The absolute very first time I saw Life of Brian was when it hit the cinema in 1979. A few years earlier, Monty Python had been kind enough to fart in our general direction, introduce us to some knights which said ‘Ni’ and dismiss the loss of limbs in combat as mere flesh wounds but, by the time the decade was drawing to a close, we were in need of a follow-up to the Holy Grail for some fresh quotes to shout across the classroom before the teacher turned up (or afterwards as well if it was Squibby Bowman).
The Pythons had played pretty fast and loose with the Arthurian legend - I'm pretty sure they completely made up the killer rabbit episode for instance - so we didn’t expect them to stay quite as faithful as they did to the story of Christ, lifting much of the material from the same source used by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber for Jesus Christ Superstar who, as all schoolchildren at the time knew, wore frilly knickers and a playtex bra (an aspect of his life which the Pythons, respectfully, decided to leave out of their biopic).
This omission clearly wasn't sufficient to stave off the controversy which threatened to derail the project, particularly when the original backers, EMI, pulled out just before production started. They had form in this regard though and had got similarly cold feet a couple of years earlier when the Sex Pistols called Bill Grundy a dirty fucker on Thames TV. That got you sacked in the 70s - they'd call it a PR coup nowadays and no one would bat an eyelid.
Instead, ex-Beatle and famous zebra-crosser George Harrison raided his piggy bank (do these still exist or are they just virtual nowadays?) and stepped in with the £2m funding on the basis that he loved the idea and just wanted to be able to see the film, making it, as Eric Idle pointed out, the most expensive cinema ticket in history. He was also given a cameo role as a thank you but proved to be a better guitarist than actor because his one line, ‘ullo’, had to be redubbed by Michael Palin in post-production.
Grown-ups in Christian communities across the globe got their knickers in a twist about Life of Brian but, as kids, we weren’t particularly bothered about the blasphemy debate. We were pretty clear that it was just a parody and that Brian was not literally intended to represent the Son of God but then we were teenagers so what did we know? I remember telling my mates at school that it seemed an obvious satire on organised religion and the mass credulity engendered by social conformism and group-think. I was 13 at the time and they bog-washed me straight afterwards which seemed a fairly accurate reflection of the level of debate going on in the media at the time.
Despite the religious furore ignited by the film, there were only two topics which the nation’s youth wanted to discuss at school: speech impediments and full-frontal nudity. In the 70s and early 80s, before it was made a hate crime, we were allowed by law to take the piss out of how people talked and so the Pythons took full advantage by not only targeting lisps (Bigguth Dickuth) but also rhotacism (which, as any school kid can tell you, is a problem with the letter 'r'). Our favourite speech-impeded line from the film was "he wanks very highly in Wome" which we found even funnier than writing 'shelloil', or even more hilariously, 'boobies' upside down on our calculators.
On top of that, the film had not one but two scenes of full-frontal nudity. Don’t forget, this was before your average 10 year old could watch hardcore porn on their smart phones during maths. We didn’t even see our parents in the nuddy because they would undress in the dark and only emerge from the bedroom if they had their jim jams on (unlike me nowadays, going commando as I lounge in my chair downstairs like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct). So, it was quite an experience for us to see Graham Chapman, as Brian, showing us his willy before his girlfriend, Judith, flashed her pubes (and when I say ‘flashed’, I mean ‘permanently kept on screen for several seconds’) which happened to be the sexiest thing I'd seen on screen since Charlie's Angels (all 3 of them) played strip poker with Bosley in the agency office. What? That wasn't actually a scene in the series? Hmmm, wonder where I saw that one then.
We Brits have always tended to like our comedians to be well-educated as well as funny and Oxbridge has churned out its fair share, including all 3 of the Goodies, three quarters of Not the Nine O’Clock News, both of Fry and Laurie and the full UK contingent of Pythons. As a result, Life of Brian had a strong educational element to it. The list of things the Romans had done for us proved a far better history lesson than the ones we had to sit through at school (although the brilliantly-named Bartle Frere did his best at times) and the Roman centurion’s corrections to Brian’s graffiti made me understand Latin grammar rules for the first (and last) time.
Life of Brian seems to have aged pretty well. I asked my grown-up kids whether their friends would appreciate Monty Python and was given the thumbs up (on a text of course - we don't actually speak). My kids themselves don't count because I force-fed them a constant diet of 70s/80s nostalgia during their formative years but theirs is a generation which was largely born this century and so thinks Grease is a country in Southern Europe, TV is something you watch when you’ve lost your iPhone and Space Dust ought to be cleaned up with a Dyson.
That said, 40-50 years on, only Michael Palin has kept his place with the public as a national treasure. John Cleese was clearly the most talented and his subsequent output – especially Fawlty Towers – cements his place at the top of the tree but he’s grown increasingly irascible as he’s got older (haven’t we all?) and his refusal to bow to the social media liberal elite has seen him sent to the Twitter naughty corner more than once in recent years.
Of the others, Eric Idle made an unlikely sandwich in the London 2012 Olympic closing ceremony between ELO and Muse and the rest are either American or dead (no more, ceased to be, kicked the bucket, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible etc). After Life of Brian, I'm not sure what sort of reception they'd have received from the Great Film Director in the Sky (who, if he actually exists, hopefully looks like one of Terry Gilliam's animations and has a wicked sense of humour....well, not wicked obviously).
God: If you want to come in here, you have to really hate the Romans
Graham Chapman: I do
God: Oh yeah, how much?
GC: A lot!
God: Right, you're in
Cut to Chapman and Jesus at the Pearly Gates, leading the heavenly choir in a sing-a-long of 'always look on the bright side of life' while Terry Jones tells them off for being very naughty boys.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME......70s BOARD GAMES
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I think we let the 3rd form whistle but I remember Johnstone, the Head of Music, singling the 2 of us out for praise for singing the chrous with 'such gusto'....by which he meant 'loudly and out-of-tune'
Everytime I hear 'Always look on the Bright side of life" it reminds me of our winning (not sure we did, but let's go with it?!?!) performance in the House music competition in the 6th form. Was it me or you who whistled????? Budgie🤣😂