John Oliver on Monty Python: ‘inspirational idiots who changed comedy’
When a reckless teacher screened Life of Brian at his school, the future comedian fell in love with the anarchic pranksters who created it. Then he met them – and even more chaos ensued
Writing about the importance of Monty Python is basically pointless. Citing them as an influence is almost redundant. It’s assumed. In fact, from now on it’s probably more efficient to say that comedy writers should have to explicitly state that they don’t owe a significant debt to Monty Python. And if someone does that, they’ll be emphatically wrong.
This strange group of wildly talented, appropriately disrespectful, hugely imaginative and massively inspirational idiots changed what comedy could be for their generation and for those that followed.