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The actor Hank Azaria was cast in the Broadway show "Spamalot" (the musical based on "...Holy Grail").
On the first day of rehearsal, while the full cast doing a table read of the script, they were impressed that Azaria had already memorized all of his lines.
He replied: "This is Monty Python and the Holy Grail... I've been off-book since I was 12"
Truth,
James
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I find "The Holy Grail" to be terrible to watch, but funny to quote afterward.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
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Monty Python aka The Emperor's New Clothes
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Did you come here looking for an argument?
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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I'm surprised by the responses. When this topic has come up before it's usually met with a lot of replies similar to "you just don't get British humour."
I haven't watched much of it but mostly because it is not very funny. I had friends who loved it though.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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It's difficult stuff, because humour is very personal. Watch Dave Allen - if you can find his stuff, and I'll howl with laughter the whole way through. But even when Falwty Towers was brand new I found it funny, but only in small, five minute doses. Any more, and I'd be chewing my knuckles with embarrassment. Take this bit: Whose Fault is It? | Fawlty Towers | BBC Comedy Greats - YouTube[^] and it still works perfectly despite all the time that has passed.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Dave Allen would come on Public Broadcasting here (Gov't run educational TV. It's where all the BBC shows aired when I was a kid)
He was very funny for someone who could only count to 9 and a half.
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"I know nothing!"
Unfortunately for the punchline to work you need to have watched the whole episode...
So old that I did my first coding in octal via switches on a DEC PDP 8
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Quote: I haven't watched much of it but mostly because it is not very funny.
Obviously, you just don't get British Humour! --- well, someone had to say it.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Well, in the IT world the entire name of unwanted mail became named SPAM because of a Monty Python sketch...
Spam stems from Monty Python sketch - YouTube[^]
But, I believe, the reason Monty Python was (seemed) so great was because we did not have any forms of humor back then. Well, there was less that was funny and especially less that was avant-garde at that time. Monty Python did things to do them and that is how a lot of technology starts out too. "Let's just see if we can do this thing."
This is what made me laugh when I saw it when I was 10 on PBS (public broadcasting system):
How Not To Be Seen Monty Python's Flying Circus - YouTube[^]
modified 13-May-20 12:05pm.
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I had no idea ! Thank you for that trivia.
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I think you hit on at least two explanations. We aren't teens or pre-teens anymore. Things that are funny change. Swirlies aren't nearly as entertaining when you are 40 vs when you are 13.
The other thing to remember is that TV was still *NEW* in the late 60's and early 70's. These guys were experimenting with things they could do in colour as well as a bunch of other new things. We had only had TV for about 10 or 12 years in 1965 in the Texas panhandle and we didn't have PBS. I had to move east for college before I saw them on TV.
In the US, comedy was changing over from Joey Bishop and others to newer stuff like the Smothers Brothers and George Carlin. Jonathan Winters was probably a good US equivalent to what Monty Python was doing.
A lot is also generational. Can you imagine someone trying to pitch Blazing Saddles to a movie company today?
I guess if you fight to understand what they are saying because of their accents, it is hard to find things funny.
I never got some of the British drama. The Prisoner and Space 1999 always seemed surreal to me. Maybe that is what they were going for?
BTW, to the guy who said "UKers": Ooooh. *NO ONE* says that. Brits is a good common name. Most folks don't know that Great Britain is an island and not a country! There are 3 countries on Great Britain.
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Yes, they're like an ALBATROSS!
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What flavour is it?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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It's a bird, innit? It's a bloody sea bird ... it's not any bloody flavour. Albatross!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Do you get wafers with it?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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'Course you don't get ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ing wafers with it, ya ****!
And we'd probably better leave it there ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Right, you! Stop that! You're not even a proper woman! 
Now, nobody likes a good laugh more than I do, except perhaps my wife and some of her friends. Oh yes, and Captain Johnson. Come to think of it, most people like a good laugh more than I do, but that's beside the point.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I think you just had the last word. 
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An african or an european one?
yes, I do know it is not regading an albatross in the original context
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Even if Monty Python is old, it belongs to my generation. It represents the absurd slapstick that was great when I was a boy. Even if old, it is "mine".
I picked up a DVD with one of my father's favorite comedians (Norwegian, not much know abroad, Leif Juster). As I watched through the sketches, some of them I knew from my childhood, I nodded again and again: That would certainly have made daddy laugh! And that one. That punch line would have made him jump up and down!
All the way, it was dad's humor, just like I knew it to be. I can pinpoint a lot of funny lines, but I do not laugh out loud myself. But it is not my humor.
Actually, I feel it worse with the humor of today's youth: I do not know why they find that moderne humor funny, the way I know daddy's humor. But my own inability to laugh at the humor a generation older than myself, and similar with that a generation younger than myself, I fully accept that those generations of people will not understand my humor. Even if you are of my generation: If you have not grown up with, say, Monty Python style humor, you will not get it. It doesn't belong to you. It is as strange as the humor of another generation.
Obviously, this is just a main rule - there are lots of exceptions, both in people and specific comedians etc. - and the combination of those.
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