Word: circusing
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...Idle devises numbers that are both parodies and evocations of popular songs. Idle's been writing this sort of ditty for decades. At Cambridge he did a song called "I Like Chinese" ("They only come up to your knees") that he reprised at the Hollywood Bowl. In his Flying Circus days he'd start with the verbal legerdemain of a highbrow-sounding verse ("Can a bee be said to be / Or not to be an entire bee / When half the bee is not a bee / Due to some ancient injury") with a simple chorus ("La di dah, one two three...
...This choleric temperament would define Cleese's post-Flying Circus personality: as Basil Fawlty in his Fawlty Towers sitcom; as the martinet sergeant in the film of Peter Nichols' Privates on Parade; and, right now, in Spamalot, as the Voice of God. When Arthur cravenly compliments Him on the notion of a quest for the Grail, Cleese the Almighty bellows in that distinct and cutting tenor: "Of course it's a good idea. I'm God, you stupid...
...Idle might have been born to showbiz. His grandfather, Henry Bertrand, had been manager of a circus called Robey's Flying Midgets. "I ended up in a circus too, and a flying one at that." In fact, his childhood was more Dickensian-poignant than Python-comic. In 1945, when Eric was two, his father died when coming home from the Army for Christmas; the car he'd hitched a ride in was hit by a truck. The family had few resources, so for a dozen years, from age seven, Eric was raised at the Royal Orphanage in Wolverhampton, an institution...
...John was older by a few years - a seniority crucial to lads just down from university. Cleese was the only one who had hit 30 by the time Flying Circus began, and the one who had become a familiar television personality pre-Python. He was also the first to get bored by the show. Cleese did go on the lam a lot, leaving the Pythons more times than Judy Garland sang "Over the Rainbow." He wrote little for the third season of the TV show (he claims doing only the two most famous sketches, Cheese Shop and Dennis Moore...
...exactly twice as old as he was when MP&HG was shot back in '74. If the old saying is true - that we become what we once mocked - then the Idle of Spamalot isn't too far from the "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" pub character in the early Flying Circus days. He wants everyone in the theater to get it, get it? This is clear from the show's brief overture, with oompah tubas and tiptoeing xylophones practically poking the audience in the ribs to announce what follows will be musical comedy stopping just short of a Spike Jones...