Guess You Can’t Quite Call Them The Full Monty
Sounds like Monty Python might be slithering back our way before long.
At the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., over the weekend, the group announced plans for a reunion tour next year to mark the 30th anniversary of the “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” TV show - minus original member Graham Chapman, who died of AIDS in 1989.
The five surviving Pythons paid typically twisted homage to Chapman in their first stage appearance since 1981, knocking over an urn that supposedly contained his ashes and scrambling to sweep it up.
In an interview, John Cleese offered this memory of his late colleague: “He would arrive late, he’d sip weak gin and tonics all morning, and by lunchtime, be rather vague about what we’d written in the morning.”
Loose talk
Ray Romano (“Everybody Loves Raymond”), on moving from New York to Los Angeles: “I’m working all the time. But it’s hard on my wife. She doesn’t know anybody, doesn’t know her way around. I tell her to go cry on a bag of money.”
Pretty soon he’ll be ready for a walker
Chuck Norris turns 58 today.
So now we know who he’s been parroting
David Hyde Pierce (“Frasier”) calls Cleese his comedic inspiration. “‘Monty Python’ first came on the air here when I was in junior high school and high school,” Pierce says. “He also had a radio show … it was hysterical. (I liked) his blend of intelligence and insanity, absurd physical comedy with restraint; he could do everything.”
Such sloppiness wasn’t really their Norm
The cast of the former TV megahit “Cheers” also reunited at the Aspen festival, and recalled their ill-fated farewell appearance on “The Tonight Show” following the final episode. The group had gathered at a bar at 2 p.m. to prepare for watching their last hurrah, and all but Kelsey Grammer were well under the table by the time of the 11:30 p.m. live broadcast. “It wasn’t a great way to go out,” said George Wendt.
No one could ever say, ‘He plain, he plain’
Ricardo Montalban says ABC hasn’t called him about its “Fantasy Island” remake. “Maybe they feel I don’t fit into their plans,” he told TV Guide. “It’s a good idea. I wish them all the luck in the world.” Considerably harder to replace will be the late Herve Villechaize, who was immortalized as the diminuitive Tattoo. “He had a unique quality,” Montalban said. “He was a very cute man.”
But, no, the ex-mayor’s name was not Kenny
Who says Comedy Central’s “South Park” is stranger than real life? A man recently went berserk in Alma, Colo., near the actual South Park, killing the former mayor and trashing government buildings with a front-end loader. “It isn’t a comedy,” Deputy B.J. Macumber said of the irreverent cartoon. “It’s a documentary.”
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino