly. And a sledge hammer. For the bathroom. If I’m still awake after the film. And the booze.

But not so long ago (ok, fucking decades ago) one of our local cinemas (they were open back then, in about 1977) offered a midweek ‘special’. One night only. Double hit. Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Blazing Saddles. Quite literally, at that time, the holy grail of comedic brilliance. So we went. Dozens of us. Who, collectively, had seen those 2 movies approximately 2,536 times between us. We must have set the precedent for the Rocky Horror Show. Which you can’t see in a cinema unless you know all the words to every song and scene and are dressed as a sweet transvestite. Because we knew every line of both movies. From “I fart in your general direction” to “Mungo just pawn in game of life”.

It was a zeitgeist thing. Two movies that were the epitome of their cultural freedoms of expression. Just before the devil that is ‘political correctness’ ruined fun forevermore.

Holy Grail was a masterpiece. And insulted everyone who needed insulting. Mainly French people. Fine by me. And was wild and wonderful and so stupid as to become totally brilliant. When Life of Brian eventually came out a little later it became ‘the’ ultimate Python film but mainly because it upset every church in the country and added heresy to the normal satire. But Holy Grail remains sacred to many of us.

Blazing Saddles was Mel Brooks’ finest moment. So that when PC finally came around that movie was the blueprint for ‘the place to start’. Because you were allowed to laugh at race jokes, slavery jokes, jokes against women, against Jews, Muslims, gays and even the KKK. You could even call the ‘native Americans’ ‘red Indians’! Who, for the purposes of the film, spoke Yiddish. Which is probably why it is never shown on those late night tv slots where they show old movies. Simply because its too good. And if you censored it using modern criteria there’d be just 3 minutes and 22 seconds left.

Happy Gorgeously sunny Day

A xxxx